Every year, we poll our
Working America members to find out what issues are most important to them. We’ve grown to over 3 million members across the country – people of all ages, industries, and backgrounds – but this year the results are remarkably consistent.
Working America members have said loudly and clearly:
- We want our leaders to focus on jobs and getting Americans back to work.
- We want accountability, not tax handouts, for the Wall Street executives who crashed our economy and continue to deceive homeowners.
- We believe health care is not a commodity for a privileged few, but a right for all Americans.
- We have paid into Social Security and Medicare our whole lives, and we want those programs available so they can retire with dignity.
- We are furious that companies continue to receive tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas. We do not believe we should have to pay for the cost of our jobs leaving the country.
- Finally, Bush tax cuts are the culmination of 30 years of a tax system that favors the top 2 percent over the rest of us. That system has failed. We need a fair tax system, one where millionaires and billionaires don’t pay a lower rate than police officers and teachers.
In the coming election, we have an undeniably clear choice on these issues. Corporate-backed politicians, at nearly every opportunity, have acted to oppose every single one of these goals. That is not just our opinion – their voting records are remarkably telling.
If we do not vote on November 6, 2012 (or prior to that date in states with early and mail-in voting) we already know what will happen. The last two years have been an effective preview:
- Politicians will continue ideological attacks on workers, women, and those who rely on basic services rather than focus on jobs.
- They will vote, as the House has 33 times before, to repeal the Affordable Care Act, giving control of our health back to the private insurers, and effectively cutting off health care access to thousands of Americans.
- They will vote, as the House has twice before, to turn Medicare into a voucher system, ending the program as we know it.
- They will continue to block, as they already have, efforts to end tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas.
- They will continue to defend, as they have in 2001, 2003, 2010, and 2012, a tax system that subsidizes the wealthiest 2 percent at our expense.
Despite the clear choice in this election, each and every one of us knows at least one person in our lives who is not voting. Maybe it’s because they work two jobs, or have to take care of children or an elderly relative, and can’t make it to the polls. Maybe they are first-time voters.
For most of them, including thousands of people we talk to on their front stoops and porches every night, it is because they are tired of a political system that ignores the needs of working families while consistently propping up those at the top.
Let’s make this the year that we get those folks to the polls. Let’s make 2012 the year we renew faith in our strength in numbers. Let’s make this an election where the great majority stands up for an economy that works for all of us.
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by Doug Foote - Reposted from Working America's Main Street Blog