Transform Our Economy
We need a bold economic vision that will both reclaim lost capital and put money back in the pockets of hard-working Americans, and create millions of new jobs for those who have been left out of the workforce.
- Green New Deal. Scientists are sounding the alarm on climate change. Communities are fighting back. It’s time to drastically and immediately move away from fossil fuels, develop the technologies of the future, and create prosperity for all of us — not just those on top. The Green New Deal is a mass mobilization to dramatically expand existing renewable power sources and deploy new production capacity with the goal of meeting 100% of national power demand through renewable sources. The Green New Deal will also provide all members of our society, across all regions and all communities, the opportunity, training and education to be a full and equal participant in the transition, including through a job guarantee program to assure a living wage job to every person who wants one and ensure a ‘just transition’ for all workers, low-income communities, communities of color, indigenous communities, rural and urban communities and the front-line communities most affected by climate change, pollution and other environmental harm including by ensuring that local implementation of the transition is led from the community level and by prioritizing solutions that end the harms faced by front-line communities from climate change and environmental pollution.
- Secure a Living Wage and tie it to Inflation. This is about justice and basic human decency. If you work hard and you work full time you shouldn’t live in poverty. Furthermore, we support strong unions and collective bargaining.
- Enact a Federal Jobs Guarantee. A federal jobs guarantee program would establish a floor for wages and benefits for the nation’s workforce. This program would provide a baseline minimum wage of $15 an hour and guarantee for public workers a basic benefits package, including healthcare and childcare. By investing in our own workforce, we can lift thousands of American families out of poverty and get people to work doing the work that needs to be done.
- Rebuild Our Crumbling Infrastructure. Our infrastructure gets a grade of D from the Society of Civil Engineers. The government should invest trillions in rebuilding our crumbling roads, bridges, schools, levees, airports, etc. There’s no reason why we can’t have the world’s #1 infrastructure.
- Block Bad Trade Deals. Americans have lost millions of decent paying jobs due to unfair trade deals. It’s time to end the race to the bottom and renegotiate these rigged deals that only benefit elites. We should not sacrifice our sovereignty. The only people who are allowed to make laws for the United States should be the American people, not multinational corporations.
- End Tax Dodging and Loopholes. Corporations dodge $450 billion a year in taxes by using offshore tax havens. We should end this injustice, as well as chain the capital gains tax to the income tax, increase the estate tax, and implement the Buffett Rule so that no millionaire CEO pays less in taxes than his or her secretary. It’s time for a tax system that benefits the middle class and the poor, and makes the top 1% and multinational corporations pay their fair share.
- End Unnecessary Wars and (Begin) Nation Building. The United States maintains 800 military bases worldwide at a cost of $100 billion a year. This is money that can be spent at home creating jobs, rebuilding infrastructure, and investing in the future of the people. The disastrous war in Iraq cost trillions, the war in Afghanistan is going on 17 years in with no end in sight, and we’re currently bombing 7 different countries. We spend more on our military than the next 8 countries combined. It’s time to end the wars and the perverse monetary incentive structure that makes politicians flippant about sending young men and women to die. Unilateral U.S. military force should only be used as a last resort to defend the nation. The current budget could be cut drastically if we used our department of defense for what it was intended — defending us, instead of waging interventionist wars.See Also: Reducing Wars:
Protect Our Rights
The growing disparities in income and wealth among our nation’s people have long-term impacts on our population — for wealth accumulation, debt reduction, and educational attainment.
- Medicare For All. The United States should catch up to every other modern nation and implement a single payer, Medicare for All system. It’s time to end the destruction of American health care by rapacious, price gouging, for-profit, private health insurance middlemen.
- Free Public Colleges and Trade Schools. Educating the citizenry of a nation pays dividends in the long run, with the economy getting back much more than is initially put in. Crushing student debt for higher education would no longer burden young men and women trying to improve their lives through hard work. We should strive to have the best education system in the world.
- Defend and Expand Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Republicans have been trying to privatize and cut earned benefit programs for decades. Corporate Democrats have been willing to go along with them under the guise of a ‘grand bargain’ and ‘reform’. We pledge to staunchly oppose this. Social Security reduced the elderly poverty rate from 35% to 10%. 3.4 million Americans would immediately fall into poverty without Medicaid. Gutting these vital programs is not an option.
- Ensure Paid Vacation Time, Sick Time, Family Leave, Childcare. The United States is one of just three countries in the world that doesn’t offer paid maternity leave, the others being Oman and Papua New Guinea. We are the only industrialized nation that doesn’t offer paid vacation time. This should be changed immediately.
- Fight For Racial Justice. Racism and xenophobia have always been part of our country’s history. Since our nation’s founding, the wealthy and the powerful have always used divide-and-conquer tactics to make working people fight each other instead of the people on top. African Americans and Latinos in particular, and people of color generally, have been targets in our nation’s continued assault against their rights, liberties, and humanity. As did generations before us, we will continue to advocate and push for justice, equity, and equality in all manner and forms, and will sponsor and vote on legislation to secure the same. We support a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate the generational harms caused by slavery and Jim Crow and propose remedies.
- Protect Women’s Rights. We support the Paycheck Fairness Act and we support repealing the Hyde Amendment. We oppose Republican cuts to Planned Parenthood and women’s health clinics all across the country. In 2016 alone, 60 TRAP laws targeting abortion were passed in 19 states. We will vigorously oppose all efforts to dismantle reproductive rights.
- Combat Homelessness. More than 600,000 Americans are homeless on any given night, including over 57,000 veterans. Studies show the cost of leaving a homeless person on the streets is $30,000 while the cost of housing them is just $10,000. Addressing this crisis is both the moral and fiscally responsible thing to do.
- Police Reform. For-profit policing and for-profit prisons should be abolished. Police training should be retooled to emphasize de-escalation tactics, and body cameras should be mandatory on all officers. Furthermore, community oversight boards should be created and broken windows policing should be eliminated. Stop & frisk — which disproportionately targets African Americans and Latinos 87% of the time — has a 97% failure rate. On top of being discriminatory and ineffective, it’s also unconstitutional and should be ended. Special prosecutors must also be appointed to hold police accountable. We should invest more in jobs and education, less in jails and incarceration.
- Enact Common-Sense Gun Regulation92% of Americans want expanded background checks, 54% want a ban on assault weapons, and 54% want a ban on high capacity magazines. We agree with the majority of the American people and support these measures. Over 30,000 Americans die every year from gun violence, including over 10,000 homicides. The time to act is now to address this public health crisis.
- Voting Rights. Since 2013, with the U.S. Supreme Court’s disastrous Shelby County v. Holder decision, states across the country have been actively working to reverse the hard-fought protections for voting rights secured during the Civil Rights Movement. Fair and equal access to the ballot is essential to our ability to uphold and protect our nation’s democracy. We believe every American citizen is entitled to vote, and we will work to secure voting rights, challenge ultra-partisan gerrymandering, and put an end to affronts to our democratic representation.
Defend Our Democracy
We cannot afford to continue partisan jockeying on these issues; there is too much at stake. Americans must be provided a better chance to succeed in the face of rising income inequality and continued machinations by corporate giants.
- Abolish ICE. ICE was created in 2003 as a reaction to 9/11. Since then, it has turned into a state-funded terror group that regularly violates basic human rights. We don’t need a special enforcement agency for undocumented immigrants. We can rely on our existing criminal justice agency to arrest those who have committed a crime, just like we did before 2003.
- End Corruption. Super PACs should be banned, private donations to politicians and campaigns should be banned, and a clean public financing system should be implemented to end the takeover of our government by corporations and billionaires. Americans deserve free and fair elections — free from the corruption of big money donors. The Supreme Court has effectively legalized bribery. We need public financing of our elections.
- Reform Our Criminal Justice System. America imprisons more people than any other nation in the world. With 4.4% of the world’s population, America incarcerates 22% of the world’s prisoners (716 per 100,000). Even as the national crime rate remains on a steady decline, incarceration rates continue to climb. On top of that, our criminal justice system currently targets Black and Brown people leading to higher arrest rates and longer sentences. That needs to end. Criminal justice reform requires sweeping and comprehensive policy changes that reverse our nation’s trends of unjust mass incarceration, and works to address the root causes of criminal behavior while mitigating the negative consequences of inappropriate policing practices.
- Implement Comprehensive Immigration Reform. We won’t give an inch in our opposition to Trump’s outrageous proposals. Ideas like a ‘total and complete’ shutdown of Muslim immigration and deporting all undocumented immigrants are anathema to America. We will fight for comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship. America is a proud nation of immigrants.
- Stop Selling Arms to Human Rights Violators. We recently gave Saudi Arabia billions in weapons and watched the civilian death toll in their vicious bombing campaign in Yemen tick up. We continue sending Egypt arms as they violently crack down on peaceful protesters. Israel received $38 billion in aid and promptly announced new settlements. The first step to peace is not enabling nations who regularly violate international law.
- End The Failed War On Drugs. The racist War on Drugs has torn families apart all across our country. Politicians in both parties created a system of mass incarceration while divesting resources from the most vulnerable communities. Legalizing marijuana is a racial and economic justice issue. Black Americans are four times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana possession despite similar usage rates. Billions of taxpayer dollars are spent to uphold a racist system. We must legalize marijuana and ensure that the records of those who were incarcerated for marijuana-related charges are expunged. As we legalize marijuana, we must also follow the models set in Massachusetts and Oakland that make sure that profits, investment, and business opportunities are going toward communities unfairly targeted by the racist war on drugs.
- Abolish The Death Penalty. Humans are fallible, we’ll never get the right answer 100% of the time. 4% of the people on death row are not guilty of a crime and have been wrongly convicted. A system that puts innocent people to death is indefensible and should be reformed. We want justice for the American people but killing innocent people on death row is the exact opposite.
- Democracy Reform73% of congressional districts in America are deemed “safely Republican or safely Democrat” and do not have competitive general elections. We support bold reforms to provide voters an equal say in our democracy. This includes efforts to expand the House of Representatives and the Fair Representation Act to create multi-member districts and ranked-choice voting. We also support the movement to provide statehood for Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico in order to bring balance to the increasingly skewed Senate. These efforts are in line with movements for racial and economic justice in our country. We also support public financing of elections and the removal of the corrupting influence of corporate and big money in our democracy.
- Oppose Bigotry. We must speak out against racism, sexism, xenophobia, and all forms of bigotry. Non-discrimination protections that currently apply to race, religion, and gender should be expanded to include the LGBTQ community.
- Defend Net Neutrality. These days, our reliance on technology has become second-nature, and the Internet has become a great enabler of industry, connectivity, and commerce. For all the wonders the internet provides, its benefits are fragile in that at any moment, large corporations seeking to pad their bottom lines and deliver outsized returns to their shareholders can, at any moment, hinder our access to the Internet – a platform for freedom of expression and medium for improving our lives. For more than a decade, the Internet has served as a great equalizer, and has provided an opportunity and platform for small businesses and voices (who may not otherwise have a platform to compete in the market alongside big corporations and other powerful entities) to meet new audiences and expand their impact. Widespread access to the internet and net neutrality have been essential for providing Americans a better chance to succeed in the face of rising income inequality and continued machinations by corporate giants. We believe in upholding net neutrality as a condition of Internet Freedom, and will work with our colleagues in Congress and around the country to ensure that Congress once and for all adopts a legislative solution to uphold the open internet. We cannot afford to continue partisan jockeying on this issue. The rules have changed consistently over the past ten years based on who occupies the White House and which party in Congress dominates in the realm of legislative control. There is too much at stake and on the line to stop now. Internet Freedom is a must, and we will do what it takes to ensure that all people have the opportunity to access the internet freely, openly, and affordably.