FDR 0 The New Bill of Rights (2 minutes)

Something that has been lost in the incredible assault on America and American values that has been the center of our politics for the past decade or more is the vision that progressives had and still have for America. Visions of a better life for all doesn’t make the headlines on the cable newsers, conflict and death do. We have had plenty of that lately.

A proposal from Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren reawakened my desire for America to once again dream of what can be. Our founders did not break away from Britain so they could become property of those wealthy in our society. True, that was an element of society back then, but the trajectory has been toward freedom for all.

America made great strides toward real freedom for all citizens from FDR’s New Deal up until 1980 when Ronald Reagans insane ‘trickle down’ economics reversed much of the gains made by the common American. It gets worse each year.

During the Clinton years things were looking up. Had Al Gore become president (after all he did win but SCOTUS short circuited the ballot count in Florida) America would have taken a hugely different direction. Clinton’s economics had the country on a path to get out of debt. With that out of the way, who knows where Al Gore would have led us.

But SCOTUS intervened and Bush got us into a costly war and occupation, bankrupted the country and nearly plunged the world into an unprecedented economic catastrophe. Democrats had dreams of some form of Medicare for All, attacking the climate challenge and the curse of the gun pandemic may have been blunted.

So when this little story snuck its way into some of the lesser news sites, my heart did a little flip.

While the mainstream (and nearly monopolistic) media is setting the midterms up as a quasi Biden v Trump rematch or possibly a referendum on President Biden, the story that Senators Sanders and Warren were introducing a bill to stabilize Social Security and raise the cap on income taxable for Social Security revved up my memory of some of the grand visions that Democrats have for our country.   

“Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren led a group of lawmakers Thursday in unveiling legislation that would expand Social Security’s modest annual benefits by $2,400 and ensure the program is fully funded for the next 75 years.

The benefit boost under the Social Security Expansion Act would be funded by lifting the cap on the maximum amount of income subject to the Social Security payroll tax. This year the cap was $147,000—meaning millionaires stopped paying into the program in late February.

“It is time to scrap the cap, expand benefits, and fully fund Social Security.”

If passed, the expansion bill would apply the payroll tax to all income, including capital gains, above $250,000 a year, a change that would only raise taxes on around 7% of U.S. households.

“At a time when half of older Americans have no retirement savings and millions of senior citizens are living in poverty, our job is not to cut Social Security,” Sanders (I-Vt.), head of the Senate Budget Committee and a co-chair of the Expand Social Security Caucus, said in a statement.”

YES WE CAN! Democrats must not forget that in America:

  –  We can afford GOOD schools for every child.

• We can afford medical care for all 
• We can afford food for all
• We can afford a dignified retirement for all
• We can afford (we simply must) stand up to the crisis of climate change
• We can assured to house our citizens 
• We can afford good paying jobs with decent benefits for all 

The list goes on. This is the year we finally say NO to the insane Reagan economics that have so distorted our nation for 40 years. It is time to say NO to the crazy culture wars that have us attacking teachers and doctors and nurses. It is time to say NO to policies that has our citizens armed to the teeth with weapons of war.

And most of all it is way past time to boot out those who use racism and bigotry to divide us and mislead us. In short we can dream again but we must get behind the leaders who will help us achieve this dreams.