Congressional Progressive Caucus Unveils New Legislative Agenda to Deliver Equality, Justice, and Economic Security for Working People

The Congressional Progressive Caucus released its Progressive Proposition Agenda, a vision for Congress to meet everyday Americans’ urgent needs and rebuild the American dream for the poor, working, and middle class. 

---

Podcasts (Video — Audio)

---

Congressional Progressive Caucus Proposition Agenda Executive Summary

I. Lower the Cost of Living

• Lower Health Care Costs and Expand Health Care Access
  • Expand Medicare drug price negotiation to cover all drugs and ensure those lower prices for all Americans including those without insurance, and make taxpayer-funded drugs affordable for all.
  • Publicly manufacture select generic drugs and offer them to consumers at a fair price.
  • Close the Medicaid coverage gap, expand Medicare to include dental, vision and hearing, and lower the Medicare eligibility age.
  • Crack down on private equity in healthcare, Medicare privatization, overcharging and
    corporate tax avoidance.
  • Increase funding for all public health care systems, including community health centers, behavioral health providers, Indian health providers, rural and veterans’ hospitals, and non-law-enforcement first responders for health emergencies.
  • Address health crises by investing in maternal and infant mortality, particularly in communities of color, and mental health and substance use treatment and prevention, particularly for the opioid epidemic.
  • Remove medical bills from Americans’ credit reports and stop collectors or creditors from targeting or discriminating against those with medical bills.

• Enact Major Investments to Address the Housing Crisis:
  • Invest $250 billion to expand public housing, address the repair backlog, and upgrade public housing consistent with climate needs.
  • End homelessness by permanently authorizing homeless assistance programs and expanding eligibility for VA programs. Provide direct assistance to first-time, working-class homebuyers.
  • Prohibit landlords from discriminating against renters with rules to control and
    stabilize rents, overcome segregation, protect tenant organizing, and crack down on
    private equity and hedge fund acquisitions in rental housing.

• Reestablish the American Rescue Plan Expanded and Improved Child Tax Credit (CTC) to provide a fully refundable monthly payment to working-class families without work requirements or administrative burdens.
• Expand Social Security: Increase and expand benefits by closing tax loopholes so that millionaires and billionaires pay what they owe.
• Strengthen Pell Grants and Loan Forgiveness Programs.
• Provide Electricity and Broadband Are Affordable, Renewable, and Reliable:
  Fund the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP); crack down on private utility
  companies that engage in price-gouging and targeted blackouts, and support affordable
  utilities that deliver renewable energy and remove barriers for municipalities and rural
  cooperatives.
• Provide Public Banking for All: Advance options for low- or no-cost financial services, including post office banking and Federal Reserve checking accounts.
• Improve the IRS: Provide free filing tools and pre-prepared returns to all Americans. Protect and increase resources for the IRS to improve customer service.
• Invest in Care to Workers and Expand Access to Care Services: Expand access to Medicaid home and community-based services and child care, including capping childcare costs at 7 percent of household income for every family in America. Improve care worker wages, nurse-to-patient ratios, and protect care workers’ right to join a union.

II. Boost Wages and Worker Power

• Strengthen Labor Law: Enact comprehensive labor law reforms to ensure collective bargaining, the right to unionize, and workplace democracy for all workers. Codify the right to timely union elections and rules to ensure workers have a real voice at the table and receive the benefits and job safety they deserve.
• Ensure Equal Pay for Equal Work and Paid Family and Medical Leave: End gender pay discrimination. Establish a 12-week paid federal Family and Medical Leave program and grant workers greater ability to take off work for health, caregiving, and family needs.
• Provide Workers a Living Wage, Workable Schedules and Benefits: Raise the federal minimum wage, eliminate the tipped minimum wage and phase out the subminimum wage for youth and workers with disabilities. Ensure workable schedules, overtime pay, and a shorter workweek.
• Protect Striking, Contract, and Other Vulnerable Workers: Protect workers’ health insurance coverage during labor disputes with unemployment insurance for striking workers and ensure federal contractors are following the highest labor standards. Codify strong federal heat, smoke, and wind safety standards and establish health and safety protections for workers.
• Crack Down on Abusive Employers: Strengthen laws to prevent corporations from engaging in wage theft, misconduct, illegal employment of children, workplace violations, and retaliation based on workers’ immigration status.

III. Advance Justice

• Strengthen Reproductive Rights: Codify the rights to abortion, contraception, and in vitro fertilization. Repeal the Hyde Amendment.
• LGBTQI Equality: Protect LGBTQI people and people with HIV from discrimination at work, school, and in public spaces. Codify the rights of transgender, nonbinary and intersex people, including gender affirming care and health care, and prohibit conversion therapy.
• Comprehensive Policing Reform: Pass comprehensive policing reform to ensure that policing reflects community values and upholds civil rights, demilitarize the police, and invests more resources in communities.
• Marijuana Legalization: Legalize cannabis, expunge records, and provide restorative justice for people with marijuana-related convictions. ● Provide a Roadmap to Citizenship for Immigrants, including essential workers, farmworkers, TPS recipients, Dreamers, deported veterans and family members, and
  others.
• Address the Legacy of Slavery: Establish a commission to study and develop proposals for reparations for Black Americans.
• Abolish the Federal Death Penalty.
• Create a Workable, Fair, and Humane Immigration System that allows the federal government to efficiently and fairly process immigrant arrivals and protects the civil and human rights of immigrants. Disentangle the criminal legal system from the immigration system and end the use of private prisons and mandatory detention for immigrants. Expand legal pathways and access to work authorization and support states’ and cities’ ability to welcome asylum seekers.
• Ensure Respect for Tribal Obligations: Fully meet and fund all treaty and trust obligations to Tribal Nations and communities, including in public land management.

IV. Protect Our Planet and Our People

• Establish National Clean Energy Standards: Create millions of renewable energy jobs to help reduce emissions with binding, enforceable federal clean-energy standards in fuel and electricity.
• Invest Resources Required to Tackle Climate Change and Protect Communities: Build on the Inflation Reduction Act’s direct pay and tax credit provisions, invest in robust renewable energy and reduce emissions in federal buildings and on federal lands, and expand the American Climate Corps. Strengthen environmental justice law to ensure community engagement and equitable benefits for Black, brown, Indigenous, and frontline communities.
• Guarantee Clean Water and Air for All Americans, free from lead, PFAS, and other pollutants. Ensure that every person in the country has access to affordable drinking water by creating a permanent water assistance program.
• End Fossil Fuel Subsidies and Tax Big Oil’s Excess Profits.
• End Hunger and Support Farmers and Local Producers: Expand access to affordable and nutritious food by investing in SNAP and WIC while supporting producers. Invest in rural infrastructure, small farms, and break up Big Ag.
• Promote Affordable and Sustainable Transportation: Invest in public transportation that lowers emissions, expands electric and renewable energy, and ensures all Americans have safe and affordable options.
  

V. Make Our Democracy Work

• Strengthen Voting Rights: Protect the right to vote by passing a broad and comprehensive voting rights bill that eliminates discrimination and barriers to voting. Provide same-day, automatic, and online voter registration.
• Improve Representation: Create fairer, more efficient, and more representative elections by supporting ranked-choice voting and fixing partisan gerrymandering. Abolish the Electoral College, grant statehood to the District of Columbia, and establish a process for the people of Puerto Rico to determine the island’s future political status.
• Bold Campaign Finance Reform: End corruption and get big money and corporations out of politics by eliminating secret corporate spending in elections.
• Crack Down on Corporate Influence in Federal Regulations and codify legal deference to federal expert agencies to protect Americans’ health and well-being.
• Fully Fund Federal Agencies that Invest in Americans’ Health, Education, and Wellbeing: Ensure that Congress funds vital federal agencies represented by annual non-defense discretionary spending and return to pre-austerity levels. Strengthen long under-resourced agencies like the NLRB and Veterans Affairs and prevent privatization of government services
• Eliminate or Reform the Filibuster: Allow for the democratic consideration and passage of essential legislation.
• Ban Stock Trading and Ownership for Members of Congress and the Federal Judiciary.
• Strengthen Judicial Ethics: Impose an enforceable code of conduct on the Supreme including instituting accountability measures and restrictions on gifts, and requiring judicial disclosures and recusal.
• Reform the Supreme Court: Expand the number of justices on the bench, implement term limits, and create new judgeships across the federal system.

VI. Break Corporations’ Hold on Our Economy

• Promote Competition, Take on Monopolies, and Crack Down on Junk Fees: Strengthen and expand antitrust laws to end monopolistic practices and malicious pricing schemes, protect consumers’ and workers’ interests, and guarantee fair markets to lower costs and ensure equal footing for small businesses.
• Establish a Billionaire Minimum Tax and New Taxes on the Ultra-Wealthy.
• Repeal the Trump Tax Cuts for the Rich and Wealthiest Corporations and eliminate tax incentives that outsource jobs and offshore profits.
• Increase Taxes on Stock Buybacks and Companies with Excessive CEO to Worker Pay Gaps.
• Develop Guardrails on Artificial Intelligence and Enact Comprehensive Online and Data Privacy Rights: Enact strong federal protections of Americans’ constitutional privacy rights, including reproductive health information; prohibit data brokers from selling Americans’ private information to governments; and hold technology companies accountable for protecting children’s safety online.

VII. Provide World-Class Public Education

• Establish Universal Pre-K and Kindergarten and College for All: Implement free tuition for public colleges, universities, community colleges, and trade schools.
• Pay Raises for Educators: Create a dignified income floor for all public school teachers and education support professionals.
• Green New Deal for Public Schools: Invest in renewable energy, pollutant removal, and strong air and water quality in public schools.
• Support Student Debt Cancellation and Relief.
• Robust Federal Support for K-12 Education, including support for Title I schools, wraparound student services, special education, free universal school meals, and ending school meal debt.

Source