Education is the catalyst for economic mobility; it puts the rungs on the ladders of opportunity. We need great teachers in every classroom so that our children have every opportunity to succeed. And we must respect the voices of these professionals when making decisions about what’s best for their students. In our view, teachers’ pay should much more closely reflect their value to our society. After all, teachers are preparing our next generation. Investing in our future is not only the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do.
Proposals
Americans depend on our nation’s roads, bridges and schools every day. Our infrastructure was once the envy of the world, but we have allowed it to fall apart and we have fallen behind.
Every American Worker Who Earned A Pension Through Hard Work Should Keep It, Without A Dollar In Benefit Cuts. In the decades after World War II, many labor unions across several different industries worked to create “multiemployer” pension plans with companies in which their membership worked. Truck drivers, coal miners and other American workers paid into these plans with their hard-earned dollars and delayed immediate financial gain for the promise of a safe and secure retirement for themselves and their families.
Every American home, school and small business should be connected to high-speed internet. Unfortunately, there are still too many communities in America that are simply being left behind. Over 34 million Americans, including 23 million rural Americans, do not have internet service available to them at an adequate speed and quality.
Across the country, too many families do not have access to high-quality early learning and care that will help their children thrive without breaking the bank. The cost of child care has increased by 25 percent in the past decade, forcing parents to choose between going to work and paying for child care.
Prescription drug prices are rising at an unprecedented and unsustainable rate. Americans pay more than double what other nations pay for prescription drugs and per capita prescription drug spending in the United States exceeds that of all other countries. Today, there are no rules in place to stop drug companies from excessively raising prices on middle-class families.
If we are going to make sure every American can provide a better life for themselves and their families, then we’ve got to focus on the most important issue: good-paying jobs.
America. It is synonymous with leadership, strength, and entrepreneurship. America was not given those qualities – we earned them. We invested in ourselves, in the education of all our children, in new roads and bridges, and in life-saving and transformational science and technology. But for too many years, America has seen its leadership decline because we have stopped investing boldly in our present and our future.
For far too many American families the gap between incomes and the cost of housing in the private market is just too large, in fact in no area of the county can a full-time minimum-wage worker afford a modest two-bedroom rental home at market rates. As a result, public housing is a critical public asset that is a key part of our nation’s social safety net, providing safe, decent, and affordable housing for approximately 1.1 million families.
Too many Americans feel that Washington is hopelessly out of touch with their priorities. President Trump promised to fight for the forgotten American, yet Republican-controlled Washington continues business as usual, rewarding the wealthy, privileged and well-connected at the expense of middle class and working families. Look no further than Congressional Republicans’ and President Trump’s agenda: billions in tax cuts for the rich, massive giveaways to special interests and the full-frontal corporate assault on workers’ rights and consumers’ protections.