Saturday, August 15, 2020

Good enough for me...and then some!

He'd double the tax rate for nonworking millionaires, eliminate the lower rates on dividends and capital gains for those Americans who annually make a million bucks or more, and boost the top tax rate to almost 40%. He'll continue to champion America's constantly-marginalized people. Once in the driver's seat, he'll start a pandemic testing board to scale up and allocate nationwide testing. He also wants to launch a state-and-local-government emergency fund to provide medical supplies, hire more health-care workers, give certain essential workers overtime pay, end cost sharing for COVID-19 testing and treatment, and start up a national public health jobs corps. (Who knows? Maybe these moves could mean 100,000 people doing contract tracing.) Scientists would be taken seriously. Period. His housing plan would cut child poverty by 33%, reduce racial opportunity gaps, and would even help with middle-income housing affordability, especially in cities on the two coasts. And then there's his economic plan: In it, $400 billion over a four-year period would go to American-made materials and services. At the same time, the plan would earmark $300 billion more for US-based research and development...like electric cars, artificial intelligence, etc. The plan also boasts a 100-day "supply chain review" to get federal agencies to choose American-made medical goods and supplies. It'd close up all the loopholes in the government's "Buy American" clauses. And his economic plan would restore the jobs that the coronavirus pandemic has taken away. In addition, the plan would fire up an additional five million gigs. He'd build on the Affordable Care Act and on the Violence Against Women Act...and these moves would help level the playing field for America's physically-challenged people. And earlier this week, he found his runningmate: US Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA). Well, there you are: A ticket whose members have been fighting for years for America's rank-and-file citizens. On 11-3-2020 (better yet, earlier than that as long as I can vote by mail), I'll be more than happy to cast my ballot for former Vice President Joe Biden and his pick for vice president, Harris. How about you?