It’s time to deliver big, bold solutions for the American people. From canceling student debt to declaring the climate crisis a national emergency to centering racial equity in the fight against COVID-19, here’s what @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris can do on day one.
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This year, nearly 300k Americans got hit with sledgehammer news that they have prostate cancer. Then came another sledgehammer: the cost of treatment. A drug called Xtandi could save their lives but costs up to $190,000/year. It’s a familiar story of corporate greed.
Taxpayer dollars helped develop Xtandi. Just to show what chumps Big Pharma makes of Americans, Astellas—the company that manufactures Xtandi—charges U.S. customers as much as six times more than patients in other countries.
The Biden-Harris administration is fighting back against Big Pharma’s greed: under a new proposal, if taxpayer dollars helped develop a drug—and if the company holding the patent has blocked access by jacking up the price—other companies could produce lower-cost generics.
Two years ago today, President Biden signed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. It’s been a big win for Massachusetts—with $6 billion announced so far to repair roads and bridges, expand broadband, replace lead pipes, electrify buses, and more. Here are just a few examples:
I never thought I’d run for office. But 12 years ago today, I launched a campaign to represent Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate—because it was a way to keep fighting for a country that works for everyone, not just the wealthy and well-connected.
I started out 17 points down. My opponent had heaps of campaign cash from Wall Street. But we ran a grassroots campaign. This was the crowd at our first organizing meeting later that fall. Person to person, we built a movement, and we won. #TBT
The past 12 years have shown us that when we organize, fight righteous fights, and hold those in power accountable, we can make positive change. Like taxing giant corporations. Lowering the cost of hearing aids. Cracking down on rich tax cheats. Funding infrastructure jobs.
When we get organized and get in the fight, we can beat back powerful special interests and make real change. Here’s how we achieved the biggest advance in corporate tax fairness in three decades:
My story doesn’t follow a straight path. I grew up on the ragged edge of the middle class. After my daddy’s heart attack, my family came within an inch from losing our house, but my mother got a minimum wage job at Sears that saved our family.
I dropped out of college at 19 to get married, but got a second chance at a public college that cost $50 a semester and got to live my dream of becoming a public school teacher.
I’ve dedicated my career to studying why families go broke and fighting to rebuild the middle class. After Wall Street crashed our economy, I fought to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has already returned about $16 billion to Americans who’ve been cheated.
My mother’s birthday was Valentine’s Day. We both loved her special connection to the holiday. When I was a girl, I got some heart-shaped pans from the dime store and started baking her a heart-shaped cake every year. I took some time this past weekend to keep up the tradition.
When she was in her 80s, she was in the hospital for some minor surgery. The night before she was scheduled to go home, she said to my daddy, “Don, there's that gas pain again.” Then she died. The autopsy showed she had advanced heart disease—never diagnosed, never treated.
Later, I learned that heart disease is the #1 killer of women. No longer considered just a “man’s disease,” doctors do a much better job screening and treating women for cardiovascular disease today than when my mother had her heart attack.