Warren and Sanders: Who Is Congress Really Serving?

By ELIZABETH WARREN and BERNIE SANDERS DEC. 17, 2017

Excerpt:

At a time when the American economy is rigged in favor of the rich and giant corporations, the coming federal funding bill is a chance to show that our country still respects hard work. We recognize that we cannot do everything we’d like to do before the end of the year, but there is room in the budget to take real, immediate steps in this direction — by easing household costs for working parents and students, by protecting workers’ pensions and Social Security, and by improving access to health care for veterans and for people who need mental health services.

Over the past generation, the costs of child care have jumped nearly 1,000 percent. That puts a lot of financial pressure on working parents, and it forces many to make difficult compromises on the quality of care they can afford. If Congress doubles federal support for child care in this year’s spending bill, we could guarantee high-quality care for nearly a quarter of a million more children.

Student loan debt is another major burden for many people, including those in lower-paying public service jobs, like teachers, nurses, firefighters, police officers, social workers and military personnel. Ten years ago, Congress created a program to help wipe out student loan debt for these public servants, hoping it would encourage more people to give back to their communities. But because of failures in student loan servicing and a lot of bureaucratic nonsense, many might not get the forgiveness they’ve earned. Congress can easily fix this in the funding bill and help tens of thousands of people.

To strengthen Americans’ economic security, it’s not enough to reduce basic expenses. We must also protect retirement — and that means pensions and Social Security. It was Wall Street greed that made our economy crash in 2008, not America’s truckers, warehouse workers, retirees and widows. But as a consequence of that crash, the pension funds of many workers are now on the brink of failure. Congress can use this funding bill to shore up these retirement plans and make sure nearly 1.5 million American workers aren’t left holding the bag for Wall Street’s mistakes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/17/opinion/warren-sanders-congress-serving.html