Under the American Rescue Plan, President Biden has made it even easier to get health insurance by extending access to silver plans for no cost to anyone who has received unemployment assistance in the last year.
Today, 3 million Florida families will start to see child tax credit payments hit their bank accounts. It’s part of the American Rescue Plan, which was delivered by President Biden and Congressional Democrats to get the economy back on track and rebuild the middle class.
Near midnight on April 19, with no cameras around or staged fanfare, he signed into law a new tax that will cost Florida consumers an estimated $1 billion a year. And instead of using this new revenue to help Floridians get health care coverage, build affordable housing, cleanup polluted waterways, or improve neighborhood schools, DeSantis’ new law uses the new taxes we will all now pay to cut taxes for wealthy corporations.
Florida’s Republican led state Legislature, backed by powerful electric utility companies, recently passed SB 1128 and HB 919 that would block local progress on clean energy production.
For more than 50 years, Floridians have used the citizen initiative process to pass popular policies when the leadership of the Florida Legislature refused to listen. Florida voters have approved citizen led changes to our state Constitution that legalized medical marijuana, restored voting rights, increased the state’s minimum wage and banned offshore oil drilling.
SB 72 and HB 7005 sponsored by Sen. Jeff Brandes (R-St. Petersburg) and Rep. Colleen Burton (R-Lakeland), let negligent nursing homes off the hook, providing liability immunity protections and severely weakening our ability to hold nursing home owners accountable for negligence that harms those in their care.
I don’t need to tell you the last year has been extraordinarily tough for Floridians – but serious, substantial help is finally on the way. Today, Democrats in Congress passed President Biden’s American Rescue Plan – providing $1.9 trillion in badly-needed COVID relief for our state and our nation.
Today is the first day of Florida’s 2021 legislative session. Gov. DeSantis just delivered his annual State of the State address. That’s why we just premiered “The People’s Response,” a video featuring a diverse group of everyday Floridians and progressive champions in the Legislature who are putting forward a people first agenda for our state.
Gov. DeSantis’s top legislative priority going into the 2021 legislative session isn’t a jobs bill, it isn’t to improve our schools, or combat COVID, but to push legislation that would criminalize peaceful protests – House Bill 1 (it’s “1” for a reason.)
Florida’s COVID-19 infection rates continue to rise with more than one million confirmed infections and more than 19,000 dead in Florida since February due in no small part to the failed leadership of Gov. Ron DeSantis.
