Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) speaks alongside Reps. Delia Ramirez (D-IL), Jesús “Chuy” García (D-IL), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) during a press conference on the CPC’s 2025 Proposition Agenda outside the U.S. Capitol, May 16, 2024.
Democrats are hitting the campaign trail to win back the House majority and keep control of the Senate and White House with an impressive record: the largest-ever investment in climate action, cancellation of $167 billion and counting of student debt, the longest streak of low unemployment in 50 years, and real progress in taking on Big Pharma and lowering prescription drug prices. Most important, even beyond specific legislation, is the recognition that government has an active role to play in creating an equal playing field and lifting up working and poor people across the country. It’s a giant rollback from the days of Reaganesque “trickle-down economics.”
Democrats and President Biden have challenged failed past policy by showing all the ways that government matters for real progress: from getting rid of “junk fees” to challenging the consolidation of companies that squeeze out local businesses and hurt workers. We’ve worked to invest in a green economy while creating good union jobs in places long ignored by big business, and fought to ensure racial justice with a commitment to investing serious funds into communities that have been most disproportionately burdened. Our successes have been seminal, in many ways, because they are once again making sure that government puts its thumb on the scale to equalize opportunity for all.
We’ve done a lot, but there are still so many people hurting and struggling to get by. There’s more to do and it’s up to us to lay out for the American people what the path forward looks like. Simply telling people across the country that we’re “better than the other guy”—though, to be clear, we very much are—is insufficient to generate the excitement and momentum we need to win back a trifecta in the House, Senate, and White House, build on the progress of Biden’s first term, and prevent Donald Trump from ending American democracy. We also need to lay out our plan of action for what we will get done if we win.
The people of this country want to see us rewrite the rules, not continue the status quo. That’s where the Congressional Progressive Caucus comes in. Progressives in Congress and in the movement have consistently pushed for Democrats to use their governing power for those who need it most. We’re continuing that tradition with the release of our “Progressive Proposition Agenda,” a comprehensive domestic policy agenda that we can implement on Day One if we keep President Biden in the White House, take back the House, and keep the Senate in 2025.
Our proposal meets the urgent needs of everyday Americans and rebuilds the American dream for poor, working, and middle-class people. We already laid the groundwork for many of these policies when progressives helped make sure they were part of President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, and when we held the line over and over again to ensure the House passed that package. Our 2025 Proposition Agenda continues this movement by focusing on raising wages and lowering costs; correcting the inequality in our economic, education, and political systems to ensure economic, gender, and racial justice; continuing progress on the climate crisis; and protecting and expanding Americans’ rights and freedoms.
Achieving many of these goals requires focusing on changing the rules that have allowed the few to have power over the many.
It would establish broad economic security by, for instance, lowering the cost of living by eliminating housing insecurity, and slashing child poverty through ambitious investments like resurrecting Biden’s expanded Child Tax Credit so that economic security isn’t a luxury only for the rich. It would boost wages and strengthen worker power. It would advance justice by restoring and expanding freedoms like voting rights and abortion rights that have been ripped away by unelected MAGA judges and extreme politicians. And it would ensure that those same judges and politicians can’t impose their extreme views on the nation unilaterally through judicial fiat or gerrymandered districts. It would put money and energy into communities affected by the climate crisis, not cozy up to subsidize Big Oil. It would invest in public schools, raise teacher pay, and make college affordable so a world-class public education is accessible and attainable in every ZIP code. It would tax the rich, break up monopolies, and put the power of our economy back in the hands of the people. At the end of the day, it would work for the people to end corruption, take money out of politics, and actually make sure our democracy works. It includes passing reforms to our immigration system to modernize it, provide more legal pathways for people to come to this country, and more resources to make the system run efficiently and address root causes of migration so that people have reason to stay in their home countries.
And this isn’t just some utopian pipe dream. We got a lot done in 2021-2022, but we were inches from getting so much more, with 99.9 percent of Democrats in the House and Senate with us.
It won’t all be easy though. Achieving many of these goals requires focusing on changing the rules that have allowed the few to have power over the many. Namely, we must get rid of the Jim Crow–legacy filibuster in the Senate that gives disproportionate power to just 40 senators who represent as little as 12 percent of the country’s population. Some of our agenda could be passed through the Senate’s reconciliation process, but other parts would require passing normal bills. That means we need at least 50 Democratic senators who will carve out, reform, or eliminate the filibuster—something that is completely doable.
The good news is that our Proposition Agenda is not just the right thing to do, it is also incredibly popular! New polling from Data for Progress on the key planks of this agenda shows support from supermajorities of the country, galvanizing our base while attracting independent and swing voters for our vision for America.
Let’s not forget that the biggest base of swing voters isn’t deciding between President Biden and Trump. They’re deciding between voting or not. Let’s give them something to believe in and show them the path forward. Keeping our democracy will require shoring up people’s belief that we can address their real challenges. We can and we will, and our Proposition Agenda shows the way forward.
