Washington, DC, August 10, 2021 – This morning, the US Senate voted to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill with $550 billion in new funding after months of negotiations between Democrats and Republicans. In response, Morris Pearl, Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires and former managing director at BlackRock, Inc., issued the following statement:
It’s great that a bipartisan group in the US Senate was able to agree on something, but the fact is that this bill has nowhere near the scope or the scale necessary to rise to the needs of the present moment. The bipartisan infrastructure bill the Senate just passed addresses almost none of the most pressing needs in this country.
We need “good” legislation, not just “as good as we can get from Republicans” legislation. Democrats in the House and Senate must move immediately and decisively to pass a much more ambitious reconciliation package that would invest in our country’s future and begin to address the gross inequality in our nation by raising taxes on millionaires, billionaires, and corporations. They have the majority, they just need the will to fulfill their promises to the American people.
Members of the Patriotic Millionaires are high-net worth Americans, business leaders, and investors who are united in their concern about the destabilizing concentration of wealth and power in America. The mission of The Patriotic Millionaires organization is to build a more stable, prosperous, and inclusive nation by promoting public policies based on the “first principles” of equal political representation, a guaranteed living wage for all working citizens, and a fair tax system. You can find out more at http://patrioticmillionaires.org/about