Activists share message on the importance and urgency of the Build Back Better Bill

Saturday, November 13th 2021 — LEWISTON (WGME) -- Advocates for the Build Back Better Bill gathered in Lewiston Saturday and spread the message around the importance and urgency of voting in favor of it as it heads to the house.

According to The White House, "the bill will impose a 15% minimum tax on the corporate profits that large corporations—with over $1 billion in profits—report to shareholders". The money would then be used to focus on combating climate change, providing affordable childcare, expanding healthcare and strengthening the middle class. Advocates said all of this was needed long before now.

"I love my car. It's a red 2004 Honda CRV with a nice old dent in the front and a steering wheel that starts to shake when it hits 60," Claire Holman, a member of Maine Youth Climate Justice and climate activist at Maranacook High School, said. "As I stop at the gas station to fill up my tank week after week, I wonder what my future will really look like. Is the gas I'm using now going to hurt me in 10 years?"

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Holman said the future as it stands right now consists of rising seas, extreme weather patterns and a ton of uninhabitable land. This bill won't change that, but she said it will be a step towards that change.

"It focuses its efforts on supporting disadvantaged communities, often the same ones that feel the strongest reverberations of climate change," Holman said. "It supports farmers in making sustainable agriculture accessible rather than some far off. "

If you are a single mother making $40,000 a year, childcare costs about $10,000, Israel Mosely, a Maine state parent ambassador, said. The Build Back Better Bill will drop that cost to $2,400 a year, he added.

"What we need to understand is that it doesn't end when the bill gets signed, when that money is available, because we still need our state to opt in," Mosely said. "We also need our state to build out these programs to decide how that money gets spent and that's going to take all of us, especially as parents."

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The human infrastructure bill; that's what Human Rights Activist Betsy Sweet calls it. She said standing up for this bill is making sure everyone has their basic needs met.

"This could be the ship that might actually save us," Sweet said. "That is what's at stake here. It's not just all the policies which are awesome and not completely adequate for sure, but it's a start. And if you don't like the tricks and the gimmicks that you claim are in here, well, fix them."

The house will vote on the bill this week and advocates predict the President will sign it before Christmas.