RuralOrganizing.org statement on Budget Reconciliation Negotiations

The following is a statement from Matt Hildreth, Executive Director of RuralOrganizing.Org:

We are reaching crunch time on the Build Back Better reconciliation bill and  we need to make something very clear: This legislation could be a much needed boon for rural America.

The Build Back Better agenda addresses real concerns - the things rural families worry about every single day: child care, prescription drug prices, eye care and dental care for Seniors and programs that prioritize small, local businesses and keep rural schools, grocery stores, pharmacies, and clinics from closing. Those are real life issues.  These are the things rural voters worry about and talk about every day.

Rural voters are not talking about the legislative process or parliamentarians or even the stepped-up basis. They want Congress to get things done to increase good paying jobs and wages in rural communities, decrease the daily expenses of rural Americans, and improve the quality of life in small town America.

We know billionaires and multinational corporations  with their armies of corporate lobbyists are working hard to make this budget work for them - not the rest of us.  Any Democrat who is working to undermine reconciliation is choosing corporate America’s lobbyists and billionaires over their rural constituents.  

For the last several decades, we’ve all seen how corporate lobbyists have rewritten our laws to ensure that the big get bigger and richer and the small get screwed. That’s especially true in rural parts of the country where the corporate agenda is  killing competition in the market and jacking up our prices making it harder and harder for families today to get ahead. Meanwhile, they hide behind rural voters to thwart tax reform like the stepped-up basis, which Secretary Vilsack correctly noted “has allowed the wealthy to amass large fortunes.” 

I’m often asked why rural voters vote against their own interests. I think, in part, it’s because  too many Democrats who have large rural constituencies, like Senators Manchin and Sinema, align themselves with corporate lobbyists and billionaires instead of the people they were elected to serve. We will see what Democrats do: stand with rural people or stand with their corporate donors.