We’ve prepared a short list of questions you can ask Senators, Representatives, and candidates for those offices when they call you or when you see them at events. Aside from helping you to decide which candidates you want to support, asking these questions is an important way for you to get your views across to elected officials during a “teachable moment. We encourage our members to check with us about which questions are most important to ask a particular candidate or to get more background on what positions the candidate has taken.

The Clean Air Act requires the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate pollutants that threaten human health, including mercury, arsenic, smog, global warming pollution, and more. In the 20 years since its passage, it has prevented 21,000 cases of heart disease, 843,000 asthma attacks, 18 million child respiratory illnesses, and hundreds of thousands of deaths. After years of foot-dragging by the Bush Administration, the EPA has recently announced rules to regulate pollution between states and from vehicle emissions, and is currently in the process of developing a slate of anti-pollution rules for mercury, air toxins, industrial boilers and greenhouse gases. These regulations will protect America’s children and families from dangerous air pollution and help reduce climate change. However, Republicans and pro-pollution business lobbies are attempting to defund the EPA and overturn new regulations. Read more at: http://voicesforprogress.org/issues/clean-energy-green-jobs

» Will you support the American Jobs Act?

We remain in a crippling jobs crisis. More than one in six workers is unemployed or underemployed. Unemployment is 11.3% among Hispanics, 15.9% among African-Americans, and 25% among young workers (and much higher among young minority workers). Nearly half of the unemployed have been out of work for 6 months or more. It would take eleven million new jobs to bring us back to pre-recession levels of unemployment.

The American Jobs Act will put more Americans back to work by stimulating the economy with tax cuts for workers and small businesses; tax incentives to hire unemployed veterans and the long-term unemployed; aid to prevent 280,000 teacher layoffs and keep firefighters and police officers on the job; immediate investments in our roads, railways, airports, and schools; and new and improved job training and job connection services for the unemployed. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics and an advisor to John McCain, estimates that the plan will create 1.9 million jobs and cut the unemployment rate by a percentage point.

» [For incumbent Senators only] Will you strongly encourage Senate leaders and the White House to get all judicial nominees confirmed over the next few months?

Unlike legislation, nominations for the courts go only to the Senate, where Republicans threaten to filibuster virtually every nominee. In fact, there are currently 16 nominations pending that have been approved unanimously by the Judiciary Committee but have not even been brought to the floor because of the threat of filibuster. Thirty-seven nominees are still waiting to be voted on by the Judiciary Committee, and there are fifty-six vacancies for which no nominations have been submitted. As a result of this Republican obstruction, the number of vacancies in US Courts doubled in the two years since President Obama took office, and the percentage of Obama’s judicial nominees to be confirmed is the lowest of any presidency in American history.

When nominations have been brought to the floor for a full Senate vote, only one has not been confirmed. But judicial nominees rarely get confirmed in an election year, so the window for action is closing. It is critical that Senate Democrats and especially Leader Reid push for these nominations to be brought to the floor, take the time to vote for cloture if necessary, and confirm them. Conservative Presidents in the past made judges a priority, and as a result, the judiciary is skewed far to the right of center. If President Obama leaves office with a plethora of unfilled judgeships, the way will be paved for the next Republican president to stack the courts with extreme-right-wing judges, who will vaporize all the gains we have made under the Obama administration and take us even further back toward a ‘tea party’ vision of America.

September 2011

 Paid for by Voices for Progress, a project of The Advocacy Fund, http://www.advocacyfund.org and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.