TexPIRG is currently working on a range of federal-level legislative initiatives ranging from toxic-free communities to internet freedom.
Our current priorities:
Healthy Communities
•
Pass chemical security legislation that replaces dangerous toxic
chemicals with safer alternatives and allows states to establish
stronger security protections.
• Protect the public’s
right-to-know about toxic pollution in communities and toxics in
consumer products, and stop attempts to preempt state toxic disclosure
laws.
• Pass legislation to ban harmful long-lived toxics
identified for elimination by the international community, and allow
states to establish stronger health protections against these toxics.
•
Reinstate legislation to make polluters pay to clean up Superfund sites
to a level that protects public health, and defend the Superfund from
rollbacks that would let polluters off the hook.
• Develop and
implement a strategy to pass legislation that will reform federal
chemical policy by placing public health protections above industry
profits.
Health Care and Prescription Drugs
• Enact
legislation guaranteeing the safety of America’s prescription drug
supply by giving the FDA the authority it needs to protect consumers
from dangerous drugs and to inform doctors of new drug safety concerns.
• Legalize reimportation of prescription drugs from Canada; restore Medicare’s ability to negotiate lower prices with drug companies; eliminate barriers to low-cost generics; and, take other steps to rein in anti-competitive drug company practices.
• Take positive steps
to expand access to universal health care, but oppose efforts to create
a separate less-regulated system of association health plans that will
only undercut everyone’s existing health insurance and lead to a race
to the bottom.
Money and Politics
• Build support and pass the Presidential Funding Act of 2006 to fix the presidential public financing system.
• Develop and pass a Clean Money, Clean Elections bill to establish full public financing for Congress.
• Develop and pass a comprehensive ethics and lobby reform package including an independent ethics enforcement office, tighter rules on privately funded travel and gifts, and disclosure of special interest campaign contributions.
• Block rollbacks and loopholes to campaign finance law like those in H.R. 1316.
Financial Privacy and Security
•
Enact federal security freeze legislation modeled on the strongest
state privacy laws that provides consumers with a free, easy-to-use
right to prevent identity thieves from accessing their credit reports.
•
Enact federal security breach legislation that requires consumer notice
any time their confidential files are stolen, unless there is no risk
of harm.
• Strengthen consumer privacy protections that fail
to prevent unfettered sharing of confidential information between
corporate affiliates and third parties, both on and off the Internet,
that contribute to both identity theft and unfair marketplace practices.
• Prevent the IRS from allowing tax preparers from sharing or selling confidential tax information for any non-tax purpose.
•
Extend to all consumers new protections against payday and other
usurious predatory lending Congress has enacted for military personnel
and their families.
• Rein in unfair credit card company
practices and regulate their practice of aggressively marketing credit
and debt to young people.
• Overturn recent rules of the federal bank regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, that prevent states from protecting their consumers from unfair practices of national banks and their subsidiaries.
• Defeat
Wal-Mart’s application for a federally-insured banking charter and
close the loopholes that have allowed other commercial firms to form
banks, placing the insurance safety net at risk.
• Oppose special-interest efforts to weaken the Sarbanes-Oxley Corporate Reform Act passed in the wake of the Enron and Worldcom debacles.
Media Reform and Internet Freedom
• Protect
Internet freedom by ensuring that all consumers have equal access to
all Web sites, and that telephone and cable companies do not establish
fast and slow lanes on the web.
• Oppose efforts to weaken
FCC media ownership rules that now promote democratic discourse and
help guarantee a diversity of broadcast and newspaper companies
competing to offer the news in local markets.
• Protect cellphone and cable customers by protecting state laws designed to protect utility customers from unfair practices.
Toy Safety
• Protect children from unsafe toys.