Jan's Plans & Pans - March 21, 2023

Following the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank, I know many of you are feeling uneasy. I want to assure you, there is a piece of legislation that I am cosponsoring, the Secure Viable Banking Act, that would help restore needed protections to safeguard our economy. The failure of Silicon Valley Bank can be traced back to harmful Trump-era regulatory rollbacks. I voted against those rollbacks in 2018 for exactly this reason. I will continue working to protect the safety and soundness of our financial system and help ensure those responsible for this crisis are held accountable.

Section 6(b) of the Consumer Product Safety Act protects companies over consumers. I was proud to reintroduce the Sunshine in Product Safety Act with Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) so that the Consumer Product Safety Commission is fully empowered to promptly warn people about dangerous products. Our bill puts consumers first and will save lives. But it will not be enough alone. Companies must do more to retrieve recalled products quickly and effectively. Together we can end these preventable deaths and injuries and ensure the safety of our children.

My dear friend, Dr. Paul Farmer, insisted that all people have a right to excellent health care, and he developed systems to deliver it in places people had written off. One year after his death, I reintroduced the Dr. Paul Farmer Memorial Resolution. This resolution lays out a 21st Century Global Health Strategy that enshrines Paul's vision to achieve global universal health care and end unnecessary and preventable deaths by increasing global health aid to $125 billion per year. We are the richest country in the world at the richest time in the world. Paul called on us to understand global health inequities as an injustice—a result of centuries of violence and exploitation inflicted on the global poor. We have a duty to end these global inequities.