Common Good Iowa

Yes, Amendment 1 is about tax policy — and tax policy impacts the well-being of our state and its people. Amendment 1 would erect a nearly insurmountable hurdle to fixing our state's pressing challenges.

Writes Peter Fisher in The Gazette about the problems with Amendment 1: "This amendment would ensure that we can't finance public schools or health care or childcare by any measure that would make the rich pay their fair share of costs. We couldn’t restore a higher tax bracket on top incomes or enact a millionaire tax as some states have done, or close a loophole that corporations exploit. Call it 'The Millionaire Protection Act.”

Hmmmm ... don't you wonder why Amendment 1 targets only taxes that can be structured to make big corporations and the rich pay their fair share?

Between 2018 and 2024, Iowa lawmakers passed repeated corporate and personal income tax cuts that gave the biggest breaks to the wealthy. Now Iowa is now running $1 billion budget deficits, and Amendment 1 backers want to change the rules to lock in those cuts and make it harder to fix our budget mess.

Today Common Good Iowa and other Iowa organizations officially launched Fair Taxes for Iowa’s Future, a campaign to educate Iowans on the harmful impacts of Amendment 1, which will appear on the November ballot statewide.

Amendment 1 would raise the bar for increasing the corporate or personal income tax in the Legislature — from a simple majority vote to a two-thirds supermajority vote. It's a gift to the wealthy that will hurt our communities and raise costs for everyday Iowans.

Learn more at the campaign website (link in the comments).

A bill that would require preschools and kindergartens to offer some time for play-based learning each day has unanimously passed the Iowa House of Representatives, a Senate subcommittee and full committee — but last week it was suddenly pulled from the Senate debate calendar.

Play is often seen as simple fun, but it is one of the most powerful tools for learning and development. Research consistently shows that play-based learning improves young children's attention, motivation and overall academic readiness.

Let's remind our Senators that play is not a break from learning, it is learning. Ask your State Senator to put House File 2652 back on the debate calendar. Find their email address at https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislators/find

ALERT! A bill moving through the Iowa House would deny the basics of good nutrition — including baby formula — to young children and pregnant and postpartum women who can’t document lawful immigrant status. Iowa would join just one other state — Idaho — in barring undocumented families from WIC.

Call or email your lawmaker today (visit https://www.commongoodiowa.org/get-involved/contact-your-legislator to learn how) and tell them that ALL babies, toddlers and new moms need healthy food. Ask them to strip the anti-immigrant WIC provisions from House Study Bill 696.

Fitting for Groundhog's Day week, a Senate committee advanced a bill yesterday that would do the same thing the Legislature did last year, and the year before that: slowly starve our schools. The legislation they approved falls far below what's needed to keep up with rising costs and meet the needs of Iowa students.

You can't have a serious talk about school funding trends without factoring in inflation. Yes, lawmakers increase SSA almost every year. But in the last decade, those increases have failed to keep up with rising costs.

Read more on Iowa's recent history of inadequate school funding: https://www.commongoodiowa.org/blog/2026/02/05/senate-committee-advances-inadequate-school-funding-proposal-again