Democrats across this country knocked on doors this fall. They made the phone calls, stood outside supermarkets handing out flyers, went door to door and on Tuesday it paid off. In January, Democrats will run the House and the Senate. They won in Kansas, for heaven’s sake.

That’s worth celebrating. It’s also worth worrying about because we’ve been here before.

In 2009 we had Barack Obama in the White House, a big House majority and, for a few months, 60 votes in the Senate. We’d done the same work to get there. Then our own leadership talked itself out of most of what we’d been promised. The public option went first. By 2010 the majority was gone and it took us years to get it back.

So to House and Senate Majority Leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, before you get comfortable: we didn’t send you there to protect the majority. We sent you there to use it. Do something, and I don’t mean something with a small s. I mean Something with a capital S. Here’s what I’d like to hear at your first press conference.

Say out loud that what has happened in Gaza is genocide, and that it has to stop now, ceasefire or no ceasefire. Then back it up with the one tool Congress actually has, which is money. No more American funding for the bombs, the bulldozers or anything else being used against civilians there.

Then do something nobody in Washington seems willing to do. Namely, apologize. On February 28, the first day of the war with Iran, an American strike hit an elementary school in Minab. More than 100 children were killed, along with their teachers. The administration has never owned it, and the Pentagon still hasn’t released its findings. Congress can’t speak for the President, but it can speak for the American people. Pass a resolution apologizing to those families on our behalf, then subpoena the investigation and put it out in the open. I know how that will play on cable news. I don’t care. Any parent in America would want somebody to say they were sorry.

At that same press conference, take care of our own. Announce that every family who lost a service member in the war with Iran will be assigned a personal advocate, one person whose only job is to walk them through the benefits, the paperwork and the bureaucracy and to get them whatever they need. And announce that every servicemember wounded in that war will be treated by the best medical specialists in the world, with the government paying whatever it costs, for as long as it takes. Whatever anyone thinks of the war, the people we sent to fight it should never have to fight us for their care.

While you’re issuing subpoenas, finish the job on the Epstein files. Congress passed a law a year ago ordering their release. What we got was millions of pages with whole sections blacked out and no real explanation. Protect the victims’ names and release everything else. Then make sure the Justice Department pursues criminal charges against anyone the files show abused children, no matter how rich or connected they are. If that can’t happen in this country, nothing we say about the rule of law means much.

After that comes the domestic agenda people actually voted for. Put universal health care on the floor and make every member go on record. Do something real about student debt, and about the system that keeps creating it.

And deal with the money. AIPAC and the network of PACs around it have had a hold on both parties for a long time. This summer Leader Jeffries opposed cutting military aid to Israel only weeks after his fundraising committee took a record earmark from AIPAC. I don’t think he’s a bad man. I think he’s a careful one, and careful isn’t what this moment needs. Leader Jeffries, stop dodging the question. Say Democrats won’t take that money anymore and go first. The rest of the caucus will follow you, or they’ll have to explain why not.

Yes, Trump still has the veto. Fine. Make him use it. Make him veto health care and debt relief and let every Republican go home in 2028 and explain why they sided with him.

The folks in Kansas and Texas and Ohio who gave us a chance this year don’t owe us anything. They’ll give us two years, maybe. We did our part. Now do yours.

Joseph Luciano lives in Bridgeport.