Tag Archives: #GOPTaxScam

Putting Common Good Over Billionaires and War Profiteers, House Progressives Introduce “People’s Budget”

The Congressional Progressive Caucus’ plan “invests in our neglected infrastructure, ends the systematic inequality in our tax system by making corporations pay their fair share, and stops the rising cost of drugs.”

By Jake Johnson, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 7-24-2018

“The People’s Budget embodies that new vision by investing in the interests of the people over the interests of the arms industry and the billionaire class,” Paul Kawika Martin, senior director for policy and political affairs at Peace Action, noted in a statement on Tuesday. (Photo: Congressional Progressive Caucus)

Offering an ambitious alternative to the House GOP’s “morally bankrupt” 2019 budget proposal—which demands over $5 trillion in cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, and other life-saving programs—the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) on Tuesday unveiled a budget that calls for massive investments in infrastructure, healthcare, and education while proposing significant cuts to the completely “out-of-control” Pentagon budget.

Titled The People‘s Budget: A Progressive Path Forward (pdf), the CPC’s plan also calls for a ban on “any expansion of U.S. combat troops in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, and many other countries,” demanding an immediate end to “the policy of funding endless wars.” Continue reading

Share Button

“Slap in the Face” to Poor Americans: House GOP Passes Farm Bill Attacking Nation’s Hungriest Families

“This is just another attempt by Paul Ryan to pretend that the biggest problem with the federal deficit is lazy poor people, not the $1.5 trillion tax cut he and his colleagues just gave to the richest people in the country.”

By  for Common Dreams. Published 6-22-2018

A grocery store in Missouri informs customers that food stamps are accepted. (Photo: Paul Sableman/Flickr/cc)

With the Poor People’s Campaign protesting “policy violence against families and children” outside the Capitol Building, House Republicans on Thursday forced through a “shameful” and “cruel” Farm Bill that would deprive about 2 million Americans of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), often called food stamps.

“It’s a deliberate slap in the face to the millions of low-income Americans who rely on SNAP benefits to survive,” declared Morris Pearl, chair of Patriotic Millionaires. “We don’t want to live in a country where the government allows its citizens to starve, and neither should anyone else.” Continue reading

Share Button

‘Morally Bankrupt’: After Tax Cuts for Richest, House GOP Unveils $5.4 Trillion Attack on Nation’s Safety Net

The Republican budget’s “extreme cuts to healthcare, retirement security, anti-poverty programs, education, infrastructure, and other critical investments are real and will inflict serious harm on American families.”

By Jake Johnson, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 6-19-2018

Photo: YouTube

With the nation’s attention rightly fixated on President Donald Trump’s horrific treatment of immigrant children, House Republicans on Tuesday quietly unveiled their 2019 budget proposal that calls for $537 billion in cuts to Medicare, $1.5 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, and four billion in cuts to Social Security over the next decade in an effort to pay for their deficit-exploding tax cuts for the wealthy.

“It’s morally bankrupt, patently absurd, and grossly un-American,” the advocacy group Patriotic Millionaires said of the GOP’s budget proposal, which calls for $5.4 trillion in spending cuts from major domestic programs. Continue reading

Share Button

Sounding Alarm Over Possible #GOPTaxScam 2.0, 130 Groups Warn Lawmakers Against ‘Another Massive Tax Cut’ for Wealthy

New letter warns of conservatives seeing “an excuse for still deeper cuts” to social safety net

By Andrea Germanos, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 6-13-2018

A woman holds a sign at a protest of the “Trump tax scam” on Dec.4, 2017. (Photo: CDEL Family/flickr/cc)

With President Donald Trump and fellow Republicans eyeing a second round of tax cuts—with a rollout possible this summer—130 organizations are urging members of Congress to reject them, because, like the first round, they will “primarily enrich the already wealthy” while threatening even deeper cuts to essential services.

“The richest Americans do not need another massive tax cut,” the letter from national groups including the AFL-CIO, Americans for Tax Fairness, Friends of the Earth, the National Education Association, and Patriotic Millionaires states. Continue reading

Share Button

While Advocates Declare #HandsOffSNAP, Trump Reportedly Wants Even Crueler Requirements for Nation’s Poor and Hungry

“Do you know who the #2018FarmBill would hurt? Well, just on the short list are: Women, veterans, children, people with disabilities, workers, and seniors”

By Jessica Corbett, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 5-9-2018

“Right now I need SNAP to get by,” Tina Keys, a mother from Washington, explained at a #HandsOffSnap rally outsite the Captiol on May 8. (Photo: @TalkPoverty/Twitter)

While social welfare advocates have launched a #HandsOffSNAP campaign to protest Republican lawmakers’ latest attempt to make Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits—often called food stamps—less accessible, President Donald Trump is reportedly planning to pressure them to include even stricter work requirements in the 2018 Farm Bill.

“Trump is expected to tell senior lawmakers in a meeting this week that he will veto the farm bill if it doesn’t include tighter work requirements for people receiving food stamps,” two people familiar with the president’s deliberations told the Wall Street Journal. Continue reading

Share Button

‘Despicable on Every Level’: After Massive Gift to Rich, Trump Demands $7 Billion Cut to Child Health Insurance

“This proposal is a shameful betrayal of children. This administration and congressional Republicans passed a massive tax giveaway to their donors and big corporations, and now they want vulnerable children to pay for it.”

By Jake Johnson, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 5-8-2018

Screenshot: CNN

Months after ramming through deficit-exploding tax cuts for billionaires and large corporations, President Donald Trump and the GOP are now looking for programs to slash to make up the difference—and they’re starting with children’s healthcare.

According to a Washington Post report late Monday, Trump is “sending a plan to Congress that calls for stripping more than $15 billion in previously approved spending,” $7 billion of which would come from the broadly popular Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Continue reading

Share Button

With Tax Scam Complete, GOP Caucus Unveils Insane Budget Blueprint to Attack Safety Net

Programs like Social Security and Medicare are gutted while tax cuts are made permanent in plan

By Andrea Germanos, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 4-26-2018

Rep. Mark Walker (R-NC) is the chair of the Republican Study Committee, a far-right caucus for House Republicans.

An ultraconservative Republican House caucus on Wednesday put forth its spending plan that represents a draconian wishlist of attacks on the social safety net and consumer and environmental protections while including a plan to further enrich the wealthy by making making permanent parts of the GOP tax plan.

The budget blueprint from the Republican Study Committee (RSC)—and titled A Framework of Unified Conservatism—says it “would take unprecedented steps to begin the deconstruction of the administrative state” and would cut $12.4 trillion over the next decade from federal spending. Continue reading

Share Button

After Being Told He’s ‘Full of Sh*t’ at School Event, Mnuchin Demands UCLA Suppress Video

In addition to being called out on his “plutocratic BS,” students in attendance attacked the Treasury chief’s record of foreclosing on tens of thousands of Americans

By Jake Johnson, staff writer for CommonDreams. Published 3-1-2018

After a short lecture, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin spoke with Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations in Los Angeles. (Photo: UCLA)

Trump Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs banker Steve Mnuchin isn’t accustomed to facing direct challenges to his wild economic claims or protests over the GOP tax plan he helped craft, and after experiencing both during an event at UCLA’s Burkle Center on Monday, Mnuchin demanded that video of his appearance be suppressed.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Mnuchin complained to the audience that he usually only talks to “people who wanna listen to me speak” after students and others attending the event yelled out “I think you’re full of shit” and denounced the Republican tax bill as an attack on “people who are in poverty.” Continue reading

Share Button

Analysis: Major Corporations Have Spent Just 6% of Tax Cut Windfall on Workers. Guess Where the Other 94% Went.

“You mean corporations aren’t using the bulk of their tax cuts to create jobs and boost workers’ wages like Trump promised? Weird…”

By Jake Johnson, staff writer  for CommonDreams. Published 2-28-2018

White House National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. Screenshot: YouTube

Almost everyone—nonpartisan commentatorseconomists, and even President Donald Trump’s chief economic adviser—predicted that corporate shareholders and CEOs, not workers, would be the primary beneficiaries of the Republican tax law, and several recent analyses have shown that prediction to be right on the money.

While many corporations immediately launched aggressive PR campaigns crediting the tax plan Trump signed in December with new “investments” in employees, a study by the nonprofit group JUST Capital published on Wednesday found that the sensational headlines touting worker bonuses obscured the fact that the vast majority of the law’s benefits have gone straight to the pockets of wealthy shareholders. Continue reading

Share Button

‘Anti-Trump Rhetoric Not Enough’: Bold, Progressive Agenda Demanded for 2018

“We must act together. And we must act strategically. 2018 is the year the people fight back like never before.”

By Jake Johnson, staff writer for CommonDreams. Published 1-1-2018

“Empty platitudes and anti-Trump rhetoric is not enough to win seats in Congress,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.). (Photo: Molly Adams/Flickr/cc)

As Republicans and President Donald Trump turn toward the new year with destruction on their minds, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) joined a chorus of voices in expressing the urgent need to reach beyond merely resisting the right’s agenda and articulate an inspiring alternative that will sweep progressives into positions of power.

“Here is a New Year’s resolution I hope you will share with me,” Sanders wrote on Twitter just before midnight on Sunday. “In 2018, we will not only intensify the struggle against Trumpism, we will increase our efforts to spread the progressive vision in every corner of the land.” Continue reading

Share Button