“What we want in Akron, Ohio is an America as good as its promise.”
A mere 17 hours after voting against the latest version of the GOP’s federal tax code, Senator Bernie Sanders arrived in Akron, joining the “Protecting Working Families Tour” organized by MoveOn.org and the Not One Penny Coalition to campaign against the proposed tax plan.
“We have been all over this country,” he said. “Right now, as part of the Democratic leadership, my job is to do everything I can to improve outreach, to go out around the country with other people and to demand we have a government here in Washington that represents all of us, not just the 1 percent.”
Though Trump and GOP legislators have promoted the bill as beneficial for the middle class, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center clearly shows that two-thirds of middle class citizens would see substantial tax increases. The Senate version of the bill currently slashes the health insurance rolls by 13 million people in order to fund corporate tax cuts. It also repeals tax credits that assist low-income Americans in paying for insurance, and will lead to $25 billion in automatic cuts to Medicare, laying ground for a difficult compromise as Congress will have to scramble to fund the health care program in early January.
Despite claims that the plan will serve as a boon for the middle class, several independent analyses have found that it disproportionately favors corporations and the wealthy, clearly demonstrating that, as Sanders said, “Republicans work for their donors, not their constituents.”
“I’ve never met anybody who begrudges people for wealth, but what we are sick and tired of is excessive greed on the backs of the poor and middle class in this country,” former Senator Nina Turner clarified. “We don’t wanna live in a society where elected officials neglect everyday people in this country or the folks who give them the money to manipulate the system against us.”
“As we saw last night, that big money can dictate a major, major piece of legislation,” Senator Sanders said. “Democracy has got to be something that we fight for. That’s why we need you to come out in an unprecedented way to knock on doors and talk to neighbors… When we stand together and we don’t let Trump and his friends divide us up by the color of our skin or our religion or where we were born, when we stand together, there is nothing we can’t accomplish.”
According to MoveOn.org, “the nastiness of this law is exactly why the GOP is so determined to rush it… But the more the public knows about what’s in this bill, the more it hurts the GOP’s chances with actual voters… it’s critical to fight back, publicly and unignorably, because if we alert enough people to this act of legislative looting by the 1%, we can make this bill backfire. Our job is to sear into the public’s mind that this bill is a massive transfer of money from the many to the few.”
It is critical for the public to vocalize their opposition to this bill. The plan is extremely unpopular throughout the majority of the country, the only bill having polled worse being the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, and by publicly opposing the code it may be possible to persuade policymakers to vote against it.
As Nina Turner said: “When history is written, it will talk about the rainbow mosaic of humanity who came up against the forces that would dare to make poverty a crime who would dare to siphon off resources from everyday people who are just trying to live a good life.”
She calls for us to “leave this place more dedicated than before to show them that people power is the most important power on the face of this earth.” We must dedicate ourselves to to stand up against abusive policies and make it clear to our policymakers that we will not be taken advantage of.
Watch the full rally here: https://www.facebook.com/moveon/videos/10154988683510493/