Month: December 2017

Here are the flimsy promises that got key Republican swing votes to support the tax plan

congress, John McCain, News, Senate, susan-collins

Several Republican senators who were considered swing votes on the GOP tax plan — a plan the chamber intends to vote on Friday night, without giving members sufficient time to even read the bill — have been swayed with flimsy promises by Republican leadership and the Trump administration.

“After securing significant changes, as well as commitments to pass legislation to help lower health insurance premiums, I will cast my vote in support of the Senate tax reform bi...

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Trump’s tax cut is class warfare and jeopardizes the futures of working Americans

Donald Trump, News, politics

President Donald Trump will soon sign a devastating piece of economic legislation, one that hands hundreds of billions of dollars to wealthy people and corporations while queuing up a tax hike for working families in the coming years.

On Friday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell found a way to buy off holdouts on the GOP tax bill like Sen. Jeff Flake (R-UT), who traded his vote for a promise that the most anti-immigrant president in modern history will take his phone calls abou...

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Flake says he’s helping undocumented immigrants by voting for GOP tax bill. He’s really not.

News, politics

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) says Republicans have the votes needed to pass a Senate tax reform bill that would increase the deficit by $1 trillion dollars — a deficit that means the Republican tax cut won’t pay for itself.

Shortly after McConnell’s announcement, Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ), an alleged hold-out vote, announced he will be voting in favor of the tax reform bill after “securing language to eliminate an $85 billion budget gimmick&#...

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Republicans tucked an irrelevant anti-abortion provision into the tax bill

congress, News, politics

The far-reaching implications of the Republican tax plan may include a sneaky attempt to use the sweeping piece of legislation to attack abortion rights.

Nearly 100 pages into the House version of the bill — and likely in the Senate bill as well, though Republicans have not yet released the text of the bill to the public, despite their intent to vote on it Friday afternoon — Republicans attempt to codify an anti-choice priority known as fetal personhood. The provision is...

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Senate Republicans refuse to believe the official analysis of their tax plan

News, politics

A key analysis of the Senate Republican tax plan released late Thursday afternoon threw a wrench into the GOP leadership’s rush to pass tax reform this week. In response, Republican lawmakers are choosing to simply ignore the report’s findings.

Just as the Senate was about to vote on Thursday on whether to advance their tax plan, the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation released a troubling report. The JCT report found that the $1.4 trillion dollar tax plan would gen...

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On World AIDS Day, remember all evidence suggests Trump still has zero plans to tackle HIV/AIDS

health care, News

“Bringing down the rate of HIV infection is one of the United States’ great public health triumphs of the past quarter-century,” wrote Keith Humphreys, who served as senior policy adviser at the White House drug policy office from 2009 to 2010.

Approximately 1.2 million residents nationwide are living with HIV, and HIV/AIDS deaths have significantly dropped. Between 2000 and 2013 in the United States, deaths decreased by 2.8 percent annually, faster than the global average of 1.5 pe...

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