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...
politics
Flake says he’s helping undocumented immigrants by voting for GOP tax bill. He’s really not.
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&#...
Republicans tucked an irrelevant anti-abortion provision into the tax bill
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...
Senate Republicans refuse to believe the official analysis of their tax plan
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...
One short video illustrating Lindsey Graham’s stunning hypocrisy on Trump
During an interview with CNN on Thursday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was asked if he’s concerned about recent reports that President Trump has been privately questioning whether a recording of him bragging about groping women is legitimate and that he remains interested in racist conspiracy theories about President Obama’s birth certificate.
Instead of answering, Graham tried to turn the tables and attacked the media for reporting about those issues in the first place.
Faith leaders arrested as major religious groups rally against the GOP tax reform bill
Faith groups are rallying against the new GOP-led tax reform proposal currently making its way through the U.S. Senate, with some enduring arrest as they urge lawmakers to abandon a bill they say will primarily benefit the wealthy at the expense of vulnerable and low-income families.
On Wednesday, a group of more than 2,400 faith leaders hailing from Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, Buddhist, and other faith traditions signed onto a letter addressed to Senate leadership decrying the...
Republicans have decided that a corporate tax cut is more important than middle class families
Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced an amendment to the Senate tax bill on Wednesday that would help provide a bit more relief for middle class families in a tax bill that currently doesn’t do much to help them. Unfortunately, President Trump reportedly opposes it.
Under the current proposed Senate tax bill, the child tax credit is expanded to $2,000, but isn’t refundable. This means that lower-income families who don’t make enough for income ta...
Trump’s pick for Health Secretary promises to implement Obamacare ‘if it remains’
President Donald Trump’s pick for Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary is a pharmaceutical executive familiar with the department which he is nominated to lead. On Wednesday, before a Senate committee on health, Alex Azar defended his past: law clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia, HHS General Counsel and Deputy Secretary under President George W. Bush, and executive to drug giant Eli Lilly.
Since Trump came to office, HHS has undermined the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and hind...
Republicans win crucial vote for tax cuts with new gimmick, but there’s a catch
The Senate Budget Committee voted the GOP Senate plan out of committee 12 to 11 Tuesday afternoon.
Senate Republicans, scrambling for the votes to even get their tax bill out of committee, needed something to win over Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) a “deficit hawk” whose support was uncertain in recent days. Both Corker and Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) have both suggested a backstop, or trigger, which would reverse some tax cuts in the case the economy won’t grow as quickly ...
Why the Senate doesn’t have the votes it needs to pass tax reform
As the Senate prepares to vote on their version of the tax bill as early as this week, all eyes are on six Senators.
Three Senators, Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Bob Corker (R-TN), and John McCain (R-AZ) are virtually immune from outside pressure as they are unlikely to face voters again. Flake and Corker are retiring and McCain is 80, just won reelection and is battling a serious illness. All three have expressed serious concerns about how much the tax proposal will increase the federal defi...