Las Vegas resident Laura Packard is a self-employed small business owner who has stage 4 Hodgkin’s lymphoma and health insurance through an Affordable Care Act exchange. On Saturday, she was thrown out of a town hall event featuring Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) after she tried to ask him why he supports legislation that would strip coverage from people like her.
After the moderator of the LIBRE Initiative read Heller a question about the Republican tax cut plan that was written by ...
ThinkProgress
‘Hands off my birth control’: 500,000 personal objections to one Trump administration policy
The Iowa family clinic Chelsea Vargas went to recently closed, forcing her to reconsider her current form of birth control. The clinic provided her a free birth control ring. Without the clinic’s financial assistance, she won’t be able to afford her preferred contraception. (Although most plans cover the ring, she hasn’t been able to pay off her deductible to use her insurance.)
Before the clinic closed, she switched from the ring to an implant, a tiny rod inserted...
Here are the disputes Republicans need to resolve before they can pass their tax bill
Over the weekend, in the dead of night, the United States Senate passed their version of Trump’s tax bill, approving a tax plan that would provide a massive tax cut to corporations and the very wealth but provide middle class families with little tax relief.
But before the president’s “big, beautiful Christmas present” can be sent to Trump for his signature, the House and Senate have to reconcile their differences in a conference committee, where Congressional Republican...
‘They came to school freaking out’: CHIP parents wait anxiously for federal action
The family liaison at Goldrick Elementary School, Mary Grace, said families came to her office last week “freaking out.” A handful of parents showed her a letter from the state. It read: If Congress does not renew federal funding, Child Health Plan Plus will end on January 31, 2018.
Some students at Goldrick in Colorado receive health insurance through CHP+ or the state’s Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). A majority of students at the Southwest Denv...
The Senate tax bill will kill about 15,000 people every year
Appearing on CNBC Monday, Harvard economist and former Obama and Clinton administration official Larry Summers warned that if the Senate tax bill becomes law, about 10,000 people will die every year who otherwise would have lived. If anything, his estimate isn’t pessimistic enough.
The reason why is that the bill repeals the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, an unpopular but necessary provision that stabilizes insurance markets and wards off something known as an...
Hatch claims poor people don’t deserve government help because “they won’t help themselves”
Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) is defending a children’s health care program he helped create, but if the federal deficit balloons by at least $1 trillion as predicted under the Republican tax plan he’s authored and shepherded through the Senate, programs for the elderly and the poor will likely take a hit.
While praising the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and indicating the program will survive, Hatch nonetheless said last Thursday, shortly before before the Sen...
Senate advances tax bill that benefits the rich and will cost $1.4 trillion dollars
The Senate voted 51 to 49 to pass its version of the GOP Tax Cuts and Jobs Act early Saturday morning. Many lawmakers only received the text of the massive bill, which has far-reaching implications across multiple sectors, just before the vote, leaving no time to read the almost-500 page piece of legislation.
Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) was the only Republican to vote against the plan, and no Democrats voted for it.
The Senate version now has to be reconciled with the House versio...
Here are the flimsy promises that got key Republican swing votes to support the tax plan
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...
Trump’s tax cut is class warfare and jeopardizes the futures of working Americans
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...
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&#...