Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told a rally of people opposed to the yet-to-be-disclosed Republican tax bill that stopping the legislation is the first step to taking back the country.
“We can take this bill — put it in the garbage can where it belongs and begin the long, hard road of taking America back,” Schumer said on Wednesday, standing in front of an effigy of a cartoonish President Donald Trump at the Capitol.
“I’m not going to rest until this bill dies,” Schumer said. “I’m not going to rest until we’ve done some real things to restore income equality to America — the way it was in the ‘70s.”
“We are not going to rest until we expose the lies of this bill; kill it and do something real for poor and middle-class people in America,” Schumer said.
Schumer was speaking at a rally organized by the left-wing Patriotic Millionaires, a lobbying group that for years has pushed for higher taxes under the guise of rich people wanting to pay their fair share or even more.
On the Patriotic Millionaires’ website a blog written by Charlie Fink, former AOL executive, reveals the agenda of the group is not helping the downtrodden but advancing its left-wing agenda on a wide range of issues.
“I was a passionate Hillary Clinton supporter, but I have come to think that Bernie Sanders was very right about one very important thing: the fight for big ideas,” Fink wrote in the blog titled “There’s Only One Way to Win Our Country Back.”
“Here’s just a few of the pocketbook issues we should be advocating for, loudly”:
– National health care
– Free college and student debt forgiveness
– Massive infrastructure plan
– Marshall plan for US K-12 STEM education
– Aggressive action on guns
– Climate change
– Tax fairness
While the specifics are still unclear, the GOP tax plan, set to be unveiled on Thursday, reportedly actually agrees with their platform — that is, it does not reduce taxes for the wealthy.
“Our framework ensures that the benefits of tax reform go to the middle class, not the highest earners,” President Donald Trump told the National Association of Manufacturers Friday, Politico reported.
National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn has also said of the plan: “The wealthy are not getting a tax cut under our plan.”
Another way the Republican tax plan is expected to help taxpayers is by including the state and local tax (SALT) deduction, House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX) recently announced.
“At the urging of lawmakers, we are restoring an itemized property tax deduction to help taxpayers with local tax burdens,” Brady said in a statement.
The other Democrats who spoke at the rally include Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), and Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), Ted Lieu, Keith Ellison (D-MN), and Maxine Waters (D-CA).