Republican Tax Scam Cuts

Floor Speech

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Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, Republican tax scam tax cuts really are only going to benefit giant corporations and the wealthy few, and what working people will ever glean from this is minimal in scope and really is just sort of a pittance in order to allow people who have more wealth than they can possibly even count to just get more.

This tax cut, this massive tax cut, would wipe away healthcare coverage for millions of workers, give multinational corporations and foreign investors a giant payday, and it paves the way for more cruel cuts, cutting programs that will benefit Americans.

It is a moral abomination. It is wrong. It is giving more to those who already have too much and taking from those who already are struggling to make ends meet. But, sadly, it is just another example of how Republicans and their billionaire buddies are in it for themselves and not the American people.

I would like to talk about another important example, because you have to look at what is going on in our Supreme Court together with these tax cuts and other programs to understand how much damage Republican leadership means to the American people.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard a case. It was Janus v. AFSCME. Janus, as the case is called, is yet another attack on the right to organize your workplace and negotiate for better wages and benefits and safer workplaces.

Over the last several decades, big companies and their conservative allies in Congress have attacked the right to collectively bargain.

The attacks on workers have led to stagnating wages for workers and greater income inequality. This case is no different. It is being bankrolled by the usual suspects: the Koch brothers and their billionaire allies.

Janus will determine whether public sector unions that represent teachers, firefighters, police officers, and nurses in States and cities across this country can collect fees from all of the employees in the workplaces that they represent.

This case is about whether millions of hardworking public sector workers will have the freedom and the resources to stand together and fight for a better future for themselves and their families. But it is also about the corrosive power of money in politics. It is about the millions of dollars wealthy donors spent to hold a Supreme Court seat open for over a year; the millions more that were spent to elect President Trump so that he could fill that seat with Neil Gorsuch; and the millions of dollars that the Koch brothers and the Bradley Foundation, two organizations devoted to cutting government services for Americans and weakening unions, spent to fund the Janus case.

And today, now that the bought-and-paid-for court has heard the case that will deliver a blow--we hope it doesn't, but likely it will--to the public service workers and the unions that represent them, their investment appears to be paying off.

Here is the thing: millionaires and billionaires who fund these antiworker and antiunion attacks are petrified about the labor movement. They are absolutely afraid of it. That is why they have been working to attack it.

That is because the labor movement is premised on the simple idea that, when workers come together, they can fight for their fair share of the wealth that they helped to create and because the labor movement is about equality and a fair economy that works for everyone, not just a few.

That is why wealthy donors have worked to eliminate and cut union representation; that is why they engage in union busting; that is why they funded the Janus case; and that is why they continue to keep kicking working people in the teeth over and over again.

This Republican tax scam is only part of the restructuring of American democracy where we take from working Americans, give to the wealthiest, and then try to deprive through the courts people's right to organize collectively on their job.

But hardworking Americans are standing up, hardworking Americans are banning together, and hardworking Americans are not going to allow a prosperous life for themselves and their families to be taken away so easily.

This Janus case is something that I urge everybody to look into. It represents another attack on the American working class, but the American working people are standing up stronger than ever and will come back stronger than ever.

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