Tammy Baldwin and Bernie Sanders fight economic inequality and fiscal irresponsibility

Cap Times editorial 46 min ago


Excerpts:

The Senate voted last Thursday to massively increase income inequality in the United States by using the power of the federal government to redistribute wealth upward. By a narrow 51-49 vote, the chamber backed a budget measure that clears the way for Republicans to enact epic tax cuts for corporate elites, multimillionaires and billionaires.

Sanders and Baldwin exposed the true agenda of the Trump administration and congressional Republicans with a pair of amendments that clarified the tax and deficit issues.

The Sanders amendment sought to prevent tax cuts for the top 1 percent of Americans, including billionaire campaign donors such as David and Charles Koch, whose enthusiasm for the Trump administration’s “tax reform” schemes was summed up by a Boston Globe headline that read: “The Koch brothers (and their friends) want President Trump’s tax cut. Very badly.” Tim Phillips, the president of the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity cabal, announced that the push for the tax cut is “the most significant federal effort we’ve ever taken on.”

Baldwin, a Wisconsinite who traces her politics to another populist movement of the upper Midwest (that of the Wisconsin progressives who supported Sen. Robert M. La Follette’s battles against wealth and privilege), proposed an amendment that focused on the fiscal irresponsibility of the GOP scheme. She sought to reinstate a Senate rule that would effectively prevent Republicans from increasing the deficit in order to fund tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.

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