Trump’s Tax Plan Is Robin Hood in Reverse for Pennsylvania Families

Taxes are going up for thousands of Pennsylvania families if Donald Trump’s tax plan becomes law, while over 60% of the tax cuts would go right into the pockets of the richest one percent — those making more than half a million dollars a year.  That’s according to the independent economists at the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy, and backed up by economic policy and tax experts from across the ideological spectrum. 

“The country should ignore the President’s lies on stage tonight, the truth is Donald Trump’s tax plan saves him bigly, forces working people to fork over more of their paycheck, and sends the national debt skyrocketing,” said American Bridge Vice President Shripal Shah ahead of Trump’s speech in Harrisburg.  “It’s lose, lose, lose for the American people.”

Here is what economic policy and tax experts from across the ideological spectrum had to say about Trump’s tax plan: 

New York […]

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Trump’s Sabotage of the Affordable Care Act Costs the People of California

Donald Trump is actively sabotaging Affordable Care Act (ACA) insurance marketplaces, and it is costing the people of California. Today, the Covered California announced that, as a result of Trump destabilizing the market, a new surcharge is being added for silver plans on the health insurance exchanges in California that will increase rates by an average of 12.4% next year.

This news comes after Donald Trump has taken a host of executive actions that have harmed insurance markets and driven-up healthcare costs for Americans, including an executive order on Trump’s first day in office to compromise the effectiveness of the individual mandate, calling into question whether the mandate would be enforced at all, pulling an initial round of ACA enrollment ads that had already been paid for, cutting the overall enrollment ad budget by 90% as well as community outreach funds by 40%, halving the enrollment period in most states, and ceasing Health and […]

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Experts: Trump Executive Order Could Complete Sabotage of ACA Marketplaces, Increasing Costs and Devastating Americans with Preexisting Conditions  

Healthcare experts are warning that the executive order Donald Trump will reportedly sign Thursday would catastrophically destabilize Affordable Care Act marketplaces, hammering Americans suffering from preexisting conditions and causing premiums to skyrocket.

This executive order will ruin the American healthcare system,” said American Bridge spokesperson Andrew Bates. “It will devastate millions of Americans who suffer from preexisting conditions and drive healthcare costs up only because Donald Trump has chosen to put his cynical political agenda ahead of the country’s medical and financial well-being. This is a tragedy in the making for countless families, and they will hold Donald Trump and his Republican enablers in Congress accountable for it.”

Trump and his administration have taken a large series of executive actions that have damaged Affordable Care Act insurance markets and that will raise healthcare costs for millions of Americans, including cutting the overall enrollment ad budget by 90% as well as community outreach funds by 40%, halving the enrollment period in most […]

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American Bridge Statement on Trump Dismantling the Clean Power Plan

American Bridge Vice President Shripal Shah released the following statement on President Trump’s plan to undo the Clean Power Plan:

“President Trump is poisoning America’s future. His decision to undo the Clean Power Plan that the EPA estimated would have saved Americans billions of dollars in health care costs annually and prevented thousands of American deaths is just plain wrong.  The first nine months of Trump’s administration will be remembered for willfully neglecting the danger posed by climate change, as well as his intentional sabotage of our air and water quality.”

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Sanders Questions: Let’s See That IQ Test Edition

So how did President Trump and Secretary Tillerson’s IQ measuring lunch go? Are we going to war with North Korea or should we just expect more “wait and see until after the commercial break” tweets?

American Bridge Rapid Response Director Emily Aden calls on White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to answer those and the following questions:

1. Did President Trump order Vice President Pence to waste nearly $250,000 in taxpayer dollars to pull a stunt at the Colts game?

2. Given the onslaught of extreme weather devastating the United States as a result of climate change, why is the Trump administration repealing the Clean Power Plan?

3. Why hasn’t the President made a statement about the deadly wildfires in California that have killed at least 11 people?

4. Instead of floating a likely unconstitutional executive order to further sabotage the Affordable Care Act, shouldn’t President Trump focus on renewing the Children’s Health Insurance […]

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BREAKING: Fund Managers Say Trump’s Corporate Tax Cuts Will Increase Automation, Cut Jobs

“At the very same time that Donald Trump is making empty promises about his tax plan benefiting manufacturing workers, fund managers are predicting that large companies will use the new corporate tax cuts in Trump’s proposal to invest in automation instead of actual jobs for Americans,” said American Bridge spokesperson Andrew Bates. “It couldn’t be more obvious: the framework Trump and congressional Republicans are pushing is all about rigging the American economy so that the wealthiest taxpayers and corporations benefit while the American dream slips more out of reach for the middle class and those fighting to get into it.”

Key paragraph: “Fund managers from Columbia Threadneedle Investments, Hodges Capital and Hood Capital say that they expect that companies will use part of their tax savings to invest in high-cost machines that will allow them to reduce labor costs over time.”

Reuters: Tax-cut plan prompts fund managers to bet on automation
David Randall
5 MIN READ

NEW […]

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Statement: Trump’s tax plan is an insult to manufacturing workers and the middle class

American Bridge released the following statement in response to Donald Trump’s event today at which he will make dishonest claims about his tax plan, which would overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy but leave manufacturing workers behind. 
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“Today’s event is a con,” said American Bridge spokesperson Andrew Bates. “Wall Street lobbyists support this Republican tax proposal while the country’s largest labor union is fighting against it. That should tell Americans everything they need to know. Donald Trump’s tax plan is nothing more an effort to rig the U.S. economy in favor of the rich and large corporations while selling-out the middle class and those fighting to get into it – including manufacturing workers.  What’s more, ​Trump’s plan ​​​does not expand the earned income tax credit ​and ​fails to address ​tax breaks corporations can exploit when moving jobs overseas.”

Why Donald Trump’s tax plan is an insult to manufacturing workers and the middle class:

​​The […]

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Sanders Questions: #HandsOffMyBC Edition 

Hey Sarah, can you tell your boss to keep his #HandsOffMyBC and answer the following questions:

1. What public health need does taking away access to birth control from hundreds of thousands of women provide?

2. Why has President Trump hypocritically created such a lax workplace that his chief of staff John Kelly’s personal cell phone was compromised and he himself used an unsecured Android phone for months?

3. Will President Trump take Secretary Mnuchin to task in their meeting today over spending $800,000 in taxpayer dollars on flights? Will he demand Mnuchin pay back the American people?

3A. When will former Secretary Price repay the American people for spending over $1 million in taxpayer money on private planes?

4. What “storm” was the President referring to last night? Does this White House understand war as anything other than a ploy for ratings?

5. Who in the White House directed FEMA to pull down information on […]

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Editorial Roundup: Let Them Eat Cake Edition

This week the nation grieved the deadliest mass shooting in our history and Americans in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands continue to suffer without electricity from Hurricane Maria. As only he knows how, President Trump managed to add insult to injury. He visited both Las Vegas, which he inexplicably described as “wonderful,” and Puerto Rico, where he threw paper towels into the crowd as if the dire situation was a playful opportunity for him to enjoy his trip. Additionally, we learned more about Trump’s tax cut for the super rich and his Cabinet members wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money to jet around on private planes.

Here’s what Americans read in their local newspapers this week:

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Arizona Republic: By Now, Donald Trump Should Know His Border Wall Is A Loser

There is a national consensus on the border and immigration, in spite […]

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American Bridge Statement On Repeal Of Access To Birth Control For Hundreds Of Thousands Of Women

This morning, President Trump announced his administration will end guaranteed coverage for birth control without out-of-pocket costs, leaving it to individual employers to decide what health care services and prescriptions their female employees deserve to access.

In response, Emily Aden, Director of American Bridge’s Protect Women’s Health Care Initiative, released the following statement: 

“Access to birth control is fundamental to women’s health care, and to politicize it as the Trump administration is doing is an insult to women across the country. Decisions about birth control are decisions women make on their own with consultation from their doctors, not their bosses, and it’s sad that in this day and age politicians like Donald Trump still don’t understand that. He ought to be ashamed of this partisan attack on women’s health that will hurt hundreds of thousands of American women.”

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