Politicians & Pundits: Donald Trump

WATCH: Gary Cohn applauded by banking lobby for Trump Administration plan to weaken Wall Street reforms 

American Bridge spokesperson Andrew Bates released the following statement after National Economic Council (NEC) Director Gary Cohn told the American Bankers Association – receiving applause – that the Trump Administration was working to diminish financial sector regulations put into place after the 2008 financial crisis: 

“At the very same time that Trump is pushing a tax plan that would give 80% of its benefits to the wealthiest Americans, his top economic adviser is being applauded by the banking lobby for promising to erode post-financial crisis Wall Street reforms.  The middle class and American workers need an advocate in the White House, but instead Donald Trump is trying to further rig the economy in favor of the richest taxpayers and expose the American people to a catastrophic repeat of the 2008 recession.”

WATCH:

American Bankers Association President and CEO Rob Nichols: Kind of a broader picture just about the overall tone […]

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Editorial Roundup: Adult Day Care Edition

In a week where California is literally burning and Puerto Rico still needs help, President Trump decided to inject uncertainty into FEMA’s commitment to Puerto Rico, throw DACA recipients back into limbo, and recklessly sabotage the Affordable Care Act. Editorial boards across the country criticized him for all of these issues and more.

Here’s what Americans were reading in their local papers this week:

10/6

San Francisco Chronicle: Trump’s Cabinet Of Chaos

Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee this week described Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly as “those people that help separate our country from chaos.” While it might surprise some administration observers to learn that anything is separating the nation from chaos, Corker has a point about the thin gray line of generals and executives who constitute the embattled anti-entropy faction of President Trump’s […]

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NEW POLL: Americans overwhelmingly oppose Trump’s sabotaging of ACA marketplaces   

A new, independent poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that the country overwhelmingly supports bipartisan action to maintain and strengthen the Affordable Care Act​ (ACA)​, and opposes forcing the law to fail as Donald Trump has been attempting to do for months. A similar poll in April also indicated that a large majority of the public would blame Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress for “any problems with the Affordable Care Act going forward.”

​What’s more, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that ending the payment of cost-sharing reductions, as the Trump Administration announced they will do last night, would increase premiums for benchmark silver plans on the ACA exchanges by 20%.

In response to the latest polling, American Bridge spokesperson Andrew Bates released the following statement: 

“The writing is on the wall – the American people want to keep the unprecedented coverage gains and protections for people suffering from preexisting conditions that […]

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BREAKING: Trump’s sabotage of the ACA will result in a Trump tax on health insurance

American Bridge Vice President Shripal Shah released the following statement after it was reported that Donald Trump will withhold the payment of Affordable Care Act cost-sharing reductions:

“Donald Trump is sabotaging insurance marketplaces across the country in the name of partisan politics and as a result, the country is going to pay the price in the form of higher premiums.  Trump is singlehandedly selling out millions of working Americans who count on these payments to afford insurance and when they’re faced with the consequences of this decision they’re going to know Donald Trump is the only one to blame.  Every Republican across the country should expect to be held accountable for this reckless decision that will hurt so many people.”

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Sanders Questions: Abandoning Americans In Their Hour Of Need Edition

The crises facing the White House are serious and Donald Trump’s reckless behavior is putting lives in danger. Everybody seems to know that except the President. American Bridge Rapid Response Director Emily Aden calls on White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to answer the following questions:

1. Why is President Trump threatening to abandon Puerto Rico when 84 percent of the Americans living there still don’t have power and a third don’t have access to clean drinking water?

2. Why has the President still not made a public statement himself about the American soldiers who were killed in an ambush in Niger?

3. Experts agree that President Trump’s health care executive order will force premiums to go up, leave millions of Americans with inadequate care, and could kill the health care market within a year. Why is he doing this other than to fulfill his childish grudge against President Obama?

4.Yesterday, the Director […]

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Statement: Trumpcare Executive Order Undermines Americans’ Access to Healthcare and Risks Legal Challenges

American Bridge Vice President Shripal Shah issued the following statement on Trump’s executive order further undermining the Affordable Care Act’s state insurance marketplaces as well as its protections for Americans with preexisting conditions: 

​”This is an outrageous, and potentially illegal, attack on Americans with preexisting conditions and the finances of middle class Americans. Trump’s actions will exacerbate the chaos in already-sabotaged marketplaces, force premiums to skyrocket, and open the doorway to large-scale health insurance fraud, all in the name of partisan politics. American families are paying attention, and they’ll know exactly who to blame when they’re hit with the consequences of Trump’s reckless behavior.”

​EXPERTS ON LEGALITY OF THE EXECUTIVE ORDER​

​American Enterprise Institute Resident Scholar Joseph Antos: “The E in ERISA is employee…They are going to have to stretch the definition of whether you’re an employee or not.” [Reuters, 10/12/2017]

Reuters: “U.S. President Donald Trump’s expected plan to let […]

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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.”

Read more after the jump.