June, 06 2018, 12:00am EDT
"Just Tax Us More, PLEASE"
"The GOP is waging a war on everday Americans on behalf of their donor class. Why else would they stand by and watch programs that help 40% of America dry up while simultaneously promoting a $1.9 trillion tax cut for the wealthy?"
WASHINGTON
According to a new report released yesterday by Medicare trustees, the program is projected to run out of funding three years earlier than previously expected, now running out of money by 2026. A partner report stated that the funding for Social Security would run out in 2035.
In response to this news the Patriotic Millionaires released the following statement:
"This is beyond absurd, this is morally bankrupt. The GOP is waging a war on everyday Americans on behalf of their donor class. Why else would they stand by and watch programs that 40% of Americans benefit from dry up all while signing a $1.9 trillion tax cut for the wealthy into law?
Millions of American seniors depend on these programs every day. Maybe GOP members of Congress are not thinking about those seniors, about 2026 or about 2035 because they plan to have skipped through the revolving door to lucrative K Street lobbying jobs by then. Whatever the reasoning, it's become clear the the GOP has plans for the type of America they want to live in, and it is not the type of America we want to live in.
We want to live in an America with a healthy population, a population that is able to live in retirement with dignity, and a population that is not under constant attack by Republican lawmakers. So tax us more. Tax us more to fund these programs and give us a healthy workforce, to give us retirees who can afford to buy our goods and services, and to give us a country that we can be even prouder to call home."
It comes as no surprise that members of the GOP have little to say in public about this news. In fact, the party voted last year to dismantle the Independent Payment Advisory Board, created by the Affordable Care Act, in order to slow the growth of Medicare. The party also voted to repeal the penalty for people who without health insurance, which had helped to offset Medicare payments to select hospitals for "uncompensated care." To date, the party has not taken up multiple legislative pushes to remove the Social Security spending cap which allows millionaires and billionaires to stop paying into Social Security weeks, sometimes even just days or hours, into the year.
The Patriotic Millionaires is a group of high-net worth Americans who share a profound concern about the destabilizing level of inequality in America. Our work centers on the two things that matter most in a capitalist democracy: power and money. Our goal is to ensure that the country's political economy is structured to meet the needs of regular Americans, rather than just millionaires. We focus on three "first" principles: a highly progressive tax system, a livable minimum wage, and equal political representation for all citizens.
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"Coups. Assassinations. Riots. Detentions. Disinformation. We know the tactics that have been deployed to undermine our democracies. But who is behind them?"
Progressive International (PI) asks and answers this and other questions with an extensive new database published Wednesday that connects the dots in what the leftist group calls the "Reactionary International"—a loose global network of right-wing leaders and organizations working to subvert democratic institutions.
PI calls it an "illicit network undermining democracy around the world."
"Today is a mask-off moment for the Reactionary International and the parties, politicians, judges, journalists, foundations, think tanks, tech platforms, NGOs, activists, financiers, and entrepreneurs that comprise it," PI said.
"After a year of preparation, we finally open the doors to our new research consortium, exposing the global network of reactionary forces that corrode our democracies, destroy our planet, and drive us closer to world war," the group added.
"The twin insurrections at the U.S. Capitol in 2021 and Brasília's Three Powers Plaza in 2023 left no doubt about the international coordination of reactionary forces," PI argued. "Yet far too little is known about the entities of this network, their sources of financing, and their institutional allies operating inside our political systems."
Ultimately, PI aims to "support democratic systems to become more resilient to their insidious tactics."
From leaders like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and former U.S. President Donald Trump—the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee—to evangelical Christian groups influencing laws in African countries criminalizing LGBTQ+ people and tech companies empowering ubiquitous state surveillance, Reactionary International is a who's-who of the world's right-wing forces.
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Yanis Varoufakis, a PI member and secretary-general of the left-wing Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, called the database "a treasure chest of well-researched reports on how the reactionaries of the world unite."
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Andre Segura, vice president of litigation at the environmental legal group Earthjustice, said Wednesday that the Republican attorneys general aim to "eviscerate civil rights protections just to make it easier for industrial polluters to continue with business as usual."
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As Volkswagen workers in Tennessee began voting on whether to join the United Auto Workers, progressive critics on Wednesday continued to call out six Southern GOP governors for jointly saying they "are highly concerned about the unionization campaign driven by misinformation and scare tactics that the UAW has brought into our states."
Govs. Kay Ivey of Alabama, Brian Kemp of Georgia, Tate Reeves of Mississippi, Henry McMaster of South Carolina, Bill Lee of Tennessee, and Greg Abbott of Texas issued their statement in response to "the largest organizing drive in modern American history," which the UAW launched after major contract wins following a strike targeting the Big Three automakers—General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis—last year.
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What actually threatens American workers?\n\u274c Anti-union, anti-worker propaganda like this\n\ud83d\udcb0 Corps that put profits over people\n\u26d1\ufe0f Safety standards not being met\n\n@GovAbbott & @GovernorKayIvey sound more like corporate lobbyists than governors here. @UAW backs American workers!— (@)
The Economic Policy Institutesaid Wednesday that the governors' anti-union statement "clearly shows how scared they are that workers organizing with UAW to improve jobs and wages will upend the highly unequal, failed anti-worker economic development model of Southern states."
Responding to the statement on social media, the Congressional Labor Caucus declared that "we speak up when we see threats to workers' rights. Workers must be allowed to choose whether to form a union on their own—free from influence from their employers or politicians. Shame on these governors for putting out this anti-union propaganda."
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More Perfect Union told Ivey that "unions only threaten your values if you value denying workers a living wage and good benefits."
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