MESSAGE FROM AFT PRESIDENT, RANDI WEINGARTEN: THE UGLY BILL

AFT Leader,

Last night the House passed a massive bill, but it’s far from beautiful. It’s big and ugly. Passing this reconciliation bill is a betrayal of all of us, including the very people who gave Donald Trump his margin of victory in the election.

By one vote, the House passed a bill gutting Medicaid, the Pell Grant program and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; cutting Medicare; making college less affordable; and using public education funding as a piggy bank to create a school voucher program that’s essentially a new tax shelter for the well-off. And why? To pay for tax cuts for billionaires.

Economists are saying this would be the largest transfer of wealth from the poor and working class to the wealthy in our history. And given the spike in the deficit, we are not just paying for these tax cuts with spending cuts; our kids and grandkids will be paying for generations.

To help you with your own communications to your members and communities, below is a summary of the bill. As you’ve heard me say many times, we cannot only win in the courts but must also win in the court of public opinion. That means organizing, educating and mobilizing. And that means getting members into the streets.

So, three things:

First, during the recess we must keep engaging members. Please check our Mobilize to see what events are happening. We have to make sure we continue the momentum.

Second, we just sent an e-activist making it clear who voted for or against this bill. If you want us to send it to your members, let us know.

Third, we need to be ready for June 14. Trump will be having his military birthday parade in D.C., but across the country we’ll have No Kings Day. It’s a nationwide action, and there are already more than 1,000 events planned. Go to go.aft.org/nokings to find out more.

It’s been a very busy day, not just in Congress but in the courts, where we had a big reprieve and a big success.

First, the Supreme Court deadlocked in the St. Isidore Catholic virtual school case, which means it blocked Oklahoma’s attempt to open and operate a religious charter school. The Supreme Court’s 4-4 decision leaves intact Oklahoma’s highest court’s decision rejecting the religious use of charters as a violation of the separation of church and state. That’s good news. You can read my statement here.

Second, we won a preliminary injunction preventing Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon from unlawfully dismantling the Department of Education. You can read about that here.

This is huge, and with the injunction we won in April that stops the administration from conditioning federal dollars on its ideological whims, the courts are truly helping us protect our kids.

In unity,
Randi Weingarten
AFT President

Memo: House Reconciliation Passage

TO: AFT Leaders
FROM: Randi Weingarten

We are sharing an update outlining where Congress is in the federal reconciliation process, including significant cuts to vital programs while handing huge tax breaks to the ultrawealthy.

In the dead of night, the House of Representatives passed this bill on a party-line vote, with every Democrat voting no. House Democrats fought the bill for more than 20 hours in the Rules Committee leading up to the floor vote and continued to vehemently oppose the bill when it was on the floor.

The bill now moves to the Senate. While we expect that Republican Senators will make some changes to the legislation as it moves through their chamber, the starting point is a bill that makes the poor poorer and the rich richer. We expect floor activity as early as the week of June 23rd to follow Trump’s insistence that the bill be signed into law by July 4th.

Reconciliation: What It Means

The Trump administration and the Republican-led Congress have prioritized a multitrillion-dollar bill on taxes, immigration and defense. This bill threatens essential programs and steals from the most vulnerable, while handing major tax cuts to the ultrawealthy. These tax giveaways will add trillions of dollars to the national debt while dampening long-run economic growth. The “reconciliation” maneuver allows the Senate to pass the bill with only a majority (as opposed to the 60 votes usually needed). In other words, in the current congressional makeup, this can pass without any Democratic votes.

Winners and Losers in House Bill

• Billionaires benefit from massive tax breaks.
• Leaves at least 13.7 million more people without health insurance by 2034. This number will increase as last-minute changes to the bill are analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office.
• ·Makes historic cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, putting nearly 11 million people—including 4 million kids—at risk of losing food assistance.
• Denies the child tax credit to families of 4.5 million U.S.-citizen children.
• Diverts funds from public schools via a national voucher program that doubles as a tax shelter for the rich.
• Cuts $350 billion from federal programs supporting higher education access.

What’s in the House Reconciliation Bill?

Tax Breaks for the Ultrawealthy

• Extends 2017 tax cuts for the ultrarich and corporations by cutting essential services Americans rely on.
• Permanently raises the estate tax exemption.
• Keeps the carried interest loophole, which helps the ultrawealthy avoid taxes.
• Expands the pass-through loophole, which helps corporations evade taxes.
• Fails to create a higher top tax bracket.

How do they Pay for Tax Breaks for Ultrawealthy?

Healthcare

Leaves at least 13.7 million more people without health insurance by 2034, including:

• 7.7 million more uninsured primarily due to Medicaid cuts.
• 4.2 million more uninsured by allowing the expiration of the ACA enhanced premium tax credits.
• 1.8 million more uninsured from implementing a proposed Trump Administration rule on the Affordable Care Act, which makes it more difficult to get and maintain coverage.

This number of uninsured will increase as last-minute changes to the bill are analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office, including fast tracking work reporting requirements.

The bill also:

• Allows health insurance companies to raise out-of-pocket costs by $450 for individuals and $900 for families.
• Could lead to across-the-board deficit reduction cuts that would impact Medicare ($500 billion) and other programs.
• Reduces federal Medicaid funding to states that provide Medicaid to undocumented adults.
• Increases out-of-pocket costs for some low-wage Medicaid recipients.
• Bans federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
• Bans federal Medicaid funding for gender-affirming care.
• Blocks states from implementing new, or increasing, provider taxes, which are used to support Medicaid.
• Blocks the nursing home safe staffing rule.

Education

• Creates a $20+ billion private school voucher scheme that doubles as a tax shelter for the rich.
• Slashes $350 billion from college affordability programs.
• Cuts financial aid, leaving 5 million students without enough aid.
• Reduces Pell Grant access for 6.6 million students, including by cutting off access to students who work full time while getting their degree.
• Adds $1.8 billion in fees for student loans.
• Eliminates affordable repayment plans, tripling costs for 12.5 million borrowers.
• Forces 426,000 students into risky private loans by eliminating Grad PLUS loans.
• Ends relief for students defrauded by colleges and lets those predatory colleges off the hook.
• Removes protections from low-quality career programs affecting 700,000 students.
• Raids university endowments to fund tax breaks for billionaires.
• Slashes funding for grants to address air pollution at schools.
• Speeds up the phase out of clean energy tax credits used to retrofit public schools, hospitals and other public buildings.

Nutrition

Cuts over $300 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP):

• Shifts costs to states and punishes unintended paperwork errors.
• Expands harsh work requirements for individuals over 55 and parents with children over the age of 7 years old.
• Limits SNAP benefit updates, slashing $30 billion over 10 years.
• Restricts how shelter costs are calculated, affecting eligibility.
• Ends SNAP’s education and obesity-prevention programs.
• Decreases number of students eligible for free school meals.

Economy and Local Control

• Raises the federal debt by $5 trillion to pay for tax cuts for the ultrawealthy and corporations.
• Doesn’t fully restore the state and local income tax deduction (SALT) but increases the deduction to $40,000 with a $500,000 income cap until 2034.
• Denies the families of 4.5 million U.S.-citizen children eligibility for the child tax credit.
• Fails to restore union dues deductions or boost the educator tax credit.
• Makes it harder for low-income working adults to qualify for the earned income tax credit.
• Bans state and local artificial intelligence regulation for 10 years, risking unaddressed harm.
• Rather than keep the promise to not tax Social Security, instead creates a new deduction for four years for those over age 65 earning a maximum of $75,000 for individual tax filers and $150,000 for married joint filers.
• Creates a remittance tax which would disproportionally harm immigrant workers who pay taxes yet often lack access to Medicaid and Social Security
• Permanently extends tax cuts that reward corporations for offshoring, moving jobs and profits overseas.