WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump celebrated the achievements of his first 100 days in workplace, members of the Home Congressional Progressive Caucus pushed again with a counternarrative Tuesday.
Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, claimed crucial story of Trump’s first 100 days is that billionaires are utilizing the federal authorities to tear off working folks.
“For 100 days, they’ve reduce your providers. For 100 days, they’ve raised your costs. They’ve fired veterans and stolen their salaries. For 100 days, Trump, Musk and the billionaire class have gotten richer off of you whereas our nation has gotten screwed,” Casar mentioned throughout a information convention the place he outlined Democrats’ plans to take again the Home of Representatives through the midterm election subsequent 12 months.
Casar and a half dozen different progressive representatives spoke on the Capitol, standing subsequent to an indication that confirmed Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and different tech executives on the president’s inauguration ceremony.
“Democrats must make confronting the billionaire takeover of our authorities our high precedence,” Casar mentioned.
Recognizing that Democrats can’t solely be the anti-Trump social gathering, he mentioned the caucus is organizing to ensure Individuals see the social gathering as having “a imaginative and prescient for America the place the world really will get higher after this.”
He mentioned the caucus is within the early levels of making a coverage agenda to make sure the federal authorities helps working folks. He added that they intend to stress deficit-hawk Home Republicans to flip their votes on the federal budget bill they are currently hammering out that will lengthen the tax cuts Trump enacted throughout his first time period and will add trillions to the federal debt and reduce billions in Medicaid funding.
“Guarantees made, guarantees damaged,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., mentioned through the occasion, reversing the “guarantees made, guarantees stored” slogan Home Republicans typically use when discussing Trump’s insurance policies.
Jayapal mentioned that through the president’s first 100 days in workplace he damaged lots of the guarantees he made on the marketing campaign path, together with decreasing prescription drug prices, making in-vitro fertilization free and never making cuts to Medicare or Social Safety.
“That is an all-out assault on our staff, on our federal security internet,” she mentioned. “This administration cares extra about protecting their billionaire buddies completely satisfied fairly than decreasing the prices of actually something that Individuals want.”
Saying Democrats must not solely struggle again however “struggle ahead” with a optimistic, proactive agenda, she cited the bicameral Medicare for All Act she launched Tuesday with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich.
The invoice seeks to broaden Medicare to offer complete advantages to all Individuals, together with main care, imaginative and prescient, dental, pharmaceuticals, psychological well being, substance abuse, long-term care and reproductive well being care.
“We have to come collectively, to face up and to point out that our collective energy is stronger than their hate and that we are going to at all times struggle for the American folks,” she mentioned.
Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif., mentioned the Democrats intend to struggle the Republicans in committees, within the courts and within the streets to stall the Trump agenda.
