[1]U.S. Senator Chris Murphy
It’s just not a good idea to put a bunch of out-of-touch, private jet-addicted, yacht-owning billionaires in charge of our government. And as President-elect Trump and his handpicked billionaire advisors/co-presidents Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy push for a Christmas government shutdown, we’re seeing exactly why.
First, let’s examine why Trump and his henchmen are pushing for a shutdown. In his statement released on Wednesday afternoon, Trump says he won’t support a government funding bill unless it raises the amount of money the government can borrow. Why is this really important to Trump and his rich friends? Because they are planning to pass another massive tax cut for billionaires and corporations and they have no intention of cutting spending to pay for it. So instead, they just want to borrow money - saddling regular Americans with even more debt - in order to increase Ramaswamy’s wealth from $1 billion to $2 billion. Because apparently $1 billion isn’t enough.
In the 6 years after Trump passed his first tax cut for rich guys, the net worth of America’s billionaires went up by…wait for it…$2.2 trillion. TWO POINT TWO TRILLION. It’s hard to even fathom how much money that is. During that same time, average wages for workers barely moved.
But now Trump wants to give more tax cuts to the uber rich, and the only way he can do it is if Congress increases the amount of money he can borrow to finance the tax giveaway.
Second, let’s talk about how a government run by billionaires has no clue about the impact of government policy. If the government shuts down over the holidays, Trump, Musk, Ramaswamy, and the 13 billionaires Trump nominated to his cabinet all get paid. Their kids and grandkids get loads of presents. Maybe a new car or a new vacation house shows up under the tree this year.
You know who goes without pay when the government shuts down? Our soldiers - 1.3 million men and women in uniform who will go without pay even as they continue to protect this country. The people who check your bags at the airport (are you traveling for the holidays?). 19,000 border patrol agents protecting more than 6,000 miles of our border. The people who run the passport office. The janitors who clean federal buildings. And many of those folks live pay period to pay period, so when they miss a single paycheck, the household budget falls to pieces. It’s their kids who won’t get presents under the tree this year.
But Trump’s billionaire advisors don’t know what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck. Trump never has - he’s had a silver spoon in his mouth since birth. And so they just don’t care if our brave soldiers can’t afford to fill their kids’ Christmas stockings this year. That’s just the price that needs to be paid in order to force Congress to raise the debt ceiling so that the billionaires can get another giant tax break.
Trump’s not even sworn in, and yet we are already seeing what a “billionaire first” agenda looks like. A skimpy, stressful Christmas for regular workers while the ruling class jets off to tropical vacations and laughs at how easy it is to rig the rules for themselves.
Merry Christmas!
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Chris Murphy is going to lead the fight against Trump and his billionaire cronies' efforts to rig our democracy and economy in their favor. The fights ahead will be tough and require his full attention. Small-dollar donations ensure he can stay focused on the work we elected him to do.
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