You get tricked, they get treats

#BillionairesFirst

On Thursday, with the passage of their budget, Congressional Republicans unleashed a monumental assault on the middle class and the future of our nation. A budget is a statement of values, but this one fails Americans at every turn.

Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi delivers her weekly press conference where she discusses the disastrous budget and tax bill, the DREAM Act, and the opioid crisis.

This extreme budget throws hard-working Americans under the bus, just to pave the way for raising taxes on middle class families on a billionaires-first tax scheme. It wreaks devastation on seniors, children, veterans and working families. In the name of tax breaks for the wealthiest, the proposed budget will hurt Americans at every stage of life and in every corner of the country, destroying middle class jobs, gutting education and job-training initiatives, ransacking Medicare and Medicaid, and still exploding the deficit. Particularly outrageous is the inexplicable provision to eliminate the deduction for state and local taxes, claimed by more than 6.1 million households in California, worth an average of more than $18,000 per family.

I stand with Governor Jerry Brown, who wrote letters to each Congressional Republican from the California delegation, urging them to oppose this budget. He was right in saying that getting rid of an individual's ability to deduct his or her California taxes is a horrible idea, but it is made far worse when you preserve—at the same time—the right of corporations to take those same deductions. Every member who voted for this budget must be held accountable for their assault on middle class families.

While they try to raise taxes on hard-working Americans to give trillion-dollar handouts to the top one percent, Democrats will oppose this devastation with all our strength, and fight to create good-paying jobs and raise wages for all. We will continue to fight for real, bipartisan tax reform that puts the middle class first, and A Better Deal with better jobs, better wages, and a better future for every American.