[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 35 (Tuesday, February 27, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H1272-H1273]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        REPUBLICAN TAX SCAM CUTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Minnesota (Mr. Ellison) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, Republican tax scam tax cuts really are 
only going to benefit giant corporations and the wealthy few, and what 
working people will ever glean from this is minimal in scope and really 
is just sort of a pittance in order to allow people who have more 
wealth than they can possibly even count to just get more.
  This tax cut, this massive tax cut, would wipe away healthcare 
coverage for millions of workers, give multinational corporations and 
foreign investors a giant payday, and it paves the way for more cruel 
cuts, cutting programs that will benefit Americans.
  It is a moral abomination. It is wrong. It is giving more to those 
who already have too much and taking from those who already are 
struggling to make ends meet. But, sadly, it is just another example of 
how Republicans and their billionaire buddies are in it for themselves 
and not the American people.
  I would like to talk about another important example, because you 
have to look at what is going on in our Supreme Court together with 
these tax cuts and other programs to understand how much damage 
Republican leadership means to the American people.
  Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard a case. It was Janus v. AFSCME. 
Janus, as the case is called, is yet another attack on the right to 
organize your workplace and negotiate for better wages and benefits and 
safer workplaces.
  Over the last several decades, big companies and their conservative 
allies in Congress have attacked the right to collectively bargain.

                              {time}  1030

  The attacks on workers have led to stagnating wages for workers and 
greater income inequality. This case is no different. It is being 
bankrolled by the usual suspects: the Koch brothers and their 
billionaire allies.
  Janus will determine whether public sector unions that represent 
teachers, firefighters, police officers, and nurses in States and 
cities across this country can collect fees from all of the employees 
in the workplaces that they represent.
  This case is about whether millions of hardworking public sector 
workers will have the freedom and the resources to stand together and 
fight for a better future for themselves and their families. But it is 
also about the corrosive power of money in politics. It is about the 
millions of dollars wealthy donors spent to hold a Supreme Court seat 
open for over a year; the millions more that were spent to elect 
President Trump so that he could fill that seat with Neil Gorsuch; and 
the millions of dollars that the Koch brothers and the Bradley 
Foundation, two organizations devoted to cutting government services 
for Americans and weakening unions, spent to fund the Janus case.
  And today, now that the bought-and-paid-for court has heard the case 
that will deliver a blow--we hope it doesn't, but likely it will--to 
the public service workers and the unions that represent them, their 
investment appears to be paying off.
  Here is the thing: millionaires and billionaires who fund these 
antiworker and antiunion attacks are petrified about the labor 
movement. They are absolutely afraid of it. That is why they have been 
working to attack it.
  That is because the labor movement is premised on the simple idea 
that, when workers come together, they can fight for their fair share 
of the wealth that they helped to create and because the labor movement 
is about equality and a fair economy that works for everyone, not just 
a few.
  That is why wealthy donors have worked to eliminate and cut union 
representation; that is why they engage in union busting; that is why 
they funded the Janus case; and that is why they continue to keep 
kicking working people in the teeth over and over again.
  This Republican tax scam is only part of the restructuring of 
American democracy where we take from working Americans, give to the 
wealthiest, and then try to deprive through the courts people's right 
to organize collectively on their job.
  But hardworking Americans are standing up, hardworking Americans are 
banning together, and hardworking Americans are not going to allow a 
prosperous life for themselves and their families to be taken away so 
easily.
  This Janus case is something that I urge everybody to look into. It 
represents another attack on the American working class, but the 
American

[[Page H1273]]

working people are standing up stronger than ever and will come back 
stronger than ever.

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