The American Federation of Teachers released a statement by its President Randi Weingarten:
Contact:
Andrew Crook
607-280-6603
acrook@aft.org
AFT’s Weingarten on Senate’s Big, Ugly Betrayal of America’s Working Families
As we prepare to celebrate our independence, the promise of the American dream, of freedom and prosperity for all, is now further out of reach.’
WASHINGTON—AFT President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement after the Senate passed President Trump’s billionaire tax scam:
“This is a big, ugly, obscene betrayal of American working families that was rammed through the Senate in the dead of night to satisfy a president determined to hand tax cuts to his billionaire friends.
“These are tax cuts paid for by ravaging the future: kicking millions off healthcare, closing rural hospitals, taking food from children, stunting job growth, hurting the climate, defunding schools and ballooning the debt. It will siphon money away from public schools through vouchers—which harm student achievement and go mostly to well-off families with kids already in private schools. It’s the biggest redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich in decades—far worse, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, than the version passed by the House.
“But if you only listened to those who voted yes, you wouldn’t have heard anything like that. You would’ve heard bad faith attempts to rewrite basic laws of accounting so they could assert that the bill won’t grow the deficit. You would’ve heard false claims about what it will do to healthcare and public schools and public services, which are the backbone of our nation.
“The reality is that the American people have rejected, in poll after poll, this bill’s brazen deception. As it travels back to the House and presumably to the president’s desk, we will continue to sound the alarm and let those who voted for it know they have wounded the very people who voted them into office. But it is also incumbent on us to fight forward for an alternative: for working-class tax cuts and for full funding of K-12 and higher education as engines of opportunity and democracy.
“Sadly, as we prepare to celebrate our independence, the promise of the American dream, of freedom and prosperity for all, is now further out of reach.”
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The AFT represents 1.8 million pre-K through 12th-grade teachers; paraprofessionals and other school-related personnel; higher education faculty and professional staff; federal, state and local government employees; nurses and healthcare workers; and early childhood educators.