President Trump’s first 100 days in office have shocked America. During his campaign, Russian intelligence operatives reportedly manipulated Donald Trump’s lack of knowledge and experience to further their nation’s policy objectives. Now, some of the country’s biggest corporations and their lobbyists are exploiting the same weaknesses to roll back laws and regulations they don’t like, cut their own taxes and, in some cases, use the Office of the President to enrich themselves — all at the expense of ordinary working people and taxpayers.
Trump’s honeymoon was essentially 100 days of corporate
giveaways:
- Stocked his cabinet with billionaires, bankers and corporate CEOs, including the former head of Exxon Mobil and two former Goldman Sachs directors.
- Appointed anti-worker jurist Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and former NLRB member Alex Acosta, who the New York Times said “is more interested in shielding employers from wage and hour rules than enforcing them” as Labor Secretary.
- Met with more than 200 corporations, inviting big business to shape federal policy.
- Signed 13 resolutions by Congress repealing Obama administration regulations opposed by big business. One Trump action relieved businesses of the obligation to keep records of serious workplace injuries and illnesses. Another reversed an order requiring that businesses comply with worker safety, wage and civil rights laws before receiving government contracts.
- Overturned the Obama administration’s measures blocking the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines.
- Signed executive orders aimed at collapsing the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law, passed in the wake of the 2008 worldwide financial meltdown.
Unbowed by the humiliating defeat of his effort to “Repeal and Replace” the Affordable Care Act and his record-low approval rating — a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll shows 53 percent of voters disapprove of the job he’s doing, the lowest since the poll began in 1945 — President Trump is making another run at Obamacare and proposing the biggest corporate tax cut in history.
Trump’s healthcare plan is a warmed over version of the last effort: a huge gift to health insurance companies that deprives millions of families of affordable coverage. His tax cut rolls back corporate tax rates to 15 percent — the rate corporations paid in the 1950s — while providing no relief to middle class families. Because the plan eliminates the ability to deduct state and local income taxes, many California families could even see a tax increase.
Trump’s proposals are textbook examples of why we need to keep the resistance alive and push harder than ever to ensure that everyone covered by an SEIU 721 contract is signed up as a full member and participating in COPE (Committee on Political Education).