Senator Bernie Sanders attended two campaign events in Michigan on Wednesday. At events in Kalamazoo and Traverse City, Sanders spoke about the importance of electing Hillary Clinton president to continue the progress the country has made the last several years. While he admitted there is still work to be done, Sanders said that Clinton’s plans are better for the country than those of Donald Trump. Sanders maintained the populist tone that he is famous for saying that it is important to grow the middle class. “It is absolutely imperative that we elect Hillary Clinton, but it is equally imperative that millions of us work together to transform this country. To do that we will have to work hard because the people who have the power are the billionaire class, drug companies, fossil fuel companies and Wall Street. No one will be able to take them on if millions of people don’t tell them government belongs to all of us, not just a few,” he said. A video of Sanders’ speech in Kalamazoo is below.
Sanders then traveled to Wisconsin where he spoke to a crowd of supporters in Milwaukee about a number of the plans Clinton has proposed. He spoke about her plans to raise the minimum wage, ensure equal pay for women, and to make college more affordable. Sanders spent some time talking about college affordability since the plan proposed by Clinton is a product of Clinton and Sanders working together. Sanders concluded the event by urging everyone to vote on November 8th. A video from the event will be added when/if available.
Donald Trump has held 32 events at Trump properties in 16 months of running for President
Today, Hillary Clinton returned to Florida to layout what’s on the ballot this election — an economy that works for everyone not just those at the top. She shared her vision for more good jobs, economic fairness and how to bring Americans together. Meanwhile, Trump spent the morning promoting the opening of his new hotel, making this the 32nd event at Trump properties in 16 months of running for president.
From his using his presidential campaign to promote his business, to a decades-long practice of stiffing small businesses, to outsourcing jobs, to his proposal to cut taxes for billionaires like himself at the expense of everyone else, Trump’s self-serving agenda is clear. America deserves better than Trump – a candidate who would rather line his own pockets than prioritize our economy, businesses, and workers.
Donald Trump’s trickle-down economic tax plan would include cutting taxes for billionaires like himself and his family, at the expense of everyone else.
Trump has doubled down on his promise to repeal the estate tax, which would give his own family as much as a $4 billion windfall. Just think about what we could do instead with that one $4 billion windfall alone, which is just for Donald Trump’s family, if we invested it in America.
Trump’s plan includes a massive loophole that gives many millionaires and billionaires like himself a backdoor tax cut, letting them pay less than half the current tax rate on a substantial portion of their income.
Trump claims his tax cuts would be paid for by economic growth – but they come at the expense of hardworking Americans. Far from growing the economy, experts on both sides of the aisle predict that Trump’s plans would risk a recession.
Trump’s tax plan is a bait and switch – he claims he’ll protect middle class families, but what he actually does is give huge tax breaks to the rich while raising taxes on at least 8 million middle-class families.
Trump called his tax avoidance “smart.” Trump’s tax avoidance is not smart – it means $0 for first responders, $0 for education, $0 for veterans and $0 for our military.
New York Times: “Trump declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns, a tax deduction so substantial it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years.”
New York Times: “Donald J. Trump explicitly acknowledged for the first time during the first presidential debate that he used a $916 million loss that he reported on his 1995 income tax returns to avoid paying personal federal income taxes for years.” Trump’s business failures eventually led to multiple bankruptcies of his companies, which were devastating for his former employees and small contractors. Trump continued to earn millions.
Trump’s business failures eventually led to multiple bankruptcies of his companies, which were devastating for his former employees and small contractors. Trump continued to earn millions.
New York Times: “But even as his companies did poorly, Mr. Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen.”
Wall Street Journal: “An analysis by Temple University law professor Jonathan Lipson ranked Trump-branded casinos ‘the worst’ among their peers when it came to jobs over a 14-year period. Mr. Lipson, a bankruptcy scholar, found that Trump casinos shed some 7,400 jobs between 1997 and 2010. That works out, on average, to job losses per casino of 900—37% higher than at other Atlantic City gambling venues in the same period.”
Trump has repeatedly refused to make good on his obligations to pay small businesses and contractors for work – from Marty Rosenberg, whose family business was paid hundreds of thousands less than it was owed for its work at Trump’s casino, to Andrew Tesoro, the architect of one of Trump’s golf course clubhouse who was told by Trump’s lawyers to accept pennies on the dollar or he’d be tied up in court for years.
Trump doesn’t buy American-made and his own products are outsourced.
The products that are branded with Trump’s name are outsourced from at least 12 countries. That doesn’t include the products used in his hotels and casinos, from bed linens made in Italy to furniture made in China.
Trump has used his campaign to promote and funnel money into his businesses.
Politico: “Trump’s Campaign Paid His Businesses $8.2 Million”
Politico: “Trump has used the campaign itself as a marketing platform to promote everything from the difficult-to-find Trump Steaks to his golf courses and a new Washington hotel. Trump’s tangle of businesses has raised concerns about the potential for conflicts of interest should he win the presidency, while the Trump-branded campaign has drawn mockery and allegations of pocket-padding from Trump’s critics.’”
Huffington Post: “Donald Trump used small donors’ money to buy nearly $300,000 worth of books from the publisher of his Art of the Deal last month, continuing a pattern of plowing campaign money back into his own businesses.”
@KatyTurNBC: “After this morning’s ribbon cutting, Trump will have held 32 events at Trump properties in 16 months of running for President”
Today, Trump is Washington, DC to open a new luxury hotel where he unsurprisingly used undocumented workers to make his project cheaper. He even sued the District of Columbia in an attempt to pay lower taxes for the property.
Washington Post: “[A] Trump company may be relying on some undocumented workers to finish the $200 million hotel, which will sit five blocks from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue, according to several who work there.”
Politico: “The city of Washington, D.C., is fighting Donald Trump’s legal drive to cut his tax bills for the luxury hotel he’s set to open in the Old Post Office Building next month … Attorneys for the Republican presidential nominee and real estate mogul contend that the roughly $1.7 million annual tax bills for the development for 2015 and 2016 were too high.”
First Lady of Arkansas Hillary Rodham Clinton with her daughter Chelsea, 13th May 1984. (Photo by Mike Stewart/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images)
Today, an op-ed by Hillary Clinton was published by Fortune magazine. In the article, Clinton discusses what she learned from being a working mother. She writes about how she had to struggle her career as a lawyer and raising her daughter. She goes to say that while progress has been made, more needs to be done. Clinton then outlines a number of her proposals aimed at helping working and single mothers including raising the minimum wage, ensuring that women receive equal pay, ensuring everyone has access to affordable childcare, and providing paid leave for new parents. Read the full op-ed below or on Fortune.
Hillary Clinton: What I Learned From Being a Mom Who Works September 29, 2016
We’ve made progress, but have a ways to go.
When I was pregnant with my daughter Chelsea, I asked about the maternity leave policy at the law firm where I worked. I was surprised to find out that we didn’t have one. I soon learned why: No woman who worked in our office had ever come back to work full-time after having a baby.
Well, I wanted to come back. I loved what I did. And it was important to me to contribute to my family’s finances, especially now that we were having a baby.
Finally, as my due date approached, I decided to take matters into my own hands. When Chelsea was born, my employer agreed to grant me four months off to be home with her. I’d still earn an income, though it would be smaller; part of my income was determined by the fees I generated for the firm, which would fall to zero while I was on leave. That made sense to me. And it meant a lot that I could have that time with my new daughter, knowing that my job would be waiting for me when I came back.
These kinds of situations are commonplace today, with more women entering the workforce than ever before. Today, nearly half of all full-time employees are women. Through our contributions, talent, insights, and very presence, we’ve changed the workplace forever. There’s no going back to the days when women were fired for getting married or pregnant, or were excluded from entire professions. Thank goodness.
But let’s be real. We still have a long way to go. Our policies just haven’t kept up with the challenges women and families face today.
Too many women still aren’t paid fairly. On average, women earn 20% less than men do for full-time, year-round work. Women of color earn even less. And when a working mom or grandmother earns less than she deserves, she’s not the only one who pays the price. Her children or grandchildren—whoever’s counting on her salary—do, too.
Women also make up the majority of minimum-wage workers, which means they make as little as $14,500 a year for full-time work. That’s below the national poverty line. Many of those women are raising kids on that income. Raising the federal minimum wage would do a lot for those families.
Meanwhile, even though the number of women running companies, labs, universities, and philanthropies is growing, it’s still too small. So is the number of women serving in elected office. That means women aren’t always included in decision-making, and their needs and concerns aren’t always reflected in government policy or workplace norms.
And we’re making it too hard to balance work and family. That’s true for all parents, but especially mothers. Women are breadwinners in more households than ever, yet they still do the lion’s share of childcare.
Many are feeling the squeeze. I’ve had moms break down in tears as they describe the heartbreak of returning to work just a few days after delivering their baby, because they don’t have paid leave at their jobs. Staying with their child for a few months would mean losing too many paychecks, maybe even their job.
In April, I met a mom in Newton, Iowa, who held her four-and-a-half-month-old in her arms. She said to me, “I’m counting on you to know what it’s like to be a working mother. Please help us working mothers and fathers have more time with our babies.”
I’m not going to let her down.
One thing we can do is invest in affordable childcare. Right now, childcare is more expensive than college tuition in many states. Let’s make sure no family has to spend more than 10% of their income on childcare by making historic investments in childcare assistance and providing tax relief to working families.
Let’s finally join every other advanced economy in the world and guarantee paid leave. I’m proposing 12 weeks of paid medical leave to recover from a serious illness, and 12 weeks of paid family leave to care for a new child or a sick relative. After all, moms and dads both deserve to spend time with their babies.
Let’s encourage employers to adopt family-friendly work policies, like flexible and fair scheduling and tele-work, so parents can both work and be there for their families.
Let’s raise the minimum wage. No one who works full-time should be forced to raise their kids in poverty.
And at long last, let’s finally ensure equal pay for women. It’s time for Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act—which I cosponsored when I was in the Senate—to give women the tools they need to fight discrimination in the workforce. We also need to promote pay transparency so that women have the information they need to negotiate fairly for their wages.
These aren’t just women’s issues. They’re economic issues and family issues. And they need to be a top priority for our next president. If we’re going to build a globally competitive workforce, we can’t afford to leave any talent on the sidelines. We can’t keep short-changing working families.
I’ll never forget what it was like to be a mom at work. It wasn’t easy. And I was lucky: I had financial security, a supportive employer, and affordable childcare. Too many families don’t. I’ve met so many parents stuck in impossible situations, at their wits’ ends trying to make it all work. It just shouldn’t be this hard to work and have a family.
As president, it’ll be my mission to bring our economy and workplaces into the 21st century, so all of our contributions are respected—both women’s and men’s—and families can thrive.
On Friday, Hillary Clinton announced a plan to combat the rising cost of prescription drugs, particularly the excessive rise in costs of live saving prescriptions like the EpiPen. Clinton’s plan would create a federal team to monitor drug prices and track increases. Her plan also provides several actions the government could take when drug prices have been raised excessively such as fines and increased access to treatment programs. An outline of Clinton’s proposal is below, and the full plan can be read on The Briefing.
Making alternatives available and increasing competition
Emergency importation of safe treatments
Penalties for unjustified price increases to hold drug companies accountable and fund expanded access
Dedicated oversight to protect consumers
Strong new enforcement measures to respond when there are unjustified, outlier price increases that threaten public health
Directly intervening to make treatments available, and supporting generic and alternative manufacturers that enter the market and increase competition to bring down prices
Broadening access to safe, high-quality generic and alternative competitors through emergency importation
Holding drug makers accountable for unjustified price increases with new penalties – and using the funds to expand access and competition
Cap monthly and annual out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs to save patients with chronic or serious health conditions hundreds or thousands of dollars
Clear out the FDA generic backlog
Prohibit “pay for delay” arrangements that keep generic competition off the market
Ensure American consumers are getting value for their drugs
Stop direct-to-consumer drug company advertising subsidies, and reinvest funds in research
Require drug companies that benefit from taxpayers’ support to invest in research, not marketing or profits
Allow Medicare to negotiate drug and biologic prices and demand higher rebates for prescription drugs in Medicare
On Friday, Hillary Clinton gave a speech at an auto manufacturing plant in Detroit where she unveiled her jobs plan. Clinton’s proposed plan, dubbed the “New Bargain,” focuses on American works and rewards American companies who expand their domestic workforce. During her speech, she criticized Wall Street firms, spoke about the decline of labor unions, spoke out against Chinese trade practices, and bashed uneven executive pay. She said, “Companies have to start treating workers as assets to be invested in — not costs to be cut.”
In a speech that had a populist tone, Clinton focused on job creation and manufacturing in the United States. She covered a wide variety of topics including raising the minimum wage, taxing corporations that outsource jobs, and criticized “inversion” practices which allow corporations to merge with overseas corporations thus moving their headquarters and avoiding taxes.
During her speech, Clinton also spoke about the Republican debate, which took place in Detroit on Thursday night. She blasted Republicans for their anti-worker and pro-business policies. Clinton said that she was most offended by the lack of discussion of any material topics by the candidates, especially the economy. She speculated that they avoided the topic “because all of the Republican candidates support the same failing policies: cut taxes for the rich, get out of the way of corporations, don’t raise the minimum wage.” A video of Clinton’s speech is available on C-SPAN.
Hillary Clinton Speeches 