Tim Kaine Campaigns in Tallahassee

Tim Kaine rallied supporters in Tallahassee, Florida today as he stressed the importance of voting during a campaign stop on the campus of Florida State University. Campaigning with Mark Kelly and former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, Kaine spoke about Hillary Clinton’s plans to enact commonsense gun control, including mandatory background checks and closing a number of loopholes that allows people who should not own a firearm to obtain one. He said, “Second Amendment supports support background checks. Gun owners support background checks. NRA members support background checks. We just need a Congress that’s willing to listen.” Kaine said that Florida is an important state in the election and urged everyone to get out and vote on election day or vote early. A video from the event will be added when/if available.

For all the latest, follow our Scheduled Events page and follow Clinton on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Also, be sure to subscribe to the campaign’s official Podcast, With Her.

News Source: Tallahassee Democrat, Florida Politics

Trump’s Self-Serving Business Agenda

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.”

No business person or contractor has proven too small for Trump to stiff, no single parent or retiree too in-need to escape the target of Trump University’s scams. The truth is that Donald Trump’s business antics have spelled disaster for countless working people and small businesses.

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.”

For all the latest, follow our Scheduled Events page and follow Clinton on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Also, be sure to subscribe to the campaign’s official Podcast, With Her.

Hillary Clinton Answers New York Times Readers’ Questions

The editorial board of The New York Times asked readers to select from a list of questions the one that they would most like both presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, to answer. The three questions that received the most votes were about climate change, income inequality, and gun violence. Read Clinton’s answers below, or click HERE to read both candidates’ answers.

1. It is widely accepted scientific fact that climate change is real and potentially catastrophic. What specific action will you take in the next four years?

Hillary Clinton: Climate change is real, and we have a moral obligation to leave our children and grandchildren a better planet. I believe we can fight climate change and create millions of good-paying jobs at the same time.

Some nation is going to be the clean energy superpower of the 21st century. It’s either going to be Germany, China or us, and I want to make sure that it’s us. And we can do it in a way that means no one gets left out or left behind.

I’ve laid out specific plans to modernize our electric grid with enough renewable energy to power every home in America within a decade, including 500 million solar panels by the end of my first term. I want to launch a Clean Energy Challenge to partner with cities, states, and rural communities that are ready to lead on clean energy, clean transportation, and energy efficiency, and help them go further.

We’ll invest in resilient infrastructure that will protect communities like those in North Carolina, Iowa, and Louisiana that have seen terrible floods just this year. We know that low-income communities and communities of color are disproportionately affected by pollution and by extreme weather, and climate change is only going to make that worse. So I will make environmental and climate justice a priority, including eliminating lead as a major public health threat within five years.

We’re already less dependent on foreign oil than we have been in decades, but we can go further, reduce oil consumption by a third, and do more to power America with home-grown wind, solar, and advanced biofuels.

And I have a real plan to invest in creating jobs and building stronger economies in coal country. America’s coal communities have kept our lights on and our factories running for generations, and I won’t let them be left in the dark.

Finally, I believe the United States needs to continue to lead the global effort to combat climate change. I will fulfill the pledge President Obama made in the Paris Climate Agreement and seek to go further by cutting emissions up to 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. We need to implement the breakthrough we achieved just last week in the Montreal Protocol to phase down super-polluting HFCs and avoid as much as half a degree of warming.

Not only does America need to lead, we need to do more to work with our neighbors. We trade more energy with Canada and Mexico than with the rest of the world combined. That’s why I want to negotiate a North American Climate Compact to cut emissions and accelerate the clean energy transition across the continent.

I won’t let the climate deniers stand in the way of progress, or let us give in to the climate defeatists who say this challenge is too big to solve. We can and will take on climate change, build a clean energy economy, and leave our kids and grandkids a safe and healthy world—because there is no Planet B.

2. What would you do to reduce the extreme income inequality in this country?

Hillary Clinton: Too many hardworking Americans have the deck stacked against them. No one who works hard should have to raise their kids in poverty, or worry they won’t be able to retire with dignity.

But the majority of the income growth since the Great Recession has gone to people at the top. Working people haven’t gotten a raise in 15 years. Right now, the top one-tenth of one percent of Americans own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent combined. We haven’t seen this level of wealth inequality since right before the Great Depression.

We need an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top. For starters, I’ll raise the federal minimum wage and guarantee equal pay for women. And we’ll promote profit-sharing—the workers who help make their companies profitable should be able to share in that success the way executives do.

We need to create more good jobs that pay enough to raise a family. So we’ll make the biggest investment in good jobs since World War II—jobs in infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, and clean energy. We need to make sure that jobs in home health care, child care, and other fields provide good pay and good benefits, and make it easier for workers to organize and bargain collectively in all industries. We need to do more to support small businesses that create so many new jobs. And we need to make it easier for people to be good employees and good parents by guaranteeing 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave for every worker.

We also need to go after intergenerational poverty. Every child in America should be able to live up to his or her God-given potential, no matter who your parents are or what ZIP code you grew up in. That’s why I’m going to make pre-school universal for every four-year-old in America.

It’s also why we’re going to embrace approaches like South Carolina Congressman Jim Clyburn’s 10-20-30 plan, where 10 percent of federal investments are made in communities where 20 percent of the people have been living in poverty for the last 30 years. Let’s address the systemic problems that have kept too many in poverty for far too long.

Lastly, we need more fairness in our tax system. By closing the loopholes and requiring those at the top to pay their fair share in taxes, we can help cover the cost of vital investments that will create jobs and opportunity for middle-class families and help lift millions out of poverty. Around two-thirds of the burden of my tax plan falls on the highest earning 0.1 percent of taxpayers.

Here’s what we won’t do. We won’t raise taxes on people making less than $250,000. And we won’t spend trillions of dollars giving huge new tax breaks to the wealthy and big corporations. They’ve seen the gains in recent years—they should pay their fair share to make the investments that will grow the economy for everyone.

3. What would your administration do to reduce gun violence and mass shootings?

Hillary Clinton: We lose an average of 90 Americans every day because of guns. Since I launched my campaign for the presidency in April of 2015, that means more than 50,000 people have been killed by gun violence in America.

I’ve met some of their families, and countless others whose lives have been forever changed by gun violence. I’ve traveled the country with mothers like Lucy McBath, whose 17-year-old son Jordan was shot and killed for playing music. I’ve been inspired by advocates like Erica Smegielski, whose mother Dawn died trying to protect her students at Sandy Hook School. And I’ve prayed with residents in cities like Charleston, one of the many communities across our country that have been devastated by this epidemic.

For decades, people have said this issue was too hard to solve and the politics too hot to touch. But as I’ve listened to the stories in every corner of our country, one question has stayed at the front of my mind: How can we just stand by and do nothing?

That simple answer is: We can’t.

So here’s what I think we need to do. First, we need to expand background checks to include more gun sales, like those at gun shows and over the Internet. There’s no reason a domestic abuser should be able to go online and buy a gun with no questions asked. And we need to close other loopholes, like the so-called “Charleston Loophole” that allows dangerous people to buy guns without a background check if that check isn’t completed within three days.

Second, we need to hold the gun industry accountable, and end laws that shield them from liability when they break the law. We saw that just this month, when one of those laws was used to block the families of the Sandy Hook shooting from having their day in court.

Finally, we need to keep military-style weapons off our streets. They are a danger to law enforcement and to our communities.

By taking these common sense steps, we can keep our children safe and respect the Second Amendment. The vast majority of Americans support measures like these. So our challenge isn’t finding common ground. It’s getting politicians to listen to their constituents rather than the gun lobby.

For that to happen we need to say, loudly and clearly, that gun violence is an issue that matters. And we need to vote accordingly.

For all the latest, follow our Scheduled Events page and follow Clinton on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Also, be sure to subscribe to the campaign’s official Podcast, With Her.

News Source: The New York Times

HFA Statement on Latest Analysis of Trump’s Tax Plan

In response to new reports on the Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump tax plans from the Tax Policy Center, Hillary for America Senior Policy Advisor Jacob Leibenluft released the following statement:

“This report is further evidence of the clear choice for voters in this election. According to an independent analysis, Hillary Clinton’s plan would provide middle-class tax relief and pay for investments in good-paying jobs by requiring the wealthy, Wall Street and large corporations to pay their fair share. Donald Trump’s plan is the most extreme form of trickle-down economics: adding more than $20 trillion to the debt over the next two decades by providing massive giveaways to the richest Americans. In fact, the report shows Trump will give as much tax relief to the top 1% as everyone else combined – even as he raises taxes on millions of working families with children. And what’s more, the Tax Policy Center has exposed a lie Trump told at Sunday night’s debate: while Clinton would close the carried interest loophole that allows Wall Street money managers to pay a lower rate than many middle-class families, Trump’s plan would actually make that loophole even worse.”

For all the latest, follow our Scheduled Events page and follow Clinton on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Also, be sure to subscribe to the campaign’s official Podcast, With Her.

Hillary Clinton’s Vision for An Economy Where Our Businesses, Our Workers, and Our Consumers Grow and Prosper Together

On Monday, Hillary Clinton and Hillary for America announced a plan that will ensure that businesses, workers, and consumers can all grow and prosper together. This would be a stark contrast from today’s economy in which one typically suffers at the expense of the others. HFA released details of her plan which are outlined below. The full plan can be read on The Briefing.

Hillary Clinton believes we need to build an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top. But today, there are still powerful interests fighting to protect their own profits and privileges at the expense of everyone else. Too many of the rules and incentives in our economy encourage those at the top to abuse their power and take advantage of consumers, workers, small businesses, and taxpayers. That makes it tougher for even well-meaning CEOs to take the high road.

In recent months, we’ve seen three egregious examples of these problems. We saw a drug company, Mylan, excessively raise the price of lifesaving EpiPens without justification. We saw one of our country’s biggest banks, Wells Fargo, bully thousands of employees into committing fraud on unsuspecting customers. And now we’ve learned the latest on Donald Trump: In one year, he lost nearly a billion dollars; he stiffed small businesses, laid off workers, and walked away from hardworking communities; and he apparently got to avoid paying taxes for nearly two decades—while tens of millions of working families paid theirs. That’s what he calls “smart” business.

Today, Clinton is offering her vision for an economy where our businesses, our workers, and our consumers grow and prosper together. She’s outlining a set of proposals to rewrite the rules so that more companies that do right by workers, small businesses, customers, and taxpayers.

Clinton will:

1. Eliminate Tax Breaks that Allow Corporations and the Wealthy to Avoid Paying Their Fair Share

• Shut down the “private tax system” for the most fortunate, starting by immediately closing egregious loopholes and restoring basic fairness to our tax code.
• Reform our tax code to reward investments in America – and stop companies from shifting jobs and profits overseas

2. Protect Consumers from Unfair and Deceptive Practices

• Strengthen consumer financial protection, including by restricting practices that businesses like Wells Fargo have used to lock the consumers they’ve harmed out of court
• Respond to unjustified price increases in long-standing, lifesaving drugs like EpiPens

3. Promoting Free and Fair Competition and Stopping Big Businesses from Hurting Small Business

• Crack down on big companies that repeatedly exploit their power to stiff small businesses – and give small businesses the power to respond
• A new commitment to promote competition, address excessive concentration and the abuse of economic power, and strengthen antitrust laws and enforcement

4. Rewrite the Rules So Workers Share in the Profits They Create

• Reward companies that share profits with their employees, not just their executives
• Fight for unions that built the American middle class and strengthen collective bargaining
• Encourage businesses to provide worker training and apprenticeships
• Make the minimum wage a living wage and fight for equal pay and overtime
• Guarantee paid leave and make affordable, high-quality childcare available to all

Full fact sheet available here.

For all the latest, follow our Scheduled Events page and follow Clinton on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Also, be sure to subscribe to the campaign’s official Podcast, With Her.

News Source: The Briefing

HFA Releases Trump Tax Calculator

Today, The Briefing released the following after it was revealed Donald Trump may not have paid taxes for eighteen years.

No time to read? Get the toplines here:

• Over the weekend, The New York Times published quite the story: Donald Trump, self-proclaimed tremendous businessman, lost $916 million (!) in a single year.
• That would have allowed him to take advantage of a loophole in our tax system — and potentially weasel out of paying federal income taxes for 18 years.
• But he still won’t release the rest of his tax returns. So who’s to say what else he’s hiding.
• Check out our Trump “Smart” Tax Calculator, to see how much you’d pay in taxes if you paid at the same rate as Trump.
• Read The New York Times’ original story here.

  This weekend, we got the clearest example yet why Donald Trump has been so reluctant to release his tax returns.

  Here’s the full story: A couple weeks ago, an anonymous source mailed The New York Times parts of Trump’s 1995 tax returns. The Paper of Record investigated further and published a piece on Saturday night detailing how the GOP’s presidential candidate could have taken advantage of our broken, billionaire-friendly tax system to avoid paying his fair share.

  This gets complicated, so let’s go through it point by point:

• It all started with Trump — the man with the “very good brain” — losing nearly a billion dollars in 1995 after making a series of really, really bad investments.
• But while those terrible business decisions no doubt led to workers getting laid off and small businesses getting stiffed, Trump himself stood to benefit from losing all those millions.
  • Our tax code would have allowed him subtract any business-related loss from his own personal taxes.
  • And because he lost so much money in 1995, he may have skirted paying any federal income tax for nearly two decades.
• So while the rest of us were chipping in to help fund our military and our public education system, Donald Trump probably weaseled out of paying a single cent.

We got all of this from just three pages of documents. Imagine what the rest of his tax returns would reveal — what other sketchy business practices he’s embraced and what other murky ethical decisions he’s made.

We can only hope that this new report will lead to more facts coming to light in the next few weeks. In the meantime, though, we put together a Trump “Smart” Tax Calculator, so you can see how much you’d pay in taxes if you paid at the same rate as Trump. (Hint: It’s almost certainly less than what you pay right now.)

With just 36 days to go, we need your help to guarantee that this failed businessman never gets to run the largest national economy in the world. Share this calculator with your friends and make sure they know the truth about Trump’s business “success”.

For all the latest, follow our Scheduled Events page and follow Clinton on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Also, be sure to subscribe to the campaign’s official Podcast, With Her.

HFA Release on Trump’s Policies

Leading up to tonight’s presidential debate between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, Hillary for America released a series of responses to Trump’s proposals on the economy, taxes, child care, maternity leave, foreign policy, health care, immigration, trade, and the Veterans Administration. A copy of the release is below.

In a prebuttal to the first presidential debate, Hillary for America released a review of Donald Trump’s few policy proposals from experts and journalists, who have judged them variously as incoherent, unrealistic, excessively costly, and devastating for working families – where he has even bothered to address the issues at all. Whether it’s a dangerous immigration plan based on mass-deportation and a “great and beautiful wall,” a half-baked child care plan that would leave millions of middle-class families to fend for themselves, tax and economic proposals to benefit the rich and explode the national debt while leaving middle-class families holding the bag, or a broader economic agenda that would plunge our country into recession and cost us millions of jobs — Trump’s policy proposals have been panned by experts and critics across the political spectrum.

ECONOMIC PLAN

Donald Trump’s economic playbook has only one trick: to get ahead and stiff others. From a decades-long pattern of scamming small businesses and outsourcing jobs, to a proposal to cut taxes for billionaires like himself and his family at the expense of everyone else, Trump’s self-serving strategy is clear. According to a former economic advisor to John McCain, Trump’s policies would destroy nearly 3.5 million jobs. In fact, economists and business leaders across the political spectrum agree that his economic plan would plunge our country back into recession.

Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics: The economy will be significantly weaker if Mr. Trump’s economic proposals are adopted:

“Quantifying Mr. Trump’s economic policies is complicated by their lack of specificity…Mr. Trump’s economic proposals will also result in larger federal government deficits and a heavier debt load…. the economy will be significantly weaker if Mr. Trump’s economic proposals are adopted…four basic conclusions regarding the impact of Mr. Trump’s economic proposals can be reached: 1) they will result in a less global U.S. economy; 2) they will lead to larger government deficits and more debt; 3) they will largely benefit very high-income households; and 4) they will result in a weaker U.S. economy, with fewer jobs and higher unemployment.”

WSJ: Economists Who’ve Advised Presidents Are No Fans of Donald Trump:

“Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump…garners no support from any of the White House economists who have advised U.S. presidents for the past half-century. The Wall Street Journal this month reached out to all 45 surviving former members of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under the past eight presidents, going back to Richard Nixon, to get their views on this year’s presidential election. Among 17 Republican appointees who responded to Journal inquiries, none said they supported Mr. Trump.

National Association of Business Economics: Business Economists Say Hillary Clinton Is Best for the Economy . . . About 14% picked Mr. Trump:

“A majority of business economists in a new survey said Hillary Clinton is the best choice to oversee the U.S. economy as president. Her Republican rival, Donald Trump, didn’t even come in second.”

Politico: Economists savage Trump’s economic agenda:

“…if Trump’s policies were enacted it would be some form of disaster for the economy. If you force 11 million undocumented immigrants to leave in a year, you would be looking at a depression. It would not help the people he is talking to, they would be the first to go down.”

Washington Post Editorial: Trump’s economic plan goes from worse to bad:

“[Trump’s] prescriptions have progressed from preposterous to merely intellectually dishonest; their foreseeable impact on the U.S. economy, from destabilizing to merely dangerous.”

U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Does a recession sound ‘great’ to you?:

“For those keeping track, under Trump’s trade plans, we would see higher prices, reduced spending power, fewer jobs, and a weaker economy, both here at home and abroad, according to the analysis. Of course, that’s the last thing our country and the global economy need right now.”

TAXES

Donald Trump has put out so many different tax plans during this campaign that we’re losing count. But his latest effort is more of the same: doubling down on tax cuts that benefit billionaires like himself and his family, while maintaining his Trump Loophole — the massive backdoor tax cut that would let the wealthy pay less than half the current tax rate on a significant portion of their income. He has also proposed a tax cut that would save his own family $4 billion (that is, if Trump is worth as much as he says he is) – while doing nothing for 99.8% of Americans. And even as Trump is exploding the debt by more than $5 trillion with tax cuts weighted towards millionaires and billionaires, his plan includes a bait-and-switch that would result in millions of middle-class families, including half of all single parents, paying higher taxes.

Washington Post: A new study says Trump would raise taxes for millions:

“More than half of America’s single parents and one-fifth of its families with children could see their federal income taxes go up under Republican Donald Trump’s revamped tax plan…”

TPM: Trump’s Economic Plan Runs Afoul Of Deficit Hawks By Ballooning The Debt:

“The organization of deficit hawks projected that Trump’s plans would increase the deficit by $5.3 trillion over a decade.”

Vox: Donald Trump’s “new” tax plan: a giveaway to the rich that he pretends helps the middle class:

“ Long story short: This is big money, going from very successful businesses to their wealthy shareholders, that Trump is proposing to tax at a much lower rate.

Fundamentally, Trump is still offering voters the same approach to taxes he’s been offering all campaign: massive cuts for corporations of all kinds, big rate cuts for top earners, and benefits supposedly aimed at the middle class that offer less than they initially appear to.”

NPR: Analysis: Trump Tax Plan Would Cost Trillions, Boost Incomes For The Rich:

“The right-leaning Tax Foundation released an analysis Monday that said Trump’s campaign would shrink federal revenues by as much as $5.9 trillion over 10 years…In that top 1 percent, the income growth is particularly high — 10.2 to 16 percent.”

Trump claims his irresponsible tax cuts for the wealthy would be paid for by economic growth – but, as we just made clear, his agenda plunges the economy back into recession.

CHILD CARE

Under Donald Trump’s child care plan, close to 80% of families might, at most, get only four cents on the dollar for child care costs—and millions of these families could very well get nothing or even face a tax increase under Trump’s overall plan. This, while Trump’s plan would provide around 40 cents on the dollar or more to taxpayers in the top bracket. It’s no surprise this regressive policy came from the man living in the penthouse of Trump Tower, who has relied on government his entire life to help pad his own pockets.

The Guardian: Trump’s child care plan is good for the rich. But what about the rest of us?:

“Trump’s plan completely fails to address the day-to-day realities of America’s working families, because it fails to address the underlying problem: it does nothing to make child care affordable. In the United States, the average cost of center-based child care for the typical working family with an infant and preschooler is about $18,000, a steep price for families to cover. If a family cannot afford child care, a tax deduction is irrelevant – a family can’t deduct something that they can’t pay for to begin with.”

Esquire: Why Donald Trump’s New Child-Care Plan Is a Joke:

“However, as reporter Jeremy Diamond clarified, the plan does not entail six weeks of full paid maternity leave. Instead, it offers six weeks of full unemployment benefits. Trump also announced a plan for parents to deduct child-care expenses from their income taxes, capped at the ‘average cost of care’ per state, and deductibles for stay-at-home parents.

All said, Trump’s plan is a big government idea very obviously meant to cater to female voters—and very obviously Ivanka’s brainchild.”

Salon: Trump’s child-care policy: A combination of the useless and the inadequate:

“As Trump hinted last month, the centerpiece of his plan is a provision letting parents deduct the costs of child care from their taxes. The problem here is that people who need the most help affording child care — poor and low-income families — frequently don’t have any federal income tax burden. If they’re already paying zero dollars in federal income tax, an extra deduction won’t do them any good; they’ll still be paying zero dollars.”

MATERNITY LEAVE

Trump’s “maternity leave” plan is demeaning and damaging–casting women as the sole caretaker for a child and undercutting women in the workplace. By only providing leave to married mothers who give birth, the plan tells us which parents Trump doesn’t believe count: single moms, women who can’t physically have a child, same-sex couples that use a surrogate, parents who adopt, and all fathers. It’s not only demeaning, it’s also harmful. Studies have shown that providing paid leave to new mothers, but not to new fathers, negatively affects women’s return to the workplace, can discourage employers from hiring or promoting female employees, and can increase the gender pay-gap.

Huffington Post: Trump’s Maternity Leave Plan Is His Biggest Insult To Women Yet:

“Let’s repeat that: Trump’s solution for struggling American families leaves out men. More than any other problem with the plan ― and there are lots ― omitting half the population is its profoundest and most revelatory flaw, confirming once again Trump’s antiquated, sexist and harmful worldview: Men work. Women do the child-raising. The end.”

Vox: Donald Trump’s plan to fund a paid family leave program is totally absurd:

“Since everything we know so far about Trump’s plan fits into two tweets, it’s hard to say for sure what he’s envisioning. But 88 percent of workers right now aren’t covered by family leave, so requiring businesses to pay for it on their own would be a very big burden. And if leave is really “guaranteed,” it’s going to require something more than a tax credit to make that happen.”

VICE: Donald Trump’s Maternity Leave Plan Is a Big Deal, Too Bad It Sucks:

“Another way Trump’s plan falls short of Clinton’s in scope is that it doesn’t do much for the poor. Most of the childcare benefits would come in the form of income tax breaks, which won’t benefit the poorest Americans, who don’t pay income taxes and would have to pony up for childcare up front.”

Washington Post: Why Trump’s maternity leave plan is unconstitutional:

“In sum, if Trump’s maternity leave plan were ever enacted into law, it would likely be struck down by the courts as unconstitutional. Trump has demonstrated utter contempt for constitutional rights and limitations on government power on a shockingly wide range of issues. His discriminatory maternity leave plan is another addition to a troubling list.”

Washington Post: Donald Trump’s new paid maternity leave plan might exclude single mothers: “The plan is discriminating against fathers, fathers and mothers who adopt, LGBT parents and apparently some set of unmarried parents,” said Carmel Martin, executive vice president for policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.”

FOREIGN POLICY

Donald Trump hasn’t said much in terms of real plans to keep our country safe. But foreign policy experts agree, the ideas Trump has mentioned are dangerous, reckless, and wrongheaded. Yet Trump continues to spew fact-free rhetoric about global issues that would make us less secure, including consistent claims that he has a “secret” plan to defeat ISIS, threats to break up NATO along with accusations that NATO countries are “ripping off the United States”, and reckless comments on nuclear weapon.

Washington Post: It’s almost like Donald Trump’s secret plan to defeat ISIS never actually existed: “But on the list of things on which Trump have over-promised and under-delivered, this surely ranks toward the top. He promised he had a “foolproof” way of ending a foreign policy challenge of massive consequence, and now he’s punting to the generals.”

Time: Why ISIS Supports Donald Trump:

“The bottom line is this: Trump’s erratic and belligerent slogans are no substitute for policies based on facts and sound judgment.”

PoliticsUSA: The Reviews Are In: Trump ISIS Speech Was Full Of Lies And Gibberish That Made No Sense:

“The consensus among non-partisan observers is that the speech that Donald Trump gave about ISIS was so full of lies, inconsistencies, and gibberish that it made no sense.”

New York Times: Donald Trump Says NATO is ‘Obsolete,’ UN is ‘Political Game’

“President Obama on Friday rebuked Mr. Trump for his comments, saying he worried the real estate billionaire “doesn’t know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean Peninsula or the world generally.”

CNN: The danger of Trump’s NATO comments

“The bottom line is this: Trump’s erratic and belligerent slogans are no substitute for policies based on facts and sound judgment.”

CNN: Japan and South Korea hit back at Trump’s nuclear comments

“Howls of inaccuracy came from the South Korean Foreign Ministry, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea, and even the White House.  Ambassador Mark Lippert said Seoul pays for 55% of all non-personnel costs. And former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Christopher Hill was more succinct. He told CNN, “I don’t know what he’s talking about but clearly neither does he.”

Business Insider: ‘Total catastrophe’: Experts say Donald Trump’s position on nuclear proliferation would be a disaster

“ But experts from two nonpartisan organizations opposed to the spread of nuclear weapons told Business Insider his position would be dangerous. Jeffrey Lewis, the director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, said Japan building nuclear weapons would be a “total catastrophe for Japan and US nuclear power programs.”

The Atlantic: With His Finger on the Trigger: The insane risks of Donald Trump’s stance on nuclear weapons:

“Stephen Walt, a prominent realist scholar, has written, “realists prefer to ‘speak softly and carry a big stick;’ Trump’s modus operandi consists of waving the big stick while running a big mouth.” His loose talk during the campaign has already damaged America’s alliances. And on the central question of nuclear weapons, he has clearly exposed himself to be weak-kneed in his acceptance of international proliferation.”

HEALTHCARE

Donald Trump has promised that he would immediately work to repeal Obamacare, taking health insurance away from 20 million people – and letting the insurance companies write the rules all over again. Trump’s suggested healthcare plan would cost hundreds of billions more, would nearly double the uninsured rate and does not address people with pre-existing conditions. Americans cannot afford that.

Newsmax‎: Trump’s Healthcare Plan Could Cost 25 Million Americans Their Coverage:

“Commonwealth Fund, a nonpartisan foundation that studies healthcare, released a study on Friday analyzing the two candidate’s plans. If Trump becomes president, up to 25 million people could lose their coverage, most of them low-income and already in poor health. Under Clinton, 9.6 million more people could gain access to healthcare.”

Chicago Tribune: Study finds 20M would lose health coverage under Trump plan:

“A new study that examines some major health care proposals from the presidential candidates finds that Donald Trump would cause about 20 million to lose coverage while Hillary Clinton would provide coverage for an additional 9 million people.”

CNBC: Obamacare repeal would lead to 24 million more people without health insurance:

“If the next president and Congress repeal Obamacare — as many Republican elected officials want to do — there could end up being more people without health insurance than before the law went into effect, a new study says. A total of 24 million more people would lose health coverage by 2021 if the Affordable Care Act was repealed, according to the study issued Monday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute.”

IMMIGRATION

Donald Trump’s immigration plan remains the same as it’s always been: Send a deportation force into American communities to tear apart families and deport 16 million people from the United States—including every undocumented immigrant and American citizens born here to undocumented parents. Experts say Trump’s immigration policies would be detrimental to the economy. Oh, and he wants to ban all Muslims from entering the United States and falsely claims Mexico will pay for his giant concrete wall.

David Leopold: Deconstructing Donald Trump’s horrifying 10-step assault on immigration, due process and other cherished American values: “Rhetorical gymnastics aside, what’s crystal clear after Wednesday’s immigration speech is that Donald Trump’s ugly vision of America would rip American families apart, devastate communities, wreak havoc on our economy, and threaten our security at home and abroad.”

The Daily Pennsylvanian: Trump’s immigration plan would cost 4 million jobs, according to Wharton model:

“If Trump were to deport 10 percent of undocumented workers per year during two terms in office, based on the limitations of the model, the U.S. would have about 156 million jobs in 2030, compared to the 160 million jobs that the country would have with the its current immigration policies.”

Washington Post: Donald Trump’s “Humane” 1950s Model for Deportation, ‘Operation Wetback,’ Was Anything But:   “

Like usual, [Trump] doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Rodolfo Acuña, professor emeritus of Chicano Studies at California State University, Northridge, told The Huffington Post … Brownell said, ‘Just give them some live ammo, let them shoot a few people. Then everyone will be scared and they won’t come across the border,” he said. “Really humane.”

CityLab: The Price of Mass Deportation; Trump wants to deport 11 million immigrants. Here are the likely economic consequences of that:

California could lose $100 billion of its GDP, annually. Texas could lose $60 billion. New Jersey, $25 billion. All but 5 U.S. states would see at least 1 percent of their GDP disappear each year. The resulting nationwide losses would build up to about $4.7 trillion in ten years.

TRADE

Donald Trump may talk tough on trade, but his own record of outsourcing contradicts his message: Trump clothing in Mexico, Trump ties in China, Trump shirts in Bangladesh, Trump furniture in Turkey and Germany, Trump mirrors in India, Trump barware in Slovenia. Trump even used to defend outsourcing, saying it created jobs in the long run. Meanwhile, Trump’s statements on trade have been either erratic and irresponsible, full of lies, or (occasionally) taken straight from Hillary’s fact sheets and onto his teleprompter.

Throughout this campaign, Trump’s statements on trade have been erratic and irresponsible — full of bluster, empty promises, and recklessness that would put American jobs at risk. Trump repeatedly rejects the idea that Americans can compete and win in the global economy and does not offer a concrete plan to actually create good-paying jobs here in America.

New York Times: Why a President Trump Could Start a Trade War With Surprising Ease :

“Mr. Trump is proposing a reordering of the global economic system that would fundamentally reshape the structure of American industry. He could start a trade war that would threaten not only American exporters who need access to foreign markets, but also any business that relies on commodities or products made overseas.”

Vox: Study: Donald Trump’s trade policies could cost 4 million jobs:

“The study, from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, attempted to quantify the impact of Trump’s proposed trade policies. Its conclusion: If a President Trump did what Candidate Trump promised, the US economy would lose more than 4 million jobs and fall into a recession.”

The Daily Beast: Donald Trump’s Trade Talk Is Garbage—Literally:

“Two powerful groups, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Chamber of Commerce, moved swiftly to condemn Trump’s [trade policy] speech. Both groups often align themselves with pro-business GOP policy makers, and it is especially unusual for them to take on the Republican presidential nominee so directly.”

CNBC: Trump’s trade policies would send US into recession, study says:

“The study released on Monday by researchers at the non-partisan Peterson Institute for International Economics illustrates how, even as the New York businessman pledges to boost growth and create millions of jobs, most mainstream economists view his economic policies as dangerous quackery.”

VETERANS ADMINISTRATION

The policy reforms Donald Trump has proposed would put us on a path toward the wholesale privatization of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Moving towards privatization as Trump’s plan does would gut the VA of the resources needed to provide high-quality, coordinated care. Fully privatizing the VA – the likely result of Trump’s proposals – is not a fix at all; it’s an ideological crusade that will only compound the problem. It would deprive our veterans of access to the specialized care they require and deserve and leave them at the mercy of a private healthcare market that’s ill-suited to handle their needs. And on top of it, Trump has proposed slashing funding for veterans’ health care by 29% within 10 years.

CBPP: Trump’s plans would cut veterans medical care by 29%:

“To help pay for his tax cut plan, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is proposing to cut total funding for non-defense programs funded through the annual appropriations process by 1 percent below the previous year’s total each year. While this may sound modest, the cumulative cut would be very substantial.  By the tenth year (2026), non-defense appropriations would be about 29 percent below current levels, after accounting for inflation.”

MSNBC: Donald Trump Is Serious About Privatizing Veterans’ Care:

“And what about the rest of Trump’s “10-point plan”? The entire list is online, but it’s woefully thin. It’s really just a series of shallow slogans that mean very little, including the first point: Trump intends to appoint a VA Secretary “whose sole purpose will be to serve veterans.”

NPR: Is Donald Trump Proposing Privatizing The VA?:

“The other issue with Trump’s broad proposal is the price tag. According to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Trump’s plan to reimburse vets for visits to any doctor they like would cost half a trillion dollars over 10 years.”

POLL: 64% of veterans oppose privatization — with 54% of them strongly opposing it — while only 29% support it.

NO POLICY

Donald Trump has run a campaign devoid of detailed plans – instead it’s been full of bluster, empty words, demagogic rhetoric. He has no real plans to improve the lives of the American people or make this country any better or safer.

National Journal: Trump Policy Shop Still Filling in Blanks:

“As debate looms, GOP nominee’s campaign can’t give clear answers to many basic policy questions.”

AP FACT CHECK: Trump says Clinton lacks policies. Seriously?

“THE FACTS: By any measure, Clinton has released far more specific plans on far more topics than her GOP rival. Trump’s website currently lays out eight policy positions, including spelling out his “economic vision,” his plans for child care and immigration reform and his plan to “pay for the wall.” Clinton’s offers position on 38 issues for potential voters to read.”

LA Times: Clinton has enough policy to fill a book, while Trump has said little about how he’d govern

“To only has Trump offered no plan to tackle mental healthcare, he’s presented the barest of outlines for most of his governing agenda, even as he now accuses Clinton of “running a policy-free campaign,” as he claimed at recent rally in Iowa. Trump’s vague tax, healthcare and national security proposals have baffled experts on both sides of the political aisle who have struggled to make sense of what Trump is offering. Even Trump’s immigration policy, perhaps the signature issue of his campaign, has proved difficult to decipher.”

Politico: Trump’s One Unbreakable Policy: Skip The Details

“He has boasted that his main policy adviser is himself and the advisers he does have say he doesn’t read briefing papers. He has mocked Hillary Clinton for surrounding herself with “eggheads” and churning out reams of wonky government reform proposals. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who will be speaking on Trump’s behalf at this week’s Republican convention in Cleveland, recently said “it’s pretty obvious he doesn’t know a lot about the issues.”

TIME: In an interview Trump admits he isn’t worried about creating policy as they are “a waste of paper”

“He [Trump] even mocks her focus on putting out so many policy proposals, a longtime tradition for major party nominees. “She’s got people that sit in cubicles writing policy all day. Nothing’s ever going to happen. It’s just a waste of paper.” (The Clinton campaign counts that paper as a point of pride: 73,645 words of policy and counting.)”

NPR: Donald Trump’s Policy Positions Lack Specifics … So Far

“Asked Tuesday morning by Savannah Guthrie on NBC’s Today show about his lack of specific proposals, Trump didn’t answer the question and simply pointed to the record ratings he drew for Fox News.”

For all the latest, follow our Scheduled Events page and follow Clinton on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Also, be sure to subscribe to the campaign’s official Podcast, With Her.

Clinton Focuses on Voter Registration in Philadelphia

In West Philadelphia, Hillary Clinton spoke at a rally where she urged everyone to vote in November. She spoke about a number of her proposals including creating millions of jobs, standing up to the gun lobby, repairing the country’s failing infrastructure, and regulating Wall Street to prevent a market crash. Clinton went after Donald Trump’s economic plan which experts say will greatly benefit top earners. Clinton called the proposal the “Trump loophole” because, by some estimates, he would earn nearly $4 billion. Clinton said that her plans focus on everyone, “I can find a much better use for those $4 billion. In fact, we could hire 95,000 public school teachers for $4 billion. We could actually double health care for our veterans for $4 billion dollars. And we can invest in more infrastructure, affordable housing and small business for $4 billion right here in Pennsylvania.” A video from the event is below.

For all the latest, follow our Scheduled Events page and follow Clinton on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Also, be sure to subscribe to the campaign’s official Podcast, With Her.

News Source: Philadelphia Magazine

Hillary Clinton Pens Open Letter to Charleston

On the one year anniversary of the shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church that claimed the lives of nine people, Hillary Clinton published an open letter to the citizens of Charleston, South Carolina remembering the victims of the shooting. Clinton mentioned each victim by name before discussing the work that still needs to be done to enact stronger gun control laws including provisions that would require a background check before the purchase of a firearm and barring those on the FBI’s terrorist watch list from purchasing a gun. A copy of Clinton’s letter is below:

Friends —

One year ago today, our nation lost nine precious lives. They were mothers and fathers, students and coaches, pastors and choir members. They were men and women of faith, each filled with passion and love, and with so much left to give. For many, time has done little to dull the pain of their loss. I still remember my grief and confusion when I heard the news. But their deaths have not been in vain.

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things,” Scripture teaches us. “Love never fails.”

On that evening in the “Mother Emanuel” AME Church, Clementa, Cynthia, Susie, Ethel, DePayne, Tywanza, Daniel, Sharonda and Myra lived out the lessons of their faith, like always — welcoming a stranger for prayer and fellowship, offering love without a second thought.

Their spirit of love remained long after they were gone. In court, one by one, grieving parents and siblings looked at the young man who had taken so much from them and said, “I forgive you.” And the entire Charleston community — black and white, Christian, Muslim and Jewish, and so many others — came together to stand up to hate and bigotry, providing love to one another instead.

Filled with that love, we have made progress. The Confederate flag that flew on the South Carolina State House grounds has been removed. Young people have called out for much-needed reforms to our criminal justice system. Mothers who lost their children to gun violence are channeling their grief into action and turning their mourning into a movement for common-sense gun reform.

But we have much more to do.

Another mass shooting, in Orlando, broke our hearts earlier this week. An average of 90 people a day are killed by gun violence in our country. This must stop. A good first step is closing the “Charleston Loophole” in our gun laws, which allows a person otherwise prohibited from buying a gun — such as a domestic abuser or other violent criminal — to buy one if a background check isn’t completed within three business days. This loophole allowed the alleged Charleston shooter to buy his gun despite his prior arrest record. How many more innocent people need to be cut down before we act and close this dangerous loophole?

On that terrible evening and every day since, Americans across the country have joined our hearts with the people of Charleston and South Carolina. Millions of Americans are still walking with them — in grief, solidarity and determination.

In the spirit of the Charleston Nine, let’s bridge our divides, fight for change and remember that love never fails.

With solidarity and warm regards, I am

Sincerely yours,

Hillary Rodham Clinton

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News Source: CNN

Clinton Interviewed by Radio Iowa

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton waves to voters following a campaign stop at the Hawkeye Labor Council AFL-CIO Labor Day picnic in Cedar Rapids, Iowa September 7, 2015. REUTERS/Brian C. Frank

Before beginning her series of town halls in Iowa, Clinton took time to speak with Radio Iowa via telephone. During the interview, Clinton spoke about the upcoming Iowa caucus, but the interview was focused on gun control and President Barack Obama’s plan to take executive action. Clinton promised that if elected, she would close the gun show loophole and enforce background check. She said, “I think we’re going to have to keep pushing forward on the political front and I intend to do that, to take on the gun lobby and to work with responsible gun owners, of which there are many millions who actually in large numbers support the common sense approaches that I’m advocating.”

Listen to the full interview on the Radio Iowa website.

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News Source: Radio Iowa