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For Immediate Release
February, 12 2025, 12:11pm EDT
Contact:
press@groundworkcollaborative.org
Groundwork’s Jacquez on House Budget Resolution: GOP is ransacking working families to fund billionaire tax breaks
Today, House Republicans unveiled their plan to deliver $4.5 trillion worth of massive tax giveaways to the ultra-wealthy and corporations, which they plan to fund by cutting $2 trillion from health care, SNAP, and other critical programs that families rely on. Groundwork Collaborative Chief of Policy and Advocacy Alex Jacquezcondemned the plan in the following statement:
“Instead of tackling rising prices and delivering relief for American families, House Republicans are charging ahead with trillions of dollars in deeply unpopular tax breaks for billionaires like Donald Trump and Elon Musk. And, they’re paying for their billionaire handouts by ransacking health care, food assistance, and other vital programs that American workers and families rely on.”
The Groundwork Collaborative is dedicated to advancing a coherent and persuasive progressive economic worldview and narrative capable of delivering meaningful opportunity and prosperity for everyone. Our work is driven by a core guiding principle: We are the economy. Groundwork Collaborative envisions an economic system that produces strong, broadly shared prosperity and power for all people, not just a wealthy few.
LATEST NEWS
Trump's Pick to Lead Gutted Consumer Agency Is 'Gift to Big Banks': Watchdog
Banks see Jonathan McKernan as "a rubber stamp for their interest in undoing the essential actions CFPB has taken to put more money in the pockets of consumers and protect them from predatory bank practices."
Feb 12, 2025
The government watchdog Accountable.US said Wednesday that Americans need look no further than comments from a top trade association for big banks to know that President Donald Trump's pick to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau won't provide them with the financial help Trump promised during his campaign.
The Consumer Bankers Association (CBA), which represents Wall Street banks including Citibank and Barclays, said that if former Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) board member Jonathan McKernan is confirmed, it looks forward to "working with Mr. McKernan to undo many of the most recent actions" by the CFPB when it was run by Rohit Chopra, an appointee of former President Joe Biden.
Under Chopra's leadership, the CFPB unveiled regulations to protect consumers against overdraft fees and cap credit card late fees at $8 instead of $30, and expanded a measure to protect people from discrimination by corporations.
All of those actions have been subject to litigation by the CBA, noted Accountable.US.
"The actions the CBA seems to be so concerned about are the ones putting money back into the wallets of Americans, and protecting them from predatory bank practices," said the group.
At the FDIC, McKernan pushed for the quick approval of bank mergers and voted against a measure to increase scrutiny of mergers that create bankers with more than $100 billion.
"By firing career CFPB employees, ceasing the agency's operations, and nominating the big bank's de facto choice for CFPB director, Trump again reneges on his campaign promise to look out for working people and lower their costs."
McKernan was named as Chopra's successor as the CFPB—which is currently being temporarily led by Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought—fired 70 probationary employees, including attorneys in the agency's enforcement division.
McKernan said after resigning from the FDIC this week that he hopes the agency reverses "the regulatory overreaches of the last few years."
Progressive advocates and Democratic lawmakers have condemned attacks on the CFPB by the Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE), which is being run by billionaire Trump backer Elon Musk. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who originally proposed the creation of the CFPB, is among those who have noted that the agency has returned more than $21 billion to working people across the U.S. who have been overcharged and scammed by banks and other financial companies.
"McKernan is a gift to big banks and special interests that would like nothing more than to see the CFPB gutted," said Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk. "Banks see a McKernan CFPB as a rubber stamp for their interest in undoing the essential actions CFPB has taken to put more money in the pockets of consumers and protect them from predatory bank practices. By firing career CFPB employees, ceasing the agency's operations, and nominating the big bank's de facto choice for CFPB director, Trump again reneges on his campaign promise to look out for working people and lower their costs—all in service of himself and his billionaire donors."
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After Calls, Trump Claims Putin and Zelenskyy Want to 'Make Peace' in Ukraine
His comments came after the defense secretary made clear the Trump administration opposes NATO membership for Ukraine and thinks that returning to the country's "pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective."
Feb 12, 2025
After phone calls with Russia and Ukraine's leaders on Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump claimed on social media that settlement talks will begin immediately, nearly three years into the Kremlin's invasion of the neighboring nation.
Trump said on his Truth Social platform that during the "lengthy and highly productive phone call" with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the pair discussed a wide range of issues and agreed that "we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine." (Although the estimates for civilian and troop deaths since February 2022 vary, they aren't in the millions.)
"We agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other's Nations. We have also agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately," wrote the U.S. president in his post. "I have asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of the CIA John Ratcliffe, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, and Ambassador and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, to lead the negotiations which, I feel strongly, will be successful."
"I want to thank President Putin for his time and effort with respect to this call, and for the release, yesterday, of Marc Fogel," Trump added, referring to an American teacher whose imprisonment in Russia was widely seen as "essentially a hostage-taking situation."
Later, Trump told reporters that he expects his first meeting with Putin to happen in Saudi Arabia, "not in the too distant future."
As of September, the U.S. Congress had appropriated or made available nearly $183 billion to help Ukraine respond to the 2022 Rusian invasion. This week Trump said Ukraine should reward the United States with $500 billion worth of precious minerals in exchange for its military support
After a subsequent call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday, Trump posted: "The conversation went very well. He, like President Putin, wants to make PEACE. We discussed a variety of topics having to do with the War, but mostly, the meeting that is being set up on Friday in Munich, where Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio will lead the Delegation. I am hopeful that the results of that meeting will be positive. It is time to stop this ridiculous War, where there has been massive, and totally unnecessary, DEATH and DESTRUCTION. God bless the people of Russia and Ukraine!"
Vance and Rubio will travel to Germany for the Munich Security Conference, which is scheduled to begin on Friday. Ahead of that summit, the Ukraine Defense Contact Group on Wednesday held a meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels, where U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered headline-making opening remarks.
The U.S. president "intends to end this war by diplomacy and bringing both Russia and Ukraine to the table," said Hegseth. "We want, like you, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine. But we must start by recognizing that returning to Ukraine's pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective. Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering."
"The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement. Instead, any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non-European troops," he continued. "To be clear, as part of any security guarantee, there will not be U.S. troops deployed to Ukraine."
Anatol Lieven, director of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft's Eurasia Program, explained that "in practice, Hegseth's statement also rules out European troops for Ukraine. Russia has made clear that it will accept only troops from genuinely neutral countries as peacekeepers, and European leaders have stated that they would only deploy their own troops if given a cast-iron assurance by the U.S. that America would come to their aid if attacked—an assurance that Hegseth has just ruled out."
Lieven also wrote:
In his statement to the other NATO defense ministers, Hegseth repeatedly stressed the words "realistic" and "realistically." Realistically, it was obvious for years before the Ukraine War that NATO countries would never fight to defend Ukraine; and on the eve of the invasion, the Biden administration and every other NATO government refused to give Ukraine a timetable for membership. Yet at the same time, they preserved the public illusion that Ukraine would one day join NATO, and they refused to negotiate a treaty of neutrality with Moscow.
Since the failure of the Ukrainian counter-offensive in 2023, 16 months ago, it has been obvious that Ukraine could not regain its lost territories, but Western officials went on committing themselves publicly to this outcome and rejecting territorial compromise. Something in the region of a quarter of a million human beings have now died so that Western establishments could continue to propagate these illusions. It is time to let them go, and we should be grateful to Hegseth for saying so.
Progressive critics of the U.S. policy in Ukraine have long argued that Trump's predecessor, former President Joe Biden, was not leveling with the American people when it came to the likely outcomes in Ukraine and that his failure to foster the conditions for peace talks or a negotiated settlement meant the fighting would drag on without end.
Trump's supposed quest for securing peace in Russia and Ukraine contrasts with his unpopular imperialistic ambitions in other cases—he's recently
proposed U.S. takeovers of Canada, Greenland, the Gaza Strip, and the Panama Canal.
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Taking Axe to 'Human Needs Budget', Trump and Musk Nowhere to Be Found at 'Slash the Pentagon' Event
"While the so-called Department of Government Efficiency has been on a rampage to root out 'waste, fraud, and abuse,' they've been ignoring the biggest money pit in the entire federal government," said Rep. Summer Lee.
Feb 12, 2025
As billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency makes its way through federal agencies with the aim of cutting spending that goes toward protecting workers' rights, providing disaster assistance and healthcare in the Global South, and defending Americans from corporate greed, Democratic lawmakers are demanding to know why Republicans are pushing to increase the already bloated Pentagon budget.
"While American families struggle with skyrocketing healthcare costs and grocery bills, Republicans are gearing up to fork over another $150 billion to the military-industrial complex," said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) at a press conference titled "Slash the Pentagon" with government watchdog Public Citizen on Tuesday.
The event was held as the Senate Budget Committee prepared to begin a markup Wednesday of Senate Republicans' budget blueprint that was recently released, which could add $150 billion to the Department of Defense (DOD) budget.
The spending would be focused on improving "military readiness," expanding the U.S. Navy, building an air and missile defense system the Trump administration has called the "Iron Dome for America," and investing in nuclear defenses.
The senator said adding to the Pentagon's budget—which already stands at nearly $900 billion—won't make Americans safer, because "the doomsday that Americans fear in the 21st century isn't being vaporized by a nuclear bomb."
"It's the doomsday diagnosis of cancer, it's medical debt, it's housing payments or loan payments, it's grocery bills and heating bills," said Markey. "Let's finally put the people before the Pentagon."
As progressive organizers have noted in recent weeks, despite the fact that President Donald Trump campaigned as a populist—and won the support of a majority of working-class voters while high earners swung toward former Vice President Kamala Harris in the November election—the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has spent the early days of Trump's second term seizing data and pushing for the shutdown of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Department of Education, attempting to take control of a major payment systemat the Department of the Treasury, and looking to cut spending at the Department of Labor.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon—which has failed seven consecutive audits, unable to account for its spending even as it swallows up 14% of the federal budget—has barely registered as a target of DOGE.
"While the so-called Department of Government Efficiency has been on a rampage to root out 'waste, fraud, and abuse,' they've been ignoring the biggest money pit in the entire federal government: the Department of Defense," said Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.). "The people want a more efficient government, quality healthcare, housing costs that don't skyrocket, and affordable eggs and groceries—not a bloated military budget that doesn't make us any safer. Maybe DOGE should take a look at that."
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) added that DOGE's actions so far will leave students with disabilities without resources and threaten senior citizens who rely on Social Security.
"We don't have clean drinking water in our country, but we always have the money for war," said Tlaib. "I'm sick of it. If our government has endless money to bomb people, they have money for clean air and water, guaranteeing healthcare as a human right, and making sure no child goes hungry. Our elected officials are choosing to spend money on endless war instead of the American people."
Trump and Musk have begun answering some questions from the press about whether DOGE will address DOD spending, with the president saying Sunday that DOGE will likely find "hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse."
Musk has criticized the Pentagon's $12 billion F-35 program as "obsolete," and some lawmakers have drawn attention to exorbitant spending at the department on luxury meals, toilet seats, and soap dispensers.
But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday expressed hope that spending cuts would focus on climate programs, saying the Pentagon "is not in the business of climate change, solving the global thermostat. We're in the business of deterring and winning wars."
The DOD is the "single largest institutional producer of greenhouse gases in the world," as the Costs of War project at Brown University said in a 2019 report, and Trump's former defense secretary, Jim Mattis, acknowledged that the DOD must "pay attention to potential adverse impacts" of the climate crisis, related to national security.
On Tuesday, Musk was also questioned about DOGE's priorities at the Pentagon, with a reporter asking whether he has a conflict of interest in examining the DOD's spending, given his role of CEO at SpaceX, an aerospace company that receives about $22 billion in defense contracts from the department.
Musk shrugged off the concern, telling the reporter that he isn't personally "the one filing the contract, it's the people at SpaceX," and adding that defense contracts received by his company are "by far the best value for money for the taxpayer."
SpaceX was handed a new $38.85 million contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on Monday.
Meanwhile, said Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman, as Republicans head toward the budget reconciliation process, "money for the Pentagon will come directly cutting spending on human needs. The money that will go to Lockheed Martin or Palantir will come directly from Medicaid and food stamps and other programs for the poor and vulnerable."
"But with the plundering of the human needs budget made plain," he said, "the American people are not going to stand for—and will defeat—the Republicans' Pentagon boondoggle proposal."
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