Investing in a rapid transition to 100% renewable energy and clean transportation, while protecting environmentally vulnerable communities from the worst effects of climate change, comprise what is arguably the most important fiscal choice we have to make as a country over the next decade.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus has released its People’s Budget, which it aptly subtitles a “roadmap to resistance.” The CPC budget is proactive, pro-public, and progressive. In decided contrast to the dystopian vision of the Trump budget, the CPC budget presents a bold vision rooted in the fundamental value that our nation is a shared project of all its people – the demos – for the benefit of the entire demos.
Donald Trump’s election came at the worst possible time in so many ways. In a spectacular litany of truly awful aims, including mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, repealing Obamacare, retracting federal oversight of abusive local policing, undoing Obama-era banking reforms, and much more, where does one begin to describe the damage he and the Republican Congress could do? But the threat Trump poses to our environment and particularly to our ability to escape the worst impacts of global warming is unparalleled.
April 26, 2017 (New York, NY) – In response to Donald Trump’s proposed tax plan, Tamara Draut, Vice President of Policy & Research at Demos, a NY based public policy think tank, issued the following statement:
“This tax proposal shows once again that Donald Trump is no populist, but rather is hewing to traditional conservative and Republican philosophies, including doubling down on the failed experiment of trickle-down economics.
New York became the first state in the country to return to a guarantee of tuition-free college for students at state public colleges and universities.
April 9, 2017 (New York, NY) -- Tamara Draut, Vice President of Policy and Research at Demos, released the following statement after New York became the first state in the country to pass tuition-free college:
Today is Equal Pay Day. Counting from January, the average woman has just earned as much as the average man did by December 31. In other words, it took her 15 months to earn what the average man earned in 12.
Judge Neil Gorsuch’s troubling record on money in politics and concern that he’ll tilt our elections even more toward the wealthy and powerful is a key reason to oppose his lifetime confirmation to the Supreme Court, at least 20 U.S. Senators have said in their statements opposing him.
With so many eventual graduates starting at community colleges, we should take a hard look at institutional aid policies, which reward incoming freshmen much more than transfer students.
Last week I had the privilege of testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee about President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch. Wth the Court split four-to-four on so many critical issues, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
But even beyond issues, what’s at stake with this nomination is the very shape of our democracy: the way we make decisions about everything from who gets health care to whether working families will live in poverty—and whose voices are heard in that process.