“A Big, Ugly, Betrayal”—AFT’s Weingarten on House Reconciliation Bill

WASHINGTON—AFT President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement after the House of Representatives passed Donald Trump’s ruinous reconciliation bill.

“A better name for this bill is the big, ugly betrayal. Passed in the dead of night, it is a direct attack on working people and the essential services Americans rely on. And for what? To pay for tax cuts for billionaires.

“This bill would make Americans—particularly children and older people—sicker and poorer through a direct transfer of wealth to the rich. Seventy percent of the benefits will go to the top 5 percent at the expense of the bottom 40 percent, a reverse Robin Hood heist that will add trillions of dollars to the national debt, hobbling economic growth.

“Rather than protect Medicare and Medicaid, this bill cuts them, denying healthcare to 14 million people. Rather than strengthen public education, it weakens it. Rather than feeding poor families, it rips food out of their mouths.

“Education is an opportunity agent, and federal supports should not be used as a piggy bank to defund our already underfunded public schools. The bill includes $20 billion for a reckless school voucher program in the guise of a tax shelter for the well-off. Vouchers syphon crucial funds away from public schools into private hands. They are directly responsible for some of the largest student achievement drops ever recorded and mostly go to parents with kids already in private school.

“This bill is the opposite of the agenda endorsed by voters. Even with Republican control, it passed by the barest of margins. The Senate should reject it. And the educators and working families of America will remember the House members who rammed it through—and they will make their anger known in the streets this summer, and at the ballot box next November.”