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CNN
13 hours ago
- Business
- CNN
Sweeping GOP budget bill illuminates the central fault line in the modern Republican coalition
The sweeping Republican budget bill advancing through Congress illuminates the central fault line in the modern GOP electoral coalition more starkly than any legislation in decades. The bill sharpens the GOP's long-standing tension between a political strategy that increasingly relies on financially squeezed working-class voters and an economic agenda that still funnels its greatest direct benefits to the affluent. The budget legislation makes that conflict unusually explicit because, for the first time in 30 years, the GOP has tied large spending cuts that will mostly hurt families below the median income in the same bill with big tax cuts that mostly benefit families above it. In the past, Republican tax bills 'where the benefits were more tilted toward the rich were not uncommon,' said Harris Eppsteiner, associate director for economic analysis for the Budget Lab at Yale University. 'But the thing that is unique here is that it is paired to cuts in the safety net that will leave folks at the bottom worse off.' More than any other single factor, Democrats are counting on a voter backlash against the budget bill — which passed the House earlier this month and is moving toward a floor vote maybe as soon as this week in the Senate — to power them to gains in the 2026 midterm elections. 'It's a powerful thing to be able to say they are cutting Medicaid and people's health care, popular programs, to fund a tax cut for the wealthiest people,' said Nick Gourevitch, a Democratic pollster. Congressional Republicans are already trying to build defenses against that argument. They are highlighting the aspects of the tax plan with the broadest populist appeal and presenting the bill's substantial cuts in Medicaid spending as a form of welfare reform that will preserve benefits for the neediest. Since the Ronald Reagan era, Republicans also have consistently shown that they can neutralize Democratic economic appeals to White blue-collar voters by painting the party as excessively liberal on cultural issues such as crime, immigration and LGBTQ rights. Yet the magnitude of what Republicans are attempting with this single bill will test that record. Simultaneously, according to nonpartisan analyses, the bill could strip health insurance from at least 16 million Americans and significantly cut food assistance — while also providing tax cuts worth over $100,000 annually to the top 0.1% of earners. Bobby Kogan, a former Senate Budget Committee aide who now analyzes fiscal policy at the liberal Center for American Progress, says that considering all its provisions, the legislation 'would be the biggest transfer from the poor to the rich in a single bill in US history.' An early skirmish between Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska and a liberal advocacy group is previewing how the debate may play out next year over what Republicans, adopting President Trump's terminology, are calling their 'One Big Beautiful Bill.' Unrig the Economy, the liberal advocacy group, has run radio and television ads in Bacon's Omaha district attacking him over his vote supporting the budget bill when it passed the House in May. 'He's actually cutting Medicaid so he can give tax breaks to big corporations and billionaires,' an Omaha woman identified as Audrey declares in the television ad. The argument that Republicans are taking health care from people who need it to fund tax cuts for people who don't is likely to be central in Democratic House and Senate campaigns next year. 'It is key that both House and Senate Democrats continue to implement this message as far and wide as possible,' the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee wrote in a strategy memo released earlier this month. Bacon, one of just three House Republicans left in districts that voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, has previewed the likely GOP response to those arguments in his pushback against the advocacy group's ads. He's emphasized the portion of the bill's Medicaid changes adding work requirements. 'We expect if you're an able-bodied adult without children that you should be seeking a job or getting the skills to get another job or as a minimum, volunteering 20 hours a week,' Bacon said in a press call with local reporters earlier this month. Republicans yoked the tax and spending cuts into one bill largely to satisfy hardline House conservatives who were complaining that the tax plan dangerously inflated the federal deficit and debt. But in choosing to pair the tax and spending cuts, the GOP conspicuously departed from its strategy for the tax cuts it passed under Presidents George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003 and Trump in 2017. Each of those bills offered sugar without spinach: They cut taxes without reducing spending. The last time the GOP pursued tax and spending cuts in the same bill was in 1995, when the aggressive 'Republican Revolution' Congress led by House Speaker Newt Gingrich precipitated an intense fiscal battle with then-President Bill Clinton. In the debates over the earlier GOP tax cuts, Democrats argued that the plans primarily benefited the rich and, by depleting federal revenues, would eventually force cuts in programs for average families. But by choosing to cut taxes and programs simultaneously, Republicans this year have eliminated any conjecture, allowing analysts to assess the plan's combined impact on families at different points on the income scale. Those analyses have returned a consistent verdict on the bill's winners and losers. Both the Congressional Budget Office and the budget model developed by the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, found that families on the lowest rungs of the income ladder would lose more from the spending cuts than they would gain from the tax savings; the CBO calculated that most families earning up to about $76,000 annually would come out net losers from the bill. Middle-to upper middle-class families, both analyses found, would see relatively small net benefits. Only those at the top would see big gains: CBO calculated the top 10% of earners would average about $12,000 in additional annual income from the bill, while the Penn Wharton model found that the top 0.1% would net over $103,000 annually. Kogan said that no previous legislation careened to such extremes on both ends. He's calculated that compared with the 'One Big Beautiful Bill' the 1995 Gingrich budget sought deeper cuts in programs for the needy but didn't provide such generous tax breaks to the rich; the famous 1981 Reagan budget plan (which was separated into two bills) cut taxes more for the rich, but programs for the poor less. With bigger program cuts than Reagan and bigger tax cuts than Gingrich, Kogan says, this bill redistributes wealth up the income ladder more than either of them. When congressional Republicans previously married tax and spending cuts into a single bill did not end well for them. In that 1995 confrontation, Clinton won the battle for public opinion, reviving his foundering presidency and propelling him toward an easy reelection in 1996. Clinton prevailed by stressing the argument Democrats are echoing today: Republicans are cutting programs that benefit average Americans to fund tax cuts for the rich. As in 1995, the GOP budget plan is facing widespread public skepticism. Substantially more Americans said they opposed than supported the bill in recent national polls by the non-partisan Pew Research Center and KFF thinktank, as well as in Washington Post/Ipsos, Fox News, and Quinnipiac University surveys. Though the Senate is considering changes to the House-passed legislation, both bills are built around the same two pillars: extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts for all earners and offsetting that cost primarily by cutting federal spending on Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. Both of those pillars stand on shaky ground with the public. In the Washington Post/Ipsos survey, a majority of Americans opposed extending the tax cuts for those earning over $400,000 annually. Both that survey and the KFF poll also found that significant majorities opposed health care cuts that would cause a significant rise in the uninsured. Only about 1 in 5 in the KFF poll said they expected the bill to help the middle-class; half thought it would hurt average families. The GOP's challenge in selling this package is even more complicated than in 1995 because of changes in their electoral coalition. Compared with that era, Republicans today are much more reliant on working-class voters without a four-year degree — not only the white voters in that category, but also increasingly the blue-collar minorities who provided Trump's most important gains in the 2024 election. That means many more GOP voters than in Gingrich's time rely on federal safety net programs. Looking at people who have purchased health care through the ACA, KFF found that more identify as Republicans than Democrats. Sixty-four House Republicans represent districts where the share of adults on Medicaid exceeds the national average. Republicans hold 13 Senate seats across the 20 states that have insured the most people under the Medicaid expansion funded by the ACA — which is the principal target for both the House and Senate cuts. Medicaid funding is especially critical to hospitals in rural areas, which now vote overwhelmingly Republican. Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican pollster, says that targeting federal health care programs for such large reductions dangerously ignores the changes in the GOP's electoral base since the days when fiscal hawks such as former House Speaker Paul Ryan set the party's fiscal agenda. 'The GOP coalition is dramatically different today than it was 10 years ago,' Ayres said. 'This looks like a bill that could have come out of a Paul Ryan House of Representatives rather than a Donald Trump House of Representatives.' Neera Tanden, the former chief domestic policy adviser for former President Joe Biden and now the president of the Center for American Progress, frames the mismatch even more starkly: 'Republicans are testing the proposition that there is nothing they can do to working class people to make them lose their support,' she said. Republicans may face particular vulnerability among the newest addition to their coalition: working-class minority voters without a college degree. The Washington Post/Ipsos, Pew and KFF polls all found them expressing much greater concern about the bill than non-college Whites, who have been more solidly cemented into the GOP base for decades. In the KFF poll, over four-fifths of minorities without a college degree said Medicaid was very important to their community and nearly three-fifths said it was very important to their own families — far more than the share of non-college Whites who said the same. In both the KFF and Pew surveys, more than three times as many of those blue-collar minorities said they expected the bill to hurt than to help them. Against all these headwinds, Republicans have some potentially potent responses. The White House has reportedly shared private polling with congressional Republicans showing support for the bill's measures to end taxes on tips and overtime, and is also urging them to stress the plan's provisions punishing states that provide Medicaid to undocumented immigrants. In the KFF poll, two-thirds of Americans backed a work requirement for able-bodied adults receiving Medicaid, another central component of the GOP plan. Most voters were likewise receptive to the GOP case that reducing Medicaid spending on those adults would save money for the elderly, low-income children and people with disabilities. Jason Cabel Roe, a Michigan-based Republican consultant, believes that it would have been better for the party to split the tax and spending cuts into separate bills, partly to make it harder for Democrats to link the two. But Roe believes public concern about the federal deficit and debt gives Republicans more leeway than Democrats believe to cut government programs — as long as the targets look justified. 'Our argument is we are going to get people off the dole who don't belong there … and if we are able to find the savings through that strategy, I think we can weather this line of attack from Democrats,' he said. 'If there are real stories of people losing their Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans benefits, then we have a problem .' Yet as KFF President Drew Altman wrote last week, the KFF poll also found that many voters were moved by Democratic counter-arguments, such as pointing out that most Medicaid recipients are already working, disabled, or caring for a family member. Gourevitch and other Democratic strategists believe the party's enduring advantage on health care — one of the few issues on which the public consistently expresses more confidence in Democrats than Republicans — will give an advantage to their candidates in any campaign exchanges over the bill. As Tanden pointed out, voters react to changes in health care policy more viscerally than most issues — a dynamic that has previously burned both parties. Revoking health insurance for millions of Americans would be a tough sell for the GOP at any point. But Republicans are creating a much more volatile compound by adding to the formula tax savings for the affluent that make the distribution of winners and losers in their plan unusually visible. 'They are playing with live bombs here,' Tanden said.
Associated Press
30-05-2025
- General
- Associated Press
Domestic Violence Survivor Support
At Gen, we believe that everyone should feel safe and able to take full advantage of the digital world. The knowledge that our personal data and financial information are protected brings invaluable peace of mind, and we aim to provide that sense of confidence to individuals across the globe, including members of our most vulnerable communities. That's why we work with organizations like the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV), the leading voice in the United States for domestic violence survivors and their advocates. Together, we've joined the fight against technology abuse, a growing part of domestic violence that often includes online stalking, identity theft or financial abuse. Through product donations and volunteer initiatives, we've helped raise awareness of tech-facilitated abuse, created tools that make survivors' lives online safer and more private, and continued to support our nonprofit partners serving these communities on the ground. Providing Survivors with Tools to Help Stay Cyber Safe In 2024, we launched a targeted donation program through our partnership with TechSoup to provide more than 3,700 Norton product licenses to domestic violence survivors across the U.S. TechSoup helps facilitate the donations to the Safe Shelter Collaborative, which in turn delivers the products to survivors through its network of member organizations. The donated products include Norton 360 Deluxe, which can prevent activity or location tracking, information theft, installation of malicious programs and uninvited changes to devices, and Norton Secure VPN, which protects the user's online privacy by hiding the computer's address from websites visited from any device. NNEDV, which represents the 56 U.S. state and territorial domestic violence coalitions, who in turn represent more than 2,000 local programs and the millions of survivors they serve annually, also collaborates on the donation program. Coming Together to Support Survivors Gen team members from across the company have volunteered their time and effort in service of survivors through a series of recent events. In April, our Head of Corporate Responsibility and our Director of AI & Innovation spoke alongside NNEDV representatives on a virtual panel about how to support domestic violence survivors in the digital age. The conversation covered the threats that survivors face online, how to identify tech-facilitated abuse when it happens and how advocates can help survivors increase their digital privacy. The event also shone a spotlight on some of the digital resources we've co-created with NNEDV, such as the Financial Abuse and Technology Guide and the Securing Devices and Accounts Guide. These tools are in addition to our $100,000 annual grant to NNEDV, supporting the organization's Safety Net technology abuse response initiative as well as its Economic Justice program. Subsequently, Gen team members at every one of our U.S. locations, including our new MoneyLion offices in New York and New Jersey, as well as our remote U.S. employees, participated in events facilitated by that benefited domestic violence survivors as part of our 2025 Global Volunteer Week. Together, Gen volunteers assembled nearly 500 backpacks for survivors that included food, hygiene items and physical copies of the resources we developed with NNEDV to help survivors stay safe online. This meaningful partnership with NNEDV helped enhance the impact of the events and further spread the word about the organization's critical work. 'I grew up in and used to work in shelters around New York, so I know how much this means,' said one volunteer. 'We wrote messages for survivors and packed kits with everyday essentials... And it was great to be able to do good alongside coworkers.' These grants were awarded from the Gen Foundation, a corporate advised fund of Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Visit 3BL Media to see more multimedia and stories from Gen Digital Inc.
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Yahoo
APS customer died after her electricity was cut off? Not again
Kate Korman was 82 when she was found dead in her Sun City West home. Six days earlier, Arizona Public Service had shut off her electricity. It's a story that will make you sick and, sadly, one we've heard before. Remember Stephanie Pullman? She was 72 when she died inside her Sun City West home on a sweltering 107-degree day in September 2018. She died for lack of a $51 payment to APS. Pullman's death, when it eventually came to light the following year, resulted in a sizable amount of outrage and a new regulation barring power companies from disconnecting their customers from June 1 through Oct. 15. Now comes Kate Korman. 12 News' Joe Dana reports she was found dead inside her Sun City West home on May 19, 2024. Six days earlier, APS turned off her power on a day when the temperature reached 99 degrees. 'When my brother and I came out to Arizona because of my mother's death, we arrived at our house and it was like an oven in there,' Jonathan Korman told Dana. 'Was there something mechanically wrong? No. We figured out it was the power company.' Kate Korman, it seems, had not paid her APS bill since January. She owed roughly $500 at the time of her death. An APS spokeswoman told Dana the utility followed 'established practices and rules.' 'We communicated directly to this customer 10 times through email, phone, monthly bill and notifications,' Jill Hanks told Dana. It's not clear whether APS went out to Korman's home before transforming the place into a death trap. If not, shame on the utility, knowing that she was elderly and quite possibly, alone. And shame on the rest of us, for not paying more attention. Dana reports that 138 people died in heat-related incidents indoors in Maricopa County last year. Thirteen of them died in homes where the electricity was off. One of them was Kate Korman, who died due to chronic alcohol use and 'exposure to elevated temperatures.' Surely, we can do better. We can do better by demanding a law that forbids utilities from shutting off the power on days when the temperature reaches 95 degrees. The month that Korman died, the temperature in Phoenix hit 95 or above on 17 days. Opinion: Your AC can't handle the heat. In Arizona, that's deadly APS records show it disconnected 2,208 homes for non-payment of bills in May 2024. The utility also began voluntarily halting disconnections on May 16, three days after cutting off Korman. Three days before her body was found. We can do better by calling the Arizona Corporation Commission and demanding that they get answers from APS about what, specifically, they do to ensure the safety of their customers before cutting them off. We can do better by signing up with the utilities to be informed if our elderly parents or friends fall behind on their bills. APS has a Safety Net program. So does Salt River Project. I'm betting that every utility does, or if not, they should. And we can do better by checking on our neighbors who live alone, just to make sure they're OK. Who knows? You might find a friend, which is exceedingly preferable to finding a body. Reach Roberts at Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) at @LaurieRobertsaz, on Threads at @LaurieRobertsaz and on BlueSky at @ Like this column? Get more opinions straight into your email inbox by signing up for our free opinions newsletter, which publishes Monday through Friday. This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: APS turned off power on a 99-degree day. A woman still died | Opinion
Yahoo
21-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Ardmore PD offers SafetyNet tracking for parents & caregivers
ARDMORE, Okla. (KFOR) – The Ardmore Police Department is now serving all of Carter County parents and caregivers of people with autism, dementia, Alzheimers, Down syndrome, or other cognitive disorders with SafetyNet Tracking Systems. According to authorities, SafetyNet is a search and rescue system designed to find and rescue people at risk of wandering and becoming lost. Quiet weather before more active storm pattern returns Residents who participate can expect once enrolled to be outfitted with a bracelet (shown below) that can be worn on the wrist or ankle in any event they go missing. Police say, if a loved one goes missing a receiver is used (shown above) to track the radio frequency signal that is emitted the last known location of your loved one. SafetyNet uses RF (Radio Frequencies) instead of relying on GPS or cellular services and has reliability inside densely wooded areas and buildings. For more information on enrollment click here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
BBC News
15-04-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Hotel workers help make Guernsey night-time venues safer
Hotel workers in Guernsey have been taking part in a project which aims to give islanders a safe, inclusive and supportive experience at night-time venues. Guernsey charity SafteyNet said the safe place project provided training and awareness for hospitality and night-time economy at Sarnia Hotels have been involved in the training which it said helped prevent inappropriate behaviour and responded to situations where someone might feel unsafe or needed assistance. Managing director Karel Harris said the hotel was pleased to have supported the initiative. Mr Harris said: "The hospitality industry plays a key role in shaping people's experiences, both for visitors and locals. "By taking part in the safe place project, we wanted to ensure that Guernsey's nightlife was not only fun and vibrant but also safe, inclusive, and supportive for all."Poppy Murray, chair and net founder of SafteyNet, said the 58 members from the hotel were enthusiastic, engaged and committed to making a "positive difference"."The Sarnia Hotels Group has been a fantastic supporter of our efforts to create safer nights out since our launch and were the only group to undertake the SafetyNet training in 2022," she said. "It's clear that creating a safe and welcoming environment for guests is a priority for the group, and we're grateful for their continued support."
