Mediaboss Marketing

A new progressive coalition, the Not One Penny campaign, is launching today to build opposition to any Republican tax reform plan that lowers rates on corporations or the very wealthy.

Progressives have known for a while that tax cuts were the number two priority for Trump, after Obamacare repeal, said Nicole Gill, executive director of TaxMarch, one of the groups spearheading the new campaign alongside MoveOn and the Working Families Party. They havethe money, and we have the millions we have actual people who want to fight this.

Starting today, the Not One Penny campaign includes a seven-figure ad buy in eight Republican-held congressional districts,* all with large numbers of white voters without college degrees, who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 but have not historically been passionate about tax cuts. Its a fraction of what pro-tax reform groups like the American Action Network have pledged, but it mirrors what progressive groups and allies did during the effort to stop the Obamacare repeal in the Senate.

The competitive advantage of Not One Penny, say organizers, will be direct action and activism, building on the Tax March an April 15 rally to demand the presidents tax returns and on the victory of the anti-repeal campaign. In mid-July, as the fight to kill repeal was underway, more than 50 organizers from the resistance underwent training on best practices for organizing against tax cuts. Theyve fanned out to create anti-tax-cut presences in congressional districts over the long August recess.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) spoke about the Democrats' "preferred path" for tax reform on Aug. 1. "The best tax reform is bipartisan tax reform aimed at helping the middle class," he said. (The Washington Post)

The goals of Not One Penny (as in, not one penny in tax cuts for the rich) are laid out in a pledge on the campaign website. The last thing we need is for the tax code to be even more rigged in favor of millionaires, billionaires, and corporate insiders, write organizers. Even more tax breaks for the super rich will undermine our commitment to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and make it impossible to invest in the middle class.

The anti-rigging rhetoric runs right into the messaging that tax cut supporters began using this week. At a series of events at the Newseum, two hubs of the Koch donor network Freedom Partners and Americans for Prosperity debuted a logo for their un-rig the economy campaign, which had been underway for a month.

Progressives see an opening in that message an admission, by the supporters of tax cuts, that reform cant be seen as a benefit only for the very rich. Polls this year from Pew and Gallup have found supermajorities of voters skeptical that corporations pay sufficient taxes. In April, 63 percent of voters said that the rich were taxed too little in the current system; 67 percent of voters said the same of corporations.

If its about whether or not the rich should get a tax cut, then conservatives will lose, said Michael Linden, a senior fellow at the progressive Roosevelt Institute. Its why they frame their plans as tax cuts for the middle class, or for competitiveness; if they talked about the distributional consequences, theyd lose.

*IA-01, IA-03, AZ-02, KS-03, ME-02, TX-23, AR-01, CA-49

Original post:
Liberals launch 'Not One Penny' campaign in effort to stop Trump tax cuts - Washington Post