Republicans celebrated their first legislative win of the year Wednesday, after both houses of Congress passed a sweeping tax reform package.
But one Democratic congresswoman told Cheddar there’s still hope for constituents who remain opposed to the bill.
“Stay mobilized, let your voice be heard,” Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) said Wednesday morning, after the Senate voted, but before the House reconvened. “Nothing is permanent but death and taxes, and we can do something about these taxes and we can do something about the makeup of this Congress.”
The president and his party leaders gathered Wednesday afternoon to praise the benefits of the tax system overhaul, which drops the corporate tax rate from 35 to 21 percent, nearly doubles the standard deduction for individuals, and lowers the tax rate for most income brackets.
While the GOP says the long-overdue changes will provide a boost to the economy, Democrats dispute that claim and say the bill will largely benefit the wealthiest Americans and balloon the deficit.
The bill does appear to be broadly unpopular. A recent CNN poll found that 55 percent of respondents opposed the legislation, a 10 percentage point increase since last month. Still, it passed the House by a vote of 224-201 Wednesday afternoon, with only 12 Republican naysayers.
Republicans also took to Twitter to cheer the victory. President Donald Trump posted a gif that read “Tax Cut for Christmas”.
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/rep-bonnie-watson-coleman-d-nj-says-voters-can-change-the-makeup-of-congress-in-2018).
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo Friday said the coronavirus pandemic has hit a "plateau" but stressed that putting New Yorkers back to work hinges on the level of testing that is available across the state.
Arkansas is one of four states in the U.S. that has not passed any stay-at-home orders to combat coronavirus, and Governor Asa Hutchinson plans to keep it that way unless cases spike.
Gayle Smith, a former National Security Council member in the Obama Administration, is spreading the message that the U.S. must look beyond its borders to stop coronavirus.
Alabama withdrew triage guidelines that recommend deprioritizing care and life-saving equipment for intellectually disabled individuals on Wednesday following backlash from disability advocates.
California Governor Gavin Newsom said the state's number of ICU hospitalizations had fallen nearly two percent over the past 24 hours
The S&P 500 index closed out its best week since 1974 with another gain Thursday after the Federal Reserve launched its latest unprecedented effort to support the economy through the coronavirus outbreak.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been moved out of intensive care, his office says.
Though New York recorded 799 deaths, a record-high number for the third day in a row, Governor Andrew Cuomo said the novel coronavirus has not killed anyone due to a lack of care and said hospitalizations in the state are nearly flat.
Conservative policy analyst Steve Moore says President Donald Trump needs to double down on the economic policies of his first term to win over the electorate amid the pandemic.
The countries reportedly agreed to a cut of 10 million barrels per day for two months. However, the alleged scale of the cut varied widely, from as little as 2 million barrels a day to as much as 20 million barrels a day.
