WASHINGTON—Once again the corporate media, as it did in the election campaign, is failing to focus on the issues that are important to the U.S. working class.
While the billionaires prepare to take direct control over the government in Washington and use that control to give themselves huge tax cuts by cutting Social Security and Medicare and by killing overtime protection for over-worked people, the media is focusing on Republican Rep. Mike Johnson’s fight to control the House with his one-vote majority.
While Trump and his right-wing minions in both the House and Senate get ready to begin a fascistic mass deportation of perhaps millions of workers in the U.S., they are focusing on false claims by GOP leaders that immigrant terrorists are running amok in America.
While the right wing gears up for its first 100 days in power, starting later this month when Trump again takes over, the Democrats have yet to roll out their own program to fight for workers during those same 100 days.
Even one of their leading fighters against Trump and Trumpism, Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, said on MSNBC yesterday that the Democrats will “sit back and eat popcorn while the Republicans tear themselves apart until they realize they have to compromise with us to govern this country.”
Hopefully, progressive Democrats will, rather than just watch the show, come up with a plan for their first 100 days of fightback. Rolling out such a plan will require a careful study of Project 2025 and a specific plan to mobilize support for everything the right wing wants to kill, including Medicare and Social Security, and a plan to fight for all the things workers need, including the right to unionize, overtime protection, and so much more. The people and labor and its allies in the mass organizations are ready to fight for all these things, and they need the Democrats to lead the fight on the legislative front and in Washington.
Trump, the Republicans, and their billionaire backers are already working overtime to implement their Project 2025 agenda. They have wasted no time, as indicated even by their reaction to the New Year’s Day attacks on Bourbon Street in New Orleans and at the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas.
Sen. John Kennedy, the right-wing senator from Louisiana, used a press conference after the attack in New Orleans to grandstand about his plan to go to the Senate and “raise holy hell about the responsibility of the federal government to fight terror caused by any immigrant or other threat.”
Trump himself tweeted about how it was open borders and dangerous immigrants behind the attack in New Orleans and the explosion outside his Vegas property. Once again, he lied about crime in America, calling it worse than ever when in fact there have been sharp reductions in crime over the last four years all over the country. He lied about immigrants being responsible, when both attacks this week were carried out by people born in the U.S.
Both Kennedy and Trump made their statements before the FBI even had a chance to release descriptions of those responsible. The individual in New Orleans was a U.S. military man on temporary leave and a citizen born in Texas. The man in the exploding Tesla Cybertruck in Las Vegas was an active member of the military with good behavior awards. A huge weapons cache collected by a potential domestic terrorist was uncovered meanwhile in Virginia. It was described as the biggest cache of such weapons ever discovered. Again, a U.S. citizen was responsible.
None of the terrorist attackers were immigrants, and none had anything to do with ever crossing a U.S. border, open or closed.
None of this made any difference to the right-wingers like Republican Sen. Kennedy, who pontificated and lied so profusely at the news conference in New Orleans. In addition to these lies, Kennedy is preparing to go back to Washington to lead the fight as the new chairman of the Senate Finance Committee to give his billionaire backers, including Elon Musk and others, more tax breaks and to slash programs vital to U.S. workers.
While some Democrats in the Congress, like Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York, are telling us that we need to compromise with Trump on any issue where he backs workers, it is fortunate that there are people, like Sen. Bernie Sanders, who are not taking that line. They understand that someone who was correctly described as a fascist threat during the election campaign does not suddenly become someone who has the interests of workers at heart.
Sanders just got a prominent platform to lead the legislative fight to protect Social Security, Medicare, and workers. The Vermont Independent, Congress’s longest supporter of workers and unions, will be a member of the powerful Senate Finance Committee that the right-wing Kennedy will chair in the next Congress—where he, Sanders, will face a fight to defend both programs.
It is on that committee where the Trumpites hope to ram through a continuation of the tax cuts for the rich.
One of four named
Sanders was one of four new Democrats named to the committee, which handles Social Security, Medicare, taxes, and trade—all of the vital interests of workers and their allies. Five committee Democrats either retired or lost their seats in November, but because the Senate switched parties, there were only four Democratic seats to fill.
On the new Senate Finance panel, Sanders will have several natural allies: Oregon’s Ron Wyden, its top Democrat, and consumer champion Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., for starters. But being on Finance will also test Sanders’s parliamentary skills, as he’ll have to devise new ways to attract allies for his campaigns against the corporate class.
And he’ll have his work cut out for him.
Even before the new committee lineups were announced, the labor-backed Alliance for Retired Americans reported “a growing number of Republicans,” led by Donald Trump puppeteer Elon Musk and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, want to cut—or in Lee’s case, kill—Social Security. Last year, the senator proposed votes every five years on retaining or abolishing it.
“Earlier this month, Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., warned cuts are on the way, saying his party will have to make some ‘hard decisions’ about Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid,” the Alliance warned. The Finance Committee handles Medicaid bills, too.
And “Lee doubled down on his previous calls to dismantle Social Security in a thread on X, which close Trump advisor Musk promptly retweeted.” Musk owns and rules over X, formerly Twitter.
“Musk and his allies have made it clear nothing is off limits when it comes to Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) commission, which is leading the charge for cuts,” the alliance elaborated. Multibillionaire Musk and multimillionaire Vivek Ramaswamy co-chair that panel. “Outside the DOGE Caucus’ first meeting last week, Rep. Greg Lopez, R-Colo., was even more direct, admitting they”—the three big programs—“are ‘on the table.’”
“We should be angered but not surprised that cutting earned benefits emerged as a top priority for Republicans, despite their campaign promises,” Alliance Executive Director Richard Fiesta responded. “Alliance members successfully defeated past threats to Social Security and Medicare and we’re ready to do it again.”
Interestingly, given that cutting Social Security and Medicare has been called “touching the third rail of American politics,” Trump’s presidential platform, aka Project 2025, has not a word about either.
“The vast majority of Americans want to strengthen Social Security and Medicare by asking the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share into the system,” a Sanders proposal, the Alliance said. “It’s our job to make sure Congress and Donald Trump understand they will pay a price for raising the retirement age or slashing benefits.”
Now they’ll have Sanders on the panel that handles both programs, raising his voice for them.
Sanders also keeps his seat atop what will be the minority on the Senate Labor Committee. But he’ll yield the gavel, and control of the agenda and a majority of the staff, to right-wing Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La.
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