Pelosi Remarks at Tax Day Press Event Against GOP Tax Scam

Leader Pelosi. Good afternoon everyone, as it is now afternoon! I am pleased to be here with each and every one of you as I see many familiar faces. Faces that were there a year ago when we came together across the country to ask for President Trump to release his tax returns. A year later, it still hasn't happened but in the course of that time, all of you, so many of you here, of course under the leadership of Nicole Gill, have been having events across the country.

So many of us came together to protect the Affordable Care Act, and then when it got to be winter and we had to fight their tax scam, their tax scam. They won the vote but they did not win the hearts and minds of the American people. And why? Because of all of you.

Whether it was the Little Lobbyists, whether it was our friends in the labor movement, whether it was advocates for health care across our country, Nicole Gill and her tribe of people across the country.

Right now, yesterday, they said, ‘It's a political loser. The public does not believe that is in their interest.' And that is because of all of you.

It's a scam, and why is it a scam? Look at this. They put forward a bill that gives 83 percent of the benefits to the top 1 percent. They try to call it a middle class tax cut and yet 86 million families and the like from this bill will be paying more in taxes. They caused – giving corporate America a trillion and half dollar tax break, tax cut, plus interest, taking us over $2 trillion into debt, mortgaging our childrens' future, placing a dark cloud over this Capitol with our budget.

So then they say, ‘well, we have to make cuts to decrease the debt. So, we are going to take a trillion dollars out of Medicaid.' Isn't that obscene? A half a trillion dollars, half a trillion dollars out of Medicare. And Heather Booth knows this. Where is Heather? There she is, I just saw her. Heather knows this with their tax cuts for the rich and corporations. Why would they take a half a trillion dollars out of Medicare?

Now this is consistent with them, because they have said, ‘Medicare should wither on the vine.' They have had in their budget that Medicare should eliminate the guarantee, and instead be a voucher. That's what they want. And even further a trillion for Medicaid cut, half a trillion for Medicare.

Then they go on to take a couple hundred billion dollars from food stamps, a hundred million dollars from education, hurting our children and their futures.

Now, Sister Simone talked about Pope Francis, the beautiful Pope Francis. In Pope Benedict's first encyclical quote ‘God is Love' he quotes his favorite saint, Saint Augustine. And in ‘God is Love' the encyclical, Saint Augustine is saying that seventeen centuries ago – seventeen hundred years ago – St. Augustine said, ‘any government that does not exist to promote justice is just a bunch of thieves.' Seventeen centuries ago.

Benedict goes on to say, sometimes it is a challenge to define justice, but in doing so we must be aware of the dazzling blindness of special interest money and power. Is that today? Is that today?

What we need, what we need is the American people to know, and that is what you are doing. A drumbeat across America to say: this is not about our values, a budget is supposed to be a statement of our national values, what is important to us as a nation.

It should be about how we invest in our childrens' future and the retirement of our seniors and the air that our kids breathe, and the opportunities and the economy, and the rest, be fair. Fairness. That's not what this budget is. It is a shame, it is wrong, it is wrong and we cannot let it stand. We won't let it stand. We won't let it stand. We won't let it stand.

Thank you all very much for what you are doing to make sure it doesn't stand. Not only that the tax cut doesn't stand, but also the budget that they have proposed that is so lacking in values. So, thank you all again, to the little lobbyists, to our friends in labor, to all our supporters here. To Nicole Gill and Not One Penny.

Thank you all very much!