The far-right Conservative House Republican Study Committee, of which Congressman Scott Garrett is a member, recently released a set of policy recommendations aimed at influencing Speaker Paul Ryan’s hollow efforts to build the House GOP’s policy agenda. In announcing their list of extreme policy positions, the RSC brags that the platform was “member-driven” – leading us to wonder, which of the RSC’s policy prescriptions did Garrett help write?
Was it: eliminating TIGER grants for critical, job-creating transportation projects, which is the natural extension of Garrett’s out-of-touch vote against last year’s bipartisan highway bill?
Or perhaps Garrett, whose bigotry is well-documented, penned the RSC’s recommendation to allow employers to discriminate against LGBT people and single moms?
“Instead of doing his job, Scott Garrett is taking a page out of Speaker Paul Ryan’s book and lending his name to another hollow GOP ‘agenda’ that won’t do anything to help New Jersey,” said Bryan Lesswing of the DCCC. “Garrett’s membership in this group means he champions its out-of-touch positions, including slashing funding to fix our roads and bridges and enabling employers to discriminate against single moms.”
RSC Taskforce Lowlights:
- First Amendment Defense Act: This bill would allow employers to discriminate against LGBT people and single moms. Newspapers across the country have slammed the bill as “ridiculous,” “unnecessary” and with the “potential to do great harm.”
- Eliminating Title X Funding: The Title X program is the only federal grant program providing contraceptive and other preventive health services to low-income patients that would otherwise lack access to such care. The program supports clinics that provide family planning services to over 100,000 patients in New Jersey.
- Eliminating TIGER grants: The TIGER grant program has provided funding for nearly 350 projects in all 50 states to create jobs and help improve local transportation infrastructure.
- Repealing Davis-Bacon: The Davis-Bacon Act requires prevailing wage protections for government contract work, ensuring fair compensation and safer work environments.
- Eliminating Export-Import Bank: The Export-Import Bank provides loans for U.S. companies doing business overseas, supporting 1.4 million private-sector American jobs since 2009.
- Fair Or Flat Tax System: Both the Fair Tax and flat tax systems are regressive approaches that will force middle class families to pay more. A Fair Tax would impose a new 23% sales tax on everything from rent and doctor’s bills to gas and mortgage interest payments. A flat tax system would favor the very wealthy, shifting the tax burden on to low- and middle-income families.
- Turning Medicaid & CHIP Into Block Grants: Efforts to block grant Medicaid and CHIP programs would likely add millions to the uninsured and underinsured populations.
- Eliminating Community Development Block Grants: The Community Development Block Grant program provides annual grants to more than 1,100 city and county governments and states to improve housing and living conditions and expand opportunities for middle and low-income residents. The program has created or retained 334,000 jobs over the past decade.
- Default Prevention Act: The so-called debt payment prioritization required by the Default Prevention Act would prioritize debt payments to creditors like China over other obligations like federal worker and military pay, Medicare payments and veterans benefits.