Montana U.S. Sen. Jon Tester released a video on Twitter Friday outlining the fact that he received the new GOP tax bill mere hours before he was supposed to vote on it.
Spanning nearly 500 pages, it would be absolutely impossible to comprehend every plan and policy that is typed out on those pages in such a short time. But that’s not the end of this story. The huge stack of paper had amendments written, rather poorly, all over the pages. Some pages were just crossed off with an X!
This is absolutely no way to govern a group of people. The GOP is very slimy for making their tax bill this way. They could have received support from the left if they had gone about reform in a normal way.
I don’t know much about Tester, who hails from Montana, but watching his rant on Twitter, it quickly became clear that he is a member of the Democratic Party. That is something that he can use to his advantage, especially on that form of social media. Democrats seem like they have an easier time going viral because of the general distaste for Donald Trump among younger generations. This is exactly what happened with Tester, and I’m glad that it did.
We need to be diligently aware of how our government is working, because at the end of the day, these people are there to serve our best interests. People like Roy Moore, who was just endorsed by President Trump, have no business being in a leading role. The sad thing about politics is that we elect leaders for the betterment of the party, not necessarily for that person’s character. This goes for both the left and the right.
In combination with the new tax plan, the Roy Moore situation stands to be the biggest test for the GOP. What will they do? I say that Moore should run, and see that the people do not want a sexual predator in office. Trump needs to pull his support for the disgraced politician and pick literally anyone other Republican in Alabama to throw his support behind, which I assume wouldn’t be too hard. We need to show the younger generations that they will be heard and taken seriously when it comes to abuse, something that will not be evident if Moore wins.
At the end of the day, the GOP is getting a strike for the way that they handled this bill. They will receive another one if they handle the Roy Moore situation poorly, which I have no reason to believe they won’t. Defending the actions of this party is getting to be a bit absurd, and it looks like people within the party are bowing down to the values of others, not their own. For example, John McCain actually stood up for what he believed and blocked the earlier bills that he did not see fit. Now, we see McCain claiming that this is a better bill and we can all be OK with it.
I have not done adequate research on the new tax bill because I can’t find a good source who knows what the bill entails. Between the poor handwriting and the crossed out pages, it would be next to impossible for me to be knowledgeable enough to vote on it. This feeling is multiplied when you add in the fact that senators had just hours to read 500 pages. What the GOP did was wrong, and I assume that they will pay for it in the next election cycle.
