By Eric Byler
More than 100 protesters stormed the Senate Budget Committee meeting on Wednesday, chanting, “Shame!” and “Kill the bill, don’t kill us!” as the Senate Budget Committee advanced the Republican tax cuts bill on a party-line vote. Thirty-six were arrested by Capitol Police, including Rebecca Wood of Charlottesville, Virginia.

Wood traveled to Washington, D.C., three times this week, twice with her daughter Charlie in tow. Charlie is dealing with complications from a premature birth, and depends on programs endangered by this legislation. “They’re going to have to drag me out,” Wood said as she boarded a bus from a staging ground at a hotel near the Capitol Building.

Katrina Raser of Hummelstown, Pennsylvania, said she was risking arrest because her “family suffers from a series of complicated health issues, and we really value insurance to the last drop.” Raser was dragged away by Capitol Police after refusing to stand.  

Both Wood and Raser said that other provisions in the tax bill, such as those that raise taxes on people with student loans, are of concern. “But when you talk about healthcare and . . . services, people will die.”

Arrestee Mark Milano of New York City, who relies on affordable health insurance to battle both cancer and AIDS, said that the GOP tax bill would “do more damage to health care than the Obamacare repeal would have done.”

In addition to potentially triggering large spending cuts to programs like Medicare and Medicaid, Milano said, the law would eliminate tax deductions that support public health and the public good. “So a teacher who buys school supplies for her kids can no longer deduct those, but a billionaire with a private jet can deduct that,” Milano said. “So it’s a massive transfer of funds and resources from the poor and middle class to the wealthy.”

TYT Investigates asked lead organizer Jennifer Flynn Walker to respond to the Trump administration’s claim that the tax reform package would benefit all Americans.  

“You can look at the CBO score, you can look at the JTO score, it’s not what they say.  And it’s also not what we saw the last time there was tax reform,” Flynn Walker said. “But even if there’s jobs down the road in the utopian view of this bill, which none of us are buying, you still have to take away our health care to do it, and that is not a sacrifice that any of us are willing to make.  

Arrestee Katya Karankevich traveled to Washington from Tucson, Arizona, after having visited the Phoenix home of Republican Senator Jeff Flake to deliver Christmas cards asking him to vote against the bill. “If Senator Flake votes with his heart and says that this bill is bad, whether it’s bad fiscally with respect to the deficit, whether it’s bad because college students will have more of a debt burden, whether it’s bad because Medicare gets cut and Arizonans will die . . . it’s a win if he votes no, I don’t care what his reasoning is,” she said.

Flake has indicated he plans to vote in favor of the bill.

Organizations participating in the action included: Popular Democracy, Housing Works, Hedgeclippers, People for Bernie, Strong Economy for All, Rights and Democracy Vermont, Delaware Alliance for Community Action, and Ohio Organizing Collaborative.