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  • Trump’s GOP Platform Won’t Make America Work
    Updated On: Jul 204, 2016

    Trump’s GOP Platform Won’t Make America Work

    By Ed Wytkind

    trump

    After a quick review of what the GOP platform has in store for our nation’s transportation system and working people, one thing is clear: tonight’s theme at Donald Trump’s coronation — “Make America Work” — needs a tweak. We have a few suggestions, like “Make America Lose as Many Jobs as Possible.” Or “Make America’s Transportation Network Fall Apart.”

    I admit that these alternatives lack pizzazz or Trumpesque theatrics. But at least these themes reflect the truth about what life in America would be like for working people if Donald Trump’s just released manifesto, the Republican Platform, takes hold. In fact, if you want to know how not to create jobs or rebuild America’s crumbling transportation system, the GOP Platform is a how-to manual.

    Oh, where to begin.

    Throughout the platform there are endless attacks on the rights of workers to freely join a union and bargaining collectively for better wages, working conditions and retirement security.  Whether an embrace of a national right to work law that would gut strong unions, demonizing “agents” at the National Labor Relations Board for simply following longstanding labor law or calling for repeal of Davis-Bacon prevailing wage standards, the Trump plan seeks to lower wages and bargaining power for workers across the entire economy.

    There’s the outdated idea that federal support for our nation’s transit systems should be eliminated. We already know Trump doesn’t care about the truth. Apparently he doesn’t care about math, either. Studies show that every dollar invested in public transportation returns $4 to the economy. What’s more, millions of Americans rely on buses and trains to get to work every day. And new research shows that access to these transportation lifelines is critical for low-income Americans to escape poverty that plagues too many of our towns and cities.

    Transit use in America has never been more popular, yet systems across the country are struggling to find the resources needed to provide safe and reliable service that Americans demand. The fact that Donald Trump doesn’t care about Americans’ commuter services isn’t surprising. After all, when you travel around in your own jet and helicopters, it’s easy to overlook the fact that for millions of working people regular bus and rail service is their only commuting option. They can’t just book a helicopter when they’re running late.

    Perhaps most shocking about the GOP’s plan for mass transit is the reason behind doing away with federal funding for transit services. The plan claims that mass transit is an inherently local affair that serves only a small portion of the population in six big cities. Once again, facts have been mangled. More than 10 billion transit trips are taken a year! Hardly a few people in a handful of metropolitan areas. And in case facts matter, the 17 states with the fewest urban areas receive 40 percent or more of their public transportation funding from the federal government. The irony? Just eight months ago, Republicans and Democrats joined together to reauthorize our nation’s transit and highway funding programs for the next five years, and specifically rejected what is now the Trump-Pence plan to hollow out public transit.

    The Trump plan goes after Amtrak as well, calling the railroad “expensive” for taxpayers. Note to Donald: Amtrak runs those big trains that pull into Manhattan all day, every day carrying over 10 million people a year into the city you say you love. This “too expensive” mindset ignores that the carrier now collects over 90 percent of its operating costs at the fare box and the fact that there isn’t a passenger rail system in the world that is free of subsidy. The platform calls for private entities to take over rail service in the Northeast – another misguided idea that has been rejected and discredited time and time again as an attempt to enrich private companies at the expense of passengers, workers and communities. No wonder Trump likes this idea.

    The Trump platform also calls for gutting the Jones Act – a law that ensures we have a functioning U.S. maritime system that can be used to transport critical supplies and our troops in times of war and humanitarian emergencies. Donald Trump must think that the 500,000 jobs this law supports are superfluous to his goal of making America work and that foreign countries can be relied on to provide U.S. military sealift operations across the world’s vast oceans. If that’s the case, I have a Trump University seminar to sell him.

    The attacks included in the Trump platform on federal workers are just mean and based on bankrupt ideas. What else is new? For starters, the platform calls for the elimination of collective bargaining rights for federal Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) – insinuating that long lines at airport check points are due to union contracts. TSOs and their union have been pushing for solutions to this problem for months and are more than willing to offer flexibility to meet spikes in air travel. The culprit of screening delays is the arbitrary cap on the number of TSOs that can be hired — 45,000 — and a lack of federal funding and training dollars necessary to meet increases in air travel. But the common-sense solution of doing away with the arbitrary cap and increasing federal spending on our nation’s aviation security regime is missing from the Trump plan. I grow weary of the tired, old idea that somehow bargaining for dignity on the job conflicts with national security.

    Some might claim that Donald Trump is not responsible for what is included in the GOP platform. That’s a nice thought, but it’s missing a key factor: for better or worse, Trump is now the leader of the GOP. That means he owns the destructive ideas that are included in a document endorsed by the same delegates that will vote to make him their nominee. If he wants to distance himself from the gutting of our transportation system and the attacks on workers, he had that chance when the platform was being drafted. My guess is he’s too concerned with his own fame during his big week to worry about what’s actually in the platform and whom it hurts.

    Trump needs to present a plan that is based on fact and will actually create jobs, grow our economy and rebuild our crumbling transportation infrastructure. Policies designed to destroy jobs and rights, wreak havoc on our transportation system and hurt working Americans — like those in the GOP platform — will not make America work again. They will weaken our economy and crush working people.


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