Why I confronted Jeff Flake on a plane
I've spent my career as an advocate for economic justice, fighting for basic fairness for working families. It wasn't until this past year that I began fighting for my own life. It's that fight that led me to get arrested protesting the Republican tax plan in Washington, and that led me into debating it with Sen. Jeff Flake at 30,000 feet in the air on my way home. I never thought I'd be in this position. A year ago, I was healthy, taking morning runs on the California coast and looking forward to a new life with my newborn son, Carl.
Then I developed ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. It's a terrible brain disease with no cure and no good treatment. Every week, it's making me a little more paralyzed. Today, I walk with a cane. I have trouble breathing. And I can't pick up Carl to kiss him. In the next few years, unless a miracle strikes, I will die, because I won't be able to breathe. Or I'll continue to live, hooked up to a machine that breathes for me.
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/15/opinions/why-i-confronted-jeff-flake-on-a-plane-barkan/index.htmlI don’t like the GOP tax bill, but now my life depends on beating it
I didn’t expect to find myself on a flight last week, face to face with Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), arguing for policies that could save my own life. I didn’t expect to spend an afternoon in a D.C. jail, watching Capitol police handle me with kid gloves because of my new disabilities. I didn’t expect to be a beneficiary of the ideas I’d devoted my life to fighting for. Anybody’s fortunes, it turns out, can reverse in no time. That’s why we need an economic justice, good jobs and basic fairness for working families. And that’s why the GOP tax plan is a danger for every American, especially, to my surprise, me.
In the coming years, unless a miracle strikes, I will need a wheelchair and become dependent on others to keep me clean, fed and comfortable. I will also need to decide whether to rely on a ventilator and a feeding tube to keep me alive — for between $150,000 and $330,000 per year. And I won’t be able to work, so we’ll be dependent on the generosity of family and friends, my wife’s salary and Medicare.
The Republican tax bill could cut many people like me off from government services. It automatically triggers $400 billion in cuts to Medicare, and Mick Mulvaney, the head of the White House Office of Management and Budget, will have sole responsibility for deciding what programs to slash. Mulvaney opposes the Medicare disability program. If this tax bill passes, will I be able to get the ventilator I need to stay alive?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/12/12/i-dont-like-the-gop-tax-bill-but-now-my-life-depends-on-beating-it/?utm_term=.ce9971fb245fLast-Ditch Effort to Sway Senator on Tax Bill Involves Personal Pleas
As a group of progressive activists and constituents prepared for a 15-minute meeting on Wednesday with Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, they sat in the lobby of her office and developed a last-ditch strategy to persuade her to vote against the $1.5 trillion tax bill barreling through Congress: tears. “If Senator Collins actually saw you as a human, saw me as a human, then she wouldn’t pass any of this,” said Ady Barkan, a member of the Center for Popular Democracy, who recently learned he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S., and uses a wheelchair.
“You have to protect us before you vote yes,” Mr. Barkan said to Ms. Collins during the meeting. (Last week, Mr. Barkan confronted Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, about the tax bill on an airplane.) “They’re lying to you.” Ms. Collins remained respectful and strained to convince the room of about a dozen skeptics that the promises that had been made to her were ironclad. She defended her decision in the face of the group’s challenges that previous Republican promises for the tax bill had been broken, including a commitment to not add to the deficit and to not benefit the rich, and that written agreements are not law. “I do not believe that I’ve given up leverage,” Ms. Collins said. “I’ve used my leverage to negotiate agreements that are promises to me.” She added, “I’m sorry that you don’t believe in the agreements.”
Ms. Collins also was not biting on Democrats calls to delay the vote. She rejected the suggestions that the tax vote should be put off so that Doug Jones, the Alabama Democrat who was elected to the Senate on Tuesday night after a special election, could be seated first and cast a vote. “I see no need to wait for Doug Jones to become a senator,” Ms. Collins said. “We vote all the time in lame-duck sessions with retired and defeated members casting votes.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/14/us/politics/susan-collins-tax-bill.html
