Groups unite to ‘kill the bill’
Grad students protest proposed tax legislation at Toomey’s office
Although they got no closer than an aide, graduate student workers from the University of Pittsburgh say their voices — and 1,000 signatures — conveyed to Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey their displeasure over tax legislation’s potential impact on higher education.
The students, accompanied by several Pitt faculty, staff and union workers, rallied in front of Mr. Toomey’s Downtown Pittsburgh office during lunch hour Wednesday, chanting “Kill the bill” and “Don’t kill us” as they urged a no vote on Republican-led tax overhaul proposals.
The students are graduate teaching and research assistants. They say taxing tuition waivers they get in return for campus work would upend their already tight finances and drive some of them from school.
“We have letters to Sen. Toomey signed by 1,000-plus individuals,” said fifth-year epidemiology student Beth Shaaban of Friendship. “When we first went in, the security guard called up to his office and they didn’t want to see us.
“We asked her to please call back up again to at least send a staff person down to receive these letters,” Ms. Shaaban said.
The rally that included a protester in a Grinch costume was organized with help from the United Steelworkers and its USW Graduate Student Organizing Committee. Graduate student employees at
Pitt are in the midst of an organizing effort to affiliate with the Steelworkers.
For Caitlin Schroering, 30, of Greenfield, both the tax legislation and the organizing drive were reasons she was there.
If she was unable to afford remaining in her doctoral program in sociology, said Ms. Schroering, it would mean forgoing her health benefits. “I would be uninsured,” she said.
The letters delivered to Mr. Toomey assert that the plan to tax tuition waivers contained in the House bill could equate to a 20 percent pay cut for many grad students at Pitt. That version, viewed within higher education as somewhat more onerous than the Senate bill, also would repeal a tax exemption for campus employee education benefits and end the student loan interest deduction, among other moves.
The Senate version passed last week, and a House bill was approved last month. Both are due to be reconciled.
In response, Sen. Toomey’s office released a statement saying the shared goal of Congressional Republicans and the Trump administration on tax reform remains delivering a direct pay raise to American families and creating growth incentives.
“When looking at a tax reform package, it is important to remember that it extends beyond singular changes and deductions,” the statement said.
“So while both the House and Senate plans adjust tax treatment for certain entities and eliminate certain deductions, they both also lower rates, double the standard deduction, and increase the child tax credit, resulting in a net tax cut for millions of working-class and middle income Pennsylvanians.”