16-state tour hosted North Carolina town hall on the harm to working people, and how fairer taxes could fund priorities that help all people thrive (not just billionaires)

Virginia Beach, Virginia (August 3, 2025) – This afternoon, Fair Share America, Unrig our Economy, and state partners brought the “Stop the Billionaire Giveaways” national bus tour to Virginia Beach for a town hall discussion on how the new budget and tax bill will harm working people and families.

The 45-foot tour bus, wrapped in a giant trillion-dollar bill, brought together local leaders and community members to lift up personal stories of citizens, highlight the harms of the devastating cuts, and hold lawmakers accountable for their votes for the budget reconciliation law.

To request video or photos from the event or to set up an interview, please contact kristin@fairshareusa.org.

Here are some highlights:

Kristen Crowell, Executive Director of Fair Share America:

"This law is a moral affront to what we believe is our responsibility as a country. It is an affront to communities and families that work hard and get up every day and pay their fair share, only to have vital services such as health care, food assistance, and more ripped out from our communities, just to give trillions, trillions of dollars away to The Ultra Rich..... This kind of wrecking ball economics are driving up the cost of our day to day living.

"We made the phone calls, we showed up, we rallied, we protested, we tried to stop this bill, and we came close to stopping the whole damn thing — it passed by only one vote. Congresswoman Jen Kiggins made a choice -- she could have made the difference and protected all of you from this harm, but she chose to put billionaires over her constituents instead.

“At Fair Share America, our sole mission is to make our tax code fair — that means that billionaires, corporations, and the wealthy, pay at least the same effective tax rate as the rest of us.”

Rodrigo Soto, Legislative & Campaigns Director, The Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis:

"The recently-passed reconciliation bill marks the biggest setback on the progress you've been able to make in healthcare ever. It also marks the biggest cut to food assistance ever. And to make matters worse, all these cuts are being done to fund massive tax giveaways to millionaires and billionaires.

"Right now the average teacher in Virginia is in the same top state income tax bracket as a millionaire CEO. And the recently passed reconciliation bill will actually now do more for said millionaire CEO than for our hard working teachers across Virginia. To make matters worse, these federal choices will take health care and food assistance from people already struggling to make ends meet."

Glenn Harris, a retired nurse and member of Affordable Virginia

What a lot of people don't realize -- especially when you listen to politicians and they paint people on Medicaid a certain way -- is that these are folks just like the rest of us. I've seen Medicaid patients with this local address. The big problem is that people who can't get health care, who can't afford medications, are the populations that get sick and don't go to the doctor. Am I going to go to the doctor? Am I going to keep my lights on? It's an impossible choice."

"My Fiancé and I went up to see our Representative Jen Kiggins, who's never around when you need her. I wanted her to meet one of the people her vote could possibly condemn to death. Of course she wasn't there."

Angel Pye, a home health care worker and small business owner from Norfolk, VA

"46 percent of people who are on Medicaid work a full time job. So [Congress] enacting a 20 hour work requirement - we need to laugh at it and they need to take that comic relief on the road because it's laughable. You're asking people who are working two and three low paying jobs to work even harder to get basic health care and food stamps to eat. It's ridiculous. People are just trying to have the basics, do the basics and live a stable life. But when you're stealing, pillaging and lying, you will point the finger at the honest, hard working people to deflect from what you are doing.

"We have to move together as a people. As Americans, we know how to do that better than anybody else. Every time you see a major disaster, we don't ask you, are you a Republican? Are you a Democrat? Are you a Catholic? Are you a Baptist? We see the need, and we step in and we build communities, we pool our money together, and we take care of each other. This is where we are again in this moment in history. We're going to have to pull our sleeves up and we're going to have to show everybody else in the world that we are still the greatest country on the planet, because we will move together."

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Learn more about the “Stop the Billionaire Giveaways” bus tour online and on social media: @FairShare_USAon X and @FairShareAmerica (FB, IG, BS, Threads, TikTok).