Alabama Democrats emphasize affordability platform as election looms

Alabama Democrats gathered on the Capitol steps Monday to reiterate the party’s plan to address the affordability crisis.

“I’ve now been to all 67 counties in Alabama and everywhere I’ve been, Alabamians are hurting,” state Representative Phillip Ensler, D-Montgomery, the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor, said. “They are struggling to pay their grocery bills, they’re struggling to pay for prescription drugs, they’re struggling to pay for health insurance, they’re struggling to pay for these high gas prices that have been caused by Donald Trump’s war overseas. They’re struggling to pay for all these basic necessities and you have farmers that are struggling from high tariffs from President Trump and MAGA Republicans. You have farmers that are struggling from high diesel prices and fertilizer prices, and Republicans in our state have been focused on everything but solving these problems.”

The group of current and former lawmakers emphasized the party’s long fight to eliminate the grocery tax following Alabama Republicans’ recent embrace of the proposal.

“We have been fighting for a very long time to completely cut the grocery tax, which Republicans now realize is an idea that they should adopt,” Ensler said.

The party drove that point home by bringing along former state Representative John Knight, who fought in the Legislature for decades to eliminate the grocery tax.

“I believe that the average working family is now discovering that the Democrats have always fought for equal rights for everybody,” Knight said. “Removing the sales tax on groceries happens to have been one issue that I fought for many years, saying that it is unfair for you to have to pay tax on groceries while we give these multi-million dollar companies millions of dollars in tax exemptions to come here.”

State Representative Penny McClammy, D-Montgomery, sponsored a bill earlier this year to fully eliminate the grocery tax, but it did not gain traction with the Republican supermajority.

“What happened?” McClammy asked at the news conference. “My bill never made it off the table of the Ways and Means Education Committee. That bill would have started eliminating the last tax off groceries on September 1, but instead, the Legislature did manage to move a bill that removed the remaining 2 percent of sales tax on groceries during the months of May and June of this year ... That was very convenient because that was during the time of the primary election. What happened on July 1? The primary is over and your taxes went back up on groceries ... Now here we are weeks away from an election and our legislative leaders have come before you and said they’re ready to take the remaining 2 percent of taxes off of groceries this year. What changed?

“Families cannot take a press conference to the grocery store and pay for food with it, and they need relief now. Stop playing around with our time, stop playing around with our wallets ... Alabama families deserve more than temporary relief, they deserve lasting relief, and they deserve it whether there’s an election on the calendar or not.”

The party’s platform also includes expanding Medicaid, establishing a living wage, eliminating the tax on overtime pay and reducing taxes on farm equipment.

“We are here today to emphasize things that we have been fighting for, not just during the campaign, not just a week out from the election, but that Democrats have been fighting for for years in Alabama,” Ensler said. “For a long time, Democrats have been fighting for Medicaid expansion, and the first excuse we heard was that the state can’t do it because it was Obama, and the state wanted nothing to do with President Obama. Then the last few years we’ve heard that the state can’t afford it—that’s BS. The 90 percent that comes down from the federal government is free money that we can tap into, and that remaining 10 percent would pay for itself; when hospitals stay open, when people are employed, that is good for the local economy and the state economy ... Medicaid expansion is one way to make people’s lives more affordable by making sure that working Alabamians have access to an affordable healthcare option.”

Democrats had already led the way on a tax exemption for overtime pay, but Republican leaders turned the policy into a temporary one-year experiment and did not renew it the following session.

“So Republicans effectively led a tax increase on working Alabamians,” Ensler said.

With Election Day one week away, Alabama Democrats hope to benefit from projected nationwide gains for the party despite the state’s recent history as a Republican stronghold.