Commemorating the day Americans file their tax returns, roughly 100 liberal activists protested outside the Madison Club Monday, where U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., was giving a speech, to show their discontent with his deficit plan.
The group proceeded to the Capitol Square to protest outside of Chase Bank to deliver a ""tax bill"" of nearly $2 billion in allegedly dodged taxes. They protested outside M&I Bank because of the banks' donations to Republicans. Some activists entered Chase, which prompted police to ask them to leave, and attempted to enter M&I before a security guard locked the door.
""Far too little attention has been paid to the fact that many of the largest and most profitable corporations in this country are quietly shifting their tax burden onto the tax-paying public,"" said Kyle Bailey, a policy advocate for Wisconsin Student Public Interest Research Group.
""By stopping corporations from stashing their profits in off-shore tax havens, which allow them to pay little to nothing in taxes, we can ease this nation's financial woes,"" Bailey said
Demonstrators focused their anger on Ryan's deficit plan and recent budget cuts in Congress, arguing that they were only necessary because of tax cuts for the rich and corporations and the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
""Don't let anybody tell you the money is not there,"" said Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, a member of the Teaching Assistants' Association. ""The money is there. There's a word for cutting schools and hospitals and jobs and giving the money to bankers and militaries. The word is class war. That's what this is. That's what they're doing to us.""
Outside the Madison Club where Ryan was supposedly speaking, protesters chanted ""make them pay"" and ""tax the rich,"" in attempts to drown out his speech. One protester brought a speaker playing Rick Astley's ""Never Gonna Give You Up"" inside the restaurant, but was quickly rebuffed by an employee.
""Right now is the tipping point,"" Steve Hughes, president of the Young Progressives said. ""We can either stand by as we watch our great state fall out from under us or we can rise up collectively and take back Wisconsin. It is in this moment that our history will be written.""
