![Congressman Jamaal Bowman](https://assets.rbl.ms/32012555/origin.png)
Rep. Jamaal Bowman Introduces Bill To Make Billionaires Pay Fair Share
Today, Congressman Jamaal Bowman, Ed.D. (NY-16) introduced legislation titled the "Babies Over Billionaires Act" which would tax the unrealized capital gains of the top 0.01% of taxpayers with over $100 million in assets.
Today, Congressman Jamaal Bowman, Ed.D. (NY-16) introduced legislation titled the "Babies Over Billionaires Act" which would tax the unrealized capital gains of the top 0.01% of taxpayers with over $100 million in assets.
"Since the pandemic began, everyday people have borne the brunt of negative public health and economic outcomes. COVID-19 has taken nearly one million lives in the United States alone, forced people to decide between paying rent or buying food, and otherwise upended the livelihoods of millions, especially our youth," said Congressman Jamaal Bowman, Ed.D. (NY-16). "Meanwhile, American billionaires have shamelessly increased their collective wealth by more than $2 trillion. As a society it's time we center the people's needs who account for most of the American population, instead of roughly 700 billionaires who have swindled us all."
"Policy reflects our priorities, and for decades, the United States has chosen to invest in the personal wealth of billionaires while failing to invest in the tangible needs of our children and our communities. Working class people are taxed more than billionaires at times and often have their income more harshly scrutinized, all while struggling to keep up with the rising costs of basic needs like food and housing. At the same time, the tax code privileges billionaires who hide their wealth in an effort to avoid paying their fair share in taxes. The IRS also lacks the resources and capacity needed to audit and tax the ultra wealthy, while consistently auditing and taxing working families more. This bill would direct more resources towards the IRS to audit and tax people whose income requires more than reviewing just a W-2 or 1099 form, people like billionaires. By auditing and taxing the 700 richest people in our country the wealthy will finally pay their fair share. As a result more taxpayers funds would be made available for children-centered programs in the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. We must invest in our youth's future and critical social safety nets - the wealthy are more than capable of funding that effort!"
"Billionaires should pay their fair share of taxes - just like everyday workers, just like a grocery clerk, a teacher, a police officer, or a nurse," said Congressman Danny K. Davis (Il-7). "Equitable taxation is a critical step to providing much-needed federal investment to strengthen children and families."
"Billionaires and working families have had extremely different experiences in the last two years," said Congresswoman Susan Wild (PA-7). "This bill will address the inequities in our tax code that keep the ultra-wealthy from paying their fair share and will invest the revenue raised in those who deserve it most: our children and hardworking families."
"America has a two-tier tax system: one system for the millionaires and billionaires, and one system for everyone else. That unfair system is a primary driver of the economic divisions slowly tearing America apart," said Congressman Bill Pascrell (NJ-9), a senior member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee and lead sponsor of legislation to close the infamous stepped-up basis and carried interest loopholes. "This legislation is another sharp tool to rebalance our unfair two-tier tax system and finally begin making those at the top pay their rightful share. Measures like this are essential to rebuilding public confidence in our nation. I thank Rep. Bowman for his aggressive work to make our tax system fair again."
It's time the tax code works for working families and not just wealthy people. The Babies Over Billionaires Act proposes income tax reform for the ultra-wealthy that would disproportionately impact the roughly 700 billionaires in the country to raise more than $1 trillion over ten years.
Specifically, the Babies Over Billionaires Act will:
* Annually tax 30% of unrealized gains of ultra-millionaires from publicly traded capital assets at the prevailing long-term capital gains rate;
* Tax 50% of unrealized gains of private capital assets at the prevailing long-term capital gains rate every 5 years;
* Mandate the IRS annually audit filers reporting in excess of $100 million in assets to crack down on rampant tax abuse by the wealthy.
* Invest the revenue raised by this tax in programs run by the Department of Education and HHS that support families and children.
Co-leads of the legislation include Representatives Bill Pascrell, Danny K. Davis, and Susan Wild.
Co-sponsors of the legislation include Representatives Eleanor Holmes Norton and Bonnie Watson Coleman.
Sponsoring organizations and people include: the American Federation of Teachers, Patriotic Millionaires, Economic Security Project Action, National Latino Farmers & Ranchers Trade Association, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, National Black Justice Coalition, Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), Coalition on Human Needs, MomsRising, Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate JPIC, People's Action, Jobs with Justice, RootsAction.org, Family Values @ Work Action, Public Citizen, National Asso. for Hispanic Elderly, Main Street Alliance, NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice, Family Values@Work, Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, RESULTS, Oxfam America, National Coalition for the Homeless, Indivisible, MoveOn and American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employee
Click herefor a one-page summary of the Babies Over Billionaires Act.
Click here for a section-by-section of the Babies Over Billionaires Act.
Click here for full bill text of the Babies over Billionaires Act.
"The existing income tax is badly broken as applied to most billionaires and mega-millionaires, who are typically able to escape all tax on the majority of their true income or the returns to their invested wealth. This bill would fix the income tax by ending the ways in which billionaires and mega-millionaires currently escape tax. The bill uses an innovative phased mark-to-market methodology to spread out the taxation of investment gains over time so as to minimize valuation problems and volatility," said David Gamage, Law Professor at University of Indiana.
"Basic fairness and sound tax policy more broadly indicate that we need to do better at taxing the income of the extremely wealthy. This bill introduces two important innovations. First, the bill only taxes a portion of the capital gains of billionaires, which helps deal with fluctuations in asset value. Second, the bill taxes privately held assets, but less regularly than public assets. This will prevent gamesmanship between asset categories while also not imposing too great an administrative burden," said Darien Shanske, Law Professor at UC Davis.
"This legislation makes a simple yet profound statement: our tax system must start benefiting babies and their working parents, and stop coddling billionaires and their yachts. This bill will close one of the worst tax loopholes so that billionaires and other ultrarich people will be taxed annually on their investment gains--just like workers are taxed every year on their wages. Rep. Bowman's bill makes the tax system fairer while raising lots of needed revenue from the ones best able to supply it," said Frank Clemente, Executive Director, Americans for Tax Fairness.
"For too long, our tax system has made it possible for the super rich to extract wealth from white, Black and Brown working people, while not paying their fair share for the services we all use. This has created exploding white billionaire wealth and struggling Black and Brown working families. It's time we start using the tax code to build wealth for working people," said Mandla Deskins, Take on Wall Street at Americans for Financial Reform.
"Too many American families are struggling--living paycheck to paycheck or not making ends meet, particularly with rising costs, while doing their best to keep their loved ones healthy and helping their kids stay safe and engaged at school. The past two years have challenged us in so many ways, and the American family has stepped up each time. Yet at the same time, American billionaires are making a killing during COVID-19, managing to accumulate more than $1.7 trillion in new wealth during the pandemic and, in some cases, paying as little as nothing in federal taxes.
No one should be profiting off a pandemic while shirking their responsibilities to pay their fair share, especially at the expense of our youth. Rep. Jamaal Bowman's Babies Over Billionaires Act is just a commonsense rebalancing of the tax code by rewarding work instead of extreme wealth and prioritizing investments that benefit our nation's future generations," said Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers.
"While the country suffered during the COVID crisis, the wealth of the billionaire class surged by $2 trillion, and these wealth gains have gone largely untaxed. [Rep.] Bowman's bill addresses head-on this tax injustice by making sure billionaires pay their fair share and pay it timely. The proposed tax will raise more than $1T over the next 10 years solely from billionaires, making it possible to keep funding the expansion of the child tax credit that cut child poverty in half in 2021," said Emmanuel Saez, Economics Professor at UC Berkeley.
"While ordinary workers have to pay taxes year after year, billionaires can defer taxation for decades and sometimes forever. Congressman Bowman's bill is a common-sense solution to this unjustifiable situation," said Gabriel Zucman, Economics Professor at UC Berkeley.
"Our current tax code is ill-equipped to handle the realities of modern wealth. As a result, billionaire wealth in America has skyrocketed while many pay virtually no taxes. Their ability to choose when to pay taxes on their capital gains gives them an enormous advantage over people who pay taxes on every paycheck. It's time to require the richest people in this country to pay taxes every year just like Americans who work for a living. The Babies over Billionaires Act is exactly what this country needs - it would fix one of the fundamental injustices of our tax code and raise hundreds of billions of dollars while costing 99.9% of Americans nothing," said Morris Pearl, the Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires and a former managing director at BlackRock, Inc.
"Rep. Bowman's bill tackles the single biggest inequity in the tax code - the fact that billionaires often pay no tax at all as they accumulate their enormous wealth, while working people have taxes taken out of every paycheck. With President Biden's billionaire minimum tax proposal and this important new legislation, there is growing momentum to fix our broken tax code and plans on the table that are both bold and practical. Rep. Bowman and colleagues should be commended for confronting inequality head on and prioritizing children and families," said Seth Hanlon, Senior Fellow for Tax and Budget Policy at Center for American Progress.
Jamaal Anthony Bowman is an American politician and educator serving as the U.S. representative for New York's 16th congressional district since 2021.
(202) 225-2464'Unfathomable': Lancet Study Estimates Gaza Death Toll May Exceed 186,000
"The horror unfolding in Gaza is unquestionably a genocide, and the full extent of that horror won't be truly known until it comes to an end," said one political analyst.
Amid the decimation of Gaza's healthcare system and Israel's relentless attacks on the enclave, officials have struggled to account for all the Palestinians who have been killed since the Israel Defense Forces began its assault in October—and a new analysis shows how "indirect" killings will likely push the death toll of the war to what one peace advocate called an "unfathomable" number.
In a letter published in the medical journal The Lancet on July 5, three public health experts cited a previous official death toll of 37,396, but pointed out that "armed conflicts have indirect health implications beyond the direct harm from violence," making it likely that the total number of deaths of Palestinians so far is much higher—and could ultimately reach close to 200,000, if not more.
"Even if the conflict ends immediately, there will continue to be many indirect deaths in the coming months and years from causes such as reproductive, communicable, and noncommunicable disease," wrote the authors. "The total death toll is expected to be large given the intensity of this conflict."
Since the authors researched the analysis, the death toll has grown to 38,193, according to Gaza health officials.
The authors wrote that an untold number of Palestinians in Gaza have died as a result of destroyed healthcare infrastructure and an inability to get medical care, starvation amid Israel's near-total blockade on humanitarian aid, and the loss of funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), one of the "very few humanitarian organizations" still working in Gaza.
Rasha Khatib of the Advocate Aurora Research Institute, Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Salim Yusuf of McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences noted that "in recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths."
"Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37,396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza."
Using the 2022 population estimate of more than 2.3 million people, the projected total death toll "would translate to 7%-9% of the total population in the Gaza Strip," reads the study.
Anthropologist Jason Hickle said the study pointed to "apocalyptic figures" in Gaza.
The Gaza Health Ministry's death count has been questioned since Israel began its bombardment of the enclave, with U.S. President Joe Biden saying in October that he had "no confidence" in officials' reports and the U.N. revising its civilian death toll in May as the Health Ministry amended its reporting of unidentified bodies.
Despite that change, wrote the authors, "the number of reported deaths is likely an underestimate," both because of "indirect" causes of death and the probability that thousands of Palestinians are still buried under rubble left behind by Israeli air-strikes.
"The U.N. estimates that, by February 29, 2024, 35% of buildings in the Gaza Strip had been destroyed, so the number of bodies still buried in the rubble is likely substantial, with estimates of more than 10,000," reads the analysis.
The authors also dismissed claims by Israeli authorities and others who have contested the Health Ministry's figures, noting that the Israeli intelligence services, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations "all agree that claims of data fabrication leveled against the Palestinian authorities in Gaza over its death toll are 'implausible.'"
Considering statements by top-level Israeli officials regarding their intent to "thin the population" of Gaza, "to a minimum," as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said, political analyst Omar Baddar said the estimated true death toll "isn't all that surprising."
The analysis was published days before the Israeli news outlet +972 Magazine published an article drawing from interviews with six Israeli soldiers who described how they "routinely executed Palestinian civilians simply because they entered an area that the military defined as a 'no-go zone'" and followed a "systematic policy of setting Palestinian homes on fire after occupying them."
Andre Damon of the World Socialist Web Sitesaid the projected death toll outlined in The Lancet represents "a systematic effort to exterminate the Palestinian people: armed, funded, and led by the U.S."
Israel faces an ongoing South Africa-led genocide case at the International Court of Justice.
The authors of the study said that "an immediate and urgent cease-fire in the Gaza Strip is essential, accompanied by measures to enable the distribution of medical supplies, food, clean water, and other resources for basic human needs."
"At the same time, there is a need to record the scale and nature of suffering in this conflict," they wrote. "Documenting the true scale is crucial for ensuring historical accountability and acknowledging the full cost of the war."
Stalwart Biden Defender Stephen King Says: 'It's Time'
"In the interests of the America he so clearly loves," says the novelist, the Democratic incumbent should "announce he will not run for re-election."
While President Joe Biden on Monday tried to put an end to the national discussion about whether or not he should stay in the presidential race any longer, another longtime and vocal ally offered his unsolicited advice.
"Joe Biden has been a fine president, but it's time for him—in the interests of the America he so clearly loves—to announce he will not run for re-election," famed novelist and essayist Stephen King declared in social media post.
King, a loyal Democrat for decades who has been outspoken in his praise for Biden, is no friend of the Republican's presumptive nominee, Donald Trump, who the author has categorized as an existential threat to the nation and the world.
In 2017, King took note of the former president's proposed tax plan—a version of which later passed into law and showered enormous giveaways to the very rich and corporations—by telling working people in the U.S. that it showed Trump "couldn't give shit one about you."
"Trump's no friend of the working man," King said.
On Sunday, in response to a leftist victory in France by which the far-right faction was blocked from seizing control of Parliament, King said: "The French right wing is going down to defeat in spite of polls. May it happen to Trump and his head-in-the-sand cronies."
'Go Forth and Win!' Labor Movement Celebrates Life of Jane McAlevey (1964-2024)
"No individual did more in the 21st century to spread the ideas and practice of a fighting, community-rooted, member-driven labor movement than Jane McAlevey."
Members of the global labor movement expressed an outpouring of love, sadness, and gratitude for the life and work of Jane F. McAlevey after news of the union organizer's death on Sunday at the age of 59.
Born on Oct. 12, 1964, McAlevey was the author of numerous books on worker organizing, including "No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age" and "A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy." Despite a series of battles with cancer since 2008, she continued to organize, teach, and write nearly to the end.
In early April, McAlevey announced she would stop working to enter in-home hospice care for the remainder of her days. "No matter how much I love the challenge of a good fight, this was never one I could win," she wrote at the time. On Sunday, a message posted to her website said she died "surrounded by family and her dedicated care team" and her stepbrother Mitchell Rotbert subsequently confirmed her passing to the New York Times, citing the cause as multiple myeloma.
"No individual did more in the 21st century to spread the ideas and practice of a fighting, community-rooted, member-driven labor movement than Jane McAlevey," wroteJacobin's editor Micah Uetricht. "The United States and the world need her more than ever at this exact moment. It's incredibly cruel that she's gone."
According to the Times:
Ms. McAlevey (pronounced MACK-a-leevee) dedicated her life to increasing working class power. She believed that worker-driven unions—led from the bottom up rather from the top down—were the most effective enginesto combat economic inequality.
In her writings, including for The Nation, as what the magazine described as its "strikes correspondent," and in frequent media interviews and podcasts, Ms. McAlevey became a vocal critic of what she saw as the complacency, ineptitude and corporate collusion of many U.S. labor leaders.
"What almost no union does is actually organize their members as members in their own communities to build community power," she said in an interview for this obituary last November. "I teach workers to take over their unions and change them."
Upon word of her death, longtime colleagues and friends expressed their sorrow as they championed McAlevey's approach to working-class politics and union organizing.
"Incredibly sad to learn that my friend, and one woman powerhouse, Jane McAlevey has passed away," said Jo Grady, general secretary of the University and College Union. "Literally everything she did—from organising workers, fighting right wingers, to hustling touts for tickets to sold out football matches—she did with effervescence and joy."
"Tonight," said Ethan Earle, a colleague of McAlevey's at Organizing for Power, on Sunday evening, "my heart is at once broken and full with the challenge she has left to us: to both mourn for our dead and fight like hell for our living."
In a heartfelt tribute to his colleague and friend posted on the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation website, Earle writes:
She knew she was going to die, had known it for months, and raced against the clock to complete as much work as she could towards the organizing future that she knew she would not see. That, ultimately, is Jane's legacy — a gift to all of us. The work output itself, but also her commitment to that work, and the belief that we can in fact win, but only through real discipline and real struggle.
Her track record was formidable — to her opponents but also perhaps to young organizers seeking to follow in her footsteps. For foes and friends alike, Jane had something of a magical aura about her. That said, she always sought to shed that perception. Everything she did was the result of hard work and practice — and all of it can be reproduced by those willing to put in the time that she did.
So, read her books and take her trainings, but not to deify her — nothing could be further from her mission. Take them so that you can put into practice the same methods that Jane McAlevey spent a lifetime practicing, modelling, and instilling in others. And then, as she would so often say at the end of a session: Go forth and win!
The Nation's John Nichols said "union activists worldwide will mark" the passing of McAlevey, who he described as "a brilliant labor organizer and an even more brilliant human being."
Writing of the far-reaching nature of her career, Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan Robinson wrote in April how her "work should be carefully studied, because she has done as much as anyone else to clearly explain the problem with the distribution of power in this country, and show practically how that distribution can be changed."
With a clear-eyed view of how the world works and no-nonsense style of communicating, McAlevey was a sharp critic of capital but also self-reflective about the weaknesses of the left and shortcomings of labor, especially leadership failures within union structures.
In Uetricht's mind, there are two big ideas central to McAlevey's lifetime of work that people who want to understand her thinking and appreciate her legacy should understand. The first is "a seriousness with which she approached questions of strategy and tactics for organizers, rooted in her obsession with actually winning." And the second was her "unwavering belief that you can't change the world without the labor movement."
Asked last year in an interview with Jacobin why she decided to focus on the labor movement as opposed to some other vehicle for achieving a better world, McAlevey answered: "Oh my god, because there is no other way."
"All of the work we do matters in the progressive movement, but we live in something called capitalism," she said. "It took me ten years of being in the environmental justice movement, the student movement, the peace movement, to realize that in a country without real democracy, the one thing that the employer class will respond to is when all the workers walk off the job and create a crisis. That, at the end of the day, is the most effective way to challenge unfettered corporate power."
With Sunday's news of McAlevey's passing dovetailing with a historic win by the left coalition in snap elections in France which organized to prevent further gains by the nation's far-right, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA union Sara Nelson, a longtime friend and ally, posted this message:
Borrowing from the famous labor song, Joe Hill, labor activist and organizer Mark Cunningham offered this tribute to McAlevey on social media:
I dreamed I saw Jane McAlevey last night,
alive as you and me.
Says I "but Jane, you passed away".
"I never died" says she
And standing there as big as life
And smiling with her eyes
Says Jane, "What cancer cannot kill"
"Went on to organize"
"Went on to organize"
And as Grady put it, "Her passing is a huge loss for the labour movement, but the legacy she leaves is a blessing. She will be so deeply missed."
As she was famous for saying, there are "no shortcuts" toward progressive victories, but by commitment, intelligence, and harnessing the intrinsic power of workers, there is a way.
In her 2020 book, "A Collective Bargain," McAlevey argues that "power for ordinary people can be built only by ordinary people standing up for themselves, with their own resources, in campaigns where they turn the prevailing dogma of individualism on its head."
She concludes the book by writing, "Good unions points us in the direction we need to go and produce the solidarity and unity desperately needed to win." In her career as an organizer and labor educator and training, winning for the working class was always at the center for Jane McAlevey.
"We can fight," she declared, "and we can win."