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don beyer
Progressives Back Harris Plan to Raise Taxes on Billionaires
"Since 1975, over $50 trillion in wealth has been redistributed from the bottom 90% to the top 1%," said one proponent. "That's trillion with a 'T.'"
Aug 22, 2024
Progressive advocates on Thursday threw their support behind a so-called billionaire minimum income tax endorsed by Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, as a way to help tackle the wealth inequality that's worse in the U.S. than just about anywhere else in the Global North.
Left-leaning economists cheered news that Harris is embracing calls to tax the richest people in the country, who enjoy various ways of ensuring they pay lower tax rates than millions of working- and middle-class Americans including many nurses, teachers, and truck drivers.
"It's outrageous that billionaires pay less taxes than public school teachers."
The plan introduced by Harris' campaign this week would increase federal revenue by $5 trillion over a decade by hiking taxes on the wealthiest Americans. It contains tax increases proposed earlier this year in President Joe Biden's budget blueprint, which was welcomed by progressives with the caveats that much more needed to be done to help working-class Americans and that far too much money—nearly $900 billion—is allocated for military spending.
Republicans have falsely accused Harris of seeking to raise taxes on the middle class.
"There's lots of tax proposals in the Biden budget, which Harris has endorsed, so why are Republicans choosing to focus on the obviously false claim that the billionaire minimum income tax applies to the middle class when the name itself refutes that?" University of Wisconsin, Madison economic policy expert Harry Stein
said Thursday on social media.
As The New York Timesreported Thursday:
No one making less than $400,000 a year would see their taxes go up under the plan. Instead, Ms. Harris is seeking to significantly raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans and large corporations. Congress has previously rejected many of these tax ideas, even when Democrats controlled both chambers.
While tax policy is right now a subplot in a turbulent presidential campaign, it will be a primary policy issue in Washington next year. The next president will have to work with Congress to address the tax cuts [then-President] Donald J. Trump signed into law in 2017. Many of those tax cuts expire after 2025, meaning millions of Americans will see their taxes go up if lawmakers don't reach a deal next year.
Harris' plan would raise the top marginal income tax rate from 37% to 39.6%, while also increasing Medicare surtax rates from 3.8% to 5% for Americans making more than $400,000 per year. Meanwhile, gains on investments would be taxed at the same rate as regular income for people making more than $1 million annually.
"The superrich don't make their money the way most people do. Their money comes from owning businesses, property, financial assets, and inheritances," economist Michael Linden
explained in a Wednesday social media post. "These types of income all enjoy special tax advantages, and that's why they end up paying less than middle-income Americans."
On Thursday, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)
said that "it's outrageous that billionaires pay less taxes than public school teachers. It's time that we make the wealthy pay their fair share. My ultra-millionaire tax would do just that."
In March, Warren and Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.)
introduced an updated version of a 2021 bill that they said would bring in at least $3 trillion over 10 years by imposing a 2% tax on wealth over $50 million. The legislation also includes a 3% tax on the wealthiest households overall, with a 1% annual surtax on the net worth of households and trusts over $1 billion.
Last year, Reps. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) and Don Beyer (D-Va.)
reintroduced the Billionaire Minimum Income Tax Act with the support of scores of House Democrats. The bill—which was drafted in coordination with the White House and U.S. Treasury Department and is backed by dozens of labor and progressive groups—would amend the Internal Revenue Code to factor unrealized gains into a minimum tax on certain wealthy individuals.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) led 15 of his colleagues in introducing an upper chamber version of the legislation.
Meanwhile, Trump, the Republican nominee for president, has promised to extend the tax cuts from his $1.5 trillion plan, which was derided as the "GOP tax scam" when he signed it into law during his first White House term. A 2023 analysis by the progressive advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness found that the collective fortune of U.S. billionaires skyrocketed by more than $2 trillion in the years after Trump signed the tax cuts into law.
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GOP Confirms 2025 Tax Plan If Trump Wins: More Giveaways to the Rich
"There are 20 years of data showing trickle-down economics doesn't work, yet today will still be a whole lot of revisionist history and wishful thinking on the singular largest failure of fiscal policy in recent memory," said Rep. Richard Neal.
Apr 12, 2024
As House Republicans prepare for Donald Trump's possible White House return by plotting to expand the billionaire and corporate tax cuts that were the cornerstone of the former president's first administration, congressional Democrats and advocates for working Americans warned Thursday that a second Trump term would bring more of the same inequality-exacerbating policies.
The GOP-controlled House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing Thursday on "expanding the success" of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA)—widely derided by opponents as the "GOP Tax Scam." Republican committee members couched a policy that the Center for Popular Democracy said "delivered big benefits to the rich and corporations but nearly none for working families" as "relief to help hardworking American families."
Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), the committee's ranking member, pushed back during Thursday's hearing, noting that "in the last three decades, Republicans have skyrocketed the deficit with trillions in tax cuts for billionaires and big corporations, always with the same result: the top 1% benefits while nothing trickles down for workers."
Neal continued:
In 2017, Ways and Means Democrats saw the GOP corporate tax giveaway for what it was: a scam. We knew that their Tax Scam would disproportionately benefit the wealthy and well-connected. We knew that it wouldn't pay for itself. We knew that big corporations, not their workers, would feel the most benefit. Six years since the GOP Tax Scam was signed into law, we've been proven right on every count. It didn't pay for itself, it didn't increase revenue, and it didn't increase wages.
A recent study whose authors included [Joint Committee on Taxation] economists—let that sink in—found that ALL of the corporate gains from TCJA went to shareholders and high-paid executives, with absolutely nothing flowing to workers. Fifty-six percent of the tax cuts enriched shareholders, and the remaining 44% lined the pockets of execs. Zero percent went to workers. ZERO!
"There are 20 years of data showing trickle-down economics doesn't work, yet today will still be a whole lot of revisionist history and wishful thinking on the singular largest failure of fiscal policy in recent memory," Neal added. "If workers and the middle class are actually your priorities, putting them ahead of big corporations and billionaires is the only way."
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.)—who also sits on the committee—agreed, asserting on social media that "the Trump tax cuts were a huge 'success' if you were a billionaire or an executive at a large corporation. They made out like bandits, with a huge amount of the benefits from the GOP tax law going to the wealthiest. Now Republicans want to give the superrich even more tax cuts."
Trump is open about this. At an exclusive fundraiser at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida last week, he shouted out his "rich as hell" supporters, telling them, "We're gonna give you tax cuts, we're gonna pay off our debt."
That's the same debt that soared by around $8 trillion during Trump's term—largely as a result of his tax cuts. Meanwhile, U.S. billionaires have collectively gotten $2.2 trillion richer since the GOP tax cuts took effect.
With many provisions of the TCJA set to expire at the end of 2025, progressives are underscoring what's at stake in this November's elections.
"Today the American people got a preview of what's in store for them next year if the Trump Tax Scam expires under conservative leadership," Groundwork Collaborative executive director Lindsay Owens said following the House hearing. "The conservative playbook for the 2025 tax fight is coming into focus, and we can be sure it includes more giveaways for the wealthy and corporations."
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House Democrat Calls GOP Budget a 'Blueprint for a Dystopian Hellscape'
Rep. Don Beyer warns the plan "would see unbridled benefits flowing to a wealthy and well-connected few while tens of millions of Americans lose healthcare, housing, retirement security, and food security."
Mar 27, 2024
As Republicans on Wednesday set their sights on a key seat opening up in the U.S. House of Representatives, the chamber's senior Democrat on the congressional Joint Economic Committee put out a blistering takedown of a top GOP budget proposal for the next fiscal year.
Congressman Don Beyer (D-Va.) took aim at the 180-page "Fiscal Sanity to Save America" plan released last week by the Republican Study Committee (RSC)—which includes about 80% of GOP House members—following proposals from Democratic President Joe Biden and House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas).
"The Republican Study Committee budget is a blueprint for a dystopian hellscape," he warned. "The vision offered by this group, which counts 4 in 5 House Republicans as members, would see unbridled benefits flowing to a wealthy and well-connected few while tens of millions of Americans lose healthcare, housing, retirement security, and food security."
RSC proposals to "dramatically weaken healthcare," Beyer noted, include turning Medicare into a voucher plan and rolling back Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provisions that cut costs for seniors; repealing tax subsidies for the Affordable Care Act and the law's protections for people with preexisting conditions; and transforming Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program into block grants to states.
As Common Dreams has reported, in addition to seeking cuts to Medicare and Social Security—while claiming to do nothing of the sort—the RSC has also launched a full-fledged assault on reproductive healthcare and rights, promoting 42 bills that would ban abortions after 15 weeks or even earlier, require unnecessary ultrasounds and 24-hour waiting periods, prohibit the use of fetal stem cells for research, and threaten access to in vitro fertilization, among other restrictions.
In addition to attacking reproductive freedom and key programs for seniors and low-income families, Beyer highlighted, the RSC wants to "weaken public health, public safety, and environmental protections," while "cutting taxes for the wealthy, by a lot."
The RSC advocates ending green tax credits from the IRA and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act as well as slashing money for Community Oriented Policing Services and the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. The committee also calls for permanently lowering taxes for the ultrarich, indexing capital gains taxes to inflation, repealing the estate tax, rolling back the IRA's corporate alternative minimum tax, and eliminating funding intended to help the Internal Revenue Service catch wealthy tax cheats.
"Democrats believe there is a better way to get our fiscal house in order without betraying our values," said Beyer. "That starts with making smart investments in our people and our future while demanding that the rich and large corporations pay their fair share in taxes. The contrast between the Democratic approach and this Republican budget could not possibly be clearer."
Biden's budget blueprint—released as he prepares for an electoral rematch against former Republican President Donald Trump, who infamously cut taxes for rich people and corporations—proposes a 25% minimum tax for individuals with wealth of more than $100 million, along with ending capital income tax breaks and closing other loopholes.
Polling results released Tuesday by Morning Consult show that a majority of voters across party lines in key swing states support raising taxes on people who make more than $400,000 per year.
Biden and the divided Congress this past weekend narrowly avoided a government shutdown by passing a long-delayed spending package. Fiscal year 2025 is set to begin in October, setting up another election-year fight over funding.
In what's been
dubbed the "Great Resignation," a growing number of House Republicans have announced that they are not seeking reelection or even exited their seats early—shrinking the party's already slim majority in the lower chamber.
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