Posted on 01/12/2019 10:30:38 AM PST by yesthatjallen
House Democrats are treading carefully when it comes to talk of a 70 percent marginal tax rate on income above $10 million, an idea floated by freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in a recent “60 Minutes” interview.
Many Democrats are supportive of the freshman phenom’s call for higher taxes on the rich, but even some progressives are stopping short of endorsing that high a marginal rate.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said she thinks “the fact that people are not paying their fair share is a problem and the millionaires and billionaires are the ones where that has to rest.”
Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), a leader of the progressive caucus in the last Congress, said that while it’s important to make sure that “everybody’s carrying their load,” he didn’t know if 70 percent “would be the right number or not.”
House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) said he wasn’t sure about a specific top rate but said that Ocasio-Cortez is “not off-base.”
Other Democratic lawmakers were more critical.
“I thought it was comical,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.), a member of the tax writing Ways and Means panel.
“You can have reasonable taxation, and then you can send signals that we’re just going to go after people who have a few dollars,” he said.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who is first vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said he would take a different approach to raising revenue, such as repealing past tax cuts on high earners, taxing corporations on foreign earnings that currently aren’t being taxed, creating a financial transactions tax and reducing U.S. military involvement overseas.
“My view is one that there are better ways of getting to the revenue” than a 70-percent tax on high incomes, he said.
Ocasio-Cortez floated the idea as a way to help pay for a “Green New Deal,” a proposal aimed at taking action on climate change.
More broadly, the new lawmaker has argued that a progressive tax system with higher taxes on the wealthy is well worth considering as the country looks for ways to pay for initiative on healthcare and other safety-net issues.
She also made the argument that such high rates are hardly unprecedented.
“You look at our tax rates back in the '60s and when you have a progressive tax rate system your tax rate, you know, let's say, from zero to $75,000 maybe 10 percent or 15 percent, et cetera. But once you get to, like, the tippy tops — on your 10 millionth dollar — sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60 or 70 percent,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
She noted that a high marginal rate wouldn’t hit most Americans, and that it would also only pinch a portion of a wealthy person’s income. A 70 percent marginal rate on income of $10 million would be effective only on a person’s income above $10 million.
“That doesn't mean all $10 million are taxed at an extremely high rate, but it means that as you climb up this ladder you should be contributing more,” she said in the “60 Minutes” interview.
Ocasio-Cortez spokesman Corbin Trent told The Hill that what the congresswoman’s remarks on the show were “more conceptual” than a specific proposal for a 70 percent marginal rate.
The top marginal tax rate in the United States was above 90 percent in much of the 1950s and early 1960s, and the rate was 70 percent as recently as 1980.That year, the 70-percent rate applied to income over $215,400 for married couples.
During Ronald Reagan’s presidency, the top rate was first cut to 50 percent and then lowered again to 28 percent.
In the last 25 years, the top rate has been in the mid-to-high 30s, with President Trump’s tax law lowering the top rate from 39.6 percent to 37 percent. In 2019, the 37-percent rate applies to income over $612,350 for a married couple filing jointly.
Ocasio-Cortez’s call for a 70 percent marginal tax rate does have the support of another freshman progressive lawmaker: Rep. Ayana Pressley (D-Mass.), who said she could potentially see herself introducing or sponsoring legislation down the line.
“I think we have a decisive mandate from this electorate, this 116th Congressional class to be bold. I think every creative solution needs to be on the table,”Pressley told The Hill. “And from a values based perspective to tax those, you know, who earn $10 million a year, I think it's exactly what we should be doing.”
Pressley said, while she and most members are currently focused on the partial government shutdown, she looks forward to continuing having a dialogue with like-minded members as they consider crafting policy.
ETC...
When Democrats talk about “fair share”, they really mean 100% (except for themselves, of course).
“It is call equal treatment under the law.”
Progressive taxation is equal treatment under the law.
If I was to own a mansion, I would pay the property taxes associated with the mansion, which are determined based on market valuation.
If you think otherwise, file suit to revoke Amendment XVI ratifications as being violative of Amendment XIV.
We’ve always had unequal property taxation in the United States.
They’re being nice,so far - but if you don’t think her meteoric rise and spotlight stealing hasn’t made the rank and file Dem congress critters livid, think again.
He has big policy socialist dreams with his sights set squarely on the halls of power. His agenda is the “Green New Deal,” transforming the American economy, and criminal justice reform. .He wants to lay the groundwork now to make them realities by launching/supporting hundreds of progressive/socialist candidates into congressional races.
Here's his outside guy....."Waleed Shahid"...Communications Director at "Justice Dems" (socialist)..Justice Dems are who gave Ocasio-Cortez media and policy training.
I thought everything being talked about to this point was income taxes.
I agree with T.P. Pole in #38 ...
Are you sure that you aren't looking for Democratic Underground or Huffington Post?
“What the hell has that got to do with how people should be taxed?”
Reality.
Not enough income for a waiter to pay a 40% tax rate.
Not practical. We can’t have most waiters sleeping on the sidewalks.
If you insist on impractical proposals, you will get nowhere.
A doctor can pay 70% on a doctor’s income and live in a house.
A doctor can pay 70% on a doctor’s income and live in a mansion.
I can’t pay 70% and get by.
Just is.
Accept reality.
“It is call equal treatment under the law.”
Equal treatment under the law is not required of the federal government.
The federal government can draft males and send them to the jungles of Asia to fight and die and give free goodies to females.
If AOC is serious about raising taxes on the wealthy, she should simply propose a law eliminating tax shelters, for example, off-shore tax havens like the Cayman Islands.
But the Democrats never propose such things — probably because their main source of campaign donations is Wall Street and its many millionaires.
In fact, the only reasonable explanation for why Wall Street fills the Democrats’ campaign coffers every election season is to bribe the Democrats not to eliminate their precious tax shelters.
There’s sure a lot of 3rd world imports involved in trying to force the Social Democrat agenda on this country.
Fits in with what transformed California over the years. Too many imagine that illegal immigration was the driving force, but it’s legal immigrants who vote and they have been voting left.
Not enough income for a waiter to pay a 40% tax rate.
Not practical. We can’t have most waiters sleeping on the sidewalks.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
You are dealing with LIBs and Socialists here..
IF the Restaurant owner can pay the 15 or 20 or whatever per hour to the bus boy, he can afford to pay the busboys apartment rent
Of course no one in ‘the group’ understands that when the prices are so high to ‘cover everything’ there will either be robot staffs OR the owner will close his doors and look for a job where someone has to take care of him.
The answer to EVERYTING in the LIB/Socialist world is based on OPM and when OP say this is enough....well you get the point....
That is not a "fact", it is an opinion...
Those silicon millionaires are going to need to get her to exempt their stock options.
“Are you sure that you aren’t looking for Democratic Underground or Huffington Post?”
I am a realistic conservative.
My beliefs are tempered by reality and human psychology.
I am as conservative as reality and human psychology allow.
I hope you simply forgot the /s.
She screws up so often because she can't remember what these guys teach and taught her about politics.......come on she was a bartender!
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I suggest a trial to see how it works. A small sampling, say the 535 members of Congress.
"Behind every woman with an economics degree, there’s a man who read the economist once explaining things to her."
I am 51. I have been a workaholic my entire life to the point that I even had a quadruple bypass at 45. Despite radical changes to my diet, excerise, and “sin” habits (quit chewing just before heart surgery without knowing I needed heart surgery). I have also quit caffeine alcohol, salt, and sugar, and have even become fairly fanatical about nutrition. And despite this, my blood pressure is rarely under 180 or 190. I say this not to complain, I made my choices, but as an announcement that I will retire and remove myself from the tax pool. I have sacrificed a lot in life, but It is not about dollar amounts. Being a salaried employee, I work a krap-ton of “overtime”. I do not make a single extra dime for every hour of overtime I work. A 100 work week is not uncommon. A 21 day “work week” is not uncommon.All it does is increase the number of hours a week and thus the percentage of my time in involuntary servitude to others who did not sacrifice anything keeping up with the latest technology, or keeping sharp in science and mathematics while away from “home” 40+ weeks a year going on 3 decades. A 70% tax rate means that on my 100 hour work week that I am spending 70 hours working for layabouts. On a 40 hour work week, I am working 28 of those hours in servitude to others. Not for roads, or bridges, and certainly not national defense for everybody, but to do things like pay for EBT so “the poor” can drive up to the supermarket in their escalades and purchase the best cuts of meat unavailable to the average family which they promptly sell to the black market for cash. I will not be a slave anymore
Straight out of liberal/progressive universities into the halls of power....though most work ‘hidden’ behind a personage used as their front as with Cortez. They do not just forget the cultural social leanings they were raised with, rather desire to install those in our country to change our country into the very failed systems they come from. BECAUSE they believe themselves superior to those who tried socialism before....that they have the right way now to implement it.
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