Taxing Billionaires

Floor Speech

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Mr. MAGAZINER. Mr. Speaker, I want you to take a look at this graph. There are two lines. The dark blue line is the effective tax rate paid by the 400 highest income earners in America, and the light blue line is the effective tax rate paid by the bottom half of income earners in our country.

In the 1960s, the people at the very top, the richest 400 Americans, paid about twice the tax rate that the average middle-class family did, but in 2018 during the Donald Trump Presidency and for the first time in our history, the billionaires started paying a lower tax rate than nurses, teachers, firefighters, and most other middle-class Americans who put in an honest day's work and make our economy run.

It is unfair, it is absurd, and it is wrong.

How did we get here? For years, corrupt rightwing politicians gave tax break after tax break to the billionaires and big corporations who funded their campaigns. When the billionaires and big corporations don't pay their fair share in taxes, you know who has to carry the load? Working people carry the load--working people who can't afford to pay thousands of dollars to go to Mar-a-Lago or Trump Hotel, working people who don't get to move their money overseas or hire an Army of accountants to find them tax loopholes or hire an Army of lobbyists to create new loopholes for them, working people who have their healthcare cut and their veterans benefits cut, working people who have to send their kids to crumbling schools all because the politicians tell them there isn't enough money left.

But there is always money when those billionaires come asking for more tax cuts, isn't there?

When Donald Trump and the Republicans were in charge, they passed a $2 trillion tax cut that went almost entirely to the wealthy, and then they turned around and tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act and kick 16 million Americans off their health insurance. We know what their priorities are, and we know what they will do if they return to power in this election.

Already, Donald Trump and House Republicans are meeting with industry lobbyists and billionaire donors to scheme how they can give away even more tax breaks to the people at the very top and cut the programs that working people depend on to get by.

Look at Project 2025, their policy plan for what they will do if they take control. That plan calls for cutting Social Security by raising the retirement age. It calls for repealing the Affordable Care Act, eliminating Head Start programs that provide preschool for 1 million children, eliminating the Department of Education, eliminating the National Weather Service. Republicans propose cuts, cuts, cuts to programs that help working people, and at the same time they propose giving even more tax cuts to the people at the top who don't need it.

It doesn't have to be this way.

We can go back to a system where the tax code is fair, and working people aren't asked to pay an unfair burden. By asking the people at the top to pay their fair share again like they used to, we can do incredible things in this country.

We can ensure that Social Security benefits keep up with the cost of living and that the program's life is extended indefinitely. We can cut the cost of healthcare. We can ensure that every child receives a world-class education. We can provide tax relief to working people who actually need it.

The possibilities are right there in front of us, but we need to reverse this dangerous trend. We need to stop the corruption. We need to start working for working people, not the big donors and the lobbyists, and we need to put people over politics.

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