Report: Democrat Rep. Thomas Suozzi Explores a ‘Patriot Tax’ on Multimillionaires
Democrat Rep. Thomas Suozzi is exploring a one-time tax on wealthy Americans as Democrats are looking for ways to pay for their partisan wish list while they control Congress.
Suozzi (D-NY), who sits on the House Ways and Means Committee, told the Hill he is looking into a one-time tax on millionaires, called the “patriot tax.” The tax would be a “one-time surcharge of 2.5 percent on wealth between $50 million and $100 million and a 5 percent tax on wealth above $100 million.” According to Suozzi, the affected Americans would be able to pay the tax over a five-year period.
Reportedly, Suozzi’s office cited research that estimates such a tax could raise about $450 billion.
“We all know that people who are wealthy did very well during the pandemic and people that were low-income people did not do well,” he said.
He also added that for wealthy people, the surcharge would be “a way to help your country to build back better.”
As of now, Suozzi has not introduced any type of legislation on the idea. However, undoubtedly the tax would face Republican challenges and the Biden administration has currently not endorsed any proposals for wealth taxes.
In recent years Democrats have gradually floated more ideas for a wealth tax to force wealthy Americans to pay more in taxes. According to the Hill, Suozzi “has some similarities to wealth taxes proposed by progressive lawmakers such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), but Warren’s proposal would create an annual tax rather than a one-time tax.”
The report noted, “Suozzi’s comments also come amid a debate over how to pay for infrastructure spending.” The two partisan packages from the Democrats combined could cost upwards of $4 trillion.
CEO pay surges amid mass death, stagnant wages and soaring inflation
Over the last year and a half, the COVID-19 pandemic has claimed the lives of more than 600,000 people in the United States, the highest death toll in the world. Approximately 400 people continue to die every day.
While the working class suffered its worst year in more than a century, the wealth of the ruling class soared to ever greater heights. The annus horribilis for the masses was an annus mirabilis for the rich. The COVID-19 death chart and wealth chart soared in tandem.
The New York Times published a report on Friday under the headline, “Meager Rewards for Workers, Exceptionally Rich Pay for CEOs.” The Times called 2020 a “blowout year” for executive pay based on a survey of the 200 highest-paid executives carried out by executive compensation consultant Equilar.
Eight CEOs, the highest number on record, each brought in more than $100 million in pay last year. Overall, pay for the 200 top CEOs rose 14.1 percent, compared to just 1.9 percent for the median worker. All told, CEOs were paid 274 times more than the median worker, up from 245 in 2019.
The top paid CEO was Alex Karp of analytics software company Palantir, a major government contractor, who received a payout of $1.1 billion, one of the largest pay packages in history. He was followed by Tony Xu of DoorDash, a food delivery app, who pulled in $414 million. And close behind was Eric Wu of OpenDoor, an online service which flips real estate, who received a compensation of $370 million.
While all three companies reported major losses last year, their lucrative CEO compensation packages were triggered by corporate stock performance and revenues. Despite a sharp decline in March last year as the pandemic began to be felt around the world, the stock market quickly reversed course and has hit record highs. Financial assets have been propped up by the corporate bailout in the CARES Act and the infusion of limitless cash by the Federal Reserve. The Dow Jones has risen by more than 50 percent since its lowest point last year.
After a year and a half of death and devastation, the pandemic profiteers have amassed wealth beyond imagination. The wealth controlled by the world’s billionaires exploded by 60 percent in the first year of the pandemic, rising from $8 trillion to $13.1 trillion.
Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos is approaching a net worth of $200 billion dollars, while Tesla CEO Elon Musk has seen his wealth more than double from $68 billion in September to $151 billion today.
Despite, or rather because of their massive piles of wealth, a recent report by ProPublica found that the top 25 billionaires in the US pay a lower tax rate than the average household. The super-rich paid just 3.4 percent in effective federal income taxes over the five years in which their collective wealth rose by $401 billion.
All of this is made possible by ongoing impoverishment of the population. As measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), inflation hit a 13-year high of 5 percent in May, meaning real wages have declined every month for the last year, driven by month-on-month price increases for basic commodities and consumer goods.
During the pandemic, millions were thrown out of work with only the most limited assistance while millions more lost hours and wages. The economic crisis that hit the working class has dwarfed the Great Recession of 2008 and is only comparable to the Great Depression of the 1930s. There were 7.6 million fewer jobs in May than in February 2020, before the pandemic’s impacts were felt in the economy.
Globally, the International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that 345 million full-time jobs were lost globally due to the pandemic. The ILO notes in its global wage report for 2020 that without subsidies, the loss of wages would have been 6.5 percent. However, government assistance only compensated for 40 percent of losses. Workers all over the world have been set back significantly by the pandemic.
Amidst the mad rush to complete the full reopening of the US economy, with the dropping of all social distancing and masking requirements to push profits and CEO pay even higher into the stratosphere, more contagious and deadly variants of COVID-19 are circulating globally. With less than half of the US population fully vaccinated, conditions are set for a potential resurgence of the pandemic.
The pandemic is a “trigger event” that has exacerbated all the reactionary tendencies of capitalism. The monstrous rise of social inequality in the face of mass death combined with the rise of inflation and declining wages has primed the situation for a powerful offensive by the working class in the United States and internationally.
Already, thousands of workers have gone on strike at Volvo Trucks in Dublin, Virginia and Warrior Met in Brookwood, Alabama in an effort to recoup years of lost wages. Steelworkers at ATI have been on strike for nearly three months, while 650 refinery workers have been locked out by ExxonMobil since May 1. In Sudbury, Canada, 2,600 miners are on strike against plans by Vale Inco to strip benefits from new hires.
The emergence of these militant struggles, which pit workers into ever more direct conflict with the corporatist trade unions, is only an initial expression of the massive social eruptions on the horizon.
If the past year and a half has demonstrated anything, it is that the interests of the vast majority of humanity are incompatible with the existence of a parasitic oligarchy and the social and economic system upon which this oligarchy rests. The combination of mass death and the accumulation of massive wealth demonstrates the necessity of the expropriation of the pandemic profiteers through the mobilization of the working class to take political power and abolish the capitalist system.
70 Percent of Migrants in May Entered Texas-Based Border Sectors
Nearly 70 percent of the 172,011 migrants apprehended at the U.S. southern border crossed into the five Texas-based Border Patrol sectors. Governor Greg Abbott (R) recently announced sweeping new law enforcement and border security actions late last week at a summit in Del Rio.
Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley, Laredo, Del Rio, Big Bend, and El Paso Sectors apprehended 118,036 of the 172,011 (68.6 percent) migrants in May, according to the May Southwest Land Border Encounters report released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection late Wednesday night. In year-to-date figures, agents apprehended 605,133 of the 897,213 (67 percent) since October 1, 2020.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection Southwest Land Border Encounters Report — May apprehensions by sector. (Chart: U.S. Customs and Border Protection)
Because of changes put in place by the Biden Administration, Abbott announced an aggressive plan where the State of Texas will erect border barriers and begin “mass arrests” of migrants who violate state laws.
In a one-on-one interview with Breitbart Texas shortly before the kickoff of the governor’s border security summit on June 10, Abbot said, “The Biden Administration’s policies are the most reckless, reprehensible, and dangerous of any president I’ve ever seen.”
“The influx across the border is out of control, and the Biden Administration has shown that is not going to step up and do its job,” the governor stated. “And, amidst reports of even more people coming in across the border, we know we have to step up and do more.”
The governor said authorities will use existing authorities under a State of Emergency declaration to crack down on those illegally crossing the border.
“If you come to Texas, you’re subject to being arrested,” Abbott stated. “You’re not going to have a pathway to roam the country. You’re going to have a pathway directly into a jail cell.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection Southwest Land Border Encounters Report — FY21 Year-to-Date apprehensions by sector. (Chart: U.S. Customs and Border Protection)
Abbott said he will immediately expand the previously enacted Operation Lone Star where he said Texas law enforcement and National Guardsmen have already arrested more than 1,500 migrants and referred another 35,000 to Border Patrol agents.
“It’s clear that that’s not enough to deter the flow,” the governor said. “And so, the State will provide many more resources, but we need to understand that just providing more resources alone is not going to be enough. We need to provide new strategies, new tools to address these challenges.”
One of those strategies is the “immediate” placement of new border barriers to be put in place by the State of Texas. The State identified many locations where migrants can easily walk across unsecured sections of the border and enter the private property along the Rio Grande.
“Immediately, we will put up barriers there,” Abbott explained. “One reason to do that is that if they move or interfere with that barrier, they have committed several (state) crimes.”
“One is they’ve committed criminal mischief, as well as vandalism of state property or local government property,” Abbott continued. “And that barrier is information to them that if they cross that barrier, they have trespassed.”
“We want to be very aggressive in working with local officials and begin making mass arrests,” Abbott stated. “In working in collaboration with a large number of counties — that means we’re going to be arresting a lot more people.”
“In the end, only the federal government and Congress can fix this, but as it stands right now, the state of Texas is going to step up and we’re going to start making arrests — sending a message to anybody thinking about coming here, you’re not going to get a free pass to the U.S. They’re getting a straight pass to a jail cell.”
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior news contributor for the Breitbart Texas-Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday-morning talk show. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Face
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