Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is warning her Democratic colleagues to get in line with progressives’ tax hike agenda as former President Donald Trump’s tax cuts inch closer to their expiration.
A long-standing supporter of raising taxes on corporations and wealthy earners, Warren reiterated her agenda during an event for the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, warning Democrats to “turn away from our history of bad deal-making and double down on raising taxes on those at the top.”
“At the end of the 2025 tax reform process, large corporations must pay higher taxes. A typical billionaire must pay a higher tax rate than a typical middle-class family. Wealthy tax cheats must be sweating because the IRS has enough money to enforce the law,” Warren told the audience on Wednesday. The event was titled “The Promise of Equitable and Pro-Growth Tax Reform.”
Warren’s speech admonished top Democratic leaders for straying too far from progressives’ anti-tax cuts platform.
“Look at the Bush tax cuts. Why did those cuts cost $8 trillion? Because his Democratic successor, President Obama, cut a deal with Republicans to make nearly all of Bush’s temporary cuts permanent,” she said.
The senator went on to reprimand House Democrats for voting in favor of a $78 billion bipartisan tax deal earlier this year. After the House passed the legislation, Senate Republicans stalled the bill in the upper chamber, planning to hold out for an even better deal should the GOP win the presidency this November. Warren rebuked her party for showing any compromise.
“[Republicans] tanked the deal because they believe they can get even more next year, and Democrats won’t have the spine to stop them,” she warned.
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The Massachusetts senator reminded Democrats to stick to their guns against any tax cuts. “A little money for poor children or a modest tax cut for middle-class families is still a lousy deal when we can’t fund childcare or infrastructure because the wealthiest among us are still sucking up billions in tax breaks,” she said during the event.
In 2017, Trump passed his Tax Cuts and Jobs Act into law. The tax cuts marked a massive overhaul of the country’s tax system, lowering most individual income tax rates and lowering the corporate income tax rate from 35 to 21%. Upon the law’s expiration in 2025, individual income tax brackets will revert to 2017 levels.
