Leftist Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) avoided answering tough questions from CNBC that underscored the nonsense behind her wealth tax proposal.
CNBC Squawk Box co-anchor Joe Kernen played devil’s advocate in an attempt to expose the lack of logic behind Warren’s tax proposal. Kernen said to Warren during the March 2 edition of Squawk Box: “If you’re going to do two percent [tax] on 50 million [dollars], and then when you get up to a billion [dollars] and you’re going to three percent [tax], if we’ve made, if we’ve crossed the rubicon … why not make it truly progressive and do 10 percent [tax] at a billion [dollars], do 20 percent at 10 billion [dollars]?”
Kernen continued his unique line of questioning: “Why not do it that way once you get started and raise some real money? What would be the problem? Why would [Amazon founder and CEO Jeff] Bezos do three percent when some poor schmo at only 50 million [dollars] does two percent?”
Clearly caught off guard, Warren avoided the question and pivoted to her claim that her plan would raise $3.75 trillion in revenue over the next ten years: “So, look, um, you know, I’m just a girl from Oklahoma. I think $3 trillion actually sounds like a lot of money. And raising $3 trillion that we can reinvest in our economy.”
Kernen smirked at Warren’s tangent. Warren continued her diversion by saying her plan would be “enough for universal child care. It’s enough for universal pre-K. It’s enough to make sure that every baby in this country has good care and raise the wages of every child care worker and pre-school teacher in America.”
Kernen laughed before cutting her off: “Senator, you didn’t answer! You didn’t answer me! Make it 10 times as good!”
Watch the segment below:
Kernen continued to press Warren, saying, “This looks to me like we’re changing the rules of the game that go back centuries for — if you’ve paid your taxes on the way in and accrue this. And a lot of these people would rather do really good things with the money then that they don’t think the government does it well.” Kernen rephrased his first question to Warren: “Why not make it five percent or 10 percent on people that are really loaded?”
Warren dodged the question again, “Okay, I’m loving this morning. I cannot believe that I’ve gotten you to say that we should tax the rich more, Joe.” She then tried to equate her wealth tax idea to real estate taxes. Warren threw Kernen’s question back to him with a nonanswer: “Now, I hear you about the percentages. You want to make the argument to pay an even greater percentage? Make the argument.”
Answer the question, senator.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that federal spending will total a gargantuan “$67.0 trillion (22.3 percent of GDP)” between 2021 and 2031, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. This means Warren’s unrealistic 10-year revenue plan would only account for .056 percent of projected federal spending over the same time period.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact ABC News (818-460-7477), CBS News (212-975-3247) and NBC News (212- 664-6192) and demand they report the disastrous economic consequences of Warren’s wealth tax.
