Tax Us More! Patriotic Millionaires Say

In a Tax Day press conference, Patriotic Millionaires issued a call for a new tax code to restore fairness and economic health. “My grandfather paid a 90% marginal tax rate on his income and he amassed plenty of wealth in the process,” said spokesperson Abigail Disney. She’s a documentary filmmaker and heir of Walt Disney.

At the same time, House Republicans were threatening to force the government into default without deep cuts to widely popular programs. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is refusing to hold a vote to raise the debt ceiling — paying for debts already incurred by Congress, including the 2017 Donald Trump tax cuts, which cost $2.3 trillion — unless President Joe Biden agrees to cuts so unpopular that McCarthy was afraid to publicly discuss them.

“It’s time to enact a new tax code that drives the benefits of the economy directly into the pockets of working people and requires those who’ve benefited the most from America’s economic structure to recycle a significant portion of that benefit back into our society rather than allowing them to amass fortunes so large that they threaten our democracy,” Disney said. “This requires not just unwinding the mistakes of the past 43 years, but going much further to reset our tax framework to one that will preserve and strengthen American democratic capitalism.”

She went on to outline three core principles for that framework supported by Patriotic Millionaires:

“One, treat all income over a million dollars in the same manner, whether it’s generated from ordinary income or capital gains or inheritance.

“Two, make our income tax code truly progressive. That means raising the standard deduction to charge nothing to people who don’t even make a living wage and it means imposing significantly higher marginal tax rates on extremely high incomes. My grandfather paid a 90% marginal tax rate on his income and he amassed plenty of wealth in the process. That means rates of up to 90% on incomes over 100 million dollars.

And the third is to pass a tax specifically designed to rein in wealth concentration — a wealth tax on the richest people in America.”

In conclusion, Disney said, “If we can do these three things, we can save America and if we don’t, we won’t. It’s just that simple.”

The tax policies they seek to reverse were sold on a false promise, according to a 2022 study from King’s College London, examining tax cuts in 18 wealthy countries between 1965 and 2015. It found “strong evidence against the influential political–economic idea that tax cuts for the rich ‘trickle down’ to boost the wider economy.” They lead to “higher income inequality in both the short- and medium-term,” but “do not have any significant effect on economic growth or unemployment.”

But rather than reverse course on 43 years of failed policy, House Republicans want to double down, with deep cuts to programs so popular that for months they’ve been loath to say anything specific about what they want to cut. They finally released a plan the day after Disney spoke, seeking to roll back key provisions of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act — including $80 billion to fully fund the IRS over the next decade, which more than pays for itself by cracking down on wealthy tax cheats. So that part of their plan clearly isn’t about reducing the deficit. But they still avoided itemizing most specific spending cuts, instead calling for an overall spending freeze at 2022 levels, with no cuts for defense, meaning deeper cuts everywhere else.

“The math is simple, but unforgiving,” said Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget.”Their bill would force a cut of 22% — cuts that would grow deeper and deeper with each year of their plan.”

For example, a Veterans Administration analysis cited 30 million fewer veteran outpatient visits, 81,000 jobs lost across the Veterans Health Administration and massive cuts to telehealth services, which are crucial for vets living in rural areas.

In February, Data For Progress polled the public on 19 spending priorities. Contrary to House Republicans, a majority of Americans favored stable or increased spending on 18 of them. A whopping 74% want increased spending on veterans benefits, for example, while 22% want stable spending. The sole exception was corporate tax breaks: 59% want to see them cut.

It seems the Patriotic Millionaires are onto something.