Senators Warren And Moreno Have A Plan To Save Social Security

The following is by Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) in The New York Times:

One of us is a Republican from Ohio who built a business that generated hundreds of jobs. The other is a Democrat from Massachusetts who built a career protecting consumers from financial tricks and traps.

We don’t agree on everything, but here’s one thing we do agree on: Congress must act now to save Social Security for generations of Americans to come.

Social Security is a core component of our nation’s promise — a covenant between the federal government and Americans who pay into it throughout their working years so they can retire with dignity.

That promise is at risk of unraveling. For years, seniors in Ohio and Massachusetts have told us how concerned they are about the future of Social Security. A new report from the trustees who oversee the Social Security Trust Funds shows they are right to worry: Unless Congress acts, the fund from which most Social Security beneficiaries are paid will be significantly depleted by late 2032. After that, Social Security benefits could be cut by more than 20 percent.

That’s just six years away. Instead of cutting benefits for the retirees who count on Social Security, we need to take bipartisan action to protect those benefits, reward work and restore fairness.

That starts with a common-sense solution: lifting the Social Security payroll tax cap.

For 2026, the payroll tax cap, or taxable maximum, is $184,500. Workers and their employers each pay 6.2 percent on wages up to that amount (self-employed individuals pay 12.4 percent). Today, the maximum Social Security withholding for one worker is $22,878, or 12.4 percent of $184,500. Not a penny more, even if an individual’s salary far exceeds $184,500. Since the vast majority of Americans make less than that, most people are paying Social Security taxes on 100 percent of their earnings while the highest earners are paying on only part of theirs.

Why should a middle-class nurse pay a larger share of her paycheck than a wealthy corporate lawyer? This is doubly unfair in an economy in which top earners’ wages, over time, have pulled far ahead of those of the average worker.

According to one estimate, eliminating the payroll tax cap would inject around $3 trillion into the program over the next 10 years. Lifting the cap so that all income is treated the same would generate substantial revenue that would extend the solvency of Social Security for another generation.

Our plan would also help to safeguard Social Security’s earned-benefit structure, in which workers make contributions to the program from their paychecks. This structure has delivered a basic level of retirement certainty for generations. One 2025 poll found that 65 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of Republicans support lifting the cap, “including a significant majority of respondents with annual household income over $200,000.”

This is a no-brainer: The wealthiest Americans, who have benefited the most from America’s opportunities, should contribute the same percentage of their income as a factory worker in Chillicothe, Ohio, or a teacher in Worcester, Mass.

Most Americans work into their 60s or 70s. Throughout their working lives, they pay into Social Security with the understanding that it will help them support themselves in retirement. With rising prices and artificial intelligence causing economic uncertainty for the future, Social Security must remain a stable foundation to help retirees afford life’s basic necessities.

Social Security was created by overwhelming bipartisan congressional majorities. Today, members of Congress from both parties must come together again to save it. That’s why the two of us are working together on legislation to remove the cap on Social Security taxes and extend the solvency of our retirement system. Americans deserve nothing less. Preserving the American dream for our children and grandchildren depends on it.

Senators Warren/Graham Want To Rein In Power Of Big Tech

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham have found something they agree on. They think Big Tech has too much power over the lives of Americans, and they want to do something about it. Here is the post they wrote together for The New York Times:

The digital revolution promised amazing new opportunities — and it delivered. Digital platforms promoted social interaction, democratized information and gave us hundreds of new ways to have fun.

But digital innovation has had a dark side. Giant digital platforms have provided new avenues of proliferation for the sexual abuse and exploitation of children, human trafficking, drug trafficking and bullying and have promoted eating disorders, addictive behaviors and teen suicide. Parents like Kristin Bride, whose teenage son killed himself after being mercilessly cyberbullied, have shared heartbreaking stories with Congress and the public about the potentially deadly consequences.

Nobody elected Big Tech executives to govern anything, let alone the entire digital world. If democracy means anything, it means that leaders on both sides of the aisle must take responsibility for protecting the freedom of the American people from the ever-changing whims of these powerful companies and their unaccountable C.E.O.s. Today we’re stepping up to that challenge with a bipartisan bill to treat Big Tech the way we treat other industries.

A few Big Tech companies generate a majority of the world’s internet traffic and essentially control nearly every aspect of Americans’ digital lives. Platforms are protected from legal liability in many of their decisions, so they operate without accountability. Big Tech companies have far too much unrestrained power over our economy, our society and our democracy. These massive businesses post eye-popping profits while they suppress competition. Google uses its search engine to give preference to its own products, like Google Hotels and Google Flights, giving it an unfair leg up on competitors. Amazon sucks up information from small businesses that offer products for sale on its platform, then uses that information to run its own competing businesses. Apple forces entrepreneurs (and thereby consumers) to pay crushing commissions to use its App Store. A few Big Tech companies stifle all competition before it poses any serious threat.

Big Tech companies also prey on ordinary users. They vacuum up our personal data, often with little care for whether their practices are responsible or even legal. Some Big Tech platforms mislead us when we try to limit the data we share, and they regularly fall prey to massive data leaks that leave us vulnerable to criminal activity, foreign interference and disinformation. Adversaries in China and other countries often store or process our data. And if we want to know how our data is being used or why our posts are being taken down, good luck getting an answer. We’re usually in the dark about where our data goes or how it is used.

Enough is enough. It’s time to rein in Big Tech. And we can’t do it with a law that only nibbles around the edges of the problem. Piecemeal efforts to stop abusive and dangerous practices have failed. Congress is too slow, it lacks the tech expertise, and the army of Big Tech lobbyists can pick off individual efforts easier than shooting fish in a barrel. Meaningful change — the change worth engaging every member of Congress to fight for — is structural.

For more than a century, Congress has established regulatory agencies to preserve innovation while minimizing harm presented by emerging industries. In 1887 the Interstate Commerce Commission took on railroads. In 1914 the Federal Trade Commission took on unfair methods of competition and later unfair and deceptive acts and practices. In 1934 the Federal Communications Commission took on radio (and then television). In 1975 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission took on nuclear power, and in 1977 the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission took on electric generation and transmission. We need a nimble, adaptable, new agency with expertise, resources and authority to do the same for Big Tech.

Our Digital Consumer Protection Commission Act would create an independent, bipartisan regulator charged with licensing and policing the nation’s biggest tech companies — like Meta, Google and Amazon — to prevent online harm, promote free speech and competition, guard Americans’ privacy and protect national security. The new watchdog would focus on the unique threats posed by tech giants while strengthening the tools available to the federal agencies and state attorneys general who have authority to regulate Big Tech.

Our legislation would guarantee common-sense safeguards for everyone who uses tech platforms. Families would have the right to protect their children from sexual exploitation, cyberbullying and deadly drugs. Certain digital platforms have promoted the sexual abuse and exploitation of children, suicidal ideation and eating disorders or done precious little to combat these evils; our bill would require Big Tech to mitigate such harms and allow families to seek redress if they do not.

Americans deserve to know how their data is collected and used and to control who can see it. They deserve the freedom to opt out of targeted advertising. And they deserve the right to go online without, say, some A.I. tool’s algorithm denying them a loan based on their race or politics. If our legislation is enacted, platforms would face consequences for suppressing speech in violation of their own terms of service. The commission would have the flexibility and agility to develop more expertise and respond to new risks, like those posed by generative A.I.

Our bill would set clear rules for tech companies and impose real consequences for companies that break the law. For the giant companies, anticompetitive practices — like exploiting market dominance, tying the sale of one product to another, charging customers different prices for the same product and preventing employees from working for competitors — would be prohibited. The bill would set a high bar for mergers and acquisitions by dominant Big Tech platforms and make it possible to block and reverse harmful deals.

Reining in tech giants will be hard, but it’s a fight worth fighting. If we win, Americans finally will have the tools they need to combat many online evils harming their children and ruining lives. And small businesses will have a fighting chance to innovate and compete in a world dominated by tech monopolies.

No company, no industry and no C.E.O. should be above the law. These reforms will ensure that the next generation of great American tech companies will operate responsibly while remaining on the cutting edge of innovation.

It’s time for Congress to act. 

Elizabeth Warren"s Latest Missive To Her Supporters

This is the latest e-mail Senator Elizabeth Warren sent to her supporters:

 I’m running for re-election because although we’ve made tremendous progress as a movement (like getting student debt cancellation signed by the president, and cracking down on giant corporations that weren't paying federal income taxes), there’s still so much more to do.

Here are some of the plans that I’m fighting for:

• Pass a wealth tax to make the wealthy finally pay their fair share.
• End the filibuster to ensure abortion rights and enact gun safety laws across the country.
• Significantly reduce the cost of child care for every American family, making it as low as $10 a day.
• Rein in big banks and pass stronger regulations to prevent another economic crisis.
• Make the Supreme Court follow a basic code of ethics.
• Expand Social Security benefits by $2,400 a year and fully fund the program all the way to 2096.
• Fast and free federal tax filing, so Americans don’t have to go through profiteering middlemen like TurboTax. (This is on its way!)
• Crack down on corporate profiteering and price gouging so that working families don’t pay the price for their greed.
• Ban members of Congress and their spouses from owning and trading individual stocks.

We need to keep laying out big, bold plans that lift up working families and protect our values.

If you wish to donate to her re-election campaign, you can go here.

 

Warren Says Extremists Have Hijacked The Judiciary

The following is an e-mail that Senator Elizabeth Warren sent to her supporters:

If you’re wondering how much damage Republican extremists can do through the federal judiciary, just look at three issues bubbling up through the courts right now:

One: This week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on what should be an open-and-shut case — whether President Biden has the legal authority to cancel student debt.

Spoiler alert: He does. Congress wrote it into the HEROES Act, clear as day, that presidents can cancel student debt to respond to major emergencies. Like, oh, let’s say a global pandemic. Donald Trump used the same power when he was president, and we didn’t hear a single peep from any right-wing politicians or judges that it could be illegal. But now that President Biden’s trying to wield that authority to help working-class and middle-class people, GOP elected officials and billionaire-funded interests are suing to stop it.

So I elevated stories that illuminate how student debt relief is clearly targeted to help people who are struggling financially from the pandemic. And I went to the Supreme Court steps on the day of oral arguments to say that the justices need to get out of the way, not play politics, and apply the law. As long as they do that, tens of millions of Americans will get some or all of their student debt canceled. But no matter what, I’m staying in the fight.

Two: The Supreme Court announced that they’ll consider whether the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is constitutional.

Spoiler alert: It is. Year after year, corporate interests have funded desperate lawsuit after desperate lawsuit challenging the CFPB’s structure. All because they don’t want a strong watchdog keeping them from cheating working families. But in case after case, the corporate interests have failed. This one should be no exception.

But if the Court ignores over a century of law and historical precedent, and if extreme right-wing justices decide to play politics and rule against the CFPB, it would throw our economy into chaos.

You know, the CFPB has already put more than $12 BILLION back in the pockets of people who got cheated by financial institutions. That gives greedy corporations more than 12 billion reasons to stop the CFPB in its tracks. But it also gives us more than 12 billion reasons to fight back.

Alongside this grassroots team and a terrific array of labor unions, civil rights groups, consumer advocates, and more, I fought tooth and nail to turn the CFPB from an unlikely idea to a concrete, consumer-protecting reality. And I won’t stop fighting to keep it that way.

Three: One single extremist judge down in Texas could ban mifepristone — a medication commonly used for abortions in America — across the entire country.

Mifepristone has been approved by the FDA for two decades. It’s been proven to be safe for medication abortions. But any day now, this Trump appointee could wake up, decide that he’s qualified to override the FDA’s scientific judgment, take mifepristone off the market nationwide, and make abortion care even more inaccessible for millions of Americans.

Let’s be clear: After the Supreme Court said that abortion rights would be up to the states, we warned that the extremists wouldn’t stop here. They’d threaten reproductive freedom in every corner of the country, even in places like Massachusetts that have strong protections. And that’s exactly what this Trump judge could do with this case.

But we won’t be out of options, no matter how he rules. After the Court overturned Roe v. Wade, I called on the Biden-Harris administration to expand access to medication abortion. They’re already taking action, and they have more tools they can use to keep protecting the right to an abortion.

Now, notice what all three of these cases have in common: The danger that right-wing judges and justices could decide to substitute their own judgment for the judgment of elected officials and qualified experts.

Extremists have hijacked the judiciary, and they’re using it to advance a far-right agenda that they’d never be able to pass through Congress. They’re using it to rig the rules even more in favor of the rich and powerful, and they’re using it to rip away our freedoms.

Warren Says Hope Is Not Lost For Women's Rights

 The following is an op-ed by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Tina Smith in The New York Times:

The Supreme Court has spoken: Roe is gone. But the Supreme Court doesn’t get the final say on abortion. The American people will have the last word through their representatives in Congress and the White House.

With its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, an extremist Supreme Court has overturned nearly 50 years of precedent, stripping away the constitutional right to an abortion and ruling that the government — not the person who is pregnant — will make the critical decision about whether to continue a pregnancy. At least nine states have already banned abortion; over a dozen more could soon follow suit by severely restricting or outright outlawing abortion, putting the lives, health and futures of girls and women at risk.

If we sound angry and alarmed, that’s because we are. This decision is devastating — and we have seen what happens next. We both lived in an America where abortion was illegal. A nation in which infections and other complications destroyed lives. A nation in which unplanned pregnancies derailed careers and livelihoods. A nation in which some women took their own lives rather than continue pregnancies they could not bear.

But we must hold on to hope. Each of us can and should act — both elected officials and everyday Americans. We can start by helping those who need access to an abortion. Support Planned Parenthood and other organizations that are expanding their services in states where abortion is available. Contribute to abortion funds. Encourage state legislators to protect reproductive rights in states like New Mexico and Minnesota that border places where abortion services will most likely be severely restricted and even criminalized. Encourage employers in states with abortion bans to give their employees adequate time off and money for travel to find the abortion care they need. Do all you can — and demand the same all-you-can approach from all of our elected leaders.

Earlier this month, along with Senator Patty Murray and half the Senate Democratic Caucus, we sent a letter to President Biden outlining executive actions he could take to defend reproductive freedom. These actions include increasing access to abortion medication, providing federal resources for individuals seeking abortion care in other states and using federal property and resources to protect people seeking abortion services locally. We need action, and we need it now.

On Friday, with the release of the Dobbs decision, we entered a perilous time that threatens millions of women across this nation. We urge the president to declare a public health emergency to protect abortion access for all Americans, unlocking critical resources and authority that states and the federal government can use to meet the surge in demand for reproductive health services. The danger is real, and Democrats must meet it with the urgency it deserves.

We’re in this dark moment because right-wing politicians and their allies have spent decades scheming to overrule a right many Americans considered sacrosanct. Passing state laws to restrict access to abortion care. Giving personhood rights to fertilized eggs. Threatening to criminalize in vitro fertilization. Offering bounties for reporting doctors who provide abortion services. Abusing the filibuster and turning Congress into a broken institution. Advancing judicial nominees who claimed to be committed to protecting “settled law” while they winked at their Republican sponsors in the Senate. Stealing two seats on the Supreme Court.

For nearly 50 years, right-wing extremists rejected the beliefs held by an overwhelming majority of Americans. They doubled and redoubled their efforts to create a future in which women and their doctors could face a prison sentence for seeking or providing basic health care. When these extremists couldn’t impose their radical views through the legislative process, they stacked the courts. And now that the Supreme Court has opened the door by overturning Roe, Republicans will continue their assault on our civil rights and liberties.

Former Vice President Mike Pence called for a national ban on abortion in all 50 states; Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, flat out stated that it’s a possibility. And the logic laid out by the majority in Dobbs seems to undercut other precedents, raising the alarming possibility that we could soon see an assault on privacy and marriage equality.

In order to fix the damage Republicans have done to our system in their efforts to control women’s lives, we need broad democracy reform: changing the composition of the courts, reforming Senate rules like the filibuster, and even fixing the outdated Electoral College that allowed presidential candidates who lost the popular vote to take office and nominate five of the justices who agreed to end the right to an abortion.

We can’t undo in five months the damage it took Republicans five decades to accomplish, but we can immediately start repairing our democracy. The public is overwhelmingly on our side. A vast majority of Americans oppose the decision the Supreme Court just made. Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. And more Americans describe themselves as pro-choice today than at any other point in the last 25 years.

Let’s be clear: Roe may be gone, but the protections it once guaranteed are on the ballot. States like Kansas and Kentucky have initiatives to strip away state constitutional protections for abortion, while Michigan and Vermont are working toward statewide votes to create constitutional protections for reproductive freedom. But make no mistake, this radical decision affects all Americans, not just those in states where the right to a safe, legal abortion will soon fall.

Now is the time to demand that every single candidate for every single office voice a firm position on reproductive rights. Ask every Senate candidate to commit to reforming the filibuster rules, so that the chamber can pass federal legislation protecting the right to reproductive freedom. If voters help us maintain our control of the House and expand our majority in the Senate by at least two votes this November, we can make Roe the law all across the country as soon as January.

Simply put: We must restore our democracy so that a radical minority can no longer drown out the will of the people. This will be a long, hard fight, and the path to victory is not yet certain. But it’s a righteous fight that we must win — no matter how long it takes. The two of us lived in an America without Roe, and we are not going back. Not now. Not ever.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren Has A Bill To Fix The Supreme Court

The Supreme Court has problems, especially when it comes to ethics. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) has introduced a bill to fix that. Here is how she describes it in an e-mail to her supporters:

Public trust in the Supreme Court has collapsed to historic lows — and it isn’t hard to see why.

A truly radical draft opinion is poised to overturn decades of settled law on abortion rights. Justice Clarence Thomas failed to recuse himself from a case on the attempted coup that his wife participated in. Justices accept lavish international trips and fail to file basic financial disclosure reports.

And it’s not just the top of the judicial branch: ethics scandals have plagued our federal courts for decades. Clerks have accused federal judges of sexual misconduct with little to no recourse. Judges and justices alike sit in cases in which they own individual stock in the parties — and in cases that could directly affect their spouses.

The judicial branch needs real ethics reform, from top to bottom. I’ve got a plan for that: Last week, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal and I introduced the Judicial Ethics and Anti-Corruption Act. 

From banning federal judges from owning individual stocks to overhauling the broken judicial recusal process, my bill would help root out corruption and restore public trust in the federal judiciary. But first, we have to fight side by side — as a grassroots movement — to get this bill through Congress.

Corruption is toxic to our democracy. But just this week, the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority opened the floodgates for more corruption across the rest of the federal branches: They ruled that campaigns can blow past limits on raking in donations after elections specifically to pay off the candidate’s personal loans to the campaign.

Justice Elena Kagan ripped the majority a new one in her dissent: “Political contributions that will line a candidate’s own pockets, given after his election to office, pose a special danger of corruption…In striking down the law today, the Court greenlights all the sordid bargains Congress thought right to stop.”

We need to fight back against those types of “sordid bargains” — including in the federal judiciary.

Here are a few big pieces of how our bill would give Americans confidence that their judges are held to the highest ethical standards and are free from conflicts of interest:

• Banning federal judges from owning individual stocks and securities, commercial real estate, trusts, and other investments.


• Strengthening restrictions on judicial gifts and privately funded travel. 


• Imposing the existing Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges on the Supreme Court — the only court in the country not currently subject to an ethical code. 


• Improving disclosure of judicial speeches and case assignments, while mandating the livestreaming of court proceedings and new judicial workplace surveys. 


• Requiring Supreme Court Justices to issue written recusal decisions whenever a litigant requests recusal and forcing the Judicial Conference to issue advisory opinions with their recusal recommendations. 


• Closing the loophole that allows judges to escape accountability by retiring from the bench, strengthening disciplinary authority for the Judicial Conference, setting up expedited impeachment procedures for federal judges, and allowing the public to file complaints against Supreme Court Justices — like all other federal judges — through a new Supreme Court Complaints Review Committee.


• Limiting the ability of courts to seal records that contain important information for the protection of public health or safety, often concealed at the urging of massive corporations.

Look: Congresswoman Jayapal and I aren’t new to this issue.

We’ve also put out the most ambitious anti-corruption plan since Watergate — targeting corruption across the federal government.

And we’ve called on Chief Justice John Roberts to clean up the judiciary — including after the revelations about Justice Thomas’s recent failure to recuse himself, and after a report that over 131 federal judges violated federal law and ethics guidelines by overseeing cases involving companies in which they or their family members owned individual stock.

But Chief Justice Roberts has simply failed to act. So we’ve got a plan to do it for him.

Ted, beyond this bill, there’s more we can do to restore faith in an independent judiciary committed to the rule of law. I’ve been pushing to expand the Supreme Court by four or more seats to rebalance this institution that’s been hijacked by right-wing extremists. But let’s make progress by tackling corruption.

There’s real momentum behind the Judicial Ethics and Anti-Corruption Act — 19 of our colleagues in Congress, and a multitude of national organizations are already on board. But now we need to show that the American people are raising their voices on this. 

Warren Says Democrats Can Win In November

If you just listen to the talking heads on cable news, you might think things are hopeless for Democrats in the 2022 election. I don't think so, and neither does Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts). In this op-ed in The New York Times, she tells us what is required for Democrats to win:

Democrats are the party of working people. Ahead of the 2020 election, we advanced ideas and plans that we believed would, in ways big and small, make our democracy and our economy work better for all Americans. Across this country, voters agreed with us — and gave us a majority in Washington so that we could deliver on those promises.

Republican senators and broken institutions have blocked much of that promised progress. Now Republicans are betting that a stalled Biden agenda won’t give Democrats enough to run on in the midterm elections — and they might be right. Despite pandemic relief, infrastructure investments and the historic Supreme Court confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, we promised more — and voters remember those promises.

Republicans want to frame the upcoming elections to be about “wokeness,” cancel culture and the “militant left wing.” Standing up for the inherent dignity of everyone is a core American value, and Democrats are proud to do that every day. While Republican politicians peddle lies, fear and division, we should use every single one of the next 200 days or so before the election to deliver meaningful improvements for working people.

Democrats win elections when we show we understand the painful economic realities facing American families and convince voters we will deliver meaningful change. To put it bluntly: if we fail to use the months remaining before the elections to deliver on more of our agenda, Democrats are headed toward big losses in the midterms.

Time is running short. We need to finalize a budget reconciliation deal, making giant corporations pay their share to fund vital investments in combating climate change and lowering costs for families, which can advance with only 50 Senate votes. Other priorities can be done with the president’s executive authority. It’s no secret that I believe we should abolish the filibuster. But if Republicans want to use it to block policies that Americans broadly support, we should also force them to take those votes in plain view.

Let’s begin with corruption. For years, Americans have identified corrupt government officials as a top concern. And they’re right: to tackle the urgent challenges we face — climate change, income inequality, systemic injustice — we must root out corruption. To start cleaning up government, members of Congress and their spouses shouldn’t be allowed to own or trade individual stocks, which the vast majority of voters support banning, according to multiple polls. Whether you’re a Republican senator or the Democratic speaker of the House, it is obvious to the American people that they should not be allowed to trade individual stocks and then vote on laws that affect those companies. I have the strongest plan and the only bipartisan bill in the Senate to get it done.

We can also act quickly to rein in costs for middle-class families. In the very short term, that means stopping companies from jacking up prices to boost their profits. Price increases are driven by many factors, including pandemic disruptions to global supply chains and Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. But when the Kroger chief executive, Rodney McMullen, said “a little bit of inflation is always good in our business,” it’s no surprise that, by a margin of two-to-one, American voters don’t buy the explanation that companies are just passing along costs. Instead, they blame corporations for raising prices to boost their own profits. Even Fed Chair Jerome Powell, a conservative Republican, acknowledged that giant corporations raise prices simply “because they can.”

The president deserves enormous credit for advancing an ambitious agenda to promote competition and appointing effective regulators to enforce our antitrust laws, and it’s time for congressional Democrats to have his back. According to Data for Progress surveys, eight in 10 Americans believe Congress should pass laws to reinvigorate competition and three-quarters strongly believe that oil and gas companies should not make gobs of money off this energy crisis. Beefing up regulators’ authority to end price-gouging, breaking up monopolies, and passing a windfall profits tax is a good start. Only in Washington, where America’s biggest companies spend billions to drown out reality, are these controversial ideas. Across America, these are popular plans.

We can stand up to the armies of lobbyists and P.R. flacks and tackle tax loopholes for the rich and powerful. About two-thirds of likely American voters — including a majority of Republicans — say it’s time for billionaires to pay more in taxes. Nearly three-quarters of Americans want to put an end to wildly profitable corporations paying nothing or little in federal income taxes (yes, Amazon, I’m looking at you) and put into place a global minimum corporate tax. And a majority of Americans would like to use some of those tax revenues to invest in clean energy, affordable child care, and universal pre-K.

That’s a big legislative agenda, but it isn’t big enough. We also need to use every tool of the presidency to deliver for working people.

For example, by a margin of more than two-to-one, Americanssupport providing some student loan debt cancellation — an action the president could take entirely on his own. Doing so would lift the economic outlook for too many borrowers who still weren’t able to get a college diploma, for the millions of female borrowers who shoulder about two-thirds of all student loan debt, and for Blackand Hispanic borrowers, a higher percentage of whom take on debt to attend college compared to white students, and have a harder time paying it off after school. With the stroke of a pen, the president could make massive strides to close gender and racial wealth gaps.

And he can do more. Decisive action on everything from lowering prescription drug prices to ensuring that more workers are eligible for overtime pay can be executed by the president alone, using the authority already given to him by existing laws, without rounding up 50 Senate votes.

Like many Americans, I’m frustrated by our failure to get big things done — things that are both badly needed and very popular with all Americans. While Republican politicians obstruct many efforts to improve people’s lives and many swear loyalty to the Big Lie, the urgency of the next election bears down on us.

Democrats cannot bow to the wisdom of out-of-touch consultants who recommend we simply tout our accomplishments. Instead, Democrats need to deliver more of the president’s agenda — or else we will not be in the majority much longer.

Warren's Statement On Congress Owning/Trading Stocks

There is a movement in Congress to ban the ownership or trading of stocks by members of Congress. One of the people pushing this is Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts). Here is what she had to say about it in an e-mail to her supporters:

I think this is pretty basic, but apparently it’s a newsflash to some people in Washington:

The American people deserve to have complete confidence that members of Congress are making decisions based on what’s best for the country — not what’s best for those lawmakers’ own personal finances.

So we need to ban members of Congress from owning and trading individual stocks. 

I’m coming out with a new bill to do exactly that — and it’s already got bipartisan support. Now, to get it over the finish line, we need to show that the American people are demanding action.

Remember: Not so long ago, Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue played down the danger of COVID-19 in public while privately trading stocks to profit from the pandemic. They both lost their re-election campaigns, but the potential for conflicts of interest still lurks around Capitol Hill — and we’ve got to clear it out.

Now, let’s be clear — I’m more than ready to go even further than this plan. My larger bill to root corruption out of Washington would ban Cabinet secretaries, federal judges (including Supreme Court justices), and other top officials from owning and trading individual stocks.

But this bipartisan plan, focused on Congress, is a straightforward first step. And there’s real momentum behind it right now.

Here’s how the ban would work:

• After a short transition period, members of Congress and their spouses won’t be allowed to own or trade individual stocks.
• Instead, they can put their money in conflict-free investments like diversified mutual funds.
• And if they break the rules, they’ll have to pay a $50,000 fine per violation.

It’s clear and sharp. It says that senators and representatives shouldn’t be able to write laws to enrich themselves. And anyone who isn’t ready to follow these basic rules can pick a new line of work.

I’ve been working on this issue for years, and I believe we’re closer than ever to making it happen. Republicans and Democrats are working together to say enough is enough. Now is the moment for everyone to raise their voices.

Thanks for being a part of this,

Elizabeth 

Warren Calls For A Wealth Tax On The Richest Americans

Currently, there is a large gap in wealth between the richest Americans and the rest of the country -- a gap as large as it was in the 1920's.

And with the rich getting much richer in the current economy while workers struggle just to stay even, that gap is growing much larger with each passing week. We are becoming a nation of "haves" and "have-nots" -- surpassing even some third world countries in inequality.

We must change the economic rules in this country, so they no longer favor the rich to the detriment of everyone else. One of the ideas to help narrow the wealth gap has been proposed by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts). It is a wealth tax on the richest Americans.

Here is how she describes it in an e-mail she sent to progressives:

This week, Jeff Bezos -- the wealthiest person in the world -- launched into space.

Meanwhile, in America today, over half of the country lives paycheck to paycheck. Nearly 43 million people are saddled with student loan debt, preventing many from buying a home or starting a family. And for those who do start a family, the astronomical costs of child care are squeezing budgets even harder, forcing millions of young parents -- especially women -- out of the workforce.

Our economy has worked better and better for the rich and powerful, and worse and worse for everyone else. How did we get here? We got here in part because billionaires like Jeff Bezos and giant corporations like Amazon have spent years avoiding paying their fair share in taxes. They’ve lobbied for loopholes, cooked up schemes with the best accountants money can buy, and hollowed out our government’s ability to invest in our people, from roads and bridges to child care and higher education.

Our tax system is rigged for those at the top. That’s why I’m fighting every day in the Senate to pass a wealth tax and level the playing field for working families. The PCCC has been right alongside me organizing grassroots supporters for a wealth tax since the beginning. We've got to keep pushing.

Look, I get it. Jeff Bezos can do what he wants with his money. But to use his enormous wealth to go to space after years of systematically paying less than his fair share of taxes is a punch in the gut to the tens of millions of Americans who struggle to make ends meet.

Just look at the numbers: Between 2014-2018, Jeff Bezos’ wealth grew by $99 billion. He paid only 0.98% of that in taxes. The rest of America? Last year, the 99% paid an average of 7.2% of their total wealth in taxes.

The worst part? Under our broken tax system, it’s completely legal.That’s because billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mike Bloomberg don’t make their fortunes through income like working families do. Their wealth comes from assets -- like stock portfolios, art collections, and super-yachts. In fact, Jeff Bezos reportedly paid $0 in federal income taxes in 2007 and 2011 -- despite already being a multi-billionaire.

My wealth tax bill would place a two-cent per dollar tax on people with a net worth above $50 million -- a few cents more for the billionaires. That means Jeff Bezos would pay $5.4 billion of his estimated net worth of $181 billion -- and he’d still have more than enough money for his space missions and super-yachts.

This small tax on America’s richest 100,000 families would generate huge amounts of revenue totaling at least $3 trillion, providing money for President Biden's big agenda to build back better and more. Policies like expanding the caregiving economy -- everything from child care to nursing homes -- rebuilding infrastructure, high quality k-12 education, and tuition-free public college and technical schools.

A wealth tax is critical for raising revenue, and that revenue is critical for raising opportunity. We build a future for all of our kids by investing in opportunity. This is one way we can make this government work for everyone -- not just the rich and powerful.

Thanks for being a part of this,

-- Elizabeth Warren