Both Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and American Compass, an organization funded by progressive donors and led by former Mitt Romney staffer Oren Cass, released tax plans in June.
Warren’s plan calls on Democrats to reject extending the Trump tax cuts, supports significant tax hikes on American businesses and the creation of a massive financial transaction tax.
The proposed budget released by Oren Cass’ American Compass, which describes itself as “the flagship for a healthier and more responsive post-Trump conservative movement,” calls for the full expiration of the 2017 Trump tax cuts, would increase the corporate rate to the Biden-preferred level of 28%, and backs Warren’s call for a financial transaction tax.
Below are a series of quotes from both Warren and Cass on a range of tax and economic topics.
See if you are skilled enough to determine which progressive — Oren or Warren — is responsible for each quote. An answer key is provided at the bottom of this post complete with citations.
Good luck!
On Republican Budget Plans and Tax Cuts
- “Nevertheless, as if compelled by some supernatural spell, the GOP continues building its economic agenda around tax cuts and making outlandish promises about their power.”
- “For a long, long time, politicians have approached taxes in completely predictable ways. Republicans talked about cutting taxes—period. No tax was small enough and no taxpayer was loathsome enough that there wasn’t a Republican willing to propose another tax cut just for them.”
- “On the Right, budgets are lists of implausible spending cuts unpopular even with Republican voters, typically paired with yet more tax cuts and baseless assumptions that faster economic growth will cure the remaining imbalances.”
On the 2017 Trump Tax Cuts
- “Perhaps unsurprisingly, given TCJA’s apparent failure to spur higher business investment, little evidence exists that it boosted overall economic growth.”
- “Have tax cuts been working? No. We can see this clearly thanks to a quirk of statistical history, in which the data used by the Trump admin to vindicate the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) ended up showing its failure.”
- “We should not be rubber-stamping Trump tax cuts for giant businesses.”
On Taxing Businesses
- “Would we be better off cutting the corporate tax rate an extra point or sending more money to working families with kids? I think it’s pretty obviously the latter. And so just as sort of a concrete, which should we do, we pulled the corporate tax rate way down. We didn’t get any of the investment benefits that it was supposed to deliver, by the way.”
- “Large corporations must pay higher taxes.”
- “Corporate income taxes: further raising the tax rate to 28%.”
On Banning Stock Buybacks
- “The United States should discourage financial engineering and push capital markets back toward their necessary, traditional role by banning share buybacks and eliminating the deductibility of interest.”
- “Corporate executives have been using stock buybacks to enrich themselves and their wealthy shareholders at the expense of workers and long-term investment. We need to put an end to this practice and ensure that companies are investing in their workers, their communities, and their futures.”
On Profits
- “Those who try to turn a profit betting on the right assets are speculators. Those who buy firms and try then to engineer greater profits through financial maneuvers are manipulators.”
On a $750-$800B Financial Transaction Tax Hike
- “For example, a small tax on financial transactions — one-tenth of one percent on the sale of bonds, stocks, or derivatives — would generate about $800 billion in revenue over the next ten years.”
- “Congress should establish a financial transaction tax (FTT) of 10 basis points on secondary-market sales of stocks, bonds, and derivatives. Most of the world’s largest financial centers, including London, Hong Kong, and Shanghai have this kind of tax, which targets unproductive and speculative transactions and can lower costs for longterm investors by reducing excessive churn and encouraging a return to low-turnover, lower-cost strategies. According to the Congressional Budget Office, such a tax would raise more than $750 billion over ten years.”
On Taxing Shareholders
- “If President Biden wants to do genuine tax reform, he should stop taxing corporations altogether and tax the shareholders, who stand to gain the most from the imputed profits.”
- “This tax leapfrogged the usual tax loopholes and put a minimum tax on the profits these big corporations reported to their shareholders, meaning no more bragging to their wealthy investors about how big their profits were, and then telling the IRS they were too poor to pay taxes.”
On Elizabeth Warren’s Stop Wall Street Looting Act (SWSLA)
- “SWSLA identifies a number of important issues in its findings, including the imposition of excessive debt on acquisitions, unfair treatment of workers in bankruptcy proceedings, and inadequate disclosure of private-fund fees and performance.”
- “The Stop Wall Street Looting Act ends these abusive practices by putting private investment fund managers on the hook for the companies they control, ending looting, empowering workers and investors, and safeguarding the markets from risky corporate debt.”
- “SWSLA is chock full of excessive interventions and yet, ultimately, does not go nearly far enough.”
On Trump
- “I often compare President Trump to an earthquake—a costly disaster.”
- “The Trump administration never translated the rhetoric into a coherent agenda. It did not implement an industrial policy to effect a significant reshoring of supply chains, nor spur waves of new investment in innovation, nor lead a major push on infrastructure, nor pursue aggressive education or labor reforms, nor confront the rent-seeking in the financial or technology sectors.”
ANSWER KEY:
On Republican Budget Plans and Tax Cuts
On the 2017 Trump Tax Cuts
On Taxing Businesses
On Banning Stock Buybacks
On Profits
On a $750-$800B Financial Transaction Tax Hike
On Taxing Shareholders
On Elizabeth Warren’s Stop Wall Street Looting Act
On Trump (okay we cheated here, both quotes are from Oren)