Warren stands by call to overturn income tax cuts
Despite the recent boost in the economy, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren isn’t budging on her position to increase taxes.
“Let’s be clear, the Republicans just gave away a trillion and a half dollars in tax cuts to billionaires and giant corporations,” Warren told the Herald yesterday. “Those tax decisions, they’re not about numbers, they’re about values. They’re about who you believe the government should work for.”
Warren denounced Trump’s tax cuts during a town hall event at the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology, even though experts have partially credited the measure with the recent GDP growth of 4.1 percent.
“I think the fundamental question is: Who has the economy improved for?” Warren said.
The tax cuts dropped income tax rates across the board, and slashed the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. Warren argued that wages are flatlining while the cost of living continues to go up.
Her criticism comes after an interview with CNBC last week, when she called for an overturn of Trump’s tax cuts but wouldn’t specify where she’d like to see them, refusing to rule out rates over 50 percent for the highest earners. Warren declined again yesterday to provide a number.
“That’s what negotiations are about,” Warren said.
State Rep. Geoff Diehl, a Republican challenger for Warren’s seat in the Senate, criticized her on the subject outside before the town hall started.
“We now have a very clear difference in November between the next U.S. senator who is going to either work to reduce taxes or who is going to support increasing taxes,” Diehl said. “I think the question I want to know and I’m hoping we find out very soon from Senator Warren is, how much should we be paying?”
There was a time in America when the rise in the stock market was accompanied by a rise in wages, Warren said, but that is no longer the case.
“It hasn’t been the case for about 30 years,” Warren said. “The stock market goes up and that’s great for people who own shares of stock … the lived experience of working families across this commonwealth and across this country is not reflected in a higher stock market.”
BAY STATE SEN. WEIGHS IN ON KAVANAUGH, P. 10.