Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is “laughing at every person in America” as he goes to space while allegedly paying minimal taxes.
TMZ encountered Warren in Reagan National Airport and asked her “about the world’s richest man adding himself to the first crewed flight to space for his aerospace company, Blue Origin.” Warren took the opportunity to blast the entrepreneur for allegedly neglecting to pay his taxes:
“Look, he’s laughing at every person in America who actually paid taxes,” Warren told the entertainment news outlet. “Jeff Bezos’ trip to outer space is being financed by all the rest of the U.S. taxpayers who paid their taxes so that Jeff Bezos didn’t have to. And Jeff Bezos kept all his money and used it on his space ticket.”
Warren’s comments emerge one week after investigative journalism website ProPublica analyzed illegally-leaked income tax records to show that some American billionaires pay no income taxes.
The Daily Wire previously reported that the ProPublica report neglects several pieces of context — including the fact that “the highest-earning Americans overall pay the lion’s share of U.S. income taxes, while the bottom half of income earners pay less than 3% of all income taxes.”
In March, Warren proposed an “ultra-millionaire” tax that would seize wealth from Americans in order to pay for President Biden’s spending agenda.
According to a statement about her bill:
The ultra-rich and powerful have rigged the rules in their favor so much that the top 0.1% pay a lower effective tax rate than the bottom 99%, and billionaire wealth is 40% higher than before the COVID crisis began… This is money that should be invested in child care and early education, K-12, infrastructure, all of which are priorities of President Biden and Democrats in Congress. I’m confident lawmakers will catch up to the overwhelming majority of Americans who are demanding more fairness, more change, and who believe it’s time for a wealth tax.
More recently, Rep. Thomas Suozzi (D-NY) proposed a “Patriot Tax” that would force those with a net worth over $50 million to surrender 2.5% of their wealth to the federal government. Those with a net worth above $100 million would surrender 5%.
Suozzi told The Hill that the tax would serve as “a way to help your country to build back better.”
As of 2019, Elizabeth Warren and her husband — both of whom worked as professors at Harvard Law School — reportedly boast a net worth of $12 million.
