During Wednesday’s Senate Finance Committee hearing, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) argued her Wealth Tax and other tax proposals were a way to pay for large-scale investments in infrastructure.
Warren, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and U.S. Reps. Andrew Levin (D-MI) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) recently introduced the BUILD GREEN Infrastructure and Jobs Act that would invest $500 billion over 10 years in state, local, and tribal projects to jumpstart the transition to all-electric public vehicles and rail.
Additionally, Warren and Levin will introduce the Buy Green Act, which would establish a $1.5 trillion federal procurement program to purchase American-made clean energy products for federal, state, and local use.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored how crucial infrastructure is to making our economy and our communities work. And that includes the roads and buses that Americans take to work or to school, but it also includes the child care that allows parents to go to work and the high-speed internet that allows our kids to rely– that our kids rely on for their studies,” Warren said during the hearing. “And yet our investments in all of that vital infrastructure have been both inadequate and inequitable. So take our roads, which earned a “D” on the most recent infrastructure report card from the American Society for Civil Engineers. One out of every five miles of American highways and roads is in poor condition.”
Warren argued that her bills – the Wealth Tax, the Real Corporate Profits Tax, and the IRS enforcement proposals – would raise more than enough money to pay for those the Green Infrastructure legislation and more.
“President Biden and I have both put forward full menus of options for paying for these long-overdue investments in our shared infrastructure, options that are not going to hurt the very people who are struggling the most to recover from this pandemic,” Warren said. “My wealth tax, real corporate profits tax, tax enforcement plan. Those three things would raise $6 trillion without raising taxes on 99.9% of Americans by a single penny. And that’s enough to pay for every penny of President Biden’s American Jobs Plan, to pay for every single penny of his American Families Plan, and to still have $2 trillion left over.”