Should Billionaires Exist? Sanders, Warren and Steyer Debate It

[Watch the debate and follow our live analysis here.]

As Tuesday’s Democratic debate in Ohio turned to the subject of income inequality, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont fielded a question on his past comments on billionaires.

His response — in which he did not explicitly answer the question of whether his goal was “to tax billionaires out of existence,” but forcefully defended his plans to tax them much more heavily — prompted a lengthy exchange with Tom Steyer, himself a billionaire; former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.; and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who was the first to propose a wealth tax this year.

Here is a transcript of the exchange:

ERIN BURNETT, moderator: Income inequality is growing in the United States at an alarming rate. The top 1 percent now own more of this nation’s wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. Senator Sanders, when you introduced your wealth tax, which would tax the assets of the wealthiest Americans, you said, quoting you, Senator: “Billionaires should not exist.” Is the goal of your plan to tax billionaires out of existence?

SANDERS: When you have a half a million Americans sleeping out on the street today, when you have 87 million people uninsured or underinsured, when you have hundreds of thousands of kids who cannot afford to go to college and millions struggling with the oppressive burden of student debt, and then you also have three people owning more wealth than the bottom half of American society, that is a moral and economic outrage. And the truth is, we cannot afford to continue this level of income and wealth inequality, and we cannot afford a billionaire class whose greed and corruption has been at war with the working families of this country for 45 years. So if you are asking me, do I think we should demand that the wealthiest top one-tenth of 1 percent start paying their fair share of taxes so we can create a nation and a government that works for all of us, yes, that’s exactly what I believe.

BURNETT: Thank you, Senator. Mr. Steyer, you are the lone billionaire on this stage. What’s your plan for closing the income gap?

STEYER: First of all, let me say this. Senator Sanders is right. There have been 40 years where corporations have bought this government, and those 40 years have meant a 40-year attack on the rights of working people and specifically on organized labor. And the results are as shameful as Senator Sanders says, both in terms of assets and in terms of income. It’s absolutely wrong. It’s absolutely undemocratic and unfair. I was one of the first people on this stage to propose a wealth tax. I would undo every Republican tax cut for rich people and major corporations. But there’s something else going on here that is absolutely shameful, and that’s the way the money gets split up in terms of earnings. As a result of taking away the rights of working people and organized labor, people haven’t had a raise — 90 percent of Americans have not had a raise for 40 years.

If you took the minimum wage from 1980 and just adjusted it for inflation, you get 11 bucks. It’s seven and a quarter. If you included productivity gains of American workers, it would be over 20 bucks. There’s something wrong here. And that is that the corporations have bought our government. Our government has failed. That’s why I’m running for president. Because we’re not going to get any of the policies that everybody on this stage wants — health care, education, Green New Deal or a living wage — unless we break the power of these corporations.

BURNETT: Thank you, Mr. Steyer. Vice President Biden, you have warned against demonizing rich people. Do you believe that Senator Sanders and Senator Warren’s wealth tax plans do that?

BIDEN: No, look. Demonizing wealth — what I talked about is how you get things done. And the way to get things done is take a look at the tax code right now. The idea — we have to start rewarding work, not just wealth. I would raise the capital gains tax to the highest rate of 39.5 percent. I would double it. Because guess what? Why in God’s name should someone who is clipping coupons in the stock market pay a lower tax rate than someone who in fact is, like I said — a schoolteacher and a firefighter? It’s ridiculous, and they pay a lower tax. Secondly, the idea that we, in fact, engage in this notion that there are — there’s $1.64 trillion in tax loopholes. You can’t justify at minimum $600 billion of that. We could eliminate it all. I could go into detail had I the time. Secondly — thirdly — what we need to do is we need to go out and make it clear to the American people that we are going to raise taxes on the wealthy. We are going to reduce tax burdens on those who are not. This is one of the reasons why these debates are kind of crazy. Because everybody tries to squeeze everything into every answer that is given. The fact is, everybody is right about the fact that the fourth industrial revolution is costing jobs. It is. The fact is also corporate greed, if they’re going back and not investing in their employees, they’re reinvesting in buying back their stock.

BURNETT: Thank you, Mr. Vice President. Senator Warren, your response.

WARREN: So, I think this is about our values as a country. Show me your budget, show me your tax plans, and we’ll know what your values are. And right now in America, the top one-tenth of 1 percent have so much wealth, understand this: That if we put a 2 cent tax on their 50 millionth and first dollar and on every dollar after that, we would have enough money to provide universal child care for every baby in this country age 0 to 5; universal pre-K for every child; raise the wages for every child care worker and preschool teacher in America; provide for universal tuition-free college; put $50 billion into historically black colleges and universities; and cancel student loan debt for 95 percent of the people who have it. My question is not why do Bernie and I support a wealth tax, it’s why is it — does everyone else on this stage think it is more important to protect billionaires than it is to invest in an entire generation of Americans?

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