Newly elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), the youngest woman ever elected to the US Congress, told Anderson Cooper that high tax rates on the super-rich would help fund the ambitious plan to combat the threat of climate change known as the “Green New Deal.”
In an upcoming 60 Minutes interview, set to air this Sunday, the 29-year-old Democratic socialist says the “Green New Deal,” which aims to eliminate carbon emissions within 12 years, is “going to require a lot of rapid change that we don’t even conceive as possible right now.”
“What is the problem with trying to push our technological capacities to the furthest extent possible?” Ocasio-Cortez asks.
To pay for the deal, Ocasio-Cortez pointed to the progressive tax rate system in the 1960s and proposed the idea of tax rates as high as 70 percent on the super-rich.
“You know, you look at our tax rates back in the ’60s. And when you have a progressive tax rate system, your tax rate . . . let’s say, from zero to $75,000, may be ten percent or 15 percent, et cetera,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “But once you get to, like, the tippy tops, on your ten-millionth dollar, sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60 or 70 percent.”
“That doesn’t mean all $10 million are taxed at an extremely high rate, but it means that, as you climb up this ladder, you should be contributing more,” she added.
Cooper replied that she was proposing a “radical agenda, compared to the way politics is done right now.”
“I think that it only has ever been radicals that have changed this country,” Ocasio-Cortez replied. “Abraham Lincoln made the radical decision to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. Franklin Delano Roosevelt made the radical decision to embark on establishing programs like Social Security. That is radical.”
Asked if she calls herself a radical, Ocasio-Cortez said, “If that’s what radical means, call me a radical.”
The freshman Congresswoman has emerged as a national progressive firebrand and has captured the attention of Americans of all political stripes. Her suggestion to tax the ultra-rich as much as 70 percent is likely to get as much attention as the recently-revealed and now-viral clip of a college-aged Ocasio-Cortez mimicking an iconic scene from the iconic 1980’s movie “The Breakfast Club.”
Ocasio-Cortez was sworn into the House of Representatives on Thursday as Democrats reclaimed control of the lower chamber. During the Democratic primary in June, the political novice unseated incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley, the fourth highest-ranking Democrat in the House. Ocasio-Cortez is a self-identified Democratic Socialist and supports universal health care, tuition-free public universities and criminal justice reform.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy