Quotes About Policy

One way to have broader access to wealth is to reduce the tax on the large group and increase the tax on the very top so concentration of wealth doesn't get to extreme levels.

The U.S. is the country that invented progressive taxation of income and of inherited wealth in the 1910s and '20s.

In the tradition of national income accounting, economic policymakers have typically focused on variables such as income, wealth, and consumption.

No matter how wealthy a few plutocrats get, we can never drive a great national economy. Only a thriving middle class can do that.

The President is destroying the fabric of America with a combined policy of war, tax cuts for the wealthy, and reductions in spending for domestic needs.

We need a senator who fights for things like affordable health care, college and technical school, not tax cuts for wealthy donors. That doesn't mean free college or Medicare for All, I'm against that.

You have to take away some of tax breaks for the wealthy, and you have to cut back on some entitlements. Because, unless we do all of these things, it just doesn't work. And what's good theater and what's good politics isn't necessarily good economic policy.

Even tax breaks that are supposed to help the middle class too often skew toward the wealthy. Consider the mortgage interest deduction. While political leaders in both parties have long considered it untouchable, it actually helps those at the top of the income scale far more than those at the bottom.

We have a lot of things we give away to people who are very, very wealthy in this country. And I'm not sure that our federal government can afford that.

Tax rates for the wealthy should revert to Clinton-era levels, both because it is necessary for long-term deficit reduction and because fairness dictates it. Moreover, there is no proof that higher marginal rates dissuade investment, all the rhetoric from the Right notwithstanding.

My premise is not to tax to destroy the wealth of the wealthy; it's to increase the wealth of the bottom and the middle class.

There are a few things that we can do. One of them is that we can increase the taxes that people are paying who are the extremely wealthy in our communities. So, 70 percent, 80 percent, we've had it as high as 90 percent.

Outside the EU, studying abroad will become the reserve of the wealthy. Inside the EU, it's an opportunity available to almost everyone.

Until the 1980s, candidates spent a fraction of their time talking to donors; just a few weeks a year, a little more right before an election. True, they'd fund raise from the wealthy interests, as they do now, but it was a minuscule part of their job: policy and constituent services were the heart of the work.

We need to consider a financial transactions tax. And we need to ask whether the top marginal tax rates are really appropriate, given that the effective tax rates paid by the wealthy are often actually lower than those paid by the rest of us.

Yes, health care is an election issue. It's also a moral imperative especially in a wealthy nation.

Trickle-down economics does not work, and tax reform should not be defined as partisan tax cuts for the wealthy and huge corporations.

It is a country that professes to care for babies. But in the United States, the infant death rate is twice as high as in similarly wealthy countries. Premature birth and low birth weight are common ailments, with lifelong and even intergenerational effects.

Sanctions are not really an economic weapon.

A temporary reduction in tax rates on individual incomes can be a powerful weapon against recession.

It urges policy makers and the Supreme Court to make the mistake of curing what could prove to be an isolated problem by disarming the government of its principal weapon to stop future terrorist attacks.

The truth is that a number of us have been saying for quite some time that it was only a matter of time until someone went to a gun show, bought a military-like semi-automatic assault weapon with a large capacity magazine, and did enormous damage.

There is no reason for a civilian to have an automatic weapon.

There's no reason anyone needs to have an assault weapon.