At a Senate Democratic press briefing, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) tore into the Republican budget resolution.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Thank you very much.
00:01We're going to talk about taxes, that's right.
00:05Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the spineless Republicans in Congress have tried to create
00:11a sandstorm so that everyone will be distracted.
00:15There's something going on every minute, looking 50 different directions, because they don't
00:20want us to look at the number one place they are driving this country, and that is trillions
00:27of dollars in tax cuts for billionaires, paid for on the backs of seniors, on the backs
00:34of little kids, on the backs of veterans, and on the backs of everybody in America who
00:40is hoping that some medical research breakthrough will help a beloved family member who's dealing
00:46with a terrible disease.
00:49Don't believe us?
00:50Just listen to the Republicans themselves.
00:54During our last go-round on this budget, the Democrats stood up and said, if you're
00:59not going to do tax cuts for the wealthiest among us, let's just put that in the bill.
01:05Can we just write that down, put it in the bill, and say not going to be any tax cuts
01:09above this level?
01:10So we started out and we said, could we just agree in the United States Senate that no
01:16one who earns more than $10 million in taxable income in a single year, that is two one-thousandths
01:30of our population, that none of those people making more than $10 million in a year will
01:36see any tax giveaways in your budget?
01:41Every Democrat said yes, every Republican said no.
01:46We got to preserve the ability to help those folks.
01:50So we said, okay, okay, if $10 million is too low for you, those people are just too
01:56close to poverty, to be able to promise they're not going to get any tax giveaways, how about
02:01$100 million in annual income?
02:06Once again, every Democrat said, yeah, let's put the cap there, and every single Republican
02:12voted no.
02:13So we said, okay, okay, we get it, how about a half a billion dollars?
02:21If your income in a single year is a half a billion dollars or more, would you at least
02:26agree that those folks will not get a tax giveaway in the Republican budget?
02:33And every single Republican said, nope, got to preserve the opportunity to hand out those
02:40tax breaks for people making more than half a billion dollars a year.
02:45So we decided to cap it off with a full billion, a full billion dollars in taxable income.
02:52Could we just agree, as a United States Senate, that anybody making a billion dollars a year
03:00in taxable income will not get a big tax cut from the Republicans?
03:08And not one single Republican supported that.
03:13Every one of them said, nope, got to preserve the opportunity for tax giveaways for our
03:20billionaire friends.
03:22After all, let's remember, Donald Trump promised his, remember the word, rich as hell donors,
03:28that he was going to deliver on those tax giveaways.
03:31He's got his co-president, Elon Musk, in there helping him right now grease the skids on
03:37that with all these cuts in the federal budget elsewhere.
03:41And that is where we stand.
03:43It's that families lose and billionaires win.
03:48Now here's the trick in the game.
03:51They created a sandstorm hoping that we will be talking about 50 other things while they
03:56try to advance this budget over the next 36 hours.
04:00There's lots going on.
04:02There's tariffs, there's invading Greenland, who knows what Donald Trump has done just
04:06while we've been standing up here.
04:09Why do that?
04:11Because the Republican approach is deeply unpopular.
04:17Not just unpopular with Democrats, it is deeply unpopular with Democrats, with Republicans,
04:24with independents, with libertarians, with vegetarians.
04:28In fact, the only people who really support this are the billionaires themselves.
04:33But most of America think that those billionaires should be paying a fair share in taxes.
04:40Most Americans believe that Jeff Bezos should not be paying taxes at a lower rate than a
04:45Boston public school teacher.
04:48So that's what the next 36 hours is all about.
04:52It's about the Republicans hoping that most of America won't notice what they're doing,
05:00and that is putting out a budget with trillions of dollars in tax cuts for billionaires paid
05:07for on the backs of seniors, little kids, veterans, and everybody who wants to see America
05:16invest in our research future, our medical future.
05:20The Republicans hope that everybody will be looking everywhere else as they try to
05:26ram their unpopular plan through.
05:28The job of the Democrats over the next 36 hours is to hold the Republicans' feet to
05:34the fire, force them to tell the truth about what they want to do to the American economy
05:41and what they believe fairness is, and that is a country that works for a handful of billionaires
05:46and lets everybody else eat dirt.
05:49The Democrats are in this fight all the way.
05:51We're ready to go.
05:52Ready to go.
05:54Great.
05:55Senator Blumenthal on veterans.
05:56Veterans and national security.
05:59I'm going to...