(The Post Millennial) - Elon Musk announced that he would be paying some $11 billion in taxes for the 2021 fiscal year, but that still isn't enough for progressive Rep. Pramila Jayapal, who thinks he should be paying even more. Jayapal appears to believe that wealth, and not just income, should be taxed.
The Washington state Democrat and chair of the House Progressive Caucus thinks that Musk's wealth indicates that he should be paying in excess of that $11 billion, likely to fund the pet projects she'd like to see enacted under the Biden's stalled Build Back Better plan.
Musk recently got into a tiff with Senator Elizabeth Warren, also a progressive Democrat, who claimed that Musk wasn't paying his "fair share" in taxes. Musk rejoined that sentiment with an estimate of his tax bill for this year.
"Let's change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else," Warren tweeted along with a Boston Globe Musk's being named "person of the year" by Time Magazine.
"Stop projecting!" Musk responded, tweeting an article about Warren's false claim to descended from Native Americans.
"You remind me of when I was a kid and my friend's angry Mom would just randomly yell at everyone for no reason," Musk wrote. "Please don't call the manager on me, Senator Karen."
Joy Reid came to Warren's rescue during her MSNBC show The Reid Out. She claimed that Musk was "…misappropriating black vernacular for misogynistic purposes" by using what is effectively a slur against white women. Reid has used the term herself, notably calling Tucker Carlson a "white, male Karen."
Jayapal lambasted Senator Joe Manchin in a Washington Post op-ed on Sunday for his unwillingness to back the Build Back Better plan, saying essentially that Democrats are entitled to Manchin's vote.
"Nearly a year ago, President Biden laid out his Build Back Better agenda: a broad vision to meet the individual and collective challenges Americans face, necessarily ambitious to address crises both created and exposed by the pandemic. For most of 2021, Democrats worked to pass legislation that realizes that vision. The president negotiated with Congress, including Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) directly. Sen. Manchin committed to the president — who relayed that commitment to House members — that he would support the legislative framework unveiled on Oct. 28."
"But on Dec. 20, Sen. Manchin went back on his commitment to the president and seemingly killed the bill on national television," Jayapal said. "In a town where your word is everything, this was a stunning rebuke of his own party’s president."
"Despite that, we must move forward,” Jayapal continued. "The president's agenda is even more urgent today. The omicron variant is surging as covid-19 has once again disrupted people’s ability to work, care for children and elders, access medical care and make ends meet. We simply cannot abandon our vision."
An NPR/Marist poll showed that the Build Back Better plan lacks popularity among Americans. Only 41 percent of those responding to the NPR poll said they were in support of the bill. Three-quarters of those supporters were Democrats, while independents and Republicans were less likely to support the broad, sweeping social program.
By Libby Emmons
December 28, 2021
