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Floor Speech
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Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I am going to spend a few minutes discussing the three words on this chart next to me: buy, borrow, and die. These three little words are allowing billionaires across America to legally get away with paying little or nothing in taxes for years and years on end.
Here is how it works: A billionaire buys and holds assets, like works of art, more houses than they can possibly live in, stocks and bonds, you name it. They increase in value untaxed.
The billionaire then borrows against these assets to support a lavish lifestyle, and they can borrow at a fraction of the consumer rate due to the enormous holdings of these valuable assets. That loan is untaxed. The billionaire's assets appreciate at a higher rate than the interest on the loan--that is not hard to do. So the billionaire can, essentially, do all of this until they die, and then their kids can start all over again.
So let's now contrast buy, borrow, and die with the tax system in America for firefighters and nurses. Nurses and firefighters, for example, living in Philomath, OR, are required to pay taxes out of every paycheck. Working people don't get to play by these billionaire rules. They don't get to call up an army of high-priced lawyers and accountants every time they don't feel like paying their taxes.
Right now, the average billionaire can wriggle their way into a low 8 percent tax rate while a nurse or a firefighter making $45,000 is paying a 22 percent tax on their wages. Now, here is the gut punch for everybody who is following this and works for a wage: Current buy, borrow, and die practices under our tax law are perfectly legal. That is a pretty sickening reality. Tax laws simply don't apply to billionaires in the same way they do to firefighters and nurses.
Nurses, firefighters have mandatory tax rules. The billionaires can pretty much pay what they want, when they want to. How is that fair? Americans overwhelmingly believe it is not. So it is time to look to solutions that restore fairness to the Tax Code while still rewarding success. After all, that is what our country was founded on. We believe deeply in success and the ethic of giving everybody a chance to get ahead.
Luckily, there is a solution that achieves both fairness and economic growth. Today, I, along with 15 other Members of the Senate, am introducing the first comprehensive Billionaires' Income Tax that would finally end buy, borrow, and die. This is going to put a stop to one of the most common schemes billionaires can use to pay little or no taxes for years and years on end.
Now, as to implementation of our bill, there is a way already on the tax books that allows you to do it. In the Tax Code there are mark-to- market rules and policies.
Now, for the tax wonks out there, people who think tax policy and its root-canal-like pain are enjoyable, here are the sections: Mark to market is in section 475, it is in section 877A, it is in section 1256, and it is in section 1296. So there is your model. That is how you do it. You use rules and policies that are on the books today, a blueprint right in front of us to use as a model for taxing billionaires fairly.
Mark to market under the Billionaires' Income Tax would require billionaires to pay taxes every year, just like those firefighters and nurses. It is time to close the loopholes and make sure that everybody at the very top is paying taxes on their income as it is earned, and our Billionaires' Income Tax is the way to do it.
This Congress, our staff on the Finance Committee and I have investigated a number of tax schemes that the very wealthy, with the help of armies of tax lawyers and accountants, use to pay virtually no Federal tax. The Finance Committee has investigated crooked Swiss bankers hiding wealthy Americans' income; $34 billion in unpaid taxes from the very wealthy, who won't even file a tax return--we are not even talking about schemes, they won't even file a return; unpaid taxes for millionaires; tax-dodging schemes between Leon Black and the notorious Jeffrey Epstein; and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's wealthy buddy secretly forgiving a massive private loan. Billionaires looking to dodge their taxes are thriving today under the current tax laws.
So I want a tax policy, as chairman of the Finance Committee, that gives everybody in America the chance to get ahead. Our friend, our former colleague, Senator Bradley from New Jersey--has a better jump shot than I do--that is what he talked about, is opportunity, giving everybody a chance to get ahead. Unfortunately, the flawed tax policies that billionaires take advantage of promote wealth building in the hands of a fortunate few.
This is leaving a lot of people behind. Over one-third of families in America don't have the cash on hand to pay for a $400 emergency if they had to. Meanwhile, during the pandemic, when families were forced make tough choices between paying rent and buying groceries, billionaires increased their wealth by over $1 trillion.
We have big needs in this country--obviously, the Medicare solvency crisis. We have seniors at the risk of losing the Medicare guarantee unless there is a way forward for paying for it. If Medicare becomes financially insolvent, seniors and Americans who counted on those guaranteed health benefits need look no further than billionaires, tax cheats, and their Republican allies who refuse to say that the billionaires could pay their fair share.
The Billionaires' Income Tax raises an estimated $557 billion over 10 years. If the ultra-wealthy started paying their fair share under my Billionaires' Income Tax proposal, we could be on our way to making Medicare financially sound, protecting the Medicare guarantee for millions of Americans.
I am going to close with this: The Billionaires' Income Tax is not an attack on success; it is a fundamental strike for fairness. We want a successful economy, and to have a successful economy, you have to have a Tax Code that ensures that everybody in America gets a fair shake, and treats everybody fairly.
It is time, in my view, to close the gap between the billionaires at the top and everybody else, and our Billionaires' Income Tax is a way to make that happen. ______
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