Buttigieg Pitches Four Tax Hikes During One Answer on the Deficit

EXCERPT:

BUTTIGIEG: “So, part of it is do no harm. Right? But there are also proactive steps we need to take, we need to be smart about spending, just as I have to be as a mayor. The city of South Bend does not have its own currency so I don’t get to print money in order to deal with the gap on the budget. We just have to figure it out, I think we need a little more of that mentality in the federal government. But debt can play a role. Deficits can play a role when you doing deficit spending that pays for itself in the long run. Now tax cuts for wealthy don’t do that. But investments in education, in infrastructure and health, sometimes can. We should be honest about the fact sometimes that is appropriate, but not if you have no vision of what revenue is going to support it, when candidates, Democrats, go out promising— as I think we should, that we’re gonna have major increases in investment in things like education, health and infrastructure, we have to be willing to say where revenue is gonna come from, that’s why we really need to entertain ideas I would say a fairer, which means higher marginal income tax rate on those earning the most, a reasonable wealth tax or something like that to make sure people are giving back when they become enormously wealthy. Perhaps a financial transaction’s tax, that taxes these millisecond differences in computer trades, that people become enormously wealthy of them. I’m not saying we should ban them. Since it is not obvious how much real values they’re adding to the economy, the least we could do is to get some value for American people and also closing corporate tax loopholes and incentives for offshoring that have it to where, pretty much everyone here in in room probably paid more personally, in federal income taxes than some of the most wealthy multinational corporations like Amazon that made billions in profits and paid zero last year.”