Joe Scarborough Goes OFF on Tax Breaks for Super Wealthy: ‘Largest Income Redistribution Scam in American History’

The New York Times is reporting a Democratic plan to fund a reported $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation by taxing the super-wealthy Americans but leaving the accumulated wealth of the world’s richest individuals (like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk) untouched.  The new tax code is just in its gestation period, and there is a lot of debate left to occur, but Joe Scarborough made explicitly clear where he lands on this issue.

The former Republican member of Congress and current host of Morning Joe went all caps OFF on what he clearly sees as an unfair tax code that has gutted the middle class while super-wealthy hedge funders amassing millions and often billions of dollars personal riches.

Following Willie Geist’s reading of the New York Times report, Scarborough started dispassionately critiquing the Democrats for leaving out the super-wealthy in this early form of their tax bill.

“I don’t understand what’s going on when you have the people writing the tax bill for the Democrats,” he opened. “They are concerned about moderates’ concerns. What? Do they want Jeff Bezos and Amazon to keep paying zero dollars? Is that a moderate concern, or is that actually a lobbyist’s concern? Because over the past few years, there are corporations that have paid zero taxes in a year and just over the past couple of years.” He then listed roughly a dozen companies: Amazon, Chevron, Avis, Delta, Eli Lilly, GM, Goodyear, Halliburton, Honeywell, IBM, Netflix, Occidental Petroleum, FedEx, and Nike.

“Are moderates really concerned that those corporations may actually have to pay millions of dollars in taxes? Right now, they’re paying zero,” he added. “And billionaires are continuing to figure out how to pay little or nothing.”

He then pivoted to the current tax codes that allow the super-rich to pay less in taxes than their support staff. “Hedge fund titans are paying taxes at lower rates than their clerical employees, the people who chauffeur their Bentleys.,” he said. “You think that’s demagoguery? You think that’s — no, it’s not. That’s the fact.”

Scarborough moved to income redistribution, a buzzword that many conservatives equate to socialism (see Joe the Plumber and former President Barack Obama.) “Everybody hates income redistribution,” he said. “That makes you a socialist, doesn’t it? If you are for a scheme that redistributes wealth.”

But the Morning Joe host flipped the script on that term, saying, “The world we’ve lived in over the past 40 years there’s been the largest income redistribution scam in American history. And it’s been the middle class that’s been looted while trillions keep flowing into the bank accounts of billionaires.”

“This whole income redistribution thing we keep — oh, you can’t raise taxes on people because that will be income redistribution,” he continued.  “You’re a socialist. Well, guess what. The very people who are saying that, the very people who are funding think tanks that will say that, the very people that are paying lobbyists to get the message out to say that, the very people who are spending millions and millions of dollars on lawyers and lobbyists on K street who are saying that. They are the people who have scammed you.”

Watch above via MSNBC.