Billionaire Ken Langone Fumes at Elizabeth Warren in Fiery CNBC Clash Over Wealth Tax: ‘I Paid My Share!’
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone engaged in a fiery clash over corporate taxes, entitlements, and other related related topics.
Warren and Langone appeared together Wednesday on CNBC’s Squawk Box, and the debate got heated right out of the gate — with Langone slamming a proposed wealth tax as a “negative compound interest.”
“I made all the money,” Langone said. “I paid the government what I owed them. What I have left, I put at risk. I could have lost it all, but I paid my share!”
Langone attempted to change topics, which prompted Warren to object and ask “could we talk about the wealth tax just for a minute before we change subjects?” Langone charged ahead, though — predicting that Warren would actually enjoy the topic change, and he proceeded to ask why wealthy people like himself receive checks because of social security.
“Why don’t you people have the courage to address entitlements as to what should no longer be an entitlement? I shouldn’t get social security,” Langone said. “Second thing, I pay a minimum alternative tax. I pay a tax. No matter what my deductions, I owe the government so much money. Why don’t corporations have a minimum tax? Rhird, what about the carried interest? Why not address that? These are home runs in terms of right versus wrong in my opinion.”
Langone went on to discuss how much the government receives from Home Depot in corporate taxes, saying “everybody has done well. We’ve paid full taxes. These are slam dunks.” He then asked Warren to “tell me why I get a check, and my wife gets another $1,000 on top of that. Take it away from me! Have the courage to do it!”
Warren tried to address the wealth tax, but Langone accused her of deflecting by saying, “you don’t want to address the issue of how I’m getting $4,000 a month from the government and I shouldn’t be getting it?” When Warren was finally given leeway to answer Langone’s questions, she argued that “Jeff Bezos, many years, has either paid nothing in taxes or has paid about 1 percent.” Warren attributed the Amazon founder’s fortune to his company stock portfolio while simultaneously borrowing money against it.
Warren went on to argue that the current tax system primarily burdens working and middle class Americans, so a wealth tax would compel the rich to pay their fair share. She also countered Langone by saying she has proposed something similar to a corporate tax by calling for highly lucrative corporations to pay a tax “on what they report, not what happens after they’ve done a zillion loopholes.”
In terms of social security, Warren described it as “an insurance policy” that’s fundamentally different from the other subjects Langone brought up.
You paid in, year after year after year, and part of the contract was if you would pay in, you would get this kind of return on the backend. It’s not somebody’s welfare, it’s not somebody’s charity. It was an agreement that every employee in the country who is eligible for social security paid into and gets a return at the backend. Surely you wouldn’t want to be the person who would go on national TV and say after a contract has been negotiated and someone has paid into it for 40 years, that the federal government should turn around and say, “Oops, we changed our mind and we are not going to give you the payout you earned by making those payments all those years.”
Watch above, via CNBC.
