ABC This Week interviews during 2019: on Tax Reform


Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Workers & government should not pay for billionaires

Whether Jeff Bezos is a billionaire or not is less of my concern than if your average Amazon worker is making a living wage, if they have guaranteed health care and can send their kids to college tuition-free. If that's the case and Bezos is a billionaire, that's one thing. But if his being a billionaire is predicated on paying people starvation wages and stripping their ability to access health care, and on the fact that his workers take food stamps, I'm paying for him to be a billionaire.
Source: ABC This Week 2019 interview for Congress NY-14 election Jun 16, 2019

Andrew Yang: Value Added Tax would generate $800 billion

Who are going to be the biggest winners from A.I. and new technologies? It's going to be Amazon, Google, Facebook and we all can see that Amazon paid $0 in federal taxes last year.

What we have to do is we have to join every other advanced The people at the top end of the income scale consume a lot more, and you can actually make the VAT so it falls more heavily on luxury goods as opposed to consumer staples. So, the way for us to get this money is really to go to where the money is, and where the money is is in the hands of the Amazons and the Googles and Facebooks of the world.

Source: ABC This Week 2019 interview of presidential hopefuls Apr 7, 2019

Amy Klobuchar: Changes in corporate tax would fund infrastructure

Q: What about infrastructure?

A: Infrastructure is an economic need. I have the funding, I've shown how I can get this plan done, and as president I will get it done.

Q: You want to raise the corporate tax rate, which the Republicans just cut. That might be a heavy lift.

A: Look at what they did, they went down to 21 percent and every point if even to put it at 25 percent, which is a significant decrease from where it was, we would bring in $400 billion to pay for roads and bridges and levies and schools. That's a lot of money. Or how about the way they did the overseas income where they took an average rate instead of assessing it for each country. If we went back to each country, $150 billion in savings.

Source: ABC This Week 2019 interviews for 2020 Democratic primary Mar 31, 2019

John Delaney: Increase marginal rate, tax investments like income

I think marginal tax rate should be higher but if we actually want to create more fairness in our tax code, we would also start taxing investment income more similar to what workers get paid at. There's a massive kind of unfairness between the amount of taxes people pay who invest for a living, versus people who pay who work for a living. And I think that can generate more revenues for the government.
Source: ABC This Week 2019 interviews of 2020 Presidential hopefuls Jan 13, 2019

Julian Castro: Top earners, corporations should pay "fair share"

I can support folks at the top paying for fair share. There was a time in this country where the top marginal tax rate was over 90 percent, even during Reagan's era in the 1980s it was around 50 percent. So do I support, in order to have something like Medicare for all, that we ask folks that are in the top .05 percent or .5 percent or top 1 percent to pay more? And, also, that we get more serious about making sure the corporations pay their fair share, and that we're smart about understanding how instead of folks having to pay sky high premiums to companies that are seeking a profit to deliver health care that we can have a better system, even if that means that we rearrange where those dollars go? Yeah, I support that.
Source: ABC This Week 2019 interviews for 2020 Democratic primary Jan 6, 2019

  • The above quotations are from ABC This Week interviews during 2019
    (Martha Raddatz interviewing candidates for 2019-2020 races).
  • Click here for definitions & background information on Tax Reform.
  • Click here for other issues (main summary page).
  • Click here for more quotes by John Kasich on Tax Reform.
  • Click here for more quotes by John Hickenlooper on Tax Reform.
2020 Presidential contenders on Tax Reform:
  Democrats running for President:
Sen.Michael Bennet (D-CO)
V.P.Joe Biden (D-DE)
Mayor Mike Bloomberg (I-NYC)
Gov.Steve Bullock (D-MT)
Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-IN)
Sen.Cory Booker (D-NJ)
Secy.Julian Castro (D-TX)
Gov.Lincoln Chafee (L-RI)
Rep.John Delaney (D-MD)
Rep.Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI)
Sen.Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
Gov.Deval Patrick (D-MA)
Sen.Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
CEO Tom Steyer (D-CA)
Sen.Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)
Marianne Williamson (D-CA)
CEO Andrew Yang (D-NY)

2020 Third Party Candidates:
Rep.Justin Amash (L-MI)
CEO Don Blankenship (C-WV)
Gov.Lincoln Chafee (L-RI)
Howie Hawkins (G-NY)
Gov.Gary Johnson(L-NM)
Howard Schultz(I-WA)
Gov.Jesse Ventura (I-MN) 		Republicans running for President:
Sen.Ted Cruz(R-TX)
Gov.Larry Hogan (R-MD)
Gov.John Kasich(R-OH)
V.P.Mike Pence(R-IN)
Gov.Mark Sanford (R-SC)
Pres.Donald Trump(R-NY)
Rep.Joe Walsh (R-IL)
Gov.Bill Weld(R-MA & L-NY)

2020 Withdrawn Democratic Candidates:
Sen.Stacey Abrams (D-GA)
Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-NYC)
Sen.Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
Sen.Mike Gravel (D-AK)
Sen.Kamala Harris (D-CA)
Gov.John Hickenlooper (D-CO)
Gov.Jay Inslee (D-WA)
Mayor Wayne Messam (D-FL)
Rep.Seth Moulton (D-MA)
Rep.Beto O`Rourke (D-TX)
Rep.Tim Ryan (D-CA)
Adm.Joe Sestak (D-PA)
Rep.Eric Swalwell (D-CA)
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Page last updated: Nov 17, 2021