Rep. Ro Khanna reveals the billionaire tax is just the beginning

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) just moved to outbid his Democratic colleagues in the presidential auction. With the radical left sweeping away establishment figures in favor of socialists, various prospective presidential candidates are offering up key institutions in their effort to appease the mob.

The Supreme Court has been the starting bid. Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg and Josh Shapiro have yielded to the mob and embraced court packing.

Khanna is not to be outdone. After his disastrous campaigning for Graham Platner, Khanna is returning to a sure winner: Class warfare.

Last week, Khanna confirmed that the “billionaire tax” is just the start and that they will go on to target the wealth of other citizens as an untapped resource of new revenue.

For years, some of us have warned that the billionaire tax was a ruse. Sponsors like Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Khanna were using billionaires as an easy political target, but they were unlikely to stop there.

The challenge is to get the tax through the courts, which is why it is so essential to pack the court. Warren notably was an early advocate of both changes.

I discuss the tax in my book “Rage and the Republic” as an example of the “eat-the-rich” politics used by demagogues from ancient Athens to the French Revolution. Politicians seek to divide a population into “haves” and “have-nots” with the promise that citizens could have it all if only they are given back power.

Warren tried to use the tax to restart her moribund 2020 presidential campaign. During one debate, she dramatically told the rich she was coming after “your Rembrandts, your stock portfolio, your diamonds and your yachts.” She thrilled the crowd by greedily rubbing her hands together after saying she would take some of the wealth of fellow candidate John Delaney, a self-made millionaire.

The problem is that a federal billionaire tax (which is distinct from California’s billionaire tax that will be on the upcoming state ballot) is, in my view, completely unconstitutional. The federal government secured the right to tax individuals in 1913, but the 16th Amendment only approved income taxes. 

As made clear by Warren, Democrats want to tax people for the things that they bought after paying their taxes from homes to art to boats.

If they can pack the Court and greenlight a billionaire tax, there would be no limit to then moving the threshold wealth level downward. Once that Rubicon is crossed, Democrats would suddenly be able to tax trillions in the property and possessions of citizens.

That is precisely what Khanna finally admitted last week in a Substack post, arguing that “the tax should not stop at billionaires; it must reach centimillionaires. The tax has to reach all fortunes $50 million and up.” 

The wealth tax is the closest this country has come to an open redistribution-of-wealth effort, a core agenda item for the rising socialist movement.

Other countries such as France tried wealth taxes with disastrous results. Not only did it fail to generate the expected revenue (the wealth left the country en masse), but it also had to be rescinded. In Norway, the government kept reducing the level of targeted assets to six-figure thresholds.

The national tax is meant to address the growing disaster in California, which has reportedly lost trillions as the wealthy flee the high-tax state. Khanna and other Democrats hope to give the wealth nowhere to flee by taking this “hunt-the-rich” effort national. 

In making this pitch, Khanna is trying to achieve the political stunt of the century. Khanna is reportedly worth roughly half a billion dollars thanks to his wife’s inheritance. He is not alone among the super wealthy Democrats declaring themselves the champions of the proletariat. 

After all, there’s Illinois Gov. Jay Robert “JB” Pritzker, who also inherited his fortune. In a July interview with CNN, Pritzker virtually begged the mob that he is a different kind of billionaire, pointing at Trump billionaires as the rightful targets (not him with $4.3 billion).

Others found themselves on the wrong side of the mob. 

Rep. Dan Goldman, who inherited a massive fortune of almost $300 million as a trust baby, unwisely promised to help subsidize his congressional reelection campaign from his family fortune. Goldman fell flat with the socialist and increasingly antisemitic base — and was crushed by over 30 points.

Khanna hopes to stay ahead of that mob by leading it to the homes of other wealthy citizens.

As for California, the state is already showing how class warfare does not quite work if the upper classes simply leave with their wealth, businesses and jobs.

The state is facing a crippling debt of billions as its tax base contracts. Rather than reducing spending and waste, California Democrats and unions are pushing for unprecedented new taxes despite the exodus to low-tax states such as Florida and Texas.

It is an example of economic Darwinism, where citizens who are slow to flee are being fleeced by some of the highest taxes, gas prices and the cost of living in the nation.

At the same time, core services from education to public safety remain subpar at a premium price.

In the meantime, the far left is already moving even further and faster than establishment candidates like Khanna.

The Democratic Socialists just released their platform, which includes allowing Congress not just to pack the Court but also to pick Supreme Court justices. It also calls for the elimination of the Senate, the defunding defense and immigration programs, open borders and allowing noncitizens to vote.

Those are the very type of measures that the Jacobins used in France to create “direct” democratic powers.

The Framers rejected such measures as offering little more than a “mobocracy.” It was the reason that our country became the oldest and most prosperous republic in history while France became “the Terror.”

Khanna, Pritzker and others may hope that they can still harness the power of the mob. However, history is not on their side.

For all of their promises of radical changes to our constitutional system and wealth taxes, these establishment figures will be devoured in the very class warfare that they seek to unleash.

Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times bestselling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”

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