Washington, DC, July 14, 2020 – In an interview with Fox Business Monday afternoon, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow commented on the prospects for a phase 4 coronavirus relief legislation, saying that the White House may push for the final package to include a capital gains tax holiday.
In response to Kudlow’s remarks, Morris Pearl, former managing director at Blackrock, Inc., and Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, issued the following statement:
A capital gains tax holiday is a blindingly stupid solution to our country’s economic problems. Giving people tax breaks on investments they’ve made in the past would do nothing to stimulate the economy or put people back to work. All it would do is put even more money into the pockets of the GOP’s wealthy donors.
The sheer recklessness, shortsightedness, and selfishness emanating from the White House and the Republican Caucus in the Senate is stunning. They’ve given up on actually trying to govern. Instead of trying to save the economy, they’re looting a sinking ship. By proposing a capital gains holiday, this White House has proven once again that the only thing it cares about is making sure millionaire and billionaire investors can make as much money as possible no matter what the cost to everyone else.
The only way to get the economy back on track is to limit the spread of the virus enough for normal life to begin to resume. At that point, we need to make sure they’re paid enough to survive on, or in other words, to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Until that happens, the only thing that the government should be concerned about is keeping people afloat, and that means keeping unemployment checks flowing.
If the next version of coronavirus stimulus legislation does not include an extension of the CARES Act’s unemployment insurance expansion, we’re dooming the next phase of economic recovery before it even begins. Local businesses and communities need people to continue spending money, and leaving millions of people unemployed without adequate support will drop consumer demand and economic activity to disastrously low levels. It would be a disaster for our economy as a whole, not even to mention the human cost of throwing millions of people into poverty, to allow these expanded benefits to expire in the midst of this crisis. The White House must do better, before it’s too late.
Proud “traitors to their class,” members of the Patriotic Millionaires are high-net worth Americans, business leaders, and investors who are united in their concern about the destabilizing concentration of wealth and power in America. The mission of The Patriotic Millionaires organization is to build a more stable, prosperous, and inclusive nation by promoting public policies based on the “first principles” of equal political representation, a guaranteed living wage for all working citizens, and a fair tax system. You can find out more at http://patrioticmillionaires.org/about/