In Early 2020 Clash, Michael Bloomberg Compares Warren Tax Plan To Venezuela

Michael Bloomberg in New Hampshire on January 29. Image by Getty Images

By Josh Nathan-Kazis January 30, 2019

At a press event in New Hampshire on Tuesday, billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg said that Senator Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to tax the ultra-rich was “probably unconstitutional,” and suggested it could lead to people “starving to death,” as in Venezuela.

“We shouldn’t be embarrassed about our system,” Bloomberg said of the Warren proposal, according to a report in Politico. “You want to look at a system that’s not capitalistic, just take a look at what was perhaps the wealthiest country in the world and now people are starving to death. It’s called Venezuela.”

Bloomberg, who is among the richest people in the world, visited New Hampshire while considering a 2020 presidential run. He singled out Warren, who is also considering a 2020 campaign, for her plan to tax the assets of the wealthiest Americans.

He also criticized other progressive proposals of likely 2020 contenders, including Senator Kamala Harris’s pitch for Medicare for All, and Senator Bernie Sanders’s call for free college education, according to Politico.

On Twitter on Tuesday afternoon, Warren shot back. “Billionaires like Howard Schultz & Michael Bloomberg want to keep a rigged system in place that benefits only them and their buddies,” Warren wrote. “And they plan to spend gobs of cash to try and buy the Presidency to keep it that way. Not on my watch.”

Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at nathankazis@forward.com or on Twitter, @joshnathankazis

Josh Nathan-Kazis is a staff writer for the Forward. He covers charities and politics, and writes investigations and longform.

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