If there is one thing in American politics over the last few decades, it's this: When a Democrat takes the oath of elected office and, in so doing, swears to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, they don't mean it. Most of them don't care about the Constitution. Most of them, evidence suggests, have never even read it. If they did, they presume that it's just a dusty old parchment written by dead white guys who were probably racists, instead of what it is: The most brilliant and lasting governing document in human history.
Nowhere is that more apparent than in the discussion of a national wealth tax, which is not only a stupid idea but also an illegal one. That doesn't stop leftists like Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the daffy old Bolshevik from Vermont, and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) from calling for just such a tax, out of an abundance of economic and constitutional ignorance.
Or, is it? Is this ignorance of the Constitution, or just a callous disregard? I'm increasingly inclined to believe the latter.
Recently, another Democrat croaker joined the chorus: California (of course) Representative Ro Khanna (CA-17), who, apparently, cares no more about the Constitution than the others.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) - fresh off endorsing California's November ballot measure to seize 5% of billionaire wealth - published a Substack essay Wednesday titled, no really, "Why I Support a Billionaire Wealth Tax."
He makes it roughly a dozen paragraphs before explaining that it isn't one.
"The tax should not stop at billionaires, it must reach centimillionaires," Khanna writes, before spelling out exactly what that means: every fortune of $50 million and up, hit with a 2% federal levy on wealth above that line - every year, forever, on top of everything else you already pay. The vehicle is Elizabeth Warren's Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act, which Khanna notes he has cosponsored every single year it's been introduced.
And before anyone reaches for the estate planner: Khanna wants the levy to pierce irrevocable trusts, with the tax billed to the grantor who set them up - because parking a fortune in a trust, in his telling, shouldn't take it off the government's books.
Former Microsoft executive Steven Sinofsky summed up the reveal in eight words: "Just like that, no longer a billionaires tax."
And, just like that, not only the dumbest idea in the long, long history of dumb Democrat ideas, but unconstitutional as well.
Read More: California's Wealth Tax Is Now on the Ballot - Gavin Newsom Is Panicking
THE ESSEX FILES: Ro Khanna Wants a Wealth Tax - Grover Norquist Says, 'You First!'
First, the practical aspects: These make a national wealth tax a dumb idea without the violations of the Constitution. Why? Well, here's why, and I'm going to tell you.
The left seems to have this idiotic idea that the very wealthy keep their assets in liquid form, as though they all have a big Scrooge McDuckian swimming pool full of gold coins that they swim in regularly. That's a canard, and even Khanna recognizes this to some extent, in advocating that the tax pierce the protection of trusts. But were one of these taxes to be put in place, paying them would require the wealthy to liquidate a portion of their holdings. That means pulling investments, disinvesting from new companies, new technologies, new development; this would result, effectively, in billions, likely trillions, of dollars being lost to our economy and paid instead into Washington's coffers.
Another practical problem should be apparent even to someone as willfully ignorant as Sanders, Warren, and Khanna: The very wealthy are also the people for whom it is easiest to simply pack up and leave, and they will. We are already seeing it now, on a state-to-state level, with what I've been calling the Great Sorting. Producers, people with businesses, productive people, and yes, wealthy people, are fleeing high-tax (Democrat) states like California, Washington, New York, New Jersey, and others, for low-tax (Republican) states like Texas, Tennessee, and Florida. A national wealth tax would supercharge this process.
Democrats seem utterly unable to understand that incentives even exist, much less that they matter.
But all of those arguments are immaterial. The real arguments against this are constitutional:
Article I, Section 2, Clause 3, states:
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.
Taxes, under this section, are linked to the same apportionment process that decides the number and allotment of House seats.
Article I, Section 9, Clause 4, states:
No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.
That strengthens Section 2, Clause 3: It states that the apportionment applies specifically to capitation (individual) taxes. Taxes are levied on the states in proportion to their population.
These prohibit any national wealth tax without a constitutional amendment. Bam. Done. Argument over. The 16th Amendment, in fact, was necessary for the income tax, and it states that, explicitly:
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
So, these wealth tax schemes are not just stupid. They are a clear and inarguable violation of the Constitution.
Why do these leftist pols keep pushing these schemes, then? Well, there's one obvious answer: They don't care. They see the Constitution not as a set of governing principles, not as the boundaries in which the government of a free people must be restrained, but as an obstacle to be overcome. And it's not just where taxation is concerned; they would overturn the First and Second Amendments just as readily.
Remember that when you go to vote in your state's primaries and in the general election. These people must never again regain the majority in Congress. These people must never again regain the White House.
