On Wednesday’s broadcast of “CNN NewsNight,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) reacted to Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) criticizing those who don’t like the government taking their money through taxes by saying that Schumer “could stay off the cameras. He’s not helping us on our messaging.” But “if you have to pay a little bit more because we can provide people health care and education, it’s not that I don’t value your success, your hard work, your ingenuity, but that’s the patriotic thing to do.”
Khanna said, “I think he could stay off the cameras. He’s not helping us on our messaging. But here’s — look, I represent a district with $12 trillion of value and the heart of Silicon Valley. What I say all the time is, I’m proud of economic success. I’m proud of prosperity. I’m proud of the founders. I’m proud of the innovators. But you know what? We’ve gone from 53rd in income inequality in this country to 128th and people, 25% of Americans are making less than $25,000 a year or are unemployed. And if you have to pay a little bit more because we can provide people health care and education, it’s not that I don’t value your success, your hard work, your ingenuity, but that’s the patriotic thing to do.”
Khanna added, “I’ll tell you what we’re getting from taxes from the federal government, we got Silicon Valley because of taxes to the federal government. If it weren’t for NASA buying semiconductors, there would be no Intel, there would be no semi — there would be no Silicon Valley. Elon Musk is a product, with Tesla, of Obama’s loan. He’s a product of Ash Carter at the Defense Department creating SpaceX and giving him contracts. Beyond that, we got Medicaid, the largest insurance program in the world. You want that gone? We got Social Security, savings for people’s retirement. We have Medicare that seniors rely on. We have the best transportation and highway system. I think Democrats have to talk about what government can do, how we can partner with the business leaders, not demonize them, to help create economic opportunity here.”
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