 I just want to congratulate Ms. Kavanaugh, the last, no, I didn't say that right. What's her, the claim? For pointing out that the issue that we have at hand isn't organizing one, we need to make sure that the American people are with us all the way, and actually they are. The polling tells us that the majority of Americans think it is time for us to tax the very rich. Now, I'm wearing a button just as tax the rich, but okay, I can add the very rich to that. I want to start with a thank you for EPI. You know, I am not an economist, I'm an activist and rely on people who really know how to do public policy, and I want to think EPI has been essential in helping the progressive caucus every year develop our people's budget, putting all the great things, including a number of my tax policies in that legislation and putting it forward, and we get a sizable number of the caucus, the Democratic caucus to vote for that legislation, and we need your help to keep building that so that we do have a progressive budget proposal. I do want to mention, before talking about tax policy, that we are hoping very early in July that we will see the minimum wage issue come up. Again, thank you, EPI, for all the work that you're doing. We're talking about raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2024, pretty modest, I would say, and the fact, though, that the national minimum wage is $7.25 is nothing short of obscene, and we're gonna get pushback from the Republicans, and we better not get pushback from some of the Democrats to talk about $15 an hour, something you can barely live on now, right? I mean, it's just not enough. I wanted to also just mention something about the shutdown that we saw. If you ask most people out there, is a federal job a good job? Is that a middle-class job? I think most people would say yes, it is, and yet we saw that after missing one or two paychecks, that people were standing in line to get food. You know, I serve on the Budget Committee, and the notion that somehow if you are super wealthy, if you're wealthy, you deserve it, and if you are struggling, you deserve that too, and Milk Mulvaney came before our Budget Committee, and he said that, you know, people like the sound of programs like Meals on Wheels and after-school feeding programs for children, but there's really no evidence that these programs work. Now, I have delivered Meals on Wheels. You knock on the door, the person answers, you hand them food, they take the food, they eat the food. To me, that is working. That's the definition of working. So when they did this, blew this $2 trillion hole in the Budget, their solutions are things like going after entitlements. Not, they're the ones that feel entitled. These are earned benefits of Social Security and Medicare, way too much money being spent on that, and other vital programs, and right now, of course, they're saying we don't have enough money to prevent children from sleeting on cold floors without a bed and not getting toothbrushes because that's too much money to spend on children who are separated from their parents, the obscenity of it all. And so thank you so much for the work that you're doing so that we can continue our moral authority and our economic authority in this country. It's just terrible. So I wanted to tell you that I'm pretty excited about reintroducing my Fairness and Taxation Act. Again, a bill that was mainly helped. I was helped by EPI and economists to develop this legislation about how we appropriately tax the rich. Look, here's the thing, and I know there are people from labor here in this room. We would not have a middle class at all, ever would have had a middle class had there not been organized labor fighting for good wages and good benefits and a good life. And that, of course, is the reason why Republicans go after organized labor. Try to atomize it. Try to get rid of it as much as possible. Try to limit its power as much as possible. But I also do want to tell you that we are looking at labor law reform in a serious way to empower organized labor once again to revitalize the middle class. It will not happen. We're dealing with the trade deal right now. And in that context as well, we're fighting to make sure that workers that we don't pass some sort of a trade bill that actually encourages outsourcing by underpaying and having no rights for Mexican workers as well. So we have a lot of fronts to fight on but I do want to talk to you about the Fairness in Taxation Act and I'm going to walk through some of the exciting updates that I'm doing on that. I'll also be introducing, I'll get back to the Fairness in Taxation. I'll also be introducing another bill for the same reason to fight inequality with Senator Van Hollen. And I know that he is planning to be here today. I'm going to let him go into the details of the bill but I'm so proud to be the house sponsor Senator Van Hollen's legislation. So when I reintroduce the Fairness in Taxation Act this time with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and I am very proud to be working with her. She's bold, progressive, doesn't shy away, doesn't back down, doesn't fold to the kinds of criticisms that you can expect would be leveled at her and I'm proud to be with her and it will include a top marginal tax rate of 59% which would come right up to that 72% top optimal tax, marginal tax rate that advocates have been advocated for by the Diamond-Sias paper which would combine the state and local taxes in places like Illinois and New York. So that would bring us up to that 70 plus marginal tax rate. Yeah, don't be afraid of it. Nobody can be afraid of it. It will also include a 45% marginal tax rate on income above a million dollars. It will also, I'll also be adding two sections to the bill, one to deal with capital gains and the carried interest loophole and the other to deal with inherited wealth. So we all remember when candidate Trump promised that he would repeal the carried interest loophole and restore fairness to the tax system and repeatedly mentioned it as a part of his tax reform agenda. I mean there's a lot of things we remember when he said and hardly anything that he has really done except helping rich himself and the family and other people of wealth. Somehow, yeah, that part of the agenda never took hold. The carried interest loophole is a symptom of the broader disease that has infected our tax code for far too long. Simply put, our tax code makes it easier for the rich to get richer and harder for poor and middle class Americans to get ahead and now is the time for just more work to be done on our tax code and I believe that we can do it. This is the moment. The preferential treatment for capital gains allows wealthy individuals to amass wealth for years and years without ever being taxed. Under the updated bill, bill tax treatment of capital gains will be made fairer. Capital gains and dividends and dividend rates will match ordinary income rates in the current tax code. Now, so right now, as you know, it's 15%, and then there's also the 3.5 ACA surtax pay for that was put in, but we're talking about making it up to 37%. That'll be in the bill. Additionally, all public traded assets, stocks, bonds, derivatives will be taxed as they grow. The economist here will call that mark to market, but I just wanna suggest another idea that I think is more understandable to people and that is pay as you grow. Think about that as maybe something that will ring better with ordinary people. Let me know what you think of the pay as you grow idea. Anybody like it here? Pay as you grow. Okay, good. I'm gonna take it as a yes. Okay. Non-traded assets, real estate, privately held businesses, fine arts are subject to deferred charges when sold. Death or a charitable contribution would be one of several determinant factors for whether taxes are owed. We would allow, in my bill, for taxpayers to have a lifetime exclusion of up to $750,000 on the pay as you grow capital gains so we don't penalize ordinary folks. This would allow for teachers, firefighters, other working people to save for their retirement. The third section of the bill deals with inherited wealth. We would implement what many economists call an inheritance tax. We would exclude the first $1 million on any assets inherited by an heir. And after that, every dollar is treated as regular income as defined by section one of the legislation. This means it would be subject to payroll taxes as well. And as we work like that, good. Okay. Need your help. And I wanna say something. We will welcome all of your suggestions. I mean, you are really the experts that are here in this room and I have always welcomed that and I will continue to welcome that. And as we work on the legislation, I would, as I said, welcome the feedback. My staff is here and I know has spoken with many of you in the past about this and I couldn't appreciate it more. So the tax, the rich crowd is really my base. But I do think given the new polling and the new reality for most Americans right now, I think it is a majority base right now. So I think it is so important that we do exactly what Ms. McLean said at the end of her speech that we now need to get that organizing piece. We have to make sure, and you're hearing it a lot, by the way, in the presidential debates. And I really, really welcome that. I think we're gonna start seeing it. Is it tomorrow, no, Thursday and Friday? We're gonna see those debates. I want to judge my candidates by the proposals that they have, the commitment they have to economic equality in our country. Otherwise, we are on an unsustainable slide to this inequality. It is not good for our economy. It is not good for our country. It is depriving our ordinary people, even people that have voted for Donald Trump. We need to convince them that every day of his presidency has been a betrayal because he has continued to leave them further and further behind. This is a hard task. We had some polling today. There are a lot of Americans, a lot of Republicans who just stick with him no matter what. But they are struggling every single day. And the people that did support him, I think who took a chance on someone who would turn things over, who would not have the status quo, because they hadn't been doing so well as it was. They wanted something new. I think a lot of them are understanding that this is not working. We can help make this work. And there is nothing more important than making sure that Americans can live what used to be a believable American dream, which is not lavish. This is about the ability to take care of their families, to not come home as Rich Trumka has said in the past to a full plate of worry every night, to be able to plan for the future, for their children to go to college. You know, I'm a grandma who has helped my grandchildren to go to college. I don't mind that. I'm able to do that. But not everybody has a grandma or a grandpa who can help out. And kids are not able to get the education that they need to make our country great. We need to include immigration in a fair economic agenda too, because the influx, every generation of people who renew this country, who make our country great, because they come to the United States of America to work hard for us. All of these things, these moral things, these proper economic things work together. That's what EPI has been about for such a long time. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart.