1. United States
2. Calif.
3. Letter

I am writing to urge you to support the Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Ro Khanna. This legislation would impose a 5% annual wealth tax on billionaires and raise an estimated $4.4 trillion over the next decade to address the severe economic inequality that is undermining our democracy. The facts are stark. Over the past 50 years, $79 trillion in wealth has been redistributed from the bottom 90% to the top 1%. While 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, 938 billionaires have become $1.5 trillion richer and now hold a collective net worth of $8.2 trillion. Billionaire wealth has increased by about 20% in 2025 alone. Meanwhile, our current tax code allows billionaires to pay a lower tax rate than the average worker. This bill would affect fewer than 1,000 people while transforming millions of lives. The revenue would provide $3,000 direct payments to every person in households making $150,000 or less, reverse $1.1 trillion in Medicaid and Affordable Care Act cuts that are estimated to cause more than 50,000 unnecessary deaths, expand Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing care, and build over 7 million affordable homes to eliminate the housing gap and end homelessness. It would also ensure no family pays more than 7% of income on childcare and establish a $60,000 minimum salary for every public school teacher. UC Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman warn that democracies become oligarchies when wealth becomes too concentrated. This modest tax would close the gap between wealth growth for billionaires and income growth for average families that has existed since the early 1980s. Even after paying this tax, someone like Elon Musk would retain approximately $792 billion of his $833 billion net worth. Roughly two-thirds of Americans support a wealth tax. I urge you to stand with your constituents and cosponsor this critical legislation.