As national debt grows $1 trillion every 100 days, Senator Booker proposes a tax cut

The nation’s ledgers are groaning under the weight of a staggering sum of $165 trillion in unfunded liabilities—pledges to pay in the future for which we have no money—and national debt—cash borrowed to cover excess annual spending— a progressive leader in New Jersey is demanding to know what Senator Cory Booker intends to do about it.

As the senator from Newark rolls out a shiny new proposal to let working families keep more of their paychecks, a familiar critic is asking what happens when the bill for everything else comes due.

Lisa McCormick, the fiery insurgent who nearly toppled disgraced former Senator Bob Menendez in 2018, is throwing cold water on the celebratory mood surrounding Booker’s “Keep Your Pay Act.”

The legislation, unveiled at a staged kitchen table discussion in Bloomfield, could be a game-changer for the average family, exempting the first $75,000 of a couple’s earnings from the federal income tax.

It’s the kind of straightforward relief that sounds like music to the ears of any American who’s ever looked at a paycheck and wondered where it all went. Booker’s plan, which he insists would be paid for by squeezing the ultra-wealthy and closing corporate loopholes, also promises to juice the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit.

McCormick says she is skeptical about Booker, who interrupted his Nazi-funded book tour to seek publicity at the event staged in Bloomfield.

On its face, the idea is a good one. But it’s the fine print, or lack thereof, that has her concerned. She points to the chasm between the senator’s words and his record.

“After taking huge contributions from more than 50 billionaires, Cory Booker has a credibility problem when he says that he will look out for ordinary people,” McCormick said, reminding voters that the senator has twice accepted more money from Wall Street than any other candidate for Congress.

The larger question, she argues, isn’t just how to give people a break, but how to square that break with the fiscal black hole the country is staring into.

The conversation quickly turns to the mechanics of money itself. McCormick brings up Modern Monetary Theory, a concept absent from Booker’s announcement, suggesting that the real conversation about funding the government requires a deeper look at where value comes from and where it goes.

“I am familiar with Modern Monetary Theory, which he doesn’t mention, and I am aware of other ways to increase government revenue, but the root of most evil in this country is unfettered greed,” she said.

Her prescription is a bold one: cap personal wealth at $100 million and establish a federal job guarantee or universal basic income.

The critique cuts deeper than just policy details. It’s about the man behind the podium. McCormick argues that after more than a decade in the Senate, Cory Booker is batting close to zero.

He has been a vocal presence, a master of the soaring speech and the symbolic gesture, but the scoreboard tells a different story. On the issues that define the era, from the right to choose to the scourge of gun violence, from protecting the right to vote to confronting the climate crisis, the losses have piled up.

“Cory Booker is batting close to zero, as he lost on abortion, gun violence, voting rights, the climate crisis, environmental protection, economic inequality, and a host of other issues,” McCormick said, listing a litany of defeats that have left the party’s base demoralized.

The political landscape since 2013 is littered with the wreckage of those fights.

The Voting Rights Act was gutted, opening the floodgates for restrictive state laws. The promise of codifying abortion rights vanished with the fall of Roe v. Wade after a half-century struggle. Meaningful gun safety legislation has remained elusive even as mass shootings have tripled. The Green New Deal remains a dream, while atmospheric CO2 continues its relentless climb.

The party has watched the courts tilt to the right, consumer protections weaken, and union power erode, all while holding the levers of power at various times, only to find those levers seemed disconnected from the machinery of change. Booker, as a prominent voice in the Senate, bears the weight of that failure.

McCormick’s frustration boils over when she contrasts the gravity of the moment with the theater of politics.

“Unfortunately, as President Donald Trump and Senator Cory Booker are adding $1 trillion to the national debt every 100 days, we need more than an empty promise from a grandstanding buffoon who has sung ‘Kumbaya’ while Chuck Schumer and the Capitulation Caucus caved in to the neo-fascist Republicans.”

She sees a pattern of surrender, a party leadership so eager to find common ground that they’ve forgotten where the ground is.

Booker’s vote in May 2025 stands as a stark example for her: he was the sole Democrat to confirm Charles Kushner—a convicted felon and the father of Donald Trump’s son-in-law—as Ambassador to France. It was a vote that, to critics, looked less like bipartisanship and more like a moral failure.

“Trump’s tyranny requires Democrats to choose leaders who will fight and win, instead of liars and losers that surrender before the first punch is thrown,” McCormick said.

It’s a call to arms that resonates with those who watch the news each night and feel the ground shifting beneath them. Booker, for his part, presents himself as a pragmatic progressive, a man who can get things done in a divided town. His campaign points to his advocacy for criminal justice reform and his efforts on child tax credits.

But the metric his critics use is simpler: look at the state of the nation. The house, as McCormick is fond of saying, is on fire. And while the senator talks about rearranging the tax code, she’s asking if he’s brought a bucket or just another megaphone.