Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Photo: Meet the Press)
Feb. 20, 2019 By Christian Murray
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fired back at her critics yesterday after being attacked by financial commentators and fellow Democrats for allegedly not understanding how the Amazon tax incentives were structured and for lacking pragmatism.
The criticism grew over the weekend following an interview by Chuck Todd of Meet The Press that raised doubts as to her grasp of the proposed deal.
In it, Ocasio-Cortez said: “If we’re willing to give away $3 billion dollars for this deal, we could invest those $3 billion dollars in our district ourselves if we wanted to.” She added: “We could hire more teachers. We can fix our subways. We can put a lot of people to work for that money if we wanted to.”
Critics argued that it indicated that she lacked an understanding of how the incentives worked and that she believed that there was a pot of money that could now be spent with the deal being off.
Meanwhile, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney argued in a CNN interview that progressives, such as Ocasio-Cortez, were not thinking clearly. Maloney, who represents Long Island City, was baffled by the opposition, given that 25,000 jobs were on offer paying an average of $150,000 per year.
“I am progressive too, but I am pragmatic,” she said. “It used to be that we would protest wars, now we are protesting jobs.”
“They [the progressives] just said we don’t want it and demonstrated against it—but it’s jobs and I have not seen anything like it,” Maloney said. She added: “If this had gone through it would have made – overnight – New York City the high tech capital of the east coast.”
The deal, as critics pointed out, required Amazon to build a campus and create the jobs in order for the tax breaks to kick in. Bill de Blasio on Meet the Press indicated that many progressives didn’t understand how the $3 billion in tax incentives worked.
Most of the tax breaks were based on job creation. For instance, Amazon was projected to receive a $1.4 billion tax credit from New York City as part of a program that incentivizes companies to bring jobs to areas outside Manhattan’s central business district. The company was also likely to get $1.2 billion in tax credits via the state’s Excelsior Jobs Program and a $500 million capital grant.
Ocasio-Cortez shot back in a series of tweets, critical of those who questioned her intellect and understanding of the deal.
Frankly, the knee-jerk reaction assuming that I “don’t understand” how tax giveaways to corps work is disappointing.
No, it’s not possible that I could come to a different conclusion. The debate *must* be over my intelligence & understanding, instead of the merits of the deal.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 19, 2019
She then criticized Amazon and government officials for shutting out the community when they stitched the deal together. She also noted many residents who live near the proposed campus site would have been priced out and noted Amazon’s questionable record of working with ICE.
There’s NO WAY that this deal – one of the biggest giveaways in state history – could possibly have been bad, right?
Surely there can’t be anything wrong with suddenly announcing a massive restructuring & pricing out of a community without any advance notice or input from them.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 19, 2019
