The Democratic Socialists of America want to tax the hell out of you.
They just can’t tell you exactly how much, or why, or what they’d do with the money.
And that became clear to everyone in one jaw-dropping exchange.
A Friendly Interview Turns Into a Policy Disaster
Democrat Socialist of America (DSA) co-chair Megan Romer appeared on The New Yorker Radio Hour to discuss the DSA’s growing footprint inside the Democrat Party. The conversation was going smoothly enough until she declared that the DSA believes in “taxing the hell out of millionaires.”
Host David Remnick, a grand poobah of the liberal media, stopped her cold.
“Well, what does ‘Taxing the hell out of them’ mean?” he asked.
What followed was painful. “Uhhhh, yeah, you know, again, I don’t have like a solid [answer], but–” Romer chuckled and sputtered, searching for words that never quite arrived.
Remnick pressed further. “If you’re the co-chair of the DSA, shouldn’t you be more specific than ‘taxing the hell’ out of something?”
Her answer didn’t get cleaner. “So again, it’s democracy, right?” Romer said. “And we have to look at what we have to spend and what we need. We don’t want to depend on the existence of millionaires because that means people are still getting exploited.”
She then added, “So yeah, we need to look at what we need to pay for in the interim, what sort of tax base we need for that to happen, and build from there.”
That’s the plan. Build from there. From a co-chair of an openly Marxist organization that wants to seize control of the American economy, that’s the full extent of the tax policy on offer.
Worth noting: just before that exchange, Romer told Remnick she was actually more worried about billionaires than millionaires, since most of them “exploited the working class” to earn their money. So the DSA’s economic target keeps shifting depending on who’s asking, which makes the absence of a concrete number even harder to explain away.
This Isn’t a Fringe Group Anymore — It’s Winning Primaries
The reason this matters goes well beyond one awkward radio interview.
DSA-backed candidates have been winning Democrat primaries across the country in the current election cycle. In New York, two card-carrying DSA members — Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez — knocked off Democrat incumbents with the backing of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, himself a DSA member. Both have a clear path to Congress from heavily Democrat districts.
And Romer isn’t some obscure chapter organizer. She’s the national co-chair of an organization whose own platform — confirmed by Romer herself in a Fox News interview with Shannon Bream — calls for abolishing the US Senate, replacing the presidency and Supreme Court “as we now know them,” abolishing ICE, eventually eliminating national borders while granting amnesty to illegal aliens, defunding the Pentagon, phasing out prisons, and shifting most large corporations to government ownership.
When Bream asked about abolishing the Senate, Romer called it “an anachronistic institution” and compared it to the British House of Lords. The DSA wants a single-chamber legislature — one that, not coincidentally, would be far easier for a well-organized socialist movement to dominate.
That’s textbook Marxist restructuring of the constitutional order. The DSA’s own platform openly calls for the government seizure of major corporations and the dismantling of the institutions designed to prevent exactly that kind of power consolidation. These aren’t fringe talking points buried in some internal document — Romer confirmed them on national television, one by one, answering “true” or “absolutely” to Bream’s questions.
But ask her what the tax rate on millionaires should be, and she’s got nothing.
What the Sputtering Actually Tells You
There’s a pattern here worth understanding. The DSA’s political strength comes entirely from slogans — “tax the rich,” “abolish the Senate,” “government ownership.” The slogans generate energy. They generate donations. They generate primary wins in deep-blue districts where the base is already radicalized and nobody asks follow-up questions.
What they don’t generate is policy. Because policy requires specifics, and specifics require accountability, and accountability is the one thing a movement built on class grievance cannot survive.
Every country that has tried to build an economy around the premise that “the existence of millionaires means people are being exploited” has ended up in the same place: shortages, stagnation, and eventually authoritarian control to manage the fallout. Venezuela. Cuba. The Soviet Union. The pattern doesn’t change because the people running the experiment have better slogans this time.
Governments do not create wealth. They redistribute it. Every dollar extracted from a business owner, an investor, or a retiree who saved diligently for 40 years is a dollar no longer working in the private economy — no longer funding a payroll, no longer building a product, no longer generating the tax revenue that actually pays for the programs these socialists claim to want. That’s not ideology. That’s arithmetic.
And the DSA’s co-chair can’t tell you what the number is. She doesn’t have “a solid” answer. She’ll build from there.
But here’s the thing: the vagueness is almost certainly intentional. Socialist candidates across the country have been winning primaries by focusing on kitchen-table issues — housing costs, healthcare, affordability — while keeping the more radical agenda items quiet until after they’ve secured the nomination. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries warned publicly that the DSA represents “dangerous, extremist radicals” who would “destroy” the Democrat Party. Democrat Representative Henry Cuellar noted that DSA candidates “don’t often discuss their more radical agenda items” on the campaign trail, preferring to win people over on affordability and housing first.
Bernie Sanders coached this approach for years. Win on the soft stuff. Implement the hard stuff later.
But Romer keeps going on television and confirming the hard stuff anyway — the Senate abolition, the corporate seizures, the open borders — and then blanking when asked to put a number on the tax rate. That combination is actually more dangerous than a polished radical with a coherent plan. It means the movement’s ambitions are real, but the governing capacity to execute them without catastrophic consequences is nowhere in sight.
And the Democrat Party, rather than running these people out, keeps watching them win primaries.
The midterms are coming. The DSA is on the ballot in districts across the country. And their co-chair still can’t tell you what “taxing the hell out of millionaires” actually means — only that the existence of your retirement account is evidence that someone got exploited.
Build from there.
Sources: Mediaite; Fox News; Daily Caller; Denver Gazette; Breitbart; 19th News; Dissent Magazine
