Steve Van

Half of my followers are named Elon Musk, the other half are beautiful women just saying hi.

[Steve Van @svan71]

@SenatorBaldwin Is that the same Senate that gave us a 38 trillion dollar debt?

[Steve Van @svan71]

@GovPressOffice Quick question: what specifically are we celebrating? Love? Already have Valentine's Day. Legal rights? Settled in 2015. If the answer is sexual identity, why does that get a month when nothing else does? I'll wait

[Steve Van @svan71]

@WarrenVsCCP The ones responsible will never be seen again.

[Steve Van @svan71]

@kenmartin73 If democrats didn’t commit so much fraud, things would be less expensive for everyone, and there would be more money to feed the children.

[Steve Van @svan71]

@Suzierizzo1 Did he even acknowledge Charlie Kirk and the assassination all of us got to witness?

[Steve Van @svan71]

@raefejenkins So the unemployed guy is the win for you? His own constituents disagree with you; otherwise, his ass wouldn't be fired.

[Steve Van @svan71]

Let's check the receipts on each claim.
Pro-freedom: You co-founded PNAC and spent twenty years lobbying to invade Muslim-majority countries. Iraq alone: 4,500 dead Americans, hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, $2 trillion, and ISIS as the parting gift. Last year you told the NYT we should "finish the job" on Iran. That's not pro-freedom. That's pro-war.
Pro-law and order: You publicly mused about using U.S. "assets to harass, snatch, or neutralize" Julian Assange. Snatching journalists isn't law and order. It's the opposite.
Pro-limited government: You championed the Patriot Act, the surveillance state, indefinite war authorizations, and an open-ended global military footprint. The federal government got bigger, more secretive, and more powerful on your watch by design.
Pro-Declaration and Constitution: The Declaration warned against entangling foreign adventures. The Constitution requires Congress to declare war. You spent your career working around both.
You're pro-Bill-Kristol. The branding changes every cycle. The record doesn't.

[Steve Van @svan71]

@BernieSanders Congress gave us 38 TRILLION DEBT!

[Steve Van @svan71]

476% on her stock portfolio specifically. ~$630K in 2021 → $2.6M–$4M now.
For context on how absurd that is:

S&P 500 over the same period (Jan 2021 → Nov 2025): roughly +75%
Nasdaq 100: roughly +110%
Warren Buffett / Berkshire over those 5 years: roughly +110%

She beat the index by ~6x. In 2025 alone she's running a 74.5% win rate across 216 trades — that's hedge-fund territory, and most hedge funds don't sustain it.

[Steve Van @svan71]

@GuntherEagleman @StephenKing @grok Obama too.

[Steve Van @svan71]

You're right on two of three. A stepped-up basis is the real giveaway—heirs inherit the stock at current value, and decades of gains vanish. Buy-Borrow-Die compounds it: pledge stock as collateral, live on loans, die, and gain disappears. Both are defensible reform targets, and I won't pretend they aren't. Where you lose me is taxing unrealized gains directly. Every European wealth tax got repealed (Norway lost more in emigration than it raised), and Moore v. US last year flagged the constitutional problem. Narrower fix: cap stepped-up basis above a high threshold and treat large stock-backed loans as realization. Hits the actual mechanism; doesn't break the rest. I'd sign it.

[Steve Van @svan71]

We were talking about billionaire tax rates. Now it's Medicaid. Noted.
But quickly, since you raised it: the 1.6M who came off Medicaid in early 2025 were unwinding from pandemic-era continuous enrollment — a Biden-era policy that ended in March 2023 and just kept running. That's not a Trump policy, that's a Biden policy reaching its scheduled end. The work requirements that are a Trump policy don't kick in until 2027.
If you want to argue against work requirements for able-bodied adults, do it. But it has nothing to do with whether billionaires should pay 33% or 25%. Pick a lane.

[Steve Van @svan71]

"What they should pay" is the question, not the answer. Who decides what they "should" pay, and on what basis?
If "should" means the rate in the tax code, they're paying it. If "should" means more than the law requires, that's not a tax argument — that's a confiscation argument with better marketing. Pick a number, defend it, and I'll engage. "More" isn't a policy.

[Steve Van @svan71]

Agreed on the diagnosis, especially "both parties." That's the part most people won't say out loud.
Small refinement: it's broader than billionaires. The top lobbying spenders in DC are trade groups, public sector unions, and AARP — not tech founders. The structure is the problem, not the specific buyer. Concentrated interests buy policy, diffuse interests pay for it. Always.

[Steve Van @svan71]

Reasonable point, and I'll grant it: 33% effective on realized income is achievable — Reagan did it. I'd vote for that.
The wrinkle is that billionaires don't have much realized income to tax. Their wealth is stock that hasn't been sold. Raise the rate to 50% and Bezos still pays the same, because he's not selling. The people who'd actually pay more are doctors, small business owners, and successful professionals — the ones whose wealth is income.
Want to fix it? Simpler code, fewer carve-outs. That was the Reagan formula. The rate is the easy part. The base is where the action is.

[Steve Van @svan71]

By your logic, anyone who takes the mortgage deduction is an "extractive hoarder." Nobody lobbies to pay more than they owe. Not you, not me, not billionaires.
"Hoarder" assumes Bezos took his wealth from someone. He didn't. He built a company that didn't exist before. The pie got bigger, and you got two-day shipping.

[Steve Van @svan71]

@JaneyTheSmall @XVanFleet @MarcoFoster_ @jamestalarico @TeamTalaricoHQ Reagan left office in January 1989. NAFTA took effect in 1994 — signed by Clinton, negotiated by Bush 41. You're blaming the wrong guy by about a decade.

[Steve Van @svan71]

The top marginal rate is 37%, and actual billionaires pay way less than that — closer to 8-23% effective, depending on the year, because most of their wealth is stock they haven't sold. That's not a loophole. That's how income tax works: you get taxed when you realize a gain, not when your stock goes up on paper.
You're right that they hire accountants to minimize taxes. So does every small business owner, every homeowner with a mortgage deduction, and probably you. The difference is they have more to work with. The fix isn't yelling about it. It's a tax code simple enough that the accountants can't game it. And guess who writes the tax code? Not the billionaires. The politicians taking their donations.

[Steve Van @svan71]

You're actually citing Reagan in favor of Reaganomics. The 1986 act — the one you're pointing to — cut the top marginal rate from 50% to 28%. The reason effective rates were higher then is that Reagan paired lower rates with a broader base and fewer loopholes. That's the Reagan formula, and it was bipartisan.
So if your point is "lower the rates and close the loopholes," congratulations — you're a Reagan Republican. I'd vote for that tomorrow.
The catch: every loophole in the current code was put there by a member of Congress, usually after a donor asked nicely. You don't fix that by raising rates. You fix it by firing the people writing the code. Until then, "close the loopholes" is what politicians say to get elected, right before they open new ones for their friends.