The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - How Do We Fix America’s Tax Problem? — with Senator Cory Booker

Episode Date: March 26, 2026

Senator Cory Booker joins Scott Galloway to discuss his proposal to make the first $75,000 of income tax-free – and how he plans to pay for it. They break down the tradeoffs between tax cuts and deficits, debate entitlement spending, and explore what a more equitable tax system could look like. They also discuss the Democratic Party’s economic messaging, rising inequality, and how to restore trust in government. We’re also now live on Substack.Subscribe at profgmedia.com to get ad-free versions of all our podcasts, the full archive of Scott’s newsletters, and exclusive content including deep dives, livestream conversations, and subscriber Q&As. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's getvcx.com. carefully consider the investment materials before investing, including objectives, risk, charges, and expenses. This and other information can be found in the funds perspective at getvc.com. This is a paid sponsorship. Once upon a dismal day, Bob's ice cream van looked gloomy and gray. Although he had big ambitions, his socials lacked creative vision. Ugh, that bad?

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When you put imagination to work at Canva.com. Once upon a dismal day, Bob's ice cream van looked gloomy and gray. Although he had big ambitions, his socials lacked creative vision. That bad? Maybe vamp it up a tad? I have an idea. Bob launched Canva and got into gear. Create a video in the vampire theme.

and make it the funniest. It went viral. Bob's business? A revival. Now, imagine what your dreams can become. When you put imagination to work at Canva.com. Episode 389. 389 is the country of Covert in North Macedonia.

In 1989, Taylor Swift was born. She's written thousands of songs about men who've broken up with her, and zero about blow jobs. Connect the dots. Welcome to the 389th episode of the Prop G-Pod. What's happening? Just a reminder that we are live on Substack. It is so interesting.

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and find you can't afford it for whatever reason, just send an email to info at propgmedia.com and we'll figure out a scholarship for you. Anyways, moving on. In today's episode, we speak with Senator Cory Booker, a U.S. Senator from New Jersey, former mayor of Newark, and Democrat recognized for criminal justice reform. I'm a huge fan of the senators. He's a moderate. He's a great leader, super compelling, and he's just proposed. I don't know if you call it a tax holiday or a tax cut for the middle class where the first $75,000 are tax free, and we want to dig into that. I am absolutely fascinated with tax policy. I think it's the boring stuff that moves the needle in a society. And in our society, simply put, whether it's declining birth rates,

or resentment or income inequality, a lot of it comes down to tax policy. And at the end of the day, one of the things that I think really, really ails our society is the following stat. And that is today, a 70-year-old is 72% wealthier than they were 40 years ago, and a person under the age of 40 is 24% less wealthy. And so what do you know? They're not having kids. But anyways, excited to have someone who I think of as a raging moderate.

Here's our conversation with Senator Cory Booker. Senator, so just a little bit of context for our listeners, the senator has literally been running to and from the floor to vote. Occasionally, I guess, they ask you to do that. So very much appreciate, and if the senator's out of breath, it's because he's been running back and forth. I appreciate your time today, Senator. I'm grateful. I'm a fan of your work and grateful to be in conversation with you today. So obviously a lot of stuff going on, but I wanted to spend some time talking specifically about some of the things you've been working.

on. So let's start with the Keep Your Pay Act. And first off, I think it's smart that Democrats have finally figured out that America loves the idea of income redistribution as long as it's in the form of a tax cut. So I salute you on that. I think it's politically astute. And my understanding is that it says the Keep Your Pay Act would make the first $75,000 of household income tax free. here's the downside. The Yale Budget Lab puts the cost at $5.5 trillion over 10 years. What is the funding side of that? It is really unrigging the tax system. So if you're wealthy in this country, extraordinarily wealthy, you have a lot of ways to avoid paying taxes. And so the way this pays for it is simply by taking away of all those ways of avoiding taxes at the very, very top, some of which we've talked about in the past, it raises the top income tax from like 37, 39, and making sure, frankly, that we have a corporate tax rate. Remember, they were asking for 25.

Donald Trump gave them 20. So it turns that dial up a little bit above 25 to about 28, 29. And all of that actually produces enough to give that, to raise that standard deduction to 75K. And this is really what I feel is I don't like a Democratic Party that criticizes success. I want I want somebody to invent something that transforms my life and the life of my neighbors. I want somebody to be an artist and create some the next beautiful work that inspires a nation. I can go on. I want those people to be successful. I want them to enjoy the wealth that comes with that success. I just want you to pay a fair tax rate that doesn't make you. pay less of an effective tax rate than the guy in Iran right now serving their nation on this unconstitutional war or the cop or firefighter or nurse in your neighborhood. We should have a tax rate that's fair across the board with a little progressivity in it to make our society more just and frankly socially mobile.

So I think when people hear that, they nod their heads. The quick math I've done is that it would be hard to find to tax people, you know, can make over a certain amount of money enough to pay for this. You have done budget scoring on this that if you raised taxes on the wealthy and closed certain loopholes, that you could actually raise this $5.5 trillion shortfall? Yeah, we have. And there's some pretty big windfalls when you get rid of things like the stepped up basis, which is just a ridiculous way to avoid paying taxes. For estate taxes. For state taxes, yes. So there's some pretty big windfalls when you get rid of carried interest. And we could put, we can put that back into this to pay for it because the

staggering deficit we have right now is something Democrats should talk about more, where not only are we spending our great-grandchildren's money, but we're actually also putting our very currency in crisis. So I just think we should be coming up with big, bold ideas that make the average American feel that there's justice, because if you're making $150,000 a year under this plan, you have two kids, you're struggling to make it in New Jersey, but now you get to keep about $10,000 more of your earnings. If you're a single mom with a young child, making $60,000, you get almost $6,000 more of your own hard-earned dollars. So that's going to help people to start believing that this capitalist system, this free market system, which was very different in my dad's era

than it is now, that the system actually can work for them as well. So let me just say, Senator, I love this. I think it's smart for Democrats to go on offensive and be the party of ideas, not indignation. I love tax policy, and I know enough about it to be dangerous. The idea of the first $75,000 being tax-free, I 100% get it notionally, but what I believe it ends up doing is up until about $50,000, people don't actually pay a lot of federal income tax. So doesn't this end up actually benefiting the most? And stay with me here. Upper middle-class taxpayers, because what it does is it shifts their tax burden higher such that the people who start to pay real tax rates are actually the biggest beneficiaries. Isn't this really

more of a tax break for the upper-middle class versus the middle, the middle-middle and the lower middle? Yeah, no. There's two things that check that. One is, I think we need to start reimagining what it is to be middle-class in this country. At the example, I gave you with the $150,000, a lot of people would think that that's a middle-class income. But if you're living in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, it's just not. But the second thing that protects against that and makes this very progressive is we do a very big expansion of the child tax credit and we do a very big expansion of the earned income tax credit. Remember, these are fully refundable tax credits. When we did that for one year under the Biden administration, we were one vote shy of making

it permanent. We virtually cut child poverty in half in this country. And when you tinker with the earned income tax credit and expand it, because right now, if you're over 65, you don't qualify. And we both know many seniors who pick up extra work. And if you're a young person in college working, you don't qualify either. We expand the qualifications. So it actually does help more the lower income tax brackets as well. But I am telling you right now, when I have sat at kitchen tables now and just went around the table, cold. I said, how much are you making?

We have a tax calculator on my way. website in a working-class New Jersey neighborhood when we told people how much they would be getting back, it made instant sense to them and was a relief to them because all this nibbling around the edges that we've been able to deliver people. And I'll support Biden's wins, the Infrastructure Act, the Chips Act. These were great bills. But the people in neighborhoods like the one I live in is one of the only senators, if not the only, that lives in a working class low-income neighborhood, my census track, I think, is below the poverty line. For people in those communities, when you actually translate that for them into how many dollars their family

saving, saying, finally, somebody is doing something or proposing something that can make a real substantive difference for my family. And in an era where we're spending $7 trillion on $5 trillion in receipts, isn't, at the end of the day, kind of to try and be the grown-up in the room, just to not cut anyone's taxes, but raise taxes at the high end and cut entitlements. Isn't this, I mean, the fear is that this is, quite frankly, we just don't have the money to do this. What's your argument for justifying? I don't think anyone's against a tax cut for the, for the middle class. I think that it's hard right now, and I don't think anyone or anyone on our party is going to argue with the notion that the upper income wealthy aren't paying their fair share of taxes. But is a reason

when we're at $7 trillion, we're at a $2 trillion annual deficit, is it a reasonable argument back that, look, we'd love to do this, but until we get our house in order on the spending side, we really can't cut taxes for anybody right now. So let me take two points to you, and you know this because I've actually heard you talk about it. The first point is we are profligate spenders. Not that we don't have good priorities as a government. I'm for the investments the Department of Education was making, health and human services making hell. If you were an investor, which you are, and I could tell you, you can invest a dollar in science research at the NHS National Health Services, and you can get fully three dollars back on every dollar you invest, we'd be like, hey, sign me up to continue and invest in that. If I told you Pell Grants actually return investment to the overall taxpayer, where we are profligate spenders is areas where we do not get a return on our investment. And there's two areas we could be cutting billions on.

One is our military spending. I'm actually one of these Democrats that believe, as a guy who spent too much of my life in the wait room, I want to be big and strong. And I want to be able to intimidate any of our potential adversaries that we could kick the crap out of them should they do something offensive against us. But John McCain and I used to talk about this all the time. We spend tens of billions of dollars because of. of corruption within the military industrial complex. And we haven't even passed an audit in the last eight years. I'm the only person that was an executive in the Senate. There's mayors, there's former governors, it's county executives. But I cut my government 25% when I was mayor,

quarter of my government. Difficult as hell, but it was a recession and I had to live within my own means. We found so much waste once we created transparencies, deep audits. We found so many more efficiencies. And the military is one area where we can do that. I'm going to continue, though, because another thing that you and I both know is that the only way out of this problem is not just cutting, but it's also in growing our economy. And there are some obvious things that this country is not doing. They could create increased economic growth and therefore increased revenues. One of them is the one thing that we're effing up royally right now, which is called immigration. You literally can move your economy almost up another, a whole click. If you open legal,

robust immigration from agricultural workers to what my Stanford president once said to me, he came to Washington demanding to see me and I thought, oh my God, did I not finish a paper? way back in the 90s. But he said to me, we graduate people from Stanford with degrees and things that half of Congress can't spell. And then we kick them out of our country because their student visas up. So what we need is the same thing we did when I was a mayor. And what did I do? One is I brought my government and made it more efficient. With less people, we took potholes from being fixed in a month to being fixed in a matter of hours. We brought in technology and innovation, streamlined services, we actually made it a better customer satisfaction because there's way too much friction.

In fact, the reason why it's so hard to pay taxes in this country, again, is that corruption that allows companies that benefit off of complicated taxes and then charge you for helping you file them. We have a system that is built in inefficient because people are making profits off of it. So the first thing that we did in Newark was cut the size of our government and make it more efficient. But the other thing we did in Newark, after 60 years of losing popular, after 60 years of disinvestment, we brought about Newark's biggest economic development boom in 60 years and increased the size of our population for the first time in 60 years. And we grew ourselves out of the deficit as well. So the problem that we have and the last point I really want to make, if the first one is we need to start auditing the military, making it more efficient, as John McCain said, we could be doing more in terms of the growth and strength of our military with less money if we were efficient.

Number two, we need to grow our economy, and there's some common sense ways we can do it now, like we did it between 1940 and 1980 when we had massive growth. But the last thing that we have to do as a country is begin to attack what I think is the biggest thing that's driving up costs, which is just the corruption writ large in America, is the fact that we have allowed this concentrations of the wealth. Remember, I want to celebrate wealth, but they're finding ways to make us less. efficient. Let me give you one last example of a windfall we can do that would bring tens of billions of dollars into our government. We tried to do it under Biden, and then Donald Trump fired them all, which was to hire IRS people to do a special task to go after big earners with complicated tax returns who are finding ways to build the American people. The Congressional Budget Office said it simply. There are lots of tax cheating going on at the high

echelons, and if we just enforced our tax laws, we would be collecting tens of billions of dollars more. So their money is out there, but our democracy right now is in peril. And you and I know this, because half of our country doesn't believe in free market democracy. They don't believe the system is working for them. And they're beginning to turn to the extremes on both sides of the aisle that should make us all worried. What we need to do is restore people's faith that the deal works like FDR did at a similar period when there was stratification of wealth in extremely great extremes. When the fundamentals of our economy were crumbling, he said it's time for a new deal. Well, I think the Democratic Party needs to stop thinking so small, nibbling around the edges.

They need to start telling the truth about our problems. But they need a big vision that can help to redeem the dream for Americans. And a tax plan like this, immediately, president elected the party, Congress is controlled by the same party, they could pass a radical shift in our tax plan that benefits the middle class and working class. And they can restore people's faith that, hey, somebody's fighting for the little guy and making this. And that would give whoever the president is and the party in power the momentum to start taking on some of the other stubborn problems that actually bring about more big solutions to these complicated problems. We'll be right back. At Medcan, we know that life's greatest moments are built on a foundation of good health, from the big milestones to the quiet winds.

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That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring? Do it the right way with Indeed. One of the reasons, Senator, I was so excited to speak to you, and I don't know if you appreciate this label or not, but I think of you as a raging moderate. And one of the calls signs of a moderate is fiscal responsibility,

and I think of you as someone who does, you know, try at least make a good faith attempt to speak about how you're going to to pay for some of your ideas. You mentioned some things that I think a lot of moderates agree with. Tons of waste of military spending, a tax gap, maybe up to $750 billion a year, closing loopholes, thinking about a sane immigration policy that continues to attract the best players, such that we grow our economy. You know, the only way we're going to deal with the deficit is both cutting spending and growth. What I don't see in your explanation there is where I think is the third-legal of the stool, if you will, of being a fiscal or fiscally responsible, and that is entitlements,

specifically Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, that in 1970 where 2% of GDP are now 9% and are projected to be 14 to 16% of GDP. I don't see a way out of our fiscal irresponsibility unless a Democrat, a moderate, such as yourself, is willing to touch this third rail and talk about cutting entitlement spending. Your thoughts, whether you agree or not, and if so, where would you cut? Apologies for the tattoo. No, no, give me a raging moderate label, and you'll make me very happy because I'm finding myself angry

and raging more and more, but I keep turning to what I want America to know is that, like, 75% of us all agree generally in the same stuff, and we're not getting things done because of people way out there on the wings who seem to benefit from sclerotic political war. I call it a political industrial complex. So let me give you two things and get you back just to when I had to balance budgets and manage people.

So I told you how much we cut our budgets, but there's two things I could not control, two costs that I had no control over. One was that my health care spending was going up eight, nine, ten percent a year, and the other was my pensions. And I had no control of that, no power to change those things. And I was going out to talk to some other CEOs to really bitch to them about brag and bitch at the same time, like brag that, hey, look at all. all these savings I found, look at the creative things I've done. But bitch that, like, I'm screwed because health care costs are growing up so much. And this guy who was the head of one of the biggest Jim Murn, I hope he's out there listening, one of the head of the biggest casino companies out in Vegas, global company, said to me,

Corey, I had the same problem, but I fixed it. And I'm like, well, what did you do to control your out-of-control health care costs? He goes, well, one day I went down in my cafeteria where we feed thousands of employees. ease. And I see deep fryers and cinnabon-like products and all the junk and the crap we were feeding people. And I was appalled. And I ripped it all out. And he said he was almost getting union complaints until he brought in the best chefs and and the best food. And people loved it. In fact, he said, I would have all these single parents who would then leave their double shifts and go and go and stop it at McDonald's. They were asking me, can we get this food to go to feed my

kids, he said within a matter of months, his cost curve on health care started to bend. The biggest so-called entitlement that is worrying, that is our problem right now in America is sickness, illness, Medicaid, Medicaid, we are spending more on health care by a long shot than any other country, and we have the worst results. And the argument we're stuck in is how to clean up the water and not how to turn off the spick it. So let me tell you something you may not know that should outrage every American. 93% of our ag subsidies, 93% of the billions of dollars that you and other taxpayers pay for go to the foods that make us sick. Only 7% go to the healthy food. So let me show you pilot. First of all, that's why my kids in my neighborhood,

a predominantly black and brown neighborhood, walk into a corner grocery store and get a twinkie cheaper than an apple. Not because of the free market. Because we've chose. to subsidize everything in the Twinkie. And not the, that's why fast food restaurants proliferate. They do not, that's not the true cost of the food, the dollar meal. It's our government subsidizing everything there. And then if they try to go get a bucket of salad, it costs 20 bucks. We have such a effed up system controlled by the monopolistic companies that right now are

controlling our food system. But let me tell you right now, there's been some battles. I'm on the ad committee. And perhaps after this election, I'll be the ranking Democrats. and maybe even the chair, if we take back to the Senate, of the ad committee. And I always see the fear in the big food oligopoly because what we've done is some small pilot programs to prove it right. Like, hey, instead of using SNAP, food stamps, where Coke and Pepsi make billions a year, I'm not exaggerating, off of our tax dollars that go to their sugar water that has no nutritional value, even though the program is called supplemental nutritional assistance program, that drives diabetes. Now, half our country is diabetic or pre-diabetic.

We've done some innovative programs, like something called Gussnip, which is a terrible Washington name for simply giving people double the value of their food stamps or their snap for fresh, healthy foods. Well, I went out to one of these places in Newark at an urban farm. I started when I was mayor, and I had a camera crew out there with me for a documentary called Food Inc. And we had African-American woman after African-American woman coming up and telling us. One woman is like I had, my doctor told me permanent digestive problems. I had to take medicine that cost $700 a month. I asked her, what's your co-pay? $100.

So we're picking up taxpayers, $600 for that. And she said, I started sourcing all my food from this farm instead of the corner place where I can only find, you know, all the horrible foods. She said, my doctor called it a miracle that now I don't need the medicine at all. I had an 80-year-old diabetic come up to me and say the same thing. I'm sourcing all my food from the farm now. It reversed my diabetes. We have a system that all the incentives are for sickness and death and suffering. We need a radical reimagining of where we put our subsidies.

If you want a hamburger, french fries, and a milkshake, I want you to have that. It's a freaking free country. but I want to have you pay the real cost for that. So I know that we want to argue about entitlements, but why aren't we making the question, why do we need so much health care in America? Why is the demand so high? So a lot of the problems that we have financially, and by the way, obese people, sick people, people with Alzheimer's, all of this is connected to our food system, you're less productive.

You have less well-being. But yet we've created a system that incentivizes. wealthy corporations, record profits off of our sickness and suffering. And I want to stop that in the years to come. Just on Social Security, I'm more pointed question. I like you, benefited from a Pac-10 education. Very lucky. I'm a wealthy man. Next year, I'm eligible for Social Security. Should I get Social Security? Listen, let me tell you, I don't think you should, to be honest with you. I really don't. So what does that mean? Means testing? Well, I would do a few things. First of all, like, give people the option to opt out. You know. Well, everyone has the

option. They don't have to take it, but that's not the big change. But again, I'll go back to my question. Do you believe we should raise the age of eligibility and means test social security? I will tell you this. I came in thinking that we should raise the age, and I now don't not believe we should raise the age. I really don't. In a time of AI and automation and all of these things, I don't not think we need to raise the age to make this solvent. I've sat down, as you probably have, with a lot of people doing the

math on this, if we simply, and I would like to skip a lot of middle income earners and get back to simply raising the Social Security tax on upper income earners, I think we can make enough to make the system solvent. Yeah, I 100%

agree. It makes no sense that it stops at 160 grand in terms of the tax. So I want to go to some of the bigger news, bigger news in the news. So Iran, do you think, do you think there was any legitimacy for the warranted military action and had the president come to Congress, got consultation or perhaps even congressional approval, that there was any legitimacy to the notion that there was a reason to engage in some sort of authorized or military operation in Iran right now? None whatsoever.

And if you just listen to the president, he will show you his lies. So at one point, he says he's completely obliterated their nuclear program. Then he comes back and tells us they're imminent in a nuclear breakout in a matter of days. That's a clear lie. And no evidence is in the public that suggests that. Number two, he says it's because they're slaughtering and murdering their own constituents. That was one of the original threats and why he says, he says, it's because they're slaughtering and murdering their own constituents. That was one of the original threats and why he said he was moving military assets in that area.

Well, he's definitely obliterated that lie by simply saying we need an off-ramp. He's not looking for regime change. Time and time again, he's shifted. But they did slaughter 30,000 of their own citizens in what, 48 hours? And you heard nothing. There should have been a lot more outrage in our country about that. And it's horrific and unjustified. But if every place from the Chinese with the Uyghurs to what's going on right now in Sudan, which is the largest mass slaughters going on on our planet, if that was the justification for U.S. military involvement, we'd be involved in a lot of other countries.

The reality is Donald Trump had no justification for bringing us unilaterally, making unilateral decision in bringing us to war, no justification. And if he thought there was a larger reason for it, he should have come to Congress, made it. this case and had a vote because that power lies with us. But now we're in a worse situation. He has not learned from history. He's repeated the mistakes of the past. He's gotten us into yet another Middle East war with no off ramp. Because again, if it's to say, I'm going to take away the nuclear threat, that would

take boots on the ground to go after fissile material. Regime change would take boots on the ground to go after these people. is no endgame in this. And meanwhile, we've changed warfare as we know it. Yes, our extraordinary military has deeply degraded their near-term combat abilities. But the one thing that's going to be very hard in wars of the future is how cheap it's gotten to design, develop, and deploy drones. And so here we have this president who's gotten us into a war where the Iranians are still able to launch attacks at us. And because of the Iranians, we're still able to launch attacks at us. And because of of the choke point of the Strait of Hermose,

he's been, they've been able to, against the strongest military on the planet Earth, completely choke up that area, which is going to send oil shocks, that even if the vote, even if the war stopped today, would still cause serious harm to our American economy

and the global economy as well. I think one of the frustrations is, I just can't imagine the majority of Democrats, and a lot of Republicans are nodding their head as they agree with you around. we kind of, that at a minimum, the execution of this war, and it is a war now, has been, you know, borderline, if not fully incompetent. There's a certain frustration, though, that there's a lack of

leadership from the Democratic Party in terms of our ability to stop things or to get things done as opposed to just, you know, moving from against indignance to ideas. And I would imagine some Republicans even feel that way. We see a lot of Republicans in Congress resigning because of their frustration. What do you think the strategy is for Democrats to, if you will, stop the president's actions around this and other things that the American public or that at least Democrats don't agree with? So I'm going to share with those people who feel anger and frustration in the Democratic Party that I do too. I think that we need to be a lot more imaginative in how we're fighting this. This is why even right now, me and a small group of Democrats are forcing every week, sometimes twice a week, I hope. just more and more votes, because we have a privileged lever that we're using to force the Senate

to have to confront this awful war and try to leverage what the Senate should be doing is having hearings, debate, checks and balances, oversight, which they're not doing at all. But I think that we need to understand a couple things. One is elections have consequences. And this election that we allow Donald Trump to win, and I will say, again, this is an indictment of the Democrats. Donald Trump didn't win. It really was our failure to mount a successful fight has consequences. That said, I'm seeing things start to shift, not as fast as I want, and I think that I can think of some ways it could shift faster, but you're seeing the popularity of this president really successfully decline, month after month, going lower and lower and

or setting up for in November, what could be not just a wave election, but a tsunami election, which then will send a signal to Republicans. Do you want to chain yourself to Donald Trump going into a 28th cycle, or do you want to start doing your job? Because right now, Senate Republicans are in a pickle. They're more afraid of Donald Trump than they are of their constituents, which speaks to what Thomas Jefferson said. When people are afraid of their government, there's tyranny.

when the government is afraid of their people, there is liberty. Well, my Senate colleagues on the Republican side are more afraid of Donald Trump than they are their people. And that's why we have this authoritarian outrage of a president now. So voters have power. People have power. I'm hoping that in the coming days we see yet another mass demonstration in this nation that's even bigger than the last, that definitely send signals to Republicans in the legislature that you are on sinking ground,

get off and start voting your conscience. But one more thing, and this is something I know you agree with me on, I don't want Donald Trump to be the center, the main character of this story of our democracy and crisis, of our country in crisis. It's a mistake. The problems you and I have already mentioned from the outrageous expansion of entitlement costs to the deficit to the military corruption, all of those things were going on before Donald Trump, if we don't start telling the truth to, what American voters already know, is that so many of the challenges we have right now are because the decisions made in Washington are being corrupted by an never-before-imagined amount of money flowing into our politics. So what gives Donald Trump the power to threaten, bully, intimidate into submission so many of my colleagues is not just his popularity and his MAGA base. It's that, and this has happened since this last year, where he can simply threaten or Elon Musk can

threaten. If you don't do what I tell you to do, I will put $20 million in a primary against you. Nobody ever conceived of that much money being so easily spent by people who have record wealth. Let me tell you right now, I'm negotiating a crypto bill as we speak. I was just with my Republican colleague who I'm negotiating with. I'm one of these Democrats that thinks Democrats are too much in the nanny state sometimes, and that blockchain technology and a lot of the things that are coming at us that we need to create safe sound regulation, but not try to stop people from having access to a lot of these new tools. Well, that said, in the middle of the negotiation, the crypto industry puts a nearly $200 million pack together and is spending at levels that are

unconscionable in races because they can. And that's how things get done around here. as much as you want change and don't like Donald Trump, the deeper problem that's bigger than him right now is we have a system that doesn't respond to the democracy that we created. The system is responding to the power and the wealth that comes with large concentrations of capital and enormous wealth among certain, a small group of individuals that's bigger than ever before in human history. We've got to stop this corruption. We've got to get the money out of politics in a big, bold way to restore trust. in our government. I think everyone's nodding their head, but again, does not involve overturning the Supreme Court decision on Citizens United? How do you do that? It absolutely does. I mean, look, we're trying to roll out as I get ready for my reelection in November. Big ideas are easy to understand. So the first one is the tax code is rigged. We are going to make sure we give a standard deduction of $75,000 by unrigging the top and transferring those tax breaks to middle class. That's number one. Number two for us is going to be a big comprehensive

bill on corruption, on how do we get all the corruption that makes me sick because 10 years ago I was one of the first people in Congress saying I'm not taking corporate PAC money. I'm now saying this on all ideological or issue PAC money, period. But you know senators can trade stocks. All my stocks, all my, I have mutual funds, but there's corrupt things that our president can create a crypto coin and have people, foreign adversaries, invest in that crypto coin. make him a lot of money. So we're going to put forward a very big omnibus bill that is just common sense stuff that's been supported by people on both sides of the aisle to undermine

the horrible Supreme Court decision and create fairness and ground rules for our politics. That has got to be part of what I think is the renewal of the American democracy that we need right now. We'll be right back after a quick break. Support for the show comes from fora. Planning a trip takes time, effort, and a bit of skill. Some people scroll through travel inspo and throw things together like they do in a shopping cart. But for others, they take a travel itinerary and bring it to life. With fora, your eye for detail and discovery becomes your calling card.

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give us what your view is the state of play here and if and when and how this gets solved well it's a weird washing way of dealing with problems we have a problem with the with ice and customs and border patrol and so instead of dealing with that problem negotiating over that problem and solving a reckless and out of control agency that's doing so much damage in our neighborhoods which was actually having an economic effect as well as obviously violating people civil rights injuring people and murdering two. Instead of dealing with that crisis, what the president has chosen to do is take the whole DHS Department of Homeland Security and hold them hostage. And so here you have TSA, which is vital for our safety security and the smooth running of our flight operations, him saying that

I am not going to fund TSA unless you deal with this problem. I'm going to put so much pressure on you that I hope Democrats are going to squeal and then come and do what I want them to do on ice, which is fund ice with this little inhibiting restraints on ice operations. And that's to me absurd. So Democrats have come to the floor time and time again and said, fund TSA, just fund TSA. And instead, the president has said, I'm not only not going to fund TSA, but I'm going to bring this ice problem into the airports, and I'm going to post them there. So yesterday I was in Newark Airport, which I know quite well, having been the mayor of the city.

And my poor authority police officers, airlines are telling me, TSA people are telling me, this is outrageous. You're taking a already chaotic environment with long lines, and you're adding this massive stressor to people as well. And the airlines, as you said, are saying, you're driving my customers away who want less and less a part of this. And I have people in my life who said, I'm not going to take my kids on spring break. I don't want to enter an airport right now. So this is Donald Trump's M.O., which is chaos and confusion, corruption, had that into that, and then rising costs in a declining economy. I do think, as I sit here running back and forth and was just in conversation on the floor,

I do think that this might break soon, that Republican Congress people who have to fly through the same airports we do are getting a lot more pressure than they bargained for. And when we looked at polling this week, we saw that most people are putting the blame squarely where it belongs, which is the president and Republicans who are enabling him. So I actually think that this is going to end soon. But again, it's just another example of a president who promised to make people's lives easier, promise to drive down costs, promise to improve our economy, and continuing to do things from the war in Iran to reckless, chaotic tariff policy to cutting people's health care, it continues to do things to make life more difficult for working families.

Before you go, I want to touch on your book, Stan, a story of generation's power in the future of the economy. Loosely speaking, I take it as your argument as the American system, if you well, isn't just unequal. It's rigged across generations and that inequality compounds over time. you're a senator, I think you're, you know, you rank kind of pretty high in terms of the likelihood you might in fact be the Democratic nominee for president. Talk a little bit about the balance between structural problems in the U.S. of which they are huge, but also I'd like you to talk about, in a message to young men, about agency and what you've learned about agency.

I know that's a lot, but let's talk about what you think of the structural problems. in the United States. I love the term you used, that inequality compounds, but also I want you to talk about agency as someone who has obviously been very successful. Yeah, I think that this country has 250 years founded on these radical ideals at the time. It was not an inalienable, an unalienable right idea that all are created equal. We actually broke with theocracies and monarchies and formed this what is now the oldest constitutional republic in the world on principles, on virtues. Now, these were imperfect geniuses. But the great thing about this nation has its ability to evolve and adapt and get better.

Who are we in this generation who have inherited wealth and abundance and promise and freedoms from people who struggled for them, fought for them, died for them? Who are we to stop believing that we, too, in our generation can shape our democracy, can direct the course of our country. And the reason why the best flattery I got for my book was that Doris Currence Goodwin, John Meacham, Henry Lus Glates, all these historians read it and then added praiseful blurbs to it because they really saw how I tried to show time and time again in American history, not the presidents and the people of great wealth and power, but how ordinary Americans through grit, guts and gumption,

in difficult times, change the course of this nation by being the best of who we were, by evidencing virtues. So here we are today on this idea of agency. It's the first chapter of my book is around that virtue of agency and rejects this idea that you do not have power, that we can't make a difference, and put squarely on us, that we are the heroes we're looking for. But dear God, right now, we need more heroes stepping up. and standing up and coming forward.

And at a time, I quote you in the book about the crisis amongst men, the loneliness that we feel, the disconnection, the isolation, the counterfeit communities that appear online to pull people into dark corners or gutters, frankly, that this is actually the time where I hope there's a resurgence in masculinity, a resurgence in standing up for the best of what it means to be a man, what it means to be an American. And using that toughness, that strength, not that perfection. One of my chapters is all about vulnerability, but that toughness and that grit to take this country by the scruff and help to pull it, push it, move it forward through what I think are really

despairing times. So you use the word masculinity. And I'm asking this to learn, not as a statement, because as somebody who gets asked a lot about masculinity, I still still. struggle with how to define it. What does masculinity mean for you and who have your role models been around masculinity? Well, first of all, it worries me when you say that, because I often quote you talking about the protector and the provider and a lot of these things that my dad showed me in a household. I'm a procreator, I might add, and you just got married. I think it's important that we pursue partnerships, friendships, friendships, romantic relationships, and that we, you know, ideally at some point have children and build loving households,

and it starts with the desire to procreate. But anyways, I interrupted you. No, but first of all, thank you for saying that, because I realized just in, we moved in together a year ago and got married in November, and it feels interesting to say this, but I feel like I've stepped up to be a man more now than I ever have when I was not in a serious, committed relationship. And there's something powerful, I think, about what you just said, about being a husband and a father.

Those are roles that are definitional to any community and a society. But look, I know what the absence of masculinity is, is what Donald Trump tries to portray this faux masculinity that he puts forward, this refusal to apologize. I'm perfect. I'm a genius. I'm better than everybody. Those are, that is not masculinity. That is weakness what he shows and, and demonstrates every single day. For me, there is something about the quiet devotion of a soldier or patriot that sacrifices, that stands up in fights that doesn't look for acclaim and doesn't look for, isn't braggadocious, but gets the work done.

Look, I was a pretty competitive football player in my day, and I loved the guys on the team who were the – may not even have the title captain, but were the guys that people would follow up a hill in hellfire because every day they showed up first. When everybody else was done, they do another lap, another rep, another set. They encouraged people. They had folks back. They took care of the people that often were given the least esteem on the team. Those were the people that were the greatest men that I served with. And they weren't the people that preened in front of the camera when they scored a touchdown or made a sack. They were the guys that every day in and out, they did what had to be done.

They were team players. They weren't on the team. They were for the team. Cory Booker is a U.S. Senator from New Jersey, former mayor of Newark, and member of the Democratic Party, known for his focus on criminal justice reform, economic opportunity, and bipartisan cooperation. And what someone's, the bio someone sends to you says a lot about them. That's the bio that was sent to me by the senator's office. No mention of the fact he was a standout athlete. That while he was an athlete, he was a Rhodes Scholar, then went to, got admission to Yale. I have a huge amount of respect for you. And also, Senator, I love the message.

I think you're an outstanding role model for young men. And I love the fact that you're unafraid in the Democratic Party and bring some of the fire that I think some of us are so hungry for. So very much appreciate your time. Hope you decide to run for president. And we're just, we're big supporters here, Senator. Very much appreciate not only what you're doing, but the signal you're sending, especially to young men. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me, Scott. This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Laura Jinnair.

Camry is our social producer. Bianca Rosario Ramirez is our video editor. And Drew Burroughs is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the PropG Pod from PropG Media.