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billionaires
Teasing Another Senate Run, Independent Dan Osborn Says 'We Could Replace a Billionaire With a Mechanic'
"Working-class candidate v. billionaire political race. I'm here for it," wrote one longtime progressive strategist.
Apr 03, 2025
Dan Osborn, an Independent U.S. Senate candidate who struck a chord with working-class voters in Nebraska and came within striking distance of unseating his Republican opponent last year, announced Thursday that he's considering another run, this time challenging GOP Sen. Pete GOP Ricketts, who is up for election in 2026.
"We could replace a billionaire with a mechanic," Osborn wrote in a thread on X on Thursday. "I'll run against Pete Ricketts—if the support is there." Osborn said that he's launching an exploratory committee and would run as Independent, as he did in 2024.
Ricketts has served as a senator since 2023, and prior to that was the governor of Nebraska from 2015-2023. By one estimate, Ricketts has a net worth of over $165 million—though the wealth of his father, brokerage founder Joe Ricketts, and family is estimated to be worth $4.1 billion, according to Forbes.
A mechanic and unionist who helped lead a strike against Kellogg's cereal company, Osborn lost to Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) by less than 7 points in November 2024 in what became an unexpectedly close race.
Although he didn't win, he overperformed the national Democratic ticket by a higher percentage than other candidates running against Republicans in competitive Senate races, according to The Nation.
"Billionaires have bought up the country and are carving it up day by day," said Osborn Thursday. "The economy they've built is good for them, bad for us. Good for huge multinationals and multibillionaires. Bad for workers. Bad for small businesses, bad for family farmers. Bad for anyone who wants Social Security to survive. Bad for your PAYCHECK."
Osborn cast the potential race as between "someone who's spent his life working for a living and will never take an order from a corporation or a party boss" and "someone who's never worked a day in his life and is entirely beholden to corporations and party."
"We could take on this illness, the billionaire class, directly," he said.
Osborn, who campaigned on issues like Right to Repair and lowering taxes on overtime payments, earned praise from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who toldThe Nation in late November that Osborn's bid should be viewed as a "model for the future."
Osborn "took on both political parties. He took on the corporate world. He ran as a strong trade unionist. Without party support, getting heavily outspent, he got through to working-class people all over Nebraska. It was an extraordinary campaign," Sanders said.
In reaction to the news that Osborn is exploring a second run, a former Sanders campaign manager and longtime progressive Democratic strategist Faiz Shakir, wrote: "working-class candidate v. billionaire political race. I'm here for it."
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Senate Budget Plan Kicks Working Class in the Face, Hands Billions Upon Billions to the Rich
"No parliamentary tricks will change the fact that Trump, Musk, and his allies in Congress are trying to give a huge handout to the ultrawealthy while forcing the rest of us to foot the bill," wrote one watchdog.
Apr 03, 2025
Watchdogs and other critics swiftly denounced a budget blueprint unveiled by Senate Republicans on Wednesday that endeavors to get the GOP one step closer to delivering additional spending and trillions in tax cuts desired by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Observers are also condemning Republicans' plans to skirt the Senate parliamentarian and use a controversial gimmick to make an extension of provisions from Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act look "free"—even the cost of extending those cuts would be nearly $4 trillion over 10 years, and the Senate proposal includes a total of $5.3 trillion in tax cuts.
"Let's be clear: Trump and his allies in Congress are cooking the books in broad daylight. They don't want Americans to know that their scam of a tax bill, which gives trillions in giveaways to their billionaire and corporate donors, costs over $5 trillion," said David Kass, the executive director of the advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF), in a statement on Wednesday.
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, referenced Trump's billionaire adviser Elon Musk when declaring that "Republicans have chosen to prioritize the Trump-Musk agenda of picking the pockets of everyday people to shower billionaires with tax giveaways."
The Senate budget blueprint would increase the country's debt limit by $5 trillion and permanently extend tax cuts passed through Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, according to NPR.
Extending those tax cuts would primarily benefit the wealthy. According to a 2024 analysis from the Tax Policy Center, households making about $450,000 or more a year would receive nearly half of the benefits of extending key provisions of Trump's 2017 tax cuts.
According to a February report from ATF, the wealthiest Republicans on tax writing panels could save themselves millions through extending these cuts, particularly by keeping in place a higher estate tax exemption.
The Senate budget blueprint includes the $4.5 trillion tax plan passed by the House of Representatives in February, according to NPR. The House plan is crafted so the only way to achieve the requirements of the budget resolution is to enact steep cuts to Medicaid. The budget resolution also makes cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) all but certain.
Sharon Parrott, the president of the nonpartisan research organization the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, framed the Senate budget plan like this: "Congress is speeding down a path to a deeply harmful budget and tax 'reconciliation' bill that showers tax cuts on millionaires, billionaires, and corporations—and pays for it in part by raising healthcare and food costs through cuts in Medicaid and SNAP, increasing hardship and leaving millions without health coverage."
In order to move the legislation forward, Senate Republicans are planning on bypassing the Senate parliamentarian—who has sway over whether legislation can be sped up through the filibuster-free reconciliation process—on a crucial budgeting matter, according to Wednesday reporting from The New York Times.
By asserting that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, can decide the cost of legislation Republicans are angling not to get the parliamentarian's sign-off on their claim that extending the tax cuts will be free, per the Times.
The GOP is attempting to make the tax cut extension appear free by using the "current policy" baseline rather than the "current law" baseline. One expert who spoke to the Timescompared it to "taking an expensive weeklong vacation and then assuming you can spend an extra $1,000 per day forever since you are no longer staying at the Plaza."
A trio of experts writing for the Center for American Progress wrote that the approach is unprecedented in the past five decades since the Congressional Budget Office was formed and lawmakers acted within the current budget framework.
"Don't be fooled: the only way Senate Republicans can pay for their tax cuts to the wealthy is by taking a chainsaw to Medicaid, school lunches for kids, and driving up the cost of groceries and housing," said the executive director of the watchdog Accoutable.US, Tony Carrk, on Wednesday. "The math doesn't add up, and no parliamentary tricks will change the fact that Trump, Musk, and his allies in Congress are trying to give a huge handout to the ultrawealthy while forcing the rest of us to foot the bill."
Republicans narrowly control both chambers of Congress. According to Politico, the Senate will vote as soon as Thursday to consider the blueprint, which if adopted, would allow the House to try to adopt it before breaking for a two week recess.
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'They've Come to Collect': Report Details Crisis of Billionaires Buying US Elections
"The billions of dollars of donations these oligarchic clans give candidates, parties, and particularly outside spending groups drown out the voices and concerns of ordinary voters," according to the report.
Apr 02, 2025
The ever-growing amount of billionaire cash in elections is poisoning U.S. democracy, according to a report published Wednesday by the advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness—which found that the top 100 billionaire families spent an eye-popping $2.6 billion on federal contests in 2024.
That's more than twice the roughly $1 billion spent by individual billionaire donors in 2020, according to the group, and constitutes 160 times the amount of billionaire political spending since the 2010 Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. That decision paved the way for the proliferation of super political action committees (PACs), a type of committee that can accept unlimited donations to spend on political activity.
Picking apart that $2.6 billion, there's a clear partisan skew: 70% of that billionaire money went to entities supporting Republican candidates, while 23% went to entities backing Democratic candidates. The other 7% went toward independent candidates—such as presidential contender Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now a Cabinet secretary—and committees that gave to candidates from both parties who champion specific issues, such as cryptocurrency.
That skew is particularly pronounced when it comes to the competitive Senate races that determined control of the chamber in 2024.
Looking at Senate contests in Arizona, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, the authors of the report found that nearly 80% of the total billionaire cash in these races—which tallied $1.14 billion in outside spending—went to outside groups supporting Republican candidates, compared to 20% used to support Democratic hopefuls.
"The billions of dollars of donations these oligarchic clans give candidates, parties, and particularly outside spending groups drown out the voices and concerns of ordinary voters, endangering democracy and distorting public policy," the report states.
What's more, "this undue influence by the billionaire donor class over our government—always a concern and already present in mostly indirect ways—has found its full, frightening expression in the second Trump administration with the ascendancy of Elon Musk, the world's richest man and the biggest billionaire donor in the 2024 elections," the authors wrote.
Musk's ability to convert his extreme wealth into political influence in the Trump administration contrasts with reports that Musk pays relatively little in taxes. In 2018, for example, Musk paid nothing in federal income taxes even as his wealth soared, largely due to Tesla stock appreciation.
But Musk is just the "most notorious example of billionaires literally buying power," according to the group. ATF highlighted that billionaire Linda McMahon secured a position as President Donald Trump's education secretary after she and her ex-husband gave tens of millions to support Republican candidates, as did billionaire businessman Howard Lutnick, now the commerce secretary.
The report, titled Billionaires Buying Elections: They've Come to Collect, is the latest in ATF's "billionaires buying elections" series, and according to the group it is the most comprehensive because it covers both direct billionaire giving and "traces the indirect routes billionaire cash can take through campaign committees contributing to each other."
In its methodology section, the report gives the example of WinSenate—a super PAC that works to elect Democrats to the Senate—which did not report billionaire contributions, but received all of its funding from the Senate Majority PAC. Because the Senate Majority PAC got 19.9% of its funding from billionaires, the report counted WinSenate's share of billionaire spending at 19.9%.
According to the report, other big-name Republican megadonors in the 2024 cycle included shipping supply magnates Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein and Israeli-American billionaire Miriam Adelson.
According to the authors of the report, billionaires need to be taxed more.
"Tax policy—which has the most direct impact on billionaire wealth—is perhaps the most obviously affected by the money-for-power billionaire bargain," according to the group, which cites the current Republican push to extend parts of Trump's 2017 tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy as part of a general trend in tax policy over the past four decades to decrease taxes on the wealthiest people and most profitable businesses.
"The self-reinforcing combination of booming billionaire fortunes and weakening campaign finance laws continues to threaten our democratic form of government," according to the report. "As the outcome of the last presidential campaign amply demonstrates, until billionaires pay their fair share of taxes and we put effective curbs on their political spending, this threat will only grow."
The report calls for solutions like bolstering the estate tax and implementing a wealth tax, such as the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act, a bill that was reintroduced by multiple Democratic senators in 2024. The newer version of the legislation would place a 2% annual tax on the net worth of households and trusts between $50 million and $1 billion, and impose an 1% annual surtax—so 3% tax overall—on the net worth of families and trusts that is above $1 billion.
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