Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) Chairman Greg Casar (D-TX) called on his fellow lawmakers to levy a tax on companies that execute “AI-driven layoffs,” arguing that the tax revenue should fund a jobs program similar to the one that President Franklin D. Roosevelt spearheaded during the Great Depression.
Citing AI entrepreneur and researcher Dario Amodei’s prediction that U.S. unemployment levels will rise to Great Depression levels within the next five years and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’s opinion that humans will not be needed “for most things” in 10 years, Casar wrote in the American Prospect that “most people involved in artificial intelligence can agree on one thing: AI is coming for your job.”
“Corporate leaders say AI-driven layoffs are already starting, with Intuit firing thousands just this week, citing AI,” the congressman wrote in a guest opinion piece for the outlet. “Businesses justify their huge investments in AI by committing to spending less on labor, and AI firms sell their products promising to help them do it.”
“Regardless of whether AI is yet good enough to replace workers, their plan is clear: lay off millions of workers, justified by AI,” Casar continued, before arguing that the only entity that “seems totally unaware” of this phenomenon is the U.S. government.
Referring to the Republican-led effort to codify President Donald Trump’s national AI framework, Casar went on to write that the “only major AI proposal advanced this Congress was a failed effort to prevent states from regulating the industry.”
According to the Democrat, an AI tax should “target the companies that stand to make billions of dollars by laying people off.”
As a “first step” to combat AI-driven unemployment, Casar called on Congress to pass a new AI tax — both to slow down job loss, and to fund a jobs program like the New Deal-era Works Progress Administration (WPA), also known as the Work Projects Administration.
“Congress should act now, and not wait to see if the worst-case scenario arrives,” he continued. “AI companies are already pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into elections to try to shape what regulations get considered. We cannot wait for these companies to become even wealthier and more powerful.”
To those who argue that levying an AI tax on American companies would make the United States less competitive with China in the technology race, Casar simply stated that he is “not interested in a race to the bottom,” where workers in both countries would “end up victims of a competition where only the very wealthy actually win.”
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.