Liberal group launches tax campaign in Houston ahead of debate

The liberal group Tax March on Wednesday announced that it has launched a five-figure ad campaign ahead of Thursday night’s Democratic presidential debate to criticize President Trump’s tax law and urge candidates to put forth proposals to raise taxes on the rich.

The campaign is taking place in Houston, where the debate will be held.

Tax March said that it is running geo-targeted ads on Facebook and Twitter starting on Wednesday. The group also has a mobile billboard truck, urging politicians to “rein in the rich,” that will be circling downtown Houston and will be near the debate’s location of Texas Southern University hours before the event.

Tax March is partnering with the liberal group Progress Texas to run a full-page ad in Thursday’s Houston Chronicle that criticizes the fact that the developers of a luxury apartment building in Houston are benefiting from a provision in Trump’s 2017 tax-cut law.

“While Texas is in the midst of an affordability crisis, the Trump tax plan is showing little impact for those who need it most,” Ed Espinoza, executive director of Progress Texas, said in a news release.

Tax March’s campaign comes after the group held a bus tour on taxing the rich over the summer. The bus tour’s starting and ending locations of Miami and Detroit were the cities that hosted the first and second Democratic presidential debates.

“Over the summer, Tax March heard from hundreds of working people across 20 states about how the Trump tax didn’t help them,” Tax March Executive Director Maura Quint said. “And this is why Tax March will be traveling to each debate stop to push debate moderators and presidential candidates to have meaningful and nuanced conversations regarding our tax code.”

2020 Democratic presidential candidates have floated various ways to raise taxes on the wealthy, including a wealth tax, expanding the estate tax and higher taxes on capital gains. Many of the candidates have also said they would roll back Trump’s 2017 tax law, arguing that it largely benefits wealthy individuals and large corporations.

Trump and his allies, however, have praised the president’s tax law, arguing that it has been beneficial for the U.S. economy and noting that most people got a tax cut under the measure.