Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.) did not deny he would raise taxes during a Saturday interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, and cited "patriotism" as a justification for his actions.
"What do you say to somebody who says, 'yeah, I'm not crazy about Trump, but the economy has done so much better and Republicans keep telling me, the Democratic nominee is going the raise my taxes and he is talking about raising taxes, so that might hurt the economy, hurt my bottom line.' What's the counterargument?" Tapper asked Booker at his home in Newark, New Jersey.
"We live in a nation with far more patriotism than people are expressing," Booker said. "What I mean is folks want the best for the country. We know if your family doesn't have a great public school, great health care, we're all suffering and creating greater costs."
Booker added that during his time as mayor of Newark, he learned that he needed to preside over an economy that "invests in each other."
"I'm going to run a campaign that speaks to all of America: I don't think Democrats should be defined by beating Republicans," he said. "We should be defined by uniting Americans. This is a moment where across this country, farm towns, factory towns, cities to suburbs, we have so much common pain where Americans are seeing, from the cost of prescription drugs, cost of college, we're all hurting because we have not envisioned an economy that invests in each other."
Booker has come under fire for his record as Mayor of Newark, which shows that he did not bring about the swift revitalization he promised. Newark's unemployment rate stood at 6.1 percent at the end of 2018, while the rest of the country stood at 3.9. The current national unemployment rate is 3.8 percent as of May 2019.