That’s a Wrap: Patriotic Millionaires’ 2025 Fall Member Summit

Last week, our millionaire members flocked to Washington, D.C., from every corner of the country to do two hugely important things: discuss the biggest problem plaguing America today—MONEY—and get the message out about the solution we have to it: The MONEY Agenda.

We kicked off our 2025 Fall Member Summit last Monday night by hosting “MONEY. Message. Millionaires.” at the Hamilton LIVE. Before a packed crowd, our members engaged in inspiring dialogues with thought leaders, activists, political strategists, and policymakers about the urgent need to enact our four-part legislative platform, The MONEY Agenda, in order to advance our three core pillars: tax the rich, pay the people, and spread the power.

Patriotic Millionaires’ President Erica Payne and Vice-Chair Stephen Prince started the evening by laying out what’s wrong with America’s economy today: too few Americans have too much money while too many Americans have too little. Their opening remarks led into Vanessa Williamson’s presentation. Vanessa, who is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings and a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, outlined the central premise of her new book, The Price of Democracy: The Revolutionary Power of Taxation in American History. If American history is any guide, taxation and democracy go hand in hand, as taxes are the best tool we have to safeguard our democracy. Below is a clip of Vanessa’s remarks:

The next slate of speakers addressed the four principles of our MONEY Agenda. Congresswoman Delia C. Ramirez (IL-03) and our Chair, Morris Pearl, spoke about the first principle: Tax all income from all sources equally. You may recall that, back in September, Congresswoman Ramirez introduced the Equal Tax Act, which makes the tax code more equitable by taxing investment income at the same rate as labor income and closing other loopholes commonly used by the wealthy.

We then moved onto two of our members, John Driscoll and Ashley Craig, who addressed the second principle of our MONEY Agenda: Full-time workers should be paid enough to support themselves. We’ve talked about John and his expertise before. He is the Chair of Magnit Global and also the co-author of Pay the People! Why Fair Pay is Good for Business and Great for America. Ashley is a new member and a finance and audit professional who spent her career working for companies like Morgan Stanley and The Walt Disney Company. Needless to say, they know their stuff when it comes to the business case for paying workers living wages and bridging the divide between, as they call it, the C-Suite and the SNAP Suite in America.

Pierre Hollis, a retired Marine Corps Officer who you may recognize from our First 45 Tax-Free ad, then tackled The MONEY Agenda’s third principle: The federal government should not tax working- and middle-class people into poverty. This will involve creating a “cost of living” exemption on federal income taxes up to the cost of living for a single adult with no children, and then shifting the burden of any lost revenues onto taxpayers that make over $1 million a year.

Bob Lord and Chuck Collins then discussed the fourth principle of the MONEY Agenda: Use the tax code to tackle America’s billionaire problem, dismantle the oligarchy, and safeguard our democracy. Bob is our Senior Vice President for Tax Policy and Chuck is one of our millionaire members and the author of a new book, Burned by Billionaires: How Concentrated Wealth and Power Are Ruining Our Lives and Planet.

Then, it was time for the keynote event, as Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen took to the stage for a conversation with Erica. Senator Van Hollen spoke powerfully about America’s inequality crisis and the Democratic party’s lack of leadership on taxes and wages, and paid special attention to The MONEY Agenda’s third principle of not taxing people into poverty. Watch Erica and Senator Van Hollen’s full exchange below:

Finally, to close the program, Terrance Woodbury, the President of HIT Strategies, spoke about trends that we saw among voters in the 2024 election cycle, and Ana María Archila, one of our Board members and the Co-director of the New York Working Families Party, reflected on the lessons that Democrats can learn from the recent NYC mayoral election.

Following the program, we hosted a “Books Against Billionaires” cocktail reception with our speakers and audience members, featuring the following books:

After a good night’s sleep with dreams of a reformed tax code and good economic policy for working people, our members took our MONEY Agenda message directly to Capitol Hill. Our members split off into groups and met with no fewer than 18 (!) members of Congress and their staff. We spent most of our time discussing the first and third principles of our MONEY Agenda, emphasizing the importance of taxing all income from all sources the same and not taxing people into poverty. The lawmakers we met with were receptive to our message and mission, and we will continue our dialogues with their offices into the new year.

Below is a post-meeting picture of some of our members and staff with New Jersey Senator Andy Kim:

On Wednesday, we hunkered down to set new goals as an organization for the new year and to strategize over the best ways to achieve them. But even though we were behind closed doors, we still managed to draw attention to ourselves—and on an international stage, at that!

G20 leaders met this weekend in Johannesburg, South Africa for their annual summit. We worked with our allies in the Tax the Super Rich alliance to stage something pretty unique and spectacular to call on the leaders to tax the rich for people and planet: a film projection on key landmarks and buildings across South Africa, narrated by Abigail Disney, one of our members, and Aminata Touré, former Prime Minister of Senegal.

Check out a video of the projection below:

Be sure to like, comment, and share our social media posts about the projection on X, Threads, Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

In addition to narrating the projection, Abigail Disney also penned an opinion piece for TIME to highlight the urgent need for G20 leaders to tax wealthy people like her. In the piece, Abigail argues that the tax policy solutions to reduce inequality already exist, along with support from the public—even among millionaires like us, as evidenced by a new poll of South African millionaires our group sponsored. Therefore, the only thing missing to make it happen is political will on the part of G20 leaders.

 You can read Abigail’s TIME op-ed in full here. Or click here to watch and share our Instagram post with video snippets of Abigail’s piece. 

With Thanksgiving around the corner, it’s only a matter of time before 2025 comes to a close. We’re glad we were able to get together before it happens, reflect on the progress we’ve made in advancing our MONEY Agenda, and draw attention to our efforts to tax the rich, pay the people, and spread the power both here at home and around the world.