Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Barbara Lee unveiled legislation on Wednesday that will fractionally tax Wall Street transactions to produce trillions of dollars in public revenue. 

“It’s a small tax on Wall Street to make big change on Main Street.”
—Mitch Jones, Food and Water Watch

The Inclusive Prosperity Act (pdf) was introduced in the Senate by Sanders, an Independent who caucuses with Democrats, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), and in the House by Lee, a Democrat from California, and a dozen of her colleagues. 

“Wall Street gets away with no taxes, even when conducting high-risk financial transactions,” Lee said in a statement. “This has to stop. It’s past time to make sure Wall Street pays their fair share so that we can provide funding for things that make us a better nation like jobs, housing, infrastructure, and college education.”

The tax is a tiny levy on the hundreds of billions of transactions on Wall Street each day.

According to a statement from Sanders’s office:

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A number of groups signed onto the measure as well, citing the potential for higher tax revenues that could be spent on social programs as well as a sense of moral justice that the tax would bring.

“Nurses know that economic inequality and poor health go hand in hand,” said Jean Ross, president of National Nurses United. “Every day, we see people who come into our emergency rooms in medical crisis because they went without preventative care or medicine because they couldn’t afford it. This small tax on Wall Street will improve the lives of millions of people by funding Medicare for All, public college for all, critical environmental and climate change mitigation programs, job creation, housing assistance, and HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention programs.”