{"id":2704295,"date":"2026-11-13T15:56:02","date_gmt":"2026-11-13T20:56:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/senator-warren-versus-gm-shareholders\/"},"modified":"2026-11-13T16:00:58","modified_gmt":"2026-11-13T21:00:58","slug":"senator-warren-versus-gm-shareholders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/senator-warren-versus-gm-shareholders\/","title":{"rendered":"Senator Warren Versus GM Shareholders"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">10<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fsenator-warren-versus-gm-shareholders%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2704295&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Sen. Elizabeth Warren and other Democrats are attacking GM\u2019s $20 billion stock buyback and pushing much higher taxes on buybacks. The article argues buybacks are a normal way to return value to shareholders and that political hostility-echoed by Abdul El\u2011Sayed-could discourage companies from doing them. it maintains that capital allocation is the prerogative of shareholders and management, not senators, and suggests politicians who disagree should buy shares and wage proxy fights rather than threaten firms with legislation, warning such interference looks like state control, not a free market.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><h2>Democrats haven\u2019t even taken over Congress yet and they\u2019re already targeting corporate stock buybacks. Why?<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<figure> \t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Democrat from Massachusetts who is set to take over as chairman of the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, is trying to block General Motors from a $20 billion stock buyback plan.<\/p>\n<p>A letter from Warren to the GM CEO, Mary Barra, complains that the buyback would &#8220;enrich \u2026 shareholders&#8221; and &#8220;prioritize investor profits,&#8221; <em>Bloomberg News<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2026-11-13\/elizabeth-warren-blasts-gm-over-20-billion-stock-buyback-plan\">reported<\/a>. Isn\u2019t that precisely what corporate managements are supposed to do?<\/p>\n<p>Senator Warren has frequently expressed concern about the federal deficit and also desire for increased federal spending. If longtime GM shareholders sell, they\u2019ll have to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/harriss-capital-gains-plan-clashes-with-bidens-investment-income-proposal-washington-examiner\/\" title=\"Harris...s capital gains plan clashes with Biden...s investment income proposal - Washington Examiner\">pay capital gains tax<\/a>. You\u2019d think Warren would be happy about the potential for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/seattle-city-economists-proposed-2-capital-gains-tax-could-spur-wealth-exodus-washington-examiner\/\" title=\"Seattle city economists: Proposed 2% capital gains ... could spur wealth exodus - Washington Examiner\">capital gains tax revenue<\/a> from the buyback plan. Yet even the prospect of more federal tax revenue for Warren and her fellow politicians in Washington to spend apparently isn\u2019t enough to allay her anxiety about the danger that some shareholder, somewhere, might\u2014heaven forbid\u2014make a profit.<\/p>\n<p>If this is going to be Senate Democrats\u2019 attitude toward shareholder profits, it\u2019s going to be a long and rough two years for American investors. Warren appears to have been inspired by the incoming senator from Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, who campaigned alongside socialist Bernie Sanders. On October 21, immediately after GM announced the buyback, El-Sayed <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/AbdulElSayed\/status\/2113009971092676827?lang=en\">posted<\/a>, &#8220;GM just announced the biggest stock buyback in automotive industry history. Instead of investing in their workers or new product lines, GM executives are robbing from the future to pay themselves and their shareholders today. Stock buybacks should be illegal.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>If it were left up to El-Sayed, the American auto industry, and our entire economy, would be as pathetically stagnant and impoverished as that of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.imf.org\/external\/datamapper\/NGDPDPC@WEO\/EGY?zoom=EGY&#038;highlight=EGY\">Egypt<\/a>, his ancestral home. The per capita GDP there is between $3,000 and $4,000 a year, where it\u2019s been stuck for about a decade.<\/p>\n<p>Warren, along with the Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, and the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, Ron Wyden, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.democrats.senate.gov\/newsroom\/press-releases\/after-gop-tax-giveaway-fuels-1-trillion-stock-buyback-bonanza-schumer-wyden-and-warren-unveil-stock-buyback-accountability-act-to-quadruple-buyback-tax-and-finally-close-executive-stock-loophole\">introduced<\/a> legislation in June proposing to quadruple the tax on stock buybacks. That effectively gives companies an incentive to do the buybacks now before the Democrats take over and quadruple the tax.        <\/p>\n<p>Schumer, who was first elected to Congress in 1980 and who before that served five years as a member of the New York State assembly, has been a longtime campaigner against stock buybacks. As a Senate Democrats <a href=\"https:\/\/www.democrats.senate.gov\/newsroom\/press-releases\/after-gop-tax-giveaway-fuels-1-trillion-stock-buyback-bonanza-schumer-wyden-and-warren-unveil-stock-buyback-accountability-act-to-quadruple-buyback-tax-and-finally-close-executive-stock-loophole\">press release<\/a> put it, &#8220;Leader Schumer has been outspoken on the need to increase taxes for stock buybacks. In 2019, he<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/02\/03\/opinion\/chuck-schumer-bernie-sanders.html\"> penned an op-ed<\/a> with Senator Sanders calling for a limit to corporate stock buybacks. In 2022, he led the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which enacted the original stock buyback tax. \u2026 Schumer<a href=\"https:\/\/www.finance.senate.gov\/ranking-members-news\/wyden-schumer-bennet-bill-would-increase-tax-on-stock-buybacks-for-oil-and-gas-companies\"> introduced<\/a>, with Senators Wyden and Bennett (D-CO), legislation that would increase the excise tax on stock buybacks of large oil and gas companies from 1 percent to 25 percent.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Warren and the rest\u2014except for Sanders, who is an independent socialist who caucuses with the Democrats\u2014call themselves Democrats. What could be more democratic than allowing shareholders to choose for themselves whether to sell back their stock or hold onto it? That\u2019s essentially what a buyback plan does. For shareholders who prefer to reallocate their cash away from GM toward other areas or companies they view as having more future promise for the price\u2014whether super intelligence, space, nuclear energy, quantum computing or nanotechnology\u2014they can do that. For shareholders who want to stick with GM, they can hold onto the stock. Perhaps some shareholders might even want to take their GM profits and donate them to Harvard, where Warren\u2019s husband, Bruce Mann, is paid <a href=\"https:\/\/assets.ctfassets.net\/lrqh3qmw9nn5\/1eGVQ3hl4FQQfTjIt6cHw4\/f0a06d1f679bc9e3fa09ddba0874c683\/Elizabeth-Warren-2025-Tax-Return.pdf\">$424,873 a year<\/a> as a law professor.<\/p>\n<p>GM went bankrupt in 2009\u2014and had a long decline before that\u2014in part because management didn\u2019t pay enough attention to customers or shareholders. The politicians will take shots at corporate management either way\u2014for not making enough money, for making too much money. The perfect amount of money, from the Schumer-Warren view, is the precise amount that lets the company management and its lobbyists give campaign contributions to Schumer without leaving too much afterward for the shareholders.<\/p>\n<p>Senator Warren\u2019s office and GM did not immediately respond to inquiries from the <em>Washington Free Beacon<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The politicians may have alternative preferred proposed uses for the capital\u2014pay the workers more, or build factories for electric cars. But in a free enterprise economy, it\u2019s the owners of a company\u2014and the management they elect\u2014that get to choose how to allocate capital. Allocating private capital is not the job of senators, even those like Senator Elizabeth Warren, who used to be professors at Harvard Law School, or Senator-elect El-Sayed, who has an M.D. from Columbia University (as Columbia has been publicly <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/columbiamed\/posts\/congrats-to-columbia-university-vagelos-college-of-physicians-and-surgeons-alum-\/1457838289867474\/\">celebrating<\/a> in the election\u2019s aftermath) and a D.Phil from Oxford University. If the senators think they know better than management how to allocate corporate capital, let them buy shares and wage a proxy campaign. The alternative approach\u2014performatively throwing their weight around with <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\" >threatening political letters selectively shown<\/a> to <em>Bloomberg News<\/em>\u2014befits a dictatorship. There are places with state-owned automakers\u2014North Korea, Communist China, Russia, Iran. Those are not free countries.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Democrats oppose GM stock buybacks; Warren fights<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4157,"featured_media":2704296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/warren_gm_original_side_by_side.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[87788,76428,87787,87786,16537],"class_list":["post-2704295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-corporate-welfare-2","tag-economic-policy-2","tag-general-motors-2","tag-senator-warren","tag-shareholders"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/warren_gm_original_side_by_side.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2704295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4157"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2704295"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2704295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2704299,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2704295\/revisions\/2704299"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2704296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2704295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2704295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2704295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}