'If that's what radical means call me a radical!': Socialist Democrat Ocasio-Cortez backs taxes as high as 70 per cent on multi-millionaires as she claims she's the successor to Lincoln and FDR

New left-wing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is calling for a top tax rate of as high as 60 or 70 per cent on those earning double-digit mi...

New left-wing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is calling for a top tax rate of as high as 60 or 70 per cent on those earning double-digit million dollar incomes – and says she'll accept the 'radical' label.

The freshman lawmaker sat for an interview with Anderson Cooper for CBS' '60 Minutes' on her first day as a member of Congress.

She called for zero carbon emissions within 12 years, and backed tax increases to pay for it, and referenced the higher income tax brackets of prior generations. 

'You look at our tax rates back in the '60s and when you have a progressive tax rate system your tax rate, you know, let's say, from zero to $75,000 may be ten percent or 15 per cent,' she said, in a clip that aired on CBS 'This Morning.'

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is calling for a top tax rate of as high as 60 or 70 per cent on those earning double-digit million dollar incomes. Here the freshman Democrat representing New York's 14th Congressional District, takes a selfie with Barbara Lee, from California and Ann McLane Kuster, from New Hampshire on the first day of the new Congress

'But once you get to, like, the tippy tops – on your 10 millionth dollar – sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60 or 70 percent,' she said. 'That doesn't mean all $10 million are taxed at an extremely high rate, but it means that as you climb up this ladder you should be contributing more.'

In 1960, before the Kennedy tax cuts, the top rate was 91 per cent for those earning more than $200,000. According to the Tax Policy Center, the top 1 per cent earned 9 per cent of all income at that time, compared to 20 per cent in 2008.  

Cooper observed that her policy sounded 'radical.'

'Well I think that it only has ever been radicals that have changed this country. Abraham Lincoln made the radical decision to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. Franklin Delano Roosevelt made the radical decision to embark on establishing programs like Social Security. That is radical,' she said. 

Cooper then asked if Ocasio-Cortez calls herself a radical.

'Yeah. You know, if that's what radical means, call me a radical,' she said. 

She said her environmental plans are going to 'require a lot of rapid change that we don't even conceive as possible right now.