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Republican Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez vigorously defended her role in moving the move from Amazon to New York on Tuesday against bipartisan criticism, claiming that the deal would have been "one of the most important gifts of the world." "state history" and would have dissuaded the public the local community.
"Frankly, the instinctive reaction that I do not" understand "how much the tax benefits to body work is disappointing," she tweeted. "No, it's not possible for me to come to a different conclusion. The debate * must * focus on my intelligence and understanding, instead of the benefits of agreement. "
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The new member of the New York Democratic Congress has been facing days of criticism from normally friendly media and fellow Democrats for her role in Amazon's decision to withdraw from building a new $ 2.5 billion campus in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens.
Amazon had cited the opposition of a number of local and state politicians in its decision to abandon the projects. Ocasio-Cortez and others at the local level had raised incentives such as $ 2.5 billion in tax relief to justify their opposition.
"If we were willing to give $ 3 billion for this deal, we could invest that $ 3 billion in our district ourselves, if we wanted to. We could hire more teachers. We can repair our subways. We can get a lot of people working for that money, if we wanted to, "said Ocasio-Cortez last week.
Mayor Bill de Blasio rejected this claim on Sunday. Even though he criticized Amazon for his decision, the mayor said his critics had wrongly suggested that tax breaks represented money that could be spent on something else. He said it was not "money you had here. And it was happening there.
The Democrat Mayor said, "The $ 3 billion in tax incentives would only have been paid when we got the jobs and generated the revenues."
Another Democratic Representative, Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., Has accused those opposed to the deal, including Ocasio-Cortez, from opposing the job.
"In the past, we were protesting against wars and now we are protesting against jobs?", She told CNN Friday, before criticizing the economic arguments of those who opposed the Amazon movement.
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"I'm progressive too, but I'm pragmatic," she said. "We have $ 4 billion less than we usually get and yet we kick out a company that would have been projected [to pay] about $ 27 billion in taxes over 10 years. "
The columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times criticized the agreement, saying it was evidence of a "financial literacy epidemic" in America.
"Little lesson: NYC did not give money to Amazon. It was an incentive program based on creating jobs, generating tax revenue, "he tweeted. "There is not a stack of $ 3 billion worth of money that can now be spent on the subway or in education."
On Tuesday, Ocasio-Cortez mocked the critics by saying, "It is not possible that this agreement, one of the biggest gifts in the history of the state, could have been bad, no ?
"There is certainly nothing wrong with the sudden announcement of a massive restructuring and the pricing of a community without notice or input from them," she asked.
In her list of critics, she included claims that Amazon was selling facial recognition technologies to immigration officers and that real estate insiders were provoking rent increases.
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"The people who managed the failed deal treated the community with condescension and disdain for their legitimate concerns," she said. "I've warned everyone, early on, that soaring costs in New York and downgrades are creating major political forces with which to count."
"But I do not know what I'm talking about, right?" She joked with an emoji shrugging her shoulders.
Frank Miles of Fox News contributed to this report.
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