O’Rourke doesn’t answer if he’d support a 70 percent individual tax rate

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke did not give an answer about whether he would support a top marginal individual tax rate of 70 percent, after being asked twice if he would support such a rate by the moderators at the first debate.

The first question moderators asked the former Texas congressman was about whether he would support a top individual rate of 70 percent — an idea floated by freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

O’Rourke responded by saying “this economy has got to work for everyone, and right now we know that it isn’t.” He then spoke in Spanish.{mosads}

WATCH: Beto O’Rourke delivers his first #DemDebate response in English and Spanish. pic.twitter.com/xxZSvvYTyq

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) June 27, 2019

When the moderators asked O’Rourke a second time if he supports a 70 percent marginal rate, he again didn’t directly answer the question. However, he did say that he wants to tax capital at the same rates as labor and wants to raise the corporate tax rate to 28 percent.

“You would generate the revenues you would need to pay for the programs we’re talking about,” he said.

President Trump’s tax-cut law slashed the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. The O’Rourke-proposed corporate rate of 28 percent is the same corporate tax rate that the Obama administration backed.

Several minutes later in the debate, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said that Democrats are “supposed to be for a 70 percent tax rate on the wealthy.”

– updated at 9:46 p.m.