Democrats will not reverse the
Trump era tax cuts for the wealthy.
Though they pretended at the time
that they found those tax cuts for
the rich objectionable, and
Joe Biden himself even campaigned
on the very idea of reversing
Donald Trump's tax cuts for
the rich.
Now, one Democrat,
who was too cowardly to identify
themselves while speaking to
the Hill said this.
Let me start off by saying that,
when it comes to how billionaires
have been performing
financially during this pandemic.
New data indicates that billions
have seen their collective wealth
grow by $1.3 billion since the
deadly pandemic began last year.
It's important to understand
that statistic,
it's important to know about that.
Because, every time a Democrat
tells you they cannot reverse
Trump's tax cuts because of
the pandemic, because we're in such
a terrible economic situation,
understand that they are lying
to you.
Because the, quote unquote, job
creators, the people that they've
given the tax cuts to in the past,
are the very people who have
done very well for
themselves during this pandemic.
In fact, America's 664 billionaires
now have a combined net worth of
$4.2 trillion.
A figure that stands in staggering
contrast to the economic pain being
felt by countless families across
the United States as joblessness,
uninsurance, and
hunger remain sky-high.
Now I want to get to a cowardly
Democrat, who didn't want to reveal
his or her name while
speaking to the Hill.
When expressing their concern about
reversing Trump era tax cuts,
this person told the Hill this.
I think we should not be raising
taxes.
People would accept the corporate
tax raised a few points but beyond
that you're going to have problems,
especially in the middle of
an economic crisis.
Now, there's a very good reason why
this person did not want to go on
the record and publicly say this
while revealing his or her name.
It's because this ideology,
this take on Trump era tax cuts,
is very unpopular, right?
But you hear similar statements
being made by people in leadership
positions in the House of
Representatives.
Including House Ways and Means
Committee Chairman Richard Neal,
who said this.
Expressed concern that attaching
tax increases to the infrastructure
bill that Democratic leaders plan
to move could send Republicans and
Democrats into their corners.
As if they're not already into
their corners.
[LAUGH] >> As if that excuse
is really going to play well with
people who actually pay attention
to their disgusting, cowardly,
selfish behavior in Congress.
And I have more for you, Cenk, but
why don't you jump in?
>> Okay, so first of all,
you're right.
That line about sending them to
their corners is hilarious.
>> What votes have you gotten
from Republicans on policy
initiative so far?
My latest count is zero.
And so,
if you think the Republicans are in
your corner, or near you, you're on
a different planet, brother.
And look,
even the most moderate proposals
by guys like Senator Romney are way
out there.
Some are like, look, we found one
that we told you about earlier in
the week where we're like, okay,
this one's bad, but not awful.
And there is some actually
interesting and
good parts of it, right?
Other than that one on childcare,
they're all super right-wing.
So if we meet in the middle
between their super right-wing
proposals and
the Democrats' moderate proposals,
we'll have a right-wing proposal.
Why, why, why?
Can anyone explain to me why
the Democrats, who have complete
control over Washington, refuse
to act on every single issue?
Ana, you misspoke by accident.
You said $1.3 billion is how much
the billionaires have increased
their wealth during the pandemic.
Of course, it's $1.3 trillion.
>> Yes, my bad. >> $1.3 trillion.
So don't tell me it's going to slow
down the economy to take away
an extra billion dollars here or
there from Bezos.
I can guarantee you,
he's not going to miss it.
He might get all emotional about it
like, my god.
And Leon Cooperman might come back
on CNBC and cry a river, and
so, what will I ever do with 184
billion I have left?
Shut up already.
So look, look, we have to strike
the right balance.
It's not a matter of eating
the rich.
It's not a matter of envy, and
I hate that stuff, right?
But saying that they don't have
enough money is deeply insulting,
and totally counterfactual, and
an alternate reality.
So let me just, real quick, during
the pandemic, Bezos and Musk,
respectively, raised their wealth
by 76.3 billion and 158 billion.
That's just two guys.
Zuckerberg raised his wealth, and
this is all in one year,
just one year,
raised his wealth by $41 billion.
So, I mean, the Koch brothers
robbed, and stole, and bought
off politicians, and did every
dirty trick in the book to get to
41 billion over their lifetimes
after the dad has given them half
a billion dollars to begin with.
But these billionaires,
their wealth is accumulating at
insane levels, while our general
population wealth is decreasing,
is getting hammered.
And then they say, no, no,
no, now's not the time to
raise taxes on the rich.
It's never time in Washington,
never, get real.
>> Right, and look, this story is
about Democratic lawmakers who had
pretended as though they found
Trump's tax cuts for
the rich objectionable.
And now they're totally backing off
of their own campaign promises and
their own party messaging in terms
of reversing those tax cuts.
But make no mistake, Republicans
are obviously incredibly awful when
it comes to this type of policy.
Because, of course,
they support tax cuts for the rich.
They always have,
that's been part of their platform
since as long as I can remember.
But one thing that's really
interesting about
this moment is how they have this
conflicting message.
On one hand,
in regard to passing Biden's $1.9
trillion economic relief plan,
you'll get Republican senators like
Senator Kennedy arguing that,
what do you mean?
The economy is doing so well, we
don't need to do anything, right?
I mean, he had this line of
questioning for the Federal Reserve
Chair Jerome Powell just recently,
and he's like, GDP is doing great.
We don't need to pass COVID relief.
You agree with me, right?
But then, at the same time,
when it comes to raising taxes,
just reversing the tax cuts for
the rich that Trump implemented,
they'll argue, no, no, no,
the economy's actually really,
really bad.
And if we do this,
if we raise taxes,
it's really going to hurt people in
being able to create jobs.
By the way, I mean,
the analysis is in,
we already expected this.
Cutting the taxes for the wealthy
did not lead to more job creation.
It actually did the opposite.
We had more situations where
companies consolidated and
then ended up laying off a bunch
of workers.
And that was something that
actually reported by Jonathan
Larson over at TYT Investigates.
But let's get back to Democrats,
because Joe Manchin continues to be
a problem.
And so Senator Joe Manchin told
the Hill in early January, for
instance, that it would be, quote,
ridiculous to repeal the Trump tax
cuts while the COVID-19 pandemic is
still a burden on the economy.
And Congress has a lot of other
legislative priorities on its
plate, such as addressing the need
for more vaccines.
Now, allegedly, on Tuesday,
he backed off of that statement
a little bit saying that
everything's open for discussion.
But there are more
Democratic lawmakers,
people like Senator Jon Tester,
another centrist, this week warned
that lawmakers need to be careful
about raising taxes when the real
unemployment rate is estimated 10%.
And then he also says,
I think there are some loopholes in
the code that could be cut out.
I don't know that you want to do it
right now.
>> Yeah, yeah, yeah- >> You don't
want to do it right now.
>> Yeah. >> Yeah.
>> Every time Republicans get
in office, their very first
priority is tax cuts for the rich.
And they do it immediately.
Every time Democrats get in office,
they go, not right now.
We can't reinstate, and
we can't reinstate it all the way.
And by the way,
we're going to make them permanent.
No, campaign promises, no, never,
never, never.
Look, I'm going to go to one of our
members here.
Theater Goddess wrote in in
the members section.
Is there any campaign promise that
Biden hasn't made noise about not
being able to complete during his
first 100 days while his political
capital is at its highest?
So this is the same
thing Obama did.
Well, I can't do
everything at once.
I mean, I gotta do things one thing
at a time, so I only have time for
one thing in the first 100 days,
actually the first year.
The second year's an election year,
so we can't get anything done.
So we're only really going to do
one thing, right?
And here, in this case, they're
saying COVID relief kind of.
So look, if Trump hadn't said
that he won the election,
which is the lie of the year,
the lie of the decade, the lie of
the century, then we would have
been having a real conversation
about what's the lie of the year.
Is it the Democrats saying that
they'd do $2,000 checks for
everyone?
So they're doing 1,400.
But even if you give them that,
hey, that's 2,000 overall,
it's not for everyone now.
Now they've negotiated it down so
that, if you're 50,000 or
over, likely,
you won't get anything, okay?
So that's a giant lie.
$15 minimum wage, totally kidding.
Not going to do it at all.
They're trying to
kill it right now.
That's later in the show.
Giant lie, and it's so easy.
Paid sick leave, nothing.
Raising taxes on the rich to get
it back to where it was pre Trump.
They never even planned to
do that ever.
It was always a lie.
How many times are these Democrats
going to lie, and
then think like, gee, I don't know
why we lost the next election?
But Biden's now talking about
the parliamentarian.
The parliamentarian, as if
the parliamentarian is president,
as if Joe Manchin is president.
Joe Biden, who's president, you or
Manchin?
If it's Manchin, let's go talk to
that guy every day,
because you're obviously abdicating
your responsibility.
You're never going to raise taxes
on the rich.
You're all goddamn liars.
You work for the rich.
Keep it real.
>> Now, we do have a poll on this.
And so we actually do not
have a poll on this, my bad,
it's for the minimum wage, my bad.
But I do want to add one more thing
to this.
And it really has to do with some
of the influencing factors behind
the scenes, which I don't think
ever really gets talked about.
Now, Cenk, you talk about money in
politics all the time, and
that is certainly
a giant influencing factor.
There's no question, but
we also often forget that many of
these law makers are tremendously
wealthy themselves.
You think they want to increase
things like the capital gains tax?
You think that they want to
do financial policies that would
actually force them to pay more in
taxes?
So this is data from
opensecrets.org, based on 2019
financial filings that the House of
Representatives and
the Senate has to file.
And so, if you take a look at how
much money these people are worth,
and it's general ballpark,
they might actually be worth more.
But you take a look at that, and
we're talking about hundreds of
millions of dollars in net worth,
hundreds of millions of dollars.
This is for the House of
Representatives.
You move over to the Senate, and
you see the exact same thing.
Now, clearly, Republican senators
and Republican members of the House
tend to be a little more wealthier,
but you have some Democrats in
there as well.
And so, if you're worth, I mean,
in this case with Rick Scott from
Florida, he's in the Senate,
he's worth more than $240 million.
That is his net worth.
These are not people who have any
interest in ensuring that wealthy
people pay their fair share.
There's a giant conflict of
interest of people this wealthy
serving in Congress in
the first place.
They're not going to look out for
you ,they don't have your best
interests at heart, and
they will change their messaging
depending on what the policy is to
ensure that they don't actually
have to do right by you and carry
out what's in your best interests.
>> Yeah, I'm so
tired of all of this.
It's all this fake drama.
They're all in on the game,
the Republicans, the Democrats,
especially on the taxes.
They're all incredibly wealthy.
They're all screwing us.
You know how Rick Scott made
his fortune?
By committing the largest Medicare
fraud in American history.
That's a fact, you can look it up.
And Democrats have
lost to him half a dozen times.
The most incompetent loser party
you've ever seen.
The guy's outright criminal,
the biggest bank robbery in a sense
of Medicare of our taxpayer money,
and then he takes that wealth and
then he buys himself a Senate seat.
And then he says,
I got a great idea.
I'll keep my taxes low, ha ha.
So that way,
I don't have to give back any of
the money I stole from you.
So it's a bunch of thugs and
criminals that run this country.
And the Democrats, we're all so
tired of your lies.
So here,
I'll go to our members again.
Efecto said, just remember,
this isn't the first time that
Biden went behind the backs of
voters to make tax cuts permanent.
He secretly cut a deal to make
the Bush era tax cuts permanent.
That's absolutely true.
You can look that up too.
And so is Biden really going to
raise taxes to back to where they
were, like he promised?
No way,
no way he's going to do that.
The donors run Washington.
And look, I'll say one last time in
this story, where else in the media
do you see the truth?
Where else do you see them talking
about broken promises?
By the way, every one of
these proposals is overwhelmingly
popular in the country.
Where else do you see them saying,
hey, they're all rich,
and all their donors are all rich,
and that's why they constantly cut
their taxes and
never increase them.
You ever see that anywhere else
in the media?
You think the media can't
figure it out?
They can't read the donors?
Either they're incredibly
incompetent, or they're part
of this corrupt system.
So no, I got news for you.
They're not going to increase
those taxes anywhere near
where they were,
if they ever get to it at all.
And it's a yet another broken
promise by Democrats, then they
wonder why they get their asses
handed to them on a regular basis.