Even as the speakership drama ensues within the House of Representatives,
Republicans are in fact pushing their first agenda in the House, and
you want to take a guess at what that agenda includes?
Gutting the IRS to allow for wealthy and
privileged people to continue dodging their taxes.
Now Republicans have already succeeded in gutting the IRS,
which is why the IRS primarily focuses its audits on easy tax returns.
Okay, individuals who barely make any money, there isn't a lot of complication,
there aren't a lot of forms they got to deal with, it takes a lot less in
resources when it comes to auditing people who aren't wealthy.
This allows for wealthy individuals to get away with skirting their taxes, and
Republicans wanna keep that process going.
Now the Inflation Reduction Act did include a provision that helped to refund,
[LAUGH] The IRS so they can continue doing audits on
the highest earners who aren't paying their fair share.
The Republican bill though is ill-named because what it actually does is
protect tax cheaters by repealing most of the new IRS funding set forth in
last year's Inflation Reduction Act.
And when I say that the Republican bill is ill-named,
it's because they're calling it something ridiculous, they're pushing the,
what do they call it, the Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act.
>> Okay, so let me expect other things.
This has nothing to do with small businesses, that's the classic excuse they
use when they wanna protect incredibly-rich people and
giant corporations.
When you hear small business from a Republican,
understand they mean giant businesses who crushed small businesses,
it's the exact opposite of what actually happened.
The bill that was passed by Democrats, and
there's a rare situation where you have to give the entire Democratic Party credit.
It doesn't happen often, but
they passed a good bill to audit more people who are wealthy.
And in the bill,
they clarified that it only applies to people making above $400,000 a year.
Now, the Republicans are, 100% of them are 100% lying about that,
and they're like, it's for the little guy, the little mechanic down the street,
and the poor dentist and the guy, who was just walking down the street,
they're gonna get an IRS, gonna mug him, absurd, absurd.
No, this is actually get enforcement from the rich to give you a sense of how deeply
things have gone awry and how much the rich are allowed to cheat on their taxes.
Now, back in 2010, if you have made over $10 million,
23% of those folks got audited.
Okay, you can argue should be higher, but okay, that's a relatively solid number.
You don't have to audit everybody, but 23%, okay, you can live with it.
By the way, there's an argument to audit everyone making over $10 million,
so but okay.
>> Is there, I mean, >> No, because look,
because the richer you are, every study has shown,
the more likely you are to cheat on taxes, it's not a moral issue.
They just have more money and they look to do,
>> No, I totally understand that, but
there should be red flags that give you enough cause to do the audit.
Because why waste resources on people who might not be,
>> No, you know why?
Because then, everybody pays.
Right now, almost no one pays the actual share of taxes, right?
So but if you could disagree or agree on 100%, 50%, 23%, you wanna know
what the number is today of people making above $10 million that get audited, 0.03%.
>> Seems fair.
>> [LAUGH] So 99.97% of the incredibly-rich don't get audited at all.
So now, what a lot of them have started doing this, not even reporting taxes.
You know how small a chance 0.03% is?
They're never gonna get caught, so they're like, well,
then I'm not even reporting any goddamn thing, okay?
Yeah, I made nothing, right?
Trump does it all the time and he never gets prosecuted.
>> And they wanna keep and maintain that system that allows for
them to skirt having to pay taxes, that's exactly what they want.
And Republicans raise their hands and say this is the first order of business.
So for people who have bought into the panic that the corporate media is trying
to sell you regarding Kevin McCarthy's power struggle and the quest for a Speaker
of the House for the Republican controlled House of Representatives, stop worrying.
Because they're not trying to accomplish a damn thing that benefits you, your life,
your family's lives, they're just looking out for their corporate donors for
the wealthy.
Quite honestly, when you look at how wealthy members of Congress are,
they're probably looking out for themselves as well.
>> Yeah, and so that has two consequences that you're seeing play out in
this speaker fight, one is it's irrelevant.
Both McCarthy and the Matt Gates wing, they both say this is their top priority
because that's the whole point of the Republican Party,
like racism is a tool that they use, bigotry is a tool that they use.
But the point is to serve the rich, so
whether it's a Freedom caucus guy or Steve Scalise or Kevin McCarthy,
they all agree this is their number one priority, everything else is irrelevant.
They're never gonna pass anything else anyway, right?
And the second phenomenon that you're seeing, but
it does not explain to you guys is understandably, so
is that corporate media is like, ha, ha, Republicans, but God have been sworn in.
This is gonna be a giant national security, and
they're creating some sort of panic for you guys, why?
They know the minute any Republican Speaker of the House,
they're all gonna get to cheat on their taxes again.
Okay, [LAUGH] So that's almost everyone on TV is a millionaire.
Uncertainly, every CEO of a media corporation is a multimillionaire if
not a billionaire.
So they're like hurry up and
get a Republican speaker so we can go back to the 0.03%,
joke of a rate where we make all of you pay taxes and we don't have to pay any.
>> Yep. >> They didn't tell you that
part, did they?