Conservative groups are doing what
they can to ensure that the IRS
continues to be underfunded so
wealthy people can get away with
evading taxes.
That is the latest update in regard
to Biden's bipartisan
infrastructure bill,
the deal that he has struck with
members of the Senate,
GOP members of the Senate who might
maybe vote in favor of this version
of the infrastructure bill.
Now, of course, Republicans don't
want to increase taxes on the rich.
So as part of the deal,
what they would do is agree to some
funding for the IRS to kind of
be able to recoup some of the money
that was evaded, or the taxes that
were evaded by wealthy individuals.
But looks like various groups,
conservative groups specifically,
are writing strongly worded letters
to GOP lawmakers to make them
remember who their daddies are,
right?
We're the donors,
don't mess with us,
do not fund the IRS.
Now, among the conservative groups
spearheading the opposition are the
Committee to Unleash Prosperity,
which is a funny name.
>> [LAUGH] Prosperity is very
leashed, so
you just want to unleash it for
the poor billionaires.
>> Right, FreedomWorks,
the Conservative Action Project,
and the Leadership Institute.
They're preparing a letter that
warns Republicans should not
negotiate with the White House
unless they agree to no
additional funding for the IRS.
Now, the letter is expected to gain
the support of 12 other
conservative groups,
because wealthy people love funding
these conservative groups that then
lobby Congress to basically keep
this system rigged against workers
and people who actually do pay
their taxes.
And also, Jason Pye, who is
a lobbyist from FreedomWorks,
says that enforcement of tax laws
is one thing, but
what people are concerned about is
aggressive audits.
And by the way, those aggressive
audits do take place.
It's just that since the IRS is
underfunded, the aggressive
auditing takes place toward people
who don't make much money,
because their taxes tend to be far
more simple and easy to audit,
whereas wealthy people takes a lot
more resources because their
taxes are super complicated.
Now, who else is behind this?
This is the important detail here.
The groups leading the opposition
to the IRS budget increase include
those that have received funds for
major conservative donors,
including the Mercer
Family Foundation, the Sarah Scaife
Foundation, and Donors Trust.
One signatory of the letter,
Phil Kerpen of American Commitment,
worked for five years at Americans
for Prosperity, the main
political arm of the, of course,
influential Koch network.
And remember, in the original
infrastructure bill, Biden had
proposed $80 billion to help fund
the IRS so they can do the correct
audits of wealthy people and
recoup that money
that they've been evading in taxes.
But in the bipartisan
infrastructure deal,
they cut that down to $40 billion.
So Biden's already made a major
concession here.
The question is, will he make more
concessions as a result of these
conservative groups lobbying
Republican lawmakers to refuse
voting in favor of the bill if it
includes the funding for the IRS?
>> Okay, you know what this is?
This is defunding the police.
>> Yeah.
>> It's just the police of tax
cheats, wealthy tax cheats.
So when it comes to that, the rich
all of a sudden turn around and go,
we don't need any stinking police
to look into our IRS tax forms
to see if we cheated or not.
No way, defund the police.
Defund it right away, right?
Isn't that amazing?
Guys, who do you think is pushing
for making sure that the IRS
cannot catch more tax cheats?
Probably, tax cheats, [LAUGH] okay?
And it's not a surprise that
all those foundations and
all those individuals and
groups that are backing this effort
are incredibly wealthy.
The Mercer's got their money out of
Wall Street, the Koch brothers,
their array of companies, etc.
So it's like if I was the IRS, and
I know you can't do this, etc.,
and we have [LAUGH] [INAUDIBLE].
But look, those groups are clearly
the ones that want to make sure
they're not audited [LAUGH], right?
So it's like waving this giant red
flag, we cheat on our taxes.
We don't want the IRS- >> Totally.
>> To look into that, right?
Now the IRS technically cannot look
into it because then that would be
going after political groups.
Mainstream media drives me nuts.
The Washington Post had an article
about this where they say,
now conservatives are also
concerned about the IRS looking
into conservative groups.
There was a controversy about that,
and later they found out they were
also looking into liberal groups.
No, later they found out that the
IRS looked into more liberal groups
than conservative groups, so the
controversy was completely fake.
And the reason for
the fake controversy was because
they wanted to help rich people
cheat on their taxes.
>> That's right.
>> Right?
Mainstream media, are you ever,
ever, ever going to tell the truth
to the American people?
So there's only one reason why they
want to defund the IRS, is because
they want to cheat on their taxes.
It's the most obvious thing in
the world.
And so that's who the Republican
Party is, infinite greed.
>> And remember, this effort to
underfund or defund the IRS worked
under the Obama administration.
And so if you take a look at how
much the funding for
the IRS has been cut,
it's a pretty significant amount.
So the IRS's enforcement staff
declined by 30% between 2010 and
2018, and that's according to
the Congressional Budget Office.
So again, I mean,
what does this do?
If you're a worker,
if you're an ordinary American, and
maybe you've been audited,
you might think, no, IRS sucks,
I don't want to fund that, right?
I get it, I understand that.
But under this current system of
an underfunded IRS, that means that
they focus all their resources on
auditing people like you, and
don't have the resources to
audit the people who are skirting
taxes to the tune of millions
of dollars in some cases, right?
I mean,
there was a recent reporting that
showed that millionaires and
billionaires have avoided paying $1
trillion in taxes.
I mean, that is an insane amount,
and it's because, again,
their taxes are complicated, and
the IRS doesn't have the resources
to do the appropriate audits of
these people.
>> So get a load of the incredible
irony of that ProPublica story that
came out.
Now the Republicans are using it as
an excuse to make sure that the IRS
is further defunded.
They're like, you see that somebody
at the IRS apparently leaked, which
by the way, they don't know that
it's from the IRS, but apparently,
someone leaked that the rich
are paying almost no taxes.
That's an outrage.
Why?
Because the rich are paying
no taxes and the rest of us have to
pay taxes they're not paying?
No, it's an outrage that
you found out.
Those are our beloved donors.
How could you do this to them?
That's it, we should defund
the IRS even more, right?
Guys, look,
if you are rational person, you
know the Republican Party is all
about greed, that's all it's about.
If you got hooked by,
I don't know abortion or race,
I don't know,
I don't really love black people,
etc, okay, that's on you, but
they're also picking your pocket.
The other ProPublica story that Ana
was referring to showed that people
who get to earn income tax credit
that make $20,000 a year,
those are the working poor,
you have to work to get that.
They get audited,
the $20,000 people a year get
audited at a greater rate than
people that make 400,000 a year.
Why?
because the process for auditing
those people is automated and
requires less staff.
The process for auditing wealthier
people is manual.
It requires people to go into there
and do a forensic audit of their
incredible wealth.
So when you defund the IRS,
the people who get away with things
the most are the rich, but
you're still getting audited, okay?
Now, one of the reasons to do this
on top of equity and justice and
having to fund the government
overall, is because when
Republicans scream, for example,
how are you going to pay for that,
or Anderson Cooper, or other
millionaire anchors scream that.
In this case,
this study showed that if you put
in $40 billion into this, which is
what they're planning right now in
the compromise, that you will get
in return $140 billion in revenue.
So it actually adds money to
the federal government because
it's so many rich people that
are cheating on their taxes.
>> Let's speak in a language that
conservatives understand, it's
a good return on your investment.
>> Yes.
>> [LAUGH] It's a great return
on your investment.
The problem is conservatives don't
want that kind of return on
investment because it's money that
goes toward funding government
programs that
help benefit Americans in general.
>> But I do want to split
conservatives here because really,
they're very different.
Now, I don't have any love for
non rich conservatives because of
all the different social issues
that we really disagree on, and
cultural issues, right?
But they don't want the rich
robbing us either.
This is rich Republicans that
are robbing all of us.
So I understand you guys get mad
about rhinos and stuff like that.
You should support Trump getting
reinstated, or
whatever lunatic thing that he's up
to these days, right?
Why do you get pissed
about the robbery?
You're worried about crime,
they're picking your pocket,
they're making you pay taxes while
the rich pay almost nothing, okay?
And that is done predominantly
by the Republican Party,
so get accountability on that.