| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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And we're going to have to do something about that. | |
| But the air that came from that caused numerous respiratory problems in California. | ||
| The Health Department was intimately involved in trying to protect people. | ||
| By the way, people were wearing masks. | ||
| You know, we had this fight about wearing masks. | ||
| Weren't no arguments about wearing masks out west. | ||
| And even the wildfires in Canada we had, remember those wildfires we had in Canada last year, what brought bad air to the northeast part of our country? | ||
| That's all due to climate change. | ||
| Dr. Benjamin, thank you very much for your time this morning. | ||
| If our viewers want to learn more, they can go to apha.org. | ||
| Thank you for the conversation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Greta. | |
| I appreciate being here. | ||
| Joining us at the table this morning is Akash Chogoly. | ||
| He's the Vice President of Government Affairs for the Americans for Prosperity here to talk about tax cuts and deregulation. | ||
| Let's begin with your group, Americans for Prosperity. | ||
| Remind our viewers who the group is or what the group is and who funds you. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| We are a 20-year-old grassroots organization. | ||
| We are the largest conservative grassroots advocacy organization in the country. | ||
| We have more than 4 million activist members across all 50 states. | ||
| We have 38 physical state chapters and we are 24-7, 365 all across the country, educating, activating average everyday citizens and giving them the tools they need to make a difference in their government at the local, state, and federal level, holding lawmakers accountable for bad policy and helping to push good policy like the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. | ||
| And you're funded by? | ||
| We are funded by thousands and thousands of donors and we're grateful for all of them. | ||
| They give anywhere from just a couple dollars a month to much larger gifts and we're grateful for their support. | ||
| How much funding by the Koch brothers? | ||
| We are proud to have been founded by them over two decades ago now. | ||
| But again, we're grateful for everyone who supports our work. | ||
| Do the Koch brothers do the majority of the funding? | ||
| We actually don't disclose our donors. | ||
| Again, we're very proud of the association with the Koch family. | ||
| Mr. Koch is one of the most successful entrepreneurs this country has ever seen. | ||
| And for that, we're grateful for his contributions as well and for his support of our organization. | ||
| But again, grateful for everyone who supports our work at AFP. | ||
| Your group announced a $20 million ad buy campaign to extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts. | ||
| Explain what you're advocating for and why. | ||
| What does $20 million campaign spending plan look like? | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| So the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was a resounding success. | ||
| I mean, it reduced the average family tax burden by $2,000. | ||
| Six million Americans were lifted from poverty from 2017 to 2019. | ||
| We hit the lowest poverty rate the country has ever seen, record low unemployment for black, Hispanic, Americans without a high school degree. | ||
| The economic opportunity that was created in this country was absolutely a smashing success from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. | ||
| However, key provisions of that law expire at the end of this year. | ||
| In particular, the individual side tax cuts, the taxes for American families. | ||
| If those expire this year, families will face tax hikes as much as $2,400 a year in Pennsylvania, $3,500 a year in Nevada. | ||
| The path-through deduction that a lot of small businesses benefit from expires if not extended at the end of the year. | ||
| So this campaign is going to include ads, stories, door knocking, mails, employer roundtables, basically with two goals in mind. | ||
| One, make sure the American people know that those tax cuts are expiring and give them the tools to take action in Congress to urge their lawmakers to set their priorities straight to make sure that the number one priority in these conversations in Congress is to extend those low tax rates. | ||
| How do you respond to critics who say the first round of tax cuts added to our nation's debts and deficits? | ||
| The main driver of our debt is not taxes. | ||
| We are never going to tax our way into prosperity. | ||
| It's been well established. | ||
| You've talked about it on your show. | ||
| The main driver of our spending is an enormous growth in spending, particularly on entitlement programs, mandatory spending programs, debt interest. | ||
| Just to give you a little sort of picture, Greta, President Biden alone in four years spent $5 trillion in additional borrowing. | ||
| That is more than three times the 10-year cost of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. | ||
| And in President Biden's instance, much of that spending was to benefit his special interest allies, the green energy movement, labor unions, trial lawyers. | ||
| The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act simply allowed the American people to keep more of their money, as I discussed, benefited people all across the socioeconomic ladder, credit and economic opportunity. | ||
| And so government is badly in need of spending cuts, but raising taxes on the American people is not how we address the deficit. | ||
| Compare the spending you just laid out by the Biden administration to the President Trump's first term. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| We've been critical of the overspending from both parties. | ||
| I think President Biden, President Trump, President Obama, going back to President Bush, there's really been no one party at fault for Washington's overspending. | ||
| It's something that we've had a strong track record on going back, like I said, two decades. | ||
| And again, it's something that we're working hard, frankly, with both parties, not just on cutting spending, but reforming our federal budget process to get this under control because it is, in our opinion, the most serious long-term issue facing the country. | ||
| But what we can do this year is continue to keep these tax cuts in place for the American people because they've already been hit by an inflation crisis driven by overspending. | ||
| The last thing they need is a tax increase on top of that. | ||
| The CBO projects U.S. debt to grow $23.9 trillion in 10 years, not including the cost of extending those tax cuts. | ||
| Yeah, again, spending is a major, major problem in this country. | ||
| Until Congress gets serious about addressing the major drivers of our spending, which is those mandatory spending programs, health care entitlements, debt interest, this problem is going to continue to be an issue. | ||
| Taxes are not the driver of our deficits and debts. | ||
| Tax cuts are a driver of economic growth, which is absolutely essential, frankly, to addressing those debts and deficits. | ||
| And again, if you just look at history, not only with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, but even previous rounds of tax cuts under President Bush, President Reagan, government revenues after those tax cuts actually exceeded the pre-tax cut projections for government revenue. | ||
| And so economic growth is a driver of increased revenue without increasing taxes on the American people if tax reform is done properly. | ||
| We think that's an essential part of addressing these debts and deficits. | ||
| But ultimately, spending cuts are not only largely often good policy, but to your point, essential to addressing the country's overspending problem. | ||
| President Trump has promised not to cut Medicare and Social Security to pay for tax cuts. | ||
| So that leaves Republicans to consider cuts to Medicaid, government subsidized health care under the Affordable Care Act, and other alternatives. | ||
| So where do Republicans cut in order to pay, or do they even need to, for tax cuts? | ||
| Look, our priority is that Congress pass the most pro-growth tax bill they can put together and get to the president's desk. | ||
| The spending conversation is a different conversation than tax policy conversations. | ||
| There are plenty of spending cuts to be had across the federal government that may or may not save enormous sums of money, but are good policy. | ||
| There are things government is either not doing properly, should be doing less of, shouldn't be doing at all, or as I mentioned, there are systemic reforms government can pursue. | ||
| We encourage Congress to do so. | ||
| But frankly, there are a number of inflection points to cut spending this year. | ||
| There's the annual appropriations fight, there's a farm bill, there's a debate over the debt limit. | ||
| And so if Congress is in fact serious about cutting spending, which we hope that they are, there are plenty of inflection points to do so. | ||
| The focus on this tax bill needs to be making sure that it's as pro-growth as it can possibly be and keeps rates low on American families and businesses. | ||
| Punchbowl News reporting this morning that Speaker Johnson has a problem within his party over how to move on extending these 2017 tax cuts. | ||
| report that rank-and-file House Republicans feel as if they have no idea where the reconciliation process is going. | ||
| It seems exceedingly unlikely that Republicans will be able to craft a single package that lifts the SALT cap, extends the Trump tax cuts, slashes the corporate tax rate from 21 to 15 percent, eliminates taxes on tips, social security, and overtime, fixes the border, and boosts military spending while also cutting social spending. | ||
| Yeah, look, this is going to be difficult. | ||
| Governing is hard, right? | ||
| We saw that the first time around. | ||
| I believe 13 Republicans voted against the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. | ||
| Last time, we have narrower majorities. | ||
| No one said governing is easy, but we're optimistic about Speaker Johnson and Republicans' ability to get this done for no other reason that they need to, right? | ||
| There's a real inflection point at the end of the year, which is that if they fail to do so, their constituents' taxes are going to go up. | ||
| There are trade-offs to all these policies. | ||
| People are going to have to give and take a little bit here and there. | ||
| But again, our priority is making sure that the low tax rates that were a result of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act stay in place. | ||
| We understand that there's going to be give and take as far as our priorities as well, but that's really where our focus is with this campaign. | ||
| Republicans in control of both the House and the Senate. | ||
| Senate Majority Leader John Thune says, we have a plan. | ||
| It's ready to go. | ||
| He wants to wait and see first what House Republicans do. | ||
| How familiar are you with the Senate plan? | ||
| What does it say? | ||
| How will they move the extension of these tax cuts? | ||
| Yeah, so what we've heard so far is they're looking at a two-prong approach, the first prong being border policy and energy policy and then holding taxes until the end of the year. | ||
| We're frankly agnostic on when they do so, whether it's one bill or it's two bills. | ||
| The House does seem to be coalescing around this one bill strategy and likely to be the first ones to take a swing at it. | ||
| And so again, like I said, we're optimistic about Speaker Johnson's ability to get this done. | ||
| He's a limited government conservative through and through. | ||
| He understands what needs to get done, has the right priorities, and we believe the tools and skills to get it through the House. | ||
| And again, we're optimistic that that could get through the Senate and eventually be signed by the President. | ||
| And so again, while we don't have a position on whether it should be one bill or two, we're optimistic about where the process is right now. | ||
| Narrow majority in the House. | ||
| Is it likely you think that Republicans will need some votes from Democrats to extend any tax cuts? | ||
| We would love to have a bipartisan tax cut bill. | ||
| Unfortunately, Greta, I don't think that's where today's Democratic Party is at. | ||
| They've made very clear their desire is to raise taxes on wealthy families, middle-class families, big businesses, small businesses. | ||
| They have any number of promises they've laid out that are frankly unaffordable for the American people. | ||
| And so while I unfortunately don't anticipate that, it would be very nice if they were to come on board with these tax cuts. | ||
| All right, Akash Toghali is our guest here this morning. | ||
| George in Philadelphia. | ||
| Democratic caller, you're up first. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why they can't cut the raise of taxes on the rich and the large business. | |
| Yeah, so that's a good question and one that comes up a lot. |