Vice President JD Vance leads failed Iran talks and campaigns for ousted Hungarian PM Viktor Orban, sparking debates on his 2028 viability. Meanwhile, the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" adds $4.7 trillion to the debt by extending tax cuts despite projected revenue losses of $4.5 to $5 trillion. Experts clarify that while tariffs hurt costs, small business deductions remain permanent, and Orban's removal may unlock over $100 billion in EU aid for Ukraine, though Iran's nuclear ambitions persist without addressing ballistic missiles or terror support. [Automatically generated summary]
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JD Vance and Iran War Funding00:14:48
Expected to vote this week to block unauthorized military force in Iran and on a bill by Senator Bernie Sanders to block hundreds of millions of dollars of military sales to Israel.
Over on C-SPAN 3 at 10:15 a.m., White House Budget Director Russell Vogt testifies on the 2027 White House budget request and is expected to take questions on funding for the Iran war.
And at 2, another budget hearing for the Energy Department with testimony by Secretary Chris Wright.
And at 4:30, we hear from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as he gives a lecture to students at the University of Texas at Austin on the Declaration of Independence ahead of the 250th anniversary of the U.S. You can also watch these events on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and online at c-SPAN.org.
Coming up on Washington Journal this morning, along with your calls and comments live, Wall Street Journal U.S. tax policy reporter Richard Rubin discusses the impact of the Trump administration scaling back on tax enforcement.
And then Garrett Watson, Director of Policy Analysis for the Tax Foundation, on the impact of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 and Trump administration tariffs.
And later, Evelyn Farkas, the executive director of the McCain Institute, will talk about the latest developments in the Iran war.
C-SPAN's Washington Journal is next.
Join the conversation.
Good morning.
It's Wednesday, April 15th.
It is tax day, and we will be talking about taxes and tax policy later in the program.
But for this first segment, we're focusing on Vice President JD Vance.
Over the weekend, the Vice President led the U.S. delegation in Islamabad, Pakistan, for direct talks with Iran.
It was the highest level face-to-face engagement between the two countries since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
After more than 20 hours of negotiations, the talks did not produce a resolution.
A second round of talks is under discussion.
Last week, the vice president traveled to Hungary, where he campaigned for Prime Minister Victor Orban ahead of national elections.
Orban's party was ultimately voted out after 16 years in power.
We want to hear from you this morning.
What is your view of Vice President JD Vance?
How do you evaluate his performance so far and his impact on the current administration?
Give us a call, share your thoughts.
Republicans are on 202-748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000, and Independents 202-748-8002.
You can text us on 202-748-8003.
Include your first name in your city-state.
And you can post to social media, facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and X at C-SPANWJ.
Welcome to today's Washington Journal.
We'll start with a portion of Vice President Vance's comments on the Iran war.
He was at a turning point USA event in Georgia last night.
My one question is: when you looked across from these Iranian negotiators, what did you make of them?
Did you get the sense that they really were the right people?
I mean, I'm assuming you guys know this type of thing, but yeah, I mean, look, you never know.
We had never, the United States had never had meetings at that level with the Iranian government in 49 years.
Like, it's a meeting that had never before happened, not Democrat, not Republican.
We had never had a meeting like that where you have, you know, the person who's effectively running the country in Iran sitting across from the vice president of the United States.
That had never happened.
And what I, my, my, look, honestly, after 49 years, there's a lot of, of course, mistrust between Iran and the United States of America.
You're not going to solve that problem overnight.
But yeah, I think the people we're sitting across from wanted to make a deal, and I know the President of the United States told us to go out there and negotiate in good faith.
That's what we did.
That's what we're going to keep on doing.
So you never know, though.
Right?
I mean, I've sat across from United States senators that I thought I agreed with.
And, you know, you don't know what those people, right?
I won't say who.
You can guess.
But I feel very good about where we are.
Great.
Well, take a look at an opinion, a portion of an opinion from the Washington Examiner.
This is Byron York, who says this about the Vice President.
He says, where Trump goes, Vance will go too.
Right now, the president's job approval rating is 41.4%, according to Real Clear Politics average of polls.
Vance's favorable rating is similar, 40.9%.
Perhaps those ratings will change dramatically for the better in the coming months and years.
But for Trump, at least, the experience of the first Trump administration suggests they will not.
Wonder what you think about that.
Do you think, if you're a Republican, do you support Vice President Vance who had the ticket in 2028?
What are your thoughts on how he's been doing so far?
Start with Mark in Oklahoma on the line for Democrats.
Good morning.
Yes.
Hello.
Yes.
Go ahead, Mark.
I think that Trump is taken in and hasn't let him spread his wings enough so people really know what's going, what he can do and can't do.
And I think with the Iran, Neil, right now he's looking really weak.
And with our foreign friends, like Britain and different ones, he's looking really bad because Trump is just hanging on to so much power that nobody's really getting to see what he can do.
So what would you want him to do, Mark?
Like, are there certain things that you'd like him to take care of?
I would like Trump to back down and let him show if he can do it or handle it or not, because Trump's just, he's failing everywhere.
I mean, I'd like to see JD Vance get four years funding on Social Security, four years funding on Medicare, four years funding for air traffic controllers, the ones that check the baggage in, four years funding so there's not a worry on it.
The Coast Guard, four years funding.
Smithsonian, four years funding.
Let's take care, let him show that he doesn't always have to chase Trump around and look like he's dragging Trump if he's going to run again, if he's going to run for president after Trump's gone and be in power.
All right, Mark.
Let's hear from David in Maryland, Independent Line.
Go ahead, David.
I'll just make a comment about JD Vance and the negotiations.
This will be sort of quick.
Iran does not negotiate with terrorism with the United States.
That's all I have to say.
Thank you.
Well, the Vice President is a Catholic, and he did respond to a question at that same turning point USA event in Florida about the criticisms of Pope Leo from the president.
Here he is.
The Pope's job is to preach the gospel.
Okay?
And again, I think that sometimes in the context, like it doesn't bother me, even when I disagree with him.
And I have a lot of respect for the Pope.
I like him.
I admire him.
I've gotten to know him a little bit.
It doesn't bother me when he speaks on issues of the day.
Frankly, even when I disagree with how he's applying a particular principle.
The most obvious example is: it has frustrated me that some of the Catholic clergy have attacked mercilessly the Trump administration on immigration.
It is a constant idea that somehow everything that the Trump administration does when it comes to securing our borders is inhumane.
And my constant response to that is: how is it humane to allow drug traffickers and sex traffickers to bring little kids across the southern border?
Amen.
How is that humane?
But again, I'd almost rather have the conversation.
So I kind of like, even when there's disagreement, I like it when the Pope comments on questions of immigration.
I like it when the Pope talks about abortion.
I like it when the Pope talks about matters of war and peace because I think that at the very least it invites a conversation.
So I think some people, you know, their reaction to this is to say, well, you know, he shouldn't have said that.
And look, there are certainly things that the Pope has said in the last few months that I disagree with.
Let me just take one very concrete example related to this conflict in Iran.
So the Pope said something where he said, and I'm going to try to remember the exact quote, but he said that God is never on the side of those who wield the sword.
God is never on the side of those who wield the sword.
I'm pretty sure that he said that exact statement.
Now, on the one hand, again, I like that the Pope is an advocate for peace.
I think that's certainly one of his roles.
On the other hand, how can you say that God is never on the side of those who wield the sword?
Was God on the side of the Americans who liberated France from the Nazis?
Was God on the side of the Americans who liberated Holocaust camps and liberated those innocent people from those who had survived the Holocaust?
I certainly think the answer is yes.
Wonder what you think about that.
You can give us a call.
Lines are biparty.
So Republicans are on 202-748-8001.
Democrats are on 202-748-8000.
And Independents are on 202-748-8002.
And on that independent line is Mike in Alabama.
Good morning, Mike.
You're on the air.
Hey, good morning.
So I think over the next several years, Vance will ride Trump's coattails.
My prognostication is that Trump will end up smelling like a rose with the Iran war and with the economy.
Hence, Vance will be our next president.
Thank you very much for taking my call.
And, Mike, do you welcome that?
Do you think that you would want to see Vance as the next president?
You know, I would, even though I'm an independent, I want to see moderation within the political spectrum.
And I think that if the Democrats can move more to the middle, we haven't had a moderate Democrat in years.
And I hope the Republicans give a little bit.
So that's my hope.
And do you see Vice President Vance as more moderate than President Trump?
Well, that's a very good question, Mimi.
It'll be up to him.
I wish that he would see the whole playing field and maybe try to stabilize this country because right now, Washington is in more disarray than I've ever seen before.
All right.
Let's talk to Anthony in Louisiana, also on the independent line.
Good morning.
Anthony.
Hi.
So, JD Vance, I couldn't abhor anyone more than him right now in the administration.
He's just a complete nothing burger who takes on the personality of whatever Donald Trump wants him to be.
And that's all I have.
All right.
And this is what minority leader Hakeem Jeffries posted on X.
He put a video about JD Vance.
We'll play it for you.
Here it is.
Things are really falling apart for JD Vance and the extremists.
First, this guy is ordered to go negotiate a peace agreement in this reckless and costly war of choice.
That peace agreement that he was negotiating completely collapsed.
Then, the guy that JD Vance campaigned with, Victor Orban, this far-right dictator and authoritarian, got crushed in the elections in Hungary yesterday.
And then JD Vance wakes up this morning and sees that his boss, that would be Donald Trump, brutally attacks the Pope of all people, the head of the Catholic church that JD Vance belongs to.
And who do you think JD Vance is going to side with?
The Pope or his wannabe king?
We know the answer to that.
JD Vance is having a horrible, no-good, really bad week.
And I'm here for it all.
I was Hakeem Jeffries, and we're asking your view of Vice President JD Vance.
Here's Donna in Florida, Democrat.
Good morning.
Good morning.
You know, every time I put this station on, I'm amazed at the people that come on and say what they say.
It really is like living in two different realities.
JD Vance is supporting a criminal, an absolute criminal.
All right, Eric Swalwell steps down, and rightfully so, rightfully so, Eric Spawll steps down.
And Donald Trump, who's been accused by I don't know how many women of sexual misconduct is still there.
And there's JD Vance running around, kissing his butt.
And the fact that he's even fighting with the Pope, the Pope has every right to talk about peace.
And they hijacked Jesus and turned him into the Republican Jesus, just the way they hijacked the flag, like they were the only patriots in this country.
It is absolutely despicable.
Nobody even talks about what's going on with the Epstein files again.
Are you kidding me?
People should read this and see what is going on.
And now, JD Vance, JD Vance, as the President of the United States, we haven't had enough.
And all this left radical liberals, the radical liberals who want health care, who want people to be deported legally and humanely and not sent to countries that they have not even any association with without due process.
What am I missing here?
What am I missing here?
I do not get it.
It's horrendous to me.
Horrendous.
And the entire Republican Party is horrendous to me.
Release the Epstein files and stop with all distractions.
You started a war that was not approved.
You threw the Constitution in the garbage pail.
I don't get it.
Political Ambitions and Epstein Files00:15:25
All right, Donna, let's talk to Steve next in Massachusetts, a Republican.
Hi, Steve.
Hi, me and me.
How are you?
Good.
Hey, I read the other day that David Axelrod, he's the senior advisor for ex-President Obama, met with the Pope on April 9th.
Okay.
Now, David Axelrod is trying to get President Obama to meet with the Pope.
Axelrod is from Chicago.
The Pope's from Chicago.
And Obama's from Chicago.
And what they're looking for is to get the Catholic Church to be against the Republicans for the midterms.
And I don't know any other reason.
Yes?
What do you think of Vice President Vance?
I think JD Vance is a great man, and I loved him before he ran for president.
And I think that if you look at his approval rating, we should look, and that's for all Americans, I guess, like when you do the 40%, I'd like to see like your approval rating for Congress.
Okay.
And those guys are doing it.
And if the election were held now, would you vote for JD Vance as the president?
Would you want to see him at the top of the ticket?
I think that him or Marco Rubio would do a great job.
And I could go back and forth on either one.
I know J.D., his wife is having a child, and I know that he's probably going to be a busy guy.
But if he's willing to do the job, I would vote for him.
All right, Steve.
And this is what ABC News says.
It says, Vance has made conflicting comments on U.S. wars abroad.
Here's what that could mean for his political ambitions.
It says the vice president has largely opposed U.S. intervention abroad.
But after President Trump decided to strike Iran, Vance now faces a conflict between his past comments and his role in the administration, forcing him to navigate the growing political divide and its possible impact on his potential political ambitions, future political ambitions.
It says, in an op-ed Vance wrote in 2023, while he was still in the Senate before Trump selected him as his running mate, he argued that leaders in both parties supported costly and unsuccessful interventions, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria.
In his article, he says he describes then-candidate Trump as the first significant break from that interventionist consensus.
It argued that Trump started no wars in his first term, despite pressure to do so, and that was part of the reason Vance supported him in his 2024 presidential run.
And that op-ed that is in the Wall Street Journal, this is, here it is, Trump's best foreign policy, not starting any wars.
He has my support in 2024 because I know he won't recklessly send Americans to fight overseas.
That is dated January 31st, 2023, if you're interested in reading that.
Let's talk to Mark, Republican, Pennsylvania.
Good morning, Mark.
Good morning.
First of all, thank you for your show.
And, you know, I really enjoy watching Vice President Vance speak.
He is such an articulate speaker.
You know, when people try to catch him off guard, he stands firm with his ground.
He's not disrespectful when he's responding to reporters or anyone who tries to make derogatory statements to him or tries to make false statements.
He comes back and he gives facts about his answers.
And I seriously think that he is the future of the Republican Party.
And I think that, you know, not that he's going to take the Republican Party in a different direction, but because he's a younger generation than a lot of senior Democrat or even Republican politicians, I think he's good for our future.
I really do.
And being a former Marine, and he was a former Marine, you know, there's always that bond that you try to have with someone, especially where he came from and where he's at now and the family man that he is and the values that he has.
I think he sets a very good example for whether people want to give him credit or not.
All right, Mark.
Let's hear from Vice President Vance.
He was on Fox News on Monday evening talking about his campaigning for Hungarian leader Victor Orban.
You also campaigned for Victor Orban in Hungary, and he lost that race, defeated after 16 years in power.
Your thoughts about whether it was worth it to go support Victor Orban in that race, considering he lost significantly and he's one of the only European leaders who supports Vladimir Putin.
Well, first of all, Brett, I think that Victor Orban's a great guy who's done a very good job.
I think that his legacy in Hungary is transformational, 16 years, fundamentally changing that country.
But one of the reasons why we decided to do that, Brett, is not because we can't read polls.
We certainly knew there was a very good chance that Victor would lose that election.
We did it because he's one of the few European leaders we've seen who's been willing to stand up to the bureaucracy in Brussels that has been very, very bad for the United States.
So, for example, when you see a European bureaucrat go after an American company, sometimes the only vote no, the only vote to protect that American interest has been Victor Orban.
We didn't go because we expected Victor to cruise to an election victory.
We went because it was the right thing to do to stand behind a person who had stood by us for a very long time.
So, this wasn't about Russia, and fundamentally, it wasn't about Europe, it was about the United States and the fact that he's been a good partner to both me and the president personally, but also to the United States.
And we are also watching our line for texting and our social media.
This is what Billy in Missouri texted us.
I believe Vance is full of it.
He is a parent to the president and says whatever the president says.
After calling Trump America's Hitler, he has no credibility.
He has hardly any political experience, and I believe this will be his last political term.
Being with Trump has ruined his chances of becoming a politician from here on out.
Let's hear from Melba, a Republican in Houston, Texas.
Good morning.
You're on the air.
Good morning.
Vance is a nice fella, I believe, and I think he's been pretty good in doing the job that he's done, but he's just not the guy for 28.
I don't feel that he has the international chops to really take us where we need to go.
My man would be Marco Rubio.
I think he's gaining and already has international respect.
And I think he would be the one to best guide us through our next presidential election term.
All right, Melba.
Let's talk to Chris in Tennessee, Republican.
Good morning, Chris.
Well, good morning.
How are you doing?
Good.
I was thinking he's going to Tennessee.
Well, first of all, Trump is going to be on NBC and PBS.
And how's it going?
Okay.
How's it going?
And what did you want to say about Vice President Vance?
Well, you know, like Vance is going to be a good, he's going to be a good president of the United States, and he's a good, he's a good campaign.
All right, Chris, let's hear from Tadella in Flushing, New York, Independent.
Yes, good morning to you.
I really follow closely JD Vance.
Number one, he's a family man, he's a charismatic man, he's a wet.
So all this quality is good for him.
And when he goes to Hungary, he knows pretty well that this guy is going to lose.
Regardless, he just wants to stand with his friend.
He's also one of the good characters.
You always stand with your friends whatever happens.
That's what I know his policy towards Europe or whatever.
Regarding Iran.
Oh, no, so I was going to say, you think he knew that Orban was going to lose?
Yes, he pretty much knows that.
I mean, this man knows very well.
Everything, everything around this Orban, Victor Orban, the whole European Union and all this Russia.
And I think he knows very well.
He's not that naive to go and say that this guy is going to.
He knows that.
But he stood with a friend.
I agree.
I really like people who stand with their friends no matter what.
Regarding Iran, he knows that this war has to end.
But my fear is that if this war has to end in condition that still Iran has a nuclear dust, that's going to be very dangerous.
If this war has to end by means that Iran will never add a nuclear dust or whatever, this guy has a good chance to be the next president.
But if they are going to put that for 15 years, 20 years, a limit on Iran's future nuclear program, it will be a disaster for him.
So his fate is just on Iran war.
If the Iran war ends up bringing Iran without a nuclear country, I think Van is...
So what about you?
Would you vote for him if he was on the ticket in 2028?
Yeah, I like his event.
He's a family man.
All these qualities, a charismatic person.
All these things added with a good outcome from Iran War.
I think this guy is going to be the next president.
I have no doubt about that.
Okay.
Here's Mike in Michigan, line for Democrats.
Go ahead, Mike.
Hey, good morning.
Where are all the people's memories about this guy?
Just prior to becoming Trump's puppet, remember his comments.
Where is his character?
People just don't flip-flop like that.
So for all those who believe, you know, you can go around with the circumstances and change who you are.
That's no character.
I don't think Vance will have a chance.
I think the Republicans should find some new blood.
I'm sick of the same old retreads.
All right.
And this is Terry in New Jersey, Independent Line.
Good morning.
Good morning.
How are you?
Good.
I'd like to take a minute to say I like JD Vance.
I think he is spoiled by the war that we have going on inside the United States.
And that's the war between the Republicans and the Democrats.
My feeling is nothing is going to get straightened out until these people can sit down in one room and talk to each other civilly and not scream and not say, you spent this and you spent that.
Okay.
And so as an independent, Terry, how are you feeling about 2028?
How are you feeling about how the vice president has done so far?
I'm worried about midterm before I worry about 28.
Okay.
I like what Jan, I think Vance is learning, and I think he can be our next Republican candidate.
All right.
And this is from Real Clear Polling.
And it has this.
It has 2028 Republican presidential nomination.
There was.
Okay, so this is a poll about for 2028.
Obviously, it's still early.
But here's what polling is saying as far as Republicans and who they would like to see.
JD Vance at 44.1%.
That is the highest by far.
After that is Trump Jr. at 15% and then Marco Rubio at 13.6%.
Then there's others after that.
But this shows you visually kind of the popularity of Vice President JD Vance currently for that 2028 Republican nomination.
And Maria, Democrat in Washington, D.C., you're on the air.
Good morning.
Morning.
I think it is pretty rich that JD Vance hikes under being a Catholic and support so many crazy things.
The example he gave about immigration is rich.
Do you all know, does he not know what's happening in those detention centers with people who have not even been have a process or anything?
Those people are not criminals and drug dealers.
Many people are there for no reason other than profiling and just not having the right papers.
But here's the thing.
There are decent Catholics.
I'm a Catholic.
And there are Catholics that protect pedophiles, either in the clergy or in the White House.
And that is JD Vance making it fit whatever he wants it to fit.
The Pope, for example, he doesn't speak about policies.
He speaks about principles.
And JD Vance is someone who weasels his way around justifying a lot of things in the name of religion, just like my Christians.
So I hope people don't get bumbuzzled again by people like JD Vance using religion.
Thank you.
And this is the New York Post with the headline, Vance defends Trump posting AI image of him as Jesus, quote, likes to mix it up.
And this is more from that interview on Fox News from Monday night where he addresses that post.
Brett, I think the president was posting a joke.
And of course, he took it down because he recognized that a lot of people weren't understanding his humor in that case.
I think the president of the United States likes to mix it up on social media.
And I actually think that's one of the good things about this president is that he's not filtered.
He doesn't send everything through a communications professional.
He actually reaches out directly to the people.
You know, when it comes to the disagreements with the Vatican, look, we're going to have disagreements, Brett, from time to time.
I think it's a good thing, actually, that the Pope is advocating for the things that he cares about.
But we're always going to have disagreements on matters of public policy.
I should say, sometimes we're going to have disagreements on matters of public policy.
The Pope has been critical of our immigration policy, but ultimately the immigration policy of the United States is set by Donald Trump.
The Pope is going to have disagreements on other issues.
We can respect the Pope.
We certainly have a good relationship with the Vatican, but we're also going to disagree on substantive questions from time to time.
I think that's a totally reasonable thing.
It isn't particularly newsworthy.
The Vance Family in 202800:16:00
That was Vice President JD Vance from Monday night.
And this is the picture that he was referencing there on your screen that President Trump posted on Truth Social.
He has since taken that down.
And the president has said that it was supposed to be him as a doctor.
And this is Mary in Washington, Independent Line.
Hi, Mary.
Hi, honey.
Mimi, I would like to show, I'm talking to you on my phone because my TV broke.
But what I would like to happen is I'd like the clean house because JD Vance was a Democrat and he couldn't stand Trump and blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then the same thing with Trump.
He was a Democrat and then he went Republican.
It's not all that.
The thing, the one thing I don't know, when President Trump had, when he was putting together that, I don't know what they called it.
It was just before the war.
Back in, I think in January, he was putting different people together.
And then he had asked Pope Leo to join and Pope Leo said, you know, he couldn't do that.
So you're talking about the Board of Peace?
Yes, ma'am.
That's what I was talking about.
And he said he couldn't do that.
Well, he's got a big job too.
And then he didn't agree with all that.
The other thing I wanted to say is the guy that Hungary had for 16 years, his name Orvak.
Well, his son-in-law is just like Jared.
He's a millionaire, and that's why Hungary went broke.
And the thing is, that's why he's such a good person.
His son-in-law builds hotels.
And he left Hungary, and he's got billions of dollars, and he fled to the United States.
But the thing that I want more than anything, I really wish that they would have something to where they put in the clause where they have a psychiatrist or somebody come in and check on, you know, the different things that have been going on, especially with that picture that they had.
I mean, that's just too kind of tipping it.
I mean, so the vice president just said that President Trump was joking.
Well, he'll say anything.
That's why I wish that there were some people that would throw their hat in the ring that maybe don't have billions of dollars in the heritage behind them.
Or that we need somebody, a good man or a good woman, or somebody, regardless of Republic or Republican.
I'm an independent.
I'm an American.
And I love this country.
I lost my father and my first husband.
My father was Navy 2nd Airborne.
My first husband was a Marine in Vietnam.
He was killed.
And then my second husband, my son, introduced me to.
He was a Navy SEAL.
I love the people, and I wish that they would do more for the veterans.
And I wanted to thank you for giving me the time to talk to you.
You're so sweet and you're so pretty.
Thank you, Mary.
And this is what Kendra says in Richmond on text.
She says, I like JD Vance, but I don't think he should run for president in 2028.
Remember, he was selected by Trump to protect him, Trump, from being impeached.
Once J.D. gets more experience and is more mature, I would like to see him run in 2028.
And this is what Kevin in Windsor, Connecticut says.
It took Obama two years to get a nuclear deal with Iran.
Vance is kidding himself if he is going to get a deal in 24 hours with Iran.
And Vance telling a Pope that he doesn't have rights and free will to speak his mind.
Even Hitler didn't say anything bad about the Pope.
Vance is opportunistic.
Here's Newman, Democrat, San Antonio, Texas.
You're on the air.
Yes, good morning.
Every morning I wake up and listen to all you to see SPAN safely.
And I'm listening to all these Republicans calling in when people say they vote Democrat, they call us, they called us traitors.
And this man went through all Cross Ocean to go over there to support a criminal.
And every morning I just wake up.
I'll be wondering.
When you say a criminal, you're talking about Victor Orban?
Yes, and he's been proven.
He was a criminal.
And I wake up every morning wondering, am I dreaming all this here?
Because I don't really understand how these Republicans can sit there and keep calling and saying, Vance is a nice man.
Last lady, the photo, infodiest year, she said that told the truth.
Vance was a Democrat.
Trump was a Democrat.
Trump even said it out of his own mouth.
I couldn't run as a Democrat because they wouldn't elect me.
But as I run as a Republican, you could say anything and tell them anything, and they would believe it.
And it shows every morning when you wake up and listen to C-SPAN.
Usually didn't like it when y'all let these people call in, but I'm glad you do now because I could sit here and see every mouth.
Wow, what are these people drinking?
Y'all have a nice day.
Here's Michael in Connecticut, Independent Line.
You're next, Michael.
Good morning.
JG Vance, I will never vote for this guy.
He's a guy a few years ago before he was against Trump.
Now he changed his attitude.
Now he's a part of the team.
I will never, like I said, I will never vote for this guy.
American people don't realize you want this guy to be the next president?
What he's staying for?
Oh, the president.
And when Trump put a picture of himself dressed as Jesus, and he says that it was a joke, no respect.
And then he disrespected the Pope.
And he just said that it's okay.
No.
His political queue is over.
After this, this term, we need to clean, clean, take those guys out of there.
We need a new leadership.
We need to have Trump out of this office now.
All right, Michael, let's hear from Valerie, a Republican in Florida.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Yes, as far as my opinion of Vance, I think he's a very nice person, and everything that everybody has spoken about Vance in good terms, I agree with.
But my pick for 28 would be Ron DeSantis all the way.
He has the authenticity, he has the leadership values, he's been, he's got many qualities.
He's already run the state, and he's run it very well.
That was my pick for 28.
So, Valerie, do you think he would do well in 2028?
Because he's run before and was unsuccessful.
Well, he was unsuccessful with a lot of negativity pushed at him.
He would have done very well.
And a lot of people and a lot of people that are a lot of newspaper writers down here are writing articles already and saying Ron, run, Ron.
So I'm hoping that, and I think he's sitting back and waiting because I hate to see a waste of somebody's talent like him.
But anyway, can I ask you a question?
Sure.
Who picks out the questions?
The producers, the production team.
Do you not like our question today, Valerie?
Well, I think it's odd.
I just think it's odd.
Well, we thought that I think the thinking behind it was, you know, he had just come back from Islamabad.
He had just gone to Hungary to campaign for Victor Orban.
He's Catholic, and he's kind of in the middle of this, you know, Jesus posting and the tiff with the Pope.
So we felt like it was time to, you know, because he had been in the news so much.
But we take your feedback.
We appreciate it.
Here's Mary in Michigan, Independent Line.
Good morning, Mary.
Good morning, Mimi.
I want to talk about Vice President Vance in 2026 and in 2028, if he runs or whatever, I would argue that the entire family is running.
It matters who the first spouse is.
And I hate to say it, but I have read the most evil, foul hate against his wife because she's from Indian and she's Hindu.
And I think to myself, what percentage of the white Christian nationalist mega is ever going to vote for a man that's married to a woman from Hindu?
And it came up when he was nominated.
It came up.
And it comes up almost every time anybody talks about his wife and that.
And I think through the years, our first ladies, if you look at our presidents, have been more than you know it one of the biggest decisions that they make is who their spouse is through the years.
And I hate to say it, but I don't think a lot of white Christian nationalists, when they look at JD Vance and look at his wife, would accept that as our first lady.
And that's just the way I see the hate and rhetoric on social media.
It's sad to say in 2026, that's what people say about her.
All right, Mary.
And this is Business Insider.
They've got an article talking about the 15 vice presidents who have become president themselves.
So in the history of the United States, only 15 vice presidents have become presidents.
Some were unexpectedly inaugurated after the president's resignation, assassination, or illness.
Others, like Joe Biden, ran for office after their term as vice president ended.
So it is here.
So for instance, Lyndon B. Johnson, after John F. Kennedy's assassination, as Kamala Harris launches her presidential campaign following Biden's exit for the race, she could join the ranks vice president.
This is an older article, but it has here, if you'd like to see who the vice presidents were that went on to become president.
John Westchester, Pennsylvania, Independent Line.
Good morning.
Hey, Mimi.
As far as JD Vance is concerned, you know, the guy's really articulate and, you know, he can spin anything with the best of them.
But the problem is that he lost a lot of credibility these days in terms of the stances that he takes and the way he's kind of flip-flopped over the years from being, I guess even, for instance, the Iran War, his opposition to that.
Now he's obviously peddling for the president.
I just think that America doesn't want somebody with a spine.
And JD Vance kind of, it doesn't seem like he stands up for anything.
He just kind of goes with whatever is politically expedient at the time.
On top of that, I mean, you know, you want to talk about standing up or something.
I don't know.
It just seems like, you know, there's an old rumor about J.D. and the couch.
I'm not sure that we want our American president to be associated with sexual relations with the couch.
And this is former Republican Congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Green, defending Vice President Vance on an interview that she did on a podcast with ceasefire host Dasha Burns.
Here it is.
You know, the vice president, JD Vance, is probably the most anti-war isolationist member of the president's cabinet.
Do you think that he should have taken a stronger stance at the outset here?
I think he actually has, but he's done it behind the scenes, which I'm very grateful for.
And I do respect what he's trying to do.
I mean, let's be honest, to be a vice president, you can't just, your role is behind the scenes.
You're there to support the president and support the administration.
And that's how, reportedly, that's how we got to the ceasefire, was because of JD Vance, who not only was outspoken internally against the war from the beginning, but has also gotten involved himself to try to get the negotiations going to come to a lasting ceasefire.
So there's also a lot of talk about this New York Times article by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan titled How Trump Took the U.S. to War with Iran.
And in this article, it does mention Vice President JD Vance here, where it says this shows in the end, even the more skeptical members of Mr. Trump's war cabinet, with the stark exception of Mr. Vance, the figure inside the White House most opposed to a full-scale war, deferred to the president's instincts, including his abundant confidence that the war would be quick and decisive.
The White House has declined to comment.
But that's at the New York Times, if you'd like to read that entire article mentioning Vice President Vance's role.
Republican in North Little Rock.
Richard, you're on the air.
Yes, ma'am.
Mimi, I think you're one of the fairest hosts on there.
John is also a very fair host.
Yeah, I'm not in agreement at all with JD Vance's wife.
I mean, it's totally foreign.
It's totally political.
The whole thing is wrong.
I mean, and the other thing is, is that you have all of these white liberal women calling in, defending.
White liberal women are the death of this country.
Wait, wait.
I don't understand your point about.
Are you still there?
We lost him.
Ismail in Seattle, Washington, Democrat, you're on the air.
I don't think JD Vance stands a chance in 2028, and here's why.
This whole administration has been basically run like a reality TV show.
And JD Vance is doing nothing but appeasing the dear leader Donald Trump.
He's afraid of him.
Basically, I mean, we're on the verge of World War III.
We're on the verge of a recession.
There's all kinds of serious problems going on in the world.
And what is the dear leader Donald Trump and JD Vance doing?
They're involved in a Twitter war against the Pope.
And they're doing everything they can to distract the American people from the book that's going to be released soon by biographer Michael Wolf.
Trump Resignation and Papal Disputes00:10:04
Michael Wolf is the only person we know that had direct access to Jeffrey Epstein because he's going to write a book about him.
He has over 25 hours of audio recordings with him and Jeffrey Epstein.
And that's why Melania Trump came out the other day because the fact is that it is true.
Jeffrey Epstein introduced Melania Trump to Donald.
And Donald and Jeffrey Epstein were best friends for over 15 years.
They talked on the phone every day.
Anyway, I'm getting off subject.
Yes, you are.
I was just about to say that.
So, yeah, so as far as Vice President Vance, you said that he's just, you know, essentially following the president.
Isn't that what vice presidents do, though?
Okay.
JD Vance did not support, did not agree with going into going into war with Iran.
But every time he gets on TV, he completely flip-flops and just says whatever he can to appease the dear leader Donald Trump.
I mean, he's basically, he reminds me of a teenager.
He doesn't, he needs to stand for something.
Not just appease Donald Trump.
This is a problem with the Republicans.
They all fear Donald Trump.
Everything they do is to make sure that Donald Trump is happy.
You know, why are they attacking the Pope right now when we have so many issues in the world going on?
Yep.
Let's take a look at another portion of that Fox News interview from Monday night where he talks about the Iran talks.
Well, first of all, Brett, I wouldn't just say that things went wrong.
I also think things went right.
We made a lot of progress, but we also made very clear, and I think this is part of the progress we made, what the terms where the United States could make some accommodation, what terms we were flexible on, and what things we absolutely needed to see in order for the President of the United States to feel like he was getting a good deal.
And so we lay those things out.
We had some good conversations.
I think it was the first time that you had ever seen the Iranian government, the U.S. government meet at such a high level, maybe in the history of the current leadership of Iran.
So that's, I think, a positive.
And again, we did make some progress in the negotiation.
The big question from here on out is whether the Iranians will have enough flexibility, whether the Iranians will accept the critical things that we need to see in order for things to get done.
And I would just like to say that I'm going to probably support whoever, the Republicans, whoever wins the primaries.
I like JD Vance.
He's very articulate, very smart, very charismatic.
I think he's very presidential.
And the same for Marco Rubio.
I think they both handle themselves very well in the international theaters.
But my question is, I hear a lot of people talking about who they won't vote for, primarily Democrats.
I want to know who are they going to vote for?
Who is their torch bearer?
Who is going to stand up for the Democrats?
That's my question.
All right, Marshall, and this is Bunny in Currensville, Pennsylvania, Democrat.
Good morning, Mamie.
Morning, morning.
I think Vance is cut from the same cloth as Donald Trump.
When Donald Trump stood up and told everyone to inject themselves with Clorox, that that would cure pure COVID, hey, get real.
Vance stands up and tells, smears a whole group of people saying they eat cats and dogs.
It's time for people to listen to these words.
These words matter.
And that's all I have to say.
Thank you.
All right.
And this is Johnny B. on X, who says, JD Vance is a great man.
He was poor growing up, had a drug-addicted mom, and yet he became the second most powerful man in the world.
A great inspiration to all children.
And Jason in Springfield, Virginia, Independent Line, what's your view of Vice President Vance?
I just wanted to bring up the fact that JD Vance just kind of came out of nowhere.
I'm pretty young.
I'm only like 28 from Springfield, Virginia, and I'm an independent.
And I like to say that it's kind of weird that Peter Thiel and all these Wall Street guys have been supporting him.
And, you know, that needs to be looked into.
And as far as you were talking about earlier with another caller about, you know, how Trump got us into this war, it's kind of strange how no one has mentioned B.B. Netanyahu and how he's visited seven times to the White House and gave speeches to Congress and kind of led us into the Iraq war as well as the Iran war now.
And, you know, I just wanted to bring up those points and see what other people's thoughts and your thoughts are.
All right, Jason.
And this is what Politico says.
Vance, after rallying in Hungary for Orban, says he wasn't surprised by the Autocrats' defeat.
It says the Vice President's comments Monday evening marked the administration's first acknowledgement of the disappointing election results.
Julian in New Haven, Connecticut, Independent Line.
Hi, Julian.
Good morning.
I would like to say that I truly believe that JD Vance is going to be the next president and not elected.
I believe that Trump will resign before the end of his term and be fully pardoned.
Not only Trump, but his entire family will be fully pardoned by Mr. JD Vance.
Thank you.
So, wait a minute, Julian, you still there?
Yes.
Why do you think that President Trump will resign?
Based on what?
I think that a lot of things that are not yet out in the open will be revealed.
And not only Mr. Trump's shady money deals and but the Trump, I mean, the scandal with Mr. Epstein, and a lot of things are going to come out in the open because all the people that will be in possession of some kind of dirt will be throwing it at him.
And I believe that he will do that.
I believe that Trump will resign, get a full pardon from JD Vance.
And I don't think that JD Vance will be elected, though, in the 28 elections.
All right.
And Rip in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Republican line, you're on the air.
Don't know whether he will be elected or not, or be the guy, but I like Rubio.
I think Rubio certainly does have a pretty significant line of experience.
I guess that's the best word for it.
Hope everybody doesn't forget basically that immigration is still the United States' largest and most concerning arena.
That in the LGBT is terrible.
Rip, tell me what you see as the difference between Secretary Rubio and Vice President Vance as far as policy goes.
In my ignorance, I would say that Mr. Rubio has a long-standing record of experience, having come from where he came from and growing up as he did, and has a lot of references on why he doesn't and does do things.
Where Vance appears, in my ignorance, once again, to be a guy who has come up through Doing what he needs to do to get to where he is right now.
I don't think Rubio did what he did and grew up how he grew just to try to get to where he is now.
I think he is what he is because that's who he is, not because of what people say when they look at him.
I don't know if people link that up.
I think the greatest thing in the world is that you're a good person, not because people are watching, but because of who you are as an individual.
So all politicians scare me.
Every single bad thing that's happened in the United States is a direct result of a voted-in official, most of whom have no experience, in my opinion, whatsoever, where I think Mr. Rubio has tremendous experience.
Thank you, Mimi.
All right, Riff, and this is President Trump posting this on True Social late last night, 11:34 p.m., saying this.
Will someone please tell Pope Leo that Iran has killed at least 42,000 innocent, completely unarmed protesters in the last two months, and that for Iran to have a nuclear bomb is absolutely unacceptable.
And Gavin Newsome, governor of California, posted this on X.
He said, JD Vance proves he's a lightweight twice in 48 hours.
Congratulations to the people of Hungary.
Democracy Wins Despite Global Tensions00:02:34
Democracy, free press, and human rights win.
Today, there is hope.
Well, in about a half an hour, we will talk to Garrett Watson of the Tax Foundation.
It is Tax Day.
He'll join us for a closer look at the winners and losers of the 2025 GOP tax and spending bill, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
But first, after the break, a conversation with Wall Street Journal reporter Richard Rubin about Trump administration cuts to IRS tax enforcement.
We'll be right back.
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Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back to Washington Journal.
We're joined now by Richard Rubin.
He is U.S. tax policy reporter for the Wall Street Journal.
IRS Enforcement and Tax Compliance00:08:00
Richard, happy tax day.
Happy tax day.
I guess it depends on if you're going to get a refund or not.
Right, if you're happy.
But most people do.
We're I think at about 70% of people who've been filing so far are getting are getting refunds.
So I think it's for most people happy taxing.
And how are those refunds looking as compared to previous years?
So they're a bit larger.
They're 10, 11% larger on average than we've seen in the past.
And it's important to think about this in a couple dimensions.
It's not just the refund size that matters because you've got people who are paying less than they would have otherwise because of the new tax law.
And what's happened is some people went from paying, owing with their tax return to owing less or from owing to a small refund.
So we've seen that average refund come up $350 or so, 10, 11%.
We also have people who've gone, say, from owing $800 to getting $200.
And so this is money that's going out to people because they're getting all of the breaks, the extensions of tax revisions that otherwise would have been expired, but then also the new tax provisions for tips and overtime and seniors.
Well, let's talk about enforcement because you wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called America's New Tax Mantra.
Quote, the IRS isn't going to catch me.
So what is happening with IRS enforcement?
Right.
So I guess we should preface this by saying, like, we're not at all advising people to not pay their taxes, right?
But what's happening is IRS enforcement is smaller, significantly smaller than it was 12 to 15 months ago.
So we had this big ramp up under the Biden administration where they gave the IRS more money and the IRS added more people in collections and audit.
And the Trump administration came in and dialed that back pretty significantly, both by getting rid of probationary employees, some of the people that the Biden administration had just hired, and then also by offering those buyouts, the deferred retirement for federal employees.
And you had the IRS had been saying for years that it had so many people who were at or near retirement age, and a lot of people took that.
So the IRS went from about 103,000 employees in January of 2025 down to closish to 70,000 now.
And what we've seen is, you know, in audits of very high-income people, with people with incomes of $10 million or more, those went down 9% last year, on track to be down another 39% this year.
We've had audits of large partnerships, complex partnerships that the IRS have been trying to ramp up scrutiny of, things like private equity firms.
Those are also down.
So what's the Trump administration's rationale for decreasing IRS enforcement?
So their argument is basically that they want the government to be smaller, right?
This is why they shed federal workers.
There's been Republicans opposed the IRS expansion in the first place, warning that it would be too burdensome on taxpayers, on small businesses in particular.
And that's part of what's driven this.
And then you've got the administration arguing for further reductions in the budget that they're proposing now for fiscal year 2027.
So I want to show you a portion of your article about this.
And this gives some of the numbers so people can kind of follow along.
So what you say is this: the cutbacks will be costly for the government's bottom line and expand budget deficits.
The administration's own IRS budget document acknowledges that chasing scuff laws generates more money than it costs.
The IRS workforce reduction so far would cut an estimated $46 billion in federal spending over the next decade and reduce revenue collections by $643 billion.
That's according to the Budget Lab at Yale, a nonpartisan center run by former Biden administration officials.
So it would seem, Michael, that the math is definitely in favor of more enforcement.
If you're approaching it from that government bottom line, for sure.
And like we said, the administration's own budget says lost revenue opportunities for the United States return on investment for additional enforcement spending, reductions cost the U.S. in the bottom line.
That Yale estimate is a pretty big return on investment estimate.
The Congressional Budget Office, the administration have differing numbers, but the direction is all the same, which is basically that if you spend more on enforcement, those people will go find non-compliant taxpayers, whether that's people who just haven't filed tax returns and then get nudged to do so and penalized for not doing so, people who owe more because they claim deductions or credits that they weren't eligible for, those kinds of things.
That's what tax enforcement does is make sure that people are following the law.
If you've got a question for Richard Rubin of the Wall Street Journal, you can start calling in now.
Republicans are on 202-748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000, and Independents 202-748-8002.
So as far as compliance rates, what's the percentage of Americans that actually pay all the taxes that they are due?
Yeah, the IRS estimates that of the taxes that are owed, the Americans pay about 85% of them of the number, not people, but the number, 85% of taxes owed on time.
And then another 2% is actually from direct enforcement.
So the actual enforcement revenue that comes in isn't really that large in the grand scheme of things for the government.
But of course, knowing that that enforcement is out there is part of what keeps that voluntary compliance rate as high as it does at 85.
And what people, you know, there's two things, a few things that drive that compliance rate.
One is that people want to follow the law, right?
People want to do their civic duty.
They want to pay their taxes.
By and large, not true of everybody, but in large part, people want to pay their taxes.
Two people know, particularly wage earners, know that the IRS has information about what you made.
So if you're a W-2 wage earner, you know that your employer has sent the IRS, say, a form at the end of the year that says you made $92,000.
You're not going to write $74,000 on your tax return.
They will send you a letter and then you'll have to pay.
So that kind of information and the ethic of tax compliance that we have in the country and have had for a long time are what keep that up.
And then the enforcement actual and then the enforcement threat of deterrence are what.
But at a certain point, if that deterrence goes down, compliance goes down, right?
If you feel like you're not going to get caught at whatever it is.
Yeah.
There's two pieces of it.
One is you feeling like you might not get caught and you can say you had a $1,000 office furniture expense for your business.
Maybe you just put an extra zero on it.
Again, not advising that.
Or you overstate how much you donated in clothes to Goodwill or whatever it is that you're kind of pushing the envelope on.
So yes, you might feel like you're not getting caught.
The other thing is that part of what drives compliance is the sense that everybody else is complying.
So it's this very much a cultural expectation that if and they're worry that if you think that other people are getting away with something that maybe you can get away with something too.
And so that's part of what drives this cycle.
And that's what some people in the tax system are concerned about is that you start eroding over time.
It doesn't happen overnight at all, but you start eroding some of that voluntary compliance if there's a sense that you can get away with things.
Before we take calls, I want to ask you about AI.
The Trump administration has said that they want to use artificial intelligence to flag which returns need to be audited.
How is the IRS using AI now and how could that change?
AI Audits and Tax Loopholes00:15:21
They're ramping it up.
And they're trying to do it in a way that respects the tax privacy laws that they have that can't have an AI that's roaming outside of the IRS systems necessarily.
But I think that's the basic idea is to be more efficient in terms of case selection, case identification.
Because for the IRS and for taxpayers, one of the worst situations is they open an audit on you and you spend a lot of time, the IRS spends a lot of time.
You spend a bunch of money hiring a CPA and paying somebody.
And then they come and say, actually, everything's just fine, right?
So what they're trying to do is prospect for cases that are going to yield some sort of change and direct the shrunken resources they have into the right place.
And I think they're relatively early in that, but they say they're making some good progress with the idea that essentially you can do, if not more with less, maybe the same with less.
All right, let's talk to callers.
We'll start with Lester in Washington, D.C. Democrat, you're on the air, Lester.
Yeah, just as the gentleman, Mr. Rubin, pointed out, can he explain, number one, the switch and bait tactics of that big beautiful bill as it relates to no taxes on tips, no taxes on this, as well as the fact that senior citizens like myself are still being taxed even at 70 years old.
Second, you know, why is it that the president, everybody else has to pay their taxes, but our president was not even audited?
Thirdly, as the gentleman pointed out, the Republicans are full of nonsense, the Kool-Aid.
In other words, no enforcement, no compliance, and the country loses billions of dollars with non-compliance and no enforcement.
And every time I hear the Republicans, the first thing they bring out is, well, we have to have fiscal responsibility.
We have to do this.
We have to do that.
Well, history has shown that every time Republicans get in office, they increase the deficit.
They give tax breaks to the rich.
And in fact, at the end of the day, the callers who call in, these people, I don't know what Kool-Aid they're drinking, but it is quite obvious that the Republican Party is nothing more than a white racist Christian.
All right, Lester, let's get an answer to those questions about the Big Beautiful bill.
Yeah, I mean, so what's labeled as no tax on tips, no tax on overtime are somewhat more complicated than that.
When Republicans went and tried to turn those slogans into policy, they put a bunch of conditions on them.
So each of them have income limits, they have dollar amount limits, they have definitional limits.
Overtime in particular has been particularly tricky because it's only the half of the time and a half accounts for the deduction, and it's only if you're required to work that overtime under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.
So that's been really difficult for taxpayers to figure out in part because employers weren't required for tax year 2025 to tell them how much.
And there's a limit on how much you could make just in general on the tax.
Yeah, there's a limit in the size of the deduction, right, the amount of deduction, and then above certain income levels, the deduction starts phasing out.
And then for people who are very low income, if you are not paying income taxes anyway, these are income tax deductions and they're not going to give you a benefit.
And there still are payroll taxes that apply to tips and overtime.
On the president's audits, all presidents are audited every year.
There's a mandatory IRS provision that does that.
It's not a law.
It's an IRS rule.
And on top of that, we know President Trump was audited in the past, both when he was president, when he was not.
We don't have, because his returns have been both leaked and revealed under legal process by the House Ways and Means Committee, but we don't actually have a great deal of information about the results of those audits.
Meaning how much taxes he's paid in the past?
Meaning when the IRS went in and said, okay, we're looking at your tax return, Mr. Trump.
Here's how much additional you owe or don't owe.
We don't know the end result of those audits.
Here's Eddie in Millbury, Massachusetts, Republican.
Good morning, Eddie.
Hi.
Good morning.
I like the conclusion or answer to Ben slogan that $2 trillion deficit spending a year is unsustainable.
What can we do about it?
Years ago, I heard something about a carbon tax, or CO2 would prefer to get some tax.
Don't have to call a sales fax or value add a tax, but how can we get it through Congress?
We can't sustain taking in $5 trillion a year in taxes and spending a trillion just to pay the interest on the nearly $40 trillion deficit that we have.
What can we do to increase taxes and decrease spending?
Thank you.
Yeah, so the caller's right that we're at this point where the U.S. is running persistent budget deficits, spending more each year than we're taking in in revenue.
The question is, how sustainable is that?
That's the, I was going to say the $64,000 question.
It's like the $64 trillion question.
We don't know at what point that burden of debt becomes a real problem for the economy.
We've been just sort of humming along and doing fine.
There have been, you know, economically, right, we're not like in a calamity because of those deficits.
So I think this is a question that lawmakers struggle with all the time is, you know, do you want more spending?
Do you want to cut spending?
Do you want to raise more revenue?
And they've struggled to find ways to do that, that get majorities, right?
So you've seen Democrats when they last had the majority, you know, President Biden had a whole number of tax increases that he couldn't get through the Senate.
And this Republican majority did, in fact, cut a bunch of spending last year as part of the One Big Beautiful bill.
But they also had even more than that in tax cuts.
Phil in Maryland, line for Democrats.
You're on the air.
Hi, how are you doing?
Good.
I have a question, or not a question, but I have a statement for Mr. Rubin.
You all showed the numbers of how much you saved by letting the IRS agents go and how much money we lost by letting them go.
And I just wanted to just say why, truthfully, why Trump did that.
And the truth is, is that Trump wanted to save his people, his buddies, money because there are no more audits.
You said the audits of millionaires and billionaires are reduced by 30 or 940%.
So I just want him to just own up to the fact that he did it because of his buddies.
That's why.
So I'm done.
Thank you very much.
All right, Phil.
Yeah, I mean, it's hard to know exactly what the rationale was.
They don't sort of spell out exactly what they're thinking so people can draw their own conclusions.
I will note that the tax lawyers that I've talked to say that the audits that are happening are still particularly thorough.
So they, you know, when agents come in now, there are fewer of them for sure.
In some cases, certainly close faster, but others, agents are coming in more prepared with lots of information about taxpayers that they've gleaned from publicly available information as well as from inside the IRS.
So do know that if you, from the people I've talked to, if you do get audited, there's risk there.
And then on top of that, you know, generally the IRS has three years from when you file a return to audit.
What you're doing now and what you're filing for tax year 26 or 27 is really about a sense of what the IRS will be able to do in terms of audits in 2029, 2030, 2031.
Well, let's talk about next year's budget, fiscal year 2027.
What does it look like, the president's request for the IRS in terms of generally for the IRS, for the agency, and for enforcement specifically?
Yes, they're talking about another billion-dollar or so reduction in the budget, which is 10 to 13 percent or so.
That reduces overall headcount at the IRS by about 1,800.
So, taking that 70-ish thousand down to about 69,000, most of that comes from the enforcement side.
They've tried as much as they can to protect the service side of the IRS, the people who are processing returns and taking phone calls.
And they've struggled some there too.
They've moved people around to make sure that they're answering those calls or as much as they can.
But they've really kind of come out of the enforcement side.
And this will be up to Congress, right?
So, Congress will decide as it's doing the appropriations for fiscal 27, the year that starts October 1st of 2026, how much they're willing to allocate to the IRS.
And the IRS is also reaching the point where that additional $80 billion they got in 2022, most of that was for enforcement.
Congress has already clawed most of that back.
There is still some spending, some money that's left over in those accounts, and the IRS is working through that.
At some point, that will be expired as well and consumed, and Congress and the administration will need to figure out what to do.
Let's talk to Debbie in Pasadena, Maryland, Republican.
Good morning, Debbie.
Good morning.
I just would like to say, my husband and I are both on Social Security, and I got audited, and they want me to pay $12,000.
I haven't did taxes in four years.
And I'm wondering how is it that I fighting it, I don't have the $12,000 to pay.
And here, people are talking about the rich getting money.
They know the loopholes.
Like Joe Biden refinances his house 35 times or 30 times.
How does that happen?
I can't afford to do that kind of stuff.
And now they want me to pay $12,000 that I don't have.
I need all in my tank.
I can't afford that.
My gas electric is through the roof.
Our tags in Maryland went up because Les West.
Our fishing license went up.
Everything's gone up.
And they want me to pay $12,000.
That's devastating to me.
So, Debbie, why didn't you file taxes for the last four years?
Well, during COVID, it was hard to get in.
And there was something on the news that Biden had said I had taken $70,000 where I could get annuity.
I had to cash it in.
I needed a car.
I needed to go to the grocery store.
I needed food.
And at certain times, I was sending people because I'm 71 and it was hard for me to get out.
And when I put a mask on, I couldn't breathe.
And it was just bad.
And I needed the money.
I mean, my car went up.
I needed a car.
I needed all in my taxes.
I needed a lot of things.
And I had no way of getting it.
And then just the loopholes, if people knew the loopholes, they wouldn't have to pay these kinds of taxes.
I mean, I'm.
So, what are you going to do, Debbie, as far as that $12,000?
Well, I went to another accountant.
Now, they told me during the summer last year, I took it to a tax man, and he sent in for something he said to help us with, which I haven't heard back from them.
But I'm worried that they have to spend any money because in case they come back and say, yeah, you've got to pay this $12,000.
All right.
Let's hear from Richard Rubin.
Yeah, I think it's hard to know anyone's particular situation without seeing all the facts.
But I guess what tax people say to me when I talk to them about these kinds of situations are a couple of things.
One is that, you know, letting a tax debt fester and kind of ignoring it can be a real problem that it doesn't go away and interest and penalties can accumulate.
And so, you know, people who just kind of stick it at the bottom, I'm not saying this is what she's done, but people who stick it at the bottom of the pile and figure they'll deal with it later, that can be really problematic because it cascades.
And the other thing is the IRS does, when you can get through to people, and if you're working with a professional in particular, though you don't have to, have a couple of things.
They have installment payment plans that you can set up.
They have what they call an offer and compromise where you can basically agree to settle the tax debt for less than a dollar on the dollar.
So there are ways the IRS tries to accommodate those kinds of situations where people have real hardship from the past tax debts they owe while also doing the job that they're doing, which is trying to make sure that people pay what they owe.
This is Peter in California, Line for Democrats.
Good morning, Peter.
Good morning.
Yeah, where's my big tax break?
You know, I'm 65 and retired, and Trump keeps saying no tax on Social Security.
So I started collecting it, and I didn't have him take any money out.
So after my measly standard deduction, my taxable income was $53,000.
The only income I get is my Social Security, my pension, and a few CDs.
So they took out $3,400.
And because Trump keeps lying and saying no tax on Social Security, I had to pay this year $4,300.
And even Carolyn Levitt said, oh, senior, 90% of the seniors, they're going to get a big break in their Social Security.
Now, I didn't qualify for the $6,000 deduction because I turned 65 this year, so I didn't get it for last year's tax.
So why does Trump keep lying and saying no tax on Social Security?
He keeps saying that.
And he should only say if that's your only income.
So I had to pay $4,300.
And he lies about everything.
All right, Peter.
Yeah, so what the president has labeled no tax on Social Security is, as the caller says, a $6,000 or $12,000 if you're married filing jointly deduction for people 65 and up.
That also phases out at an income level above where he is.
But as he notes, it's for people 65 and up as of tax year 2025.
So if you turn, as he did, 65 this year in 2026, but you were claiming Social Security, you know, because you can get it as early as 62, or you can get it if you're under disability.
If you have Social Security income and you're under 65, there is no no tax on Social Security.
You only get that benefit if you're older.
So it's both true that about 88% of seniors receiving Social Security don't have to effectively pay taxes on it because of this new deduction.
But there are people exactly like the caller who are under 65 for this tax year who are effectively paying tax on their Social Security or people who are higher income seniors also are paying taxes on their social security.
And that income level is $75,000?
Social Security Taxes for Seniors00:10:24
I think so.
I don't have it memorized, but it's above where he is.
But I think we're seeing this happen where you've seen the slogans are really easy to campaign on.
No tax on TIPS, no tax on Social Security.
But Republicans, as they wrote the bill, very intentionally tried to limit the sort of fiscal impact of those and cabin them somewhat.
And this is what results.
Steve in St. Louis, Missouri, Independent Line.
You're on with Richard Rubin of the Wall Street Journal.
Nest, good morning.
Yeah, I want to talk in contrast to your last caller.
I am retired.
I'm 70 years old.
Last year, I had to pay $7,200, wrote a check to the IRS.
But with the cuts this year, Social Security, no taxes, et cetera, I only had to write a check for $3,400.
So to the people who are saying the tax cuts didn't work, baloney.
Baloney.
They do work.
That's my comment.
Yeah, I mean, no doubt.
Like, there are tax cuts.
Like, Congress last year passed bigger standard deduction, bigger child tax credit, extended everything that was scheduled to expire, the tips, the overtime, the seniors, a larger tax deduction for state and local taxes for people who itemize.
So there's no doubt that taxes are lower this year.
People are getting bigger refunds.
People are writing smaller checks as the collar did.
That's fundamentally what they did.
And Jan in Illinois, Independent Line, you're on the air, Jan.
Yes.
Are you there, Jan?
I'm here.
Yes, go ahead.
My question is this.
I've heard that during President Clinton's years in office that we actually did balance our budget.
And I wonder if he could elaborate on how that was done during those years of the Clinton administration.
Yeah, that's a great question.
So we did have balanced budgets, particularly toward the end of the Clinton administration in the last few years.
It was a few things.
It was Democrats raised taxes in 1993, and so that generated revenue.
You had spending cut deals that Democrats cut with Republicans in the late 1990s.
You know, Republicans won the House in 1994.
And so after that, you had this sort of bipartisan push to lower deficits.
You also, that was in many ways the peak employment and earning years of the baby boomers.
And so you had lots of people working and paying taxes into the system.
And then you also had a real big economic and productivity gain during that period.
Capital gains too is toward the end of that period with the dot-com stocks, but also just all of, you know, basically computer technology making work more efficient and making the economy grow faster.
So that was a period when we had a lot of that.
What's happened since then, of course, is the population is older than it was then.
So we're spending as a share of the economy more on Social Security, Medicare, than we did at the time.
Defense increased after 9-11 in particular.
And so, right.
And also during that period, we were coming out of the Cold War.
So you had what they called the peace dividend where military spending wasn't as large as it was before or after.
And it's that combination of factors that happened at the time that led to essentially having balanced budgets for a few years.
So were taxes higher then during that part of the Clinton administration than they are now?
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, and taxes not just on high-income people, but taxes across the board.
So if you compare where we were in 2000, right, what happened since then?
The Bush administration came in and there was a bipartisan tax cut in 2001.
They extended almost all of that in 2010 and 2012 under President Obama.
President Trump came in and created more tax cuts in 2017 that this Congress extended and expanded last year.
So there have been some tax increases since on some high-income people and on corporations here and there.
But in large part, what's happened over the past 25 years has been higher spending and lower taxes.
Tina is in Alabama, Republican.
Good morning, Tina.
Good morning.
Good to speak with you all.
Sir, I have a question.
A lot of people, we're all concerned about the cost of living, but how many Americans recognize that 30 to 50 percent of their income goes towards paying taxes?
And can you break it down into quintiles as to what those percentages are?
I'm not going to be able to do quintiles off the top of my head here.
In general, 30 to 50 percent is higher than what taxes are in the country.
Overall, if you look at all taxes at all levels across the country compared to state, federal, local compared to total GDP, we're in the mid to high 20s.
And that varies.
In general, the federal income tax system is very progressive.
Higher income people pay a greater share of their income to the government for federal income taxes.
Federal payroll taxes are somewhat regressive, right?
Because the Social Security tax caps out at about $180,000 or so.
So higher income people don't pay as much of the share of their income in payroll taxes.
And lower income people who are working pay payroll taxes, but not income taxes.
State taxes tend to be regressive.
They vary, of course, across states, but sales taxes are on that, hit more people who are spending a greater share of their income.
But then states like New York and California that have high personal income taxes tend to be more progressive.
You wrote in your article that tax enforcement goes through boom and bust cycles, depending on who's in power.
Do you think that if there's another boom in enforcement, that there will be challenges of ramping that back up?
I mean, isn't it very highly inefficient to go, okay, we're going to enforce, okay, never mind, we're not lay everybody off, hire everybody?
Yeah, and one of the things about that is it's how the IRS does this.
So it takes time to hire people, particularly specialists.
One of the things the Biden administration did is they quickly, after they got that money, hired people to do customer service, process tax returns, state phone calls.
Those are hourly jobs, and you can fill them much more quickly than you can fill jobs of experienced accountants and attorneys.
So those enforcement jobs took longer for them to ramp up.
And then once they hire them, they take their senior people off of the work they're doing to train the new people.
So even if you know how to be an accountant or a tax attorney, following IRS procedures so that you're doing things legally and can actually collect the money takes time.
So they have to learn that.
And then they lost a lot of that right away.
So yeah, it would take time to ramp back up if and when they had more money.
Al in Rochester, Minnesota, Independent Lion.
Go ahead.
Oh, yeah.
I'm just calling about, it was a PR stunt with the DoorDash lady on no tips on that type of thing.
There was like 10 of them that they flew in from areas from Missouri area and down around there.
But they the lady there was a she's in a campaign commercials for the Jason on ways and means.
I can't remember his last name, Jason.
And he's a Republican in the House of Representatives.
And she's also in some of these other, she shows up at these meetings and city councils and things like that.
But also I wanted to mention the tax on tips or the tax on no tax on tips.
The strippers in Las Vegas, they don't have to pay taxes on their tips.
And I just find that a certain class of people shouldn't get tax breaks like that.
That's all I got to say.
Thank you.
Yeah, so what the caller's referring to is there was a, the president had McDonald's deliver the other day and talked to the woman who delivered it about the No Tax on Tips.
There's been a whole bunch of reporting about who she is and how much she's been involved in promoting this tax break before.
I think No Tax on Tips gets into, you know, the caller talked about categories of people who should or shouldn't get something.
And this is essentially what the No Tax on Tips provision did is it created differences between different types of workers.
So even, you know, by labeling tips as somehow different.
So if you think about people, even at a restaurant, right, the waiters might get tips, but the janitors who come in and might work for a different company at the end of the night won't.
And so it created that kind of gap between different, what you might think of similar types of income being taxed differently.
And so the tax experts don't like these sorts of carve outs.
It's obviously proven for the public very popular because, you know, we all know people who get tip income or have worked those jobs or interact with them.
And it's a sort of politically salient and attractive piece.
All right, that's Richard Rubin, U.S. tax policy reporter at the Wall Street Journal.
You could read his articles at WSJ.com.
Richard, thanks for joining us.
Thanks for having me.
In about a half an hour on the Washington Journal, an update on the Iran war and the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz with McCain Institute Executive Director Evelyn Farkas.
But first, after the break, we'll continue our conversation about taxes with Garrett Watson of the Tax Foundation.
He'll give us a closer look at the winners and losers of the 2025 GOP tax and spending bill known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Alice McDermott Book Club Segment00:03:10
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Washington Journal continued.
Welcome back to Washington Journal.
We're joined now by Garrett Watson.
He's policy analysis director at the Tax Foundation, joining us to talk about the impact of the 2025 GOP tax law on taxes.
Welcome to the program.
Thanks for having me.
Tell us first about the Tax Foundation and if you have an ideological point of view.
Right, at the Tax Foundation, we were founded in 1937, one of the oldest tax policy research organizations in the country.
And we focus on federal, state, and global tax policy to make sure that we can have an efficient, simple, and transparent tax code.
We are all about trying to make sure that taxes are raised efficiently at any level of revenue that government is looking to fund for important services.
A big part of our work is, of course, research and analysis and modeling of major tax proposals and overhauls at the federal and state and global levels.
But we also do a lot of education on how the tax system currently works, opportunities for reform, and trying to undercut a lot of the partisan confusion and debate that we see day to day.
And so the educational component is also really important for folks.
And we do a lot of charts and maps and graphs, try to get to folks who aren't following this discussion on a day-to-day basis.
So are you, do you tend to be on the right, on the left, or are you nonpartisan?
We are strictly nonpartisan.
We try to focus on how to raise taxes efficiently and simply and transparently.
And there's lessons to be learned, I think, on both sides of the political aisle on achieving that goal.
We've had challenges with that in the past, and I think there's a lot more work to do that I'm sure we'll get into today.
So let's talk about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
It was signed into law in last July.
What were the major tax differences that were instituted based on that law for individuals and for businesses?
So for individuals, the headline change was trying to avoid the expiration of the 2017 tax cuts that were scheduled to expire at the end of 2025.
It's going to be a pretty large tax increase.
It was going to increase taxes on 62% of individuals by our estimate.
And the bulk of the tax cuts that are talked about was extending and making permanent all of those different tax cuts from 2017 that included the larger standard deduction, an expanded child tax credit, a variety of other tax cuts.
And then on top of that, on top of those extensions, Congress went ahead and added in new provisions, new deductions, for example, for tipped income, overtime, seniors, auto loans that added a tax break on top of those extensions.
Those new deductions are temporary.
They go for the next few years through the end of 2028.
And then there'll be another discussion about what to do with them.
Also, notably, the state and local tax deduction, which was capped at $10,000 through 2025, was made more generous.
So now taxpayers can deduct their state and local taxes up to $40,000 in 2025, $40,400 this year, and that'll be another big tax break for folks living in higher cost living states.
Regardless of income level?
So with the SALT cap, the new change was they did put in a new income cap for higher earners that didn't exist before for folks earning over $500,000 a year.
So that is important to note that higher earners will be limited.
For the business side, a lot of the focus was on reverting a lot of the scheduled tax hikes on businesses, most notably the phase out of immediate deductions for certain types of investments like equipment.
We saw a switch in the way in which research and development expenses were deducted from immediate deduction to five years of amortization.
We saw a tighter deduction for interest expenses.
All of that was rolled back and made permanent to try to increase investment.
And that was paired with other tax hikes.
For example, notably a reduction in a major scale back of green energy tax credits, for example, that certain businesses will be facing in the coming years.
So we had gotten this on text for the last guest, but we didn't get a chance to get to it.
So I'll ask you, which of the BBB tax breaks are permanent, which are temporary?
Is it true that the ones that are permanent favor those with the most wealth?
So by far, the bulk of the tax cuts were made permanent because they were those underlying 2017 expirations.
And that was a big part of the underlying debate in 2025 was how to think about that.
Because for a lot of taxpayers, of course, they're just seeing it as an extension of the status quo.
It's a continuation of tax, the tax system they're already familiar with, that they're already paying.
And we were just avoiding a tax hike.
And that was part of what motivated the additional deductions, the additional tax cuts that were provided in that law.
And of course, the distribution of the underlying 2017 tax cuts was maybe a little bit different than the new tax cuts.
The new tax cuts are very targeted in that there's a lot of income limits, right?
Trying to get to working middle-class folks who are earning tips or overtime or other types of deductions like for our seniors.
But the 2017 tax cuts, while they did overall cut taxes for most taxpayers by 90%, they do tend to increase the after-tax income of the top a bit more than the middle and working class folks.
If you'd like to join our conversation, we've got Garrett Watson with us for the next 20 minutes from the Tax Foundation.
You can start calling in now.
Republicans are on 2027-8001.
Democrats are on 202-748-8000.
And Independents 202-748-8002.
You mentioned in the beginning that the Tax Foundation likes to see taxes that are simple and efficient.
Does the One Big Beautiful Bill Act make taxes more or less simple and efficient?
So I think the 2025 tax law was very much a mixed bag.
So on the more simple side of things, it is good that we saw the things like the higher standard deduction and child tax credit made permanent from the 2017 law.
That did reduce, for example, the number of itemizers who go through a much more complicated process of itemizing their deductions, going from about a third of taxpayers to about slightly less than 10%.
So that simplified things for folks.
Also, of course, the permanence aspect, I think, was important.
There was a lot of uncertainty about what was going to happen with those tax cuts, about the direction of the tax system.
And permanency is always an important principle that we try to emphasize, and that was delivered for much of what was in the law.
On the other side, though, of course, we didn't introduce new deductions that are novel that folks are still trying to figure out.
A lot of folks have a lot of confusion or concern about the way in which the senior deduction works, which tips qualify for the tip deduction, for example.
They're also temporary.
So we're going to, once again, be revisiting those provisions as they expire in 2029, which is going to introduce new uncertainty.
So I think there is very much, I think, an argument to be made that in some ways the tax code is made more complicated in the law, even if we did solve that major sort of short-term problem of avoiding tax hikes on folks at the end of 2025.
Let's talk about the deficit, the national debt.
This is the committee for a responsible federal budget headline.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act dynamic score comes in at $4.7 trillion.
So that is adding to the national debt through fiscal year 2035, $4.7 trillion.
First, do you agree with that number?
That's right.
We found that it would reduce, the law would reduce revenue by about between $4.5 and $5 trillion if you're counting interest costs over 10 years.
And so basically, the value of the tax cuts outweigh the offsets that were included in the law.
It is very much a net tax cut over the next 10 years.
And I think that's another trade-off or challenge with this law: it is going to complicate our fiscal situation moving forward.
We are going to have to look at tough spending and tax changes in the next few years as we head toward a rapidly oncoming entitlement crisis.
So I think the only other positive thing that's worth mentioning, of course, that ameliorates some of that revenue effect is there are some aspects of the law that were pro-growth.
So we made permanent, for example, immediate deductions for and full deductions for short-lived investments for certain types of structures for RD.
And we find that that was the biggest sort of increase in economic growth is coming from those provisions.
But they do not come close to offsetting the conventional cost of the law.
Because proponents will say that we're going to grow the economy, and so we are not going to add to the national debt.
That's right.
We found between 15 and 20 percent of the revenue will be recollected due to the economic growth from income taxes and payroll taxes from those pro-growth provisions.
But the bulk of that cost is still going to be on the table, and we'll have to find a way to work through that in the coming years as our deficits increase.
All right, let's talk to callers.
We'll start with Judy in Pennsylvania, Line for Democrats.
Good morning.
Hey, good morning, Mimi.
I have a comment that I have a question.
My first comment is about the 2017 big, beautiful tax cuts for businesses.
That was sold to the American people as cutting taxes on corporations and businesses would lower the tax rate and it would bring American businesses back to the United States.
Because according to Donald Trump, America had the highest rate of business taxes of anywhere in the world.
So if he cut taxes, it would bring all the manufacturing back to the United States.
I call that the business carrot.
And that didn't work very well.
So then Donald Trump came out with the tariff stick.
Donald Trump claimed that imposing all tariffs on the imports would bring American manufacturing back to the United States.
But that's not working either.
So that's my comment.
My question is, and I hope you can answer it because I think this would be surprising news to taxpayers.
Can you tell us how much money you have to make on a yearly basis to be considered the top 1%?
And can you tell us how much annual income puts you in the top 10%?
I think people will be really, really surprised that it really doesn't take that much money to put you in the top 1% of income earners.
I think that people believe you have to make millions and millions of dollars every year to be in the top 1%.
But no, that's not the case.
That amount of money is really low, which shows you how little the rest of the country makes.
So I'd really appreciate it if you could give us that information.
Thank you.
Sure.
So I think on the corporate side, to address the caller's first comments, we did see some improvements, I think, from the 2017 law in that our corporate rate was very uncompetitive.
It was at 35% before.
We were having this issue known as corporate inversions where corporations were leaving the U.S. or changing their headquarters and merging with firms abroad.
We brought the rate down to 21%.
We were more competitive, more in line with international norms, and we did see an end to those inversions and some evidence that some folks repatriated billions of dollars back into the U.S.
But it's right to say that that was paired now in the second Trump administration with tariffs that are trying to create an incentive for investment by creating basically a penalty for offshoring or importing goods into the U.S. Though, as we've argued pretty strongly, and I think as the evidence suggests, that has had a much more negative effect overall on net when you think about the increase in costs associated with those tariffs.
On sort of income levels in the U.S., I think it's an important point.
The top 1% of income earners earn somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000, maybe a bit north of that overall on average, while for the top 10%, it's around ballpark, around $150,000 for households in the U.S.
So I think it's important to point out that there's a lot of variation here.
The top 1% of income earners in, say, Washington, D.C. or New York City or San Francisco, it's going to be a much higher number than the top 1% earning in Topeka, Kansas, or Fayetteville, Arkansas.
So I think that's another important point is you have a lot of geographic variation in the U.S. Mark, Democrat in San Antonio, Texas.
You're on with Garrett Watson.
Yes, thank you.
My question is regarding why our tax system tends to penalize through regressive taxation and doesn't account for the fact that we have multiple numbers of billionaires who aren't earning an income or a salary yet are reporting these high amounts of wealth through other types of investments and so forth.
Why are we not figuring out a way to address such a large deficit imbalance by taxing appropriately those people who have stuff to tax?
Thank you.
Right.
So on the overall, I think, progressivity of the system, the overall federal tax system is progressive in that we do tax high earners as they earn more income at a higher level of a higher tax rate, both overall in the federal system and particularly with federal income taxes, which are some of the most progressive in the world, paired with less progressive aspects like payroll taxes or excise taxes, for example.
But there is an ongoing debate, and it's been ongoing for a long time in the last decade about should it be even more progressive, right?
What is actually fair for higher earners to pay, particularly very high earners who billionaires, for example, are maybe earning capital gains that they're not realizing because they have appreciated value in their companies that they founded, for example.
And they may not be paying that tax on a year-to-year basis.
So increasingly, we've seen folks propose taxes like billionaires wealth taxes.
For example, there's a pretty high-profile proposal in the state of California to consider that, as well as other national proposals that have been brought forward.
But there's a lot of logistical challenges here.
One, of course, is these billionaires need to have liquidity to pay the tax.
And there's a concern that if we go ahead and institute a wealth tax, that would cause economic disruption, maybe reduce the asset values of various companies.
It's also, of course, very questionable whether or not it's constitutional as a tax overall.
And there's other types of taxes outside of wealth taxes that have been considered, much more straightforward efforts.
For example, of course, in 2021, notably Democrats brought forward the Build Back Better Act that had a suite of tax hikes amounting to over $3 trillion over 10 years.
And I think that the 28, 2029 window is going to be a reopening of that discussion.
We're already seeing some of those new proposals come forward from Democrats on the Hill to try to think about not how much taxes should we actually raise and how should we do that.
Should it be through a more novel approach or should it be through a more incremental increase in tax rates or things that we're more familiar with?
Can you explain again the no tax on Social Security and how that affects seniors and if it's actually not taxing Social Security or if it's a different way to save seniors tax money?
Flat Tax vs Progressive Systems00:10:00
Right.
So the 2025 law provided a new deduction worth $6,000 per eligible senior age 65 or over if you earn up to $75,000 and then it phases out.
And what that was meant to do was effectively replicate for most seniors by 88% of them by one estimate so they would not have to pay any tax on their Social Security.
The challenge is that it's not actually a literal exclusion of tax on Social Security.
It's this deduction.
And what that means is you do have seniors who are under the age of 65 who are claiming Social Security, for example, who aren't eligible at all, seniors who are of very high income, or seniors who earn additional sources of income like pension income, 401k withdrawals, where they will still have to pay tax there and it may have interacting where they still pay tax on their Social Security even after that deduction.
So there's been a lot of confusion there.
And I think it's important that, yeah, we should be clear with the American people that this is some tax relief, but it's not a true exclusion on tax paid on Social Security.
This, of course, does expire in 2029.
So one thing we'll be following very closely is their popular interest in changing this to try to have a fuller exclusion.
Part of the sort of legislative challenge was in the reconciliation process, the wonky process that this bill was used to turn into law, you're not allowed to change payroll tax collections.
And so we basically feed in on taxes paid from Social Security that revenue back into the Social Security trust funds.
And there's concern about whether or not that would be allowed procedurally in the Senate.
So that might be part of the problem is if it runs into that.
But if it becomes more popular, they might be able to end run around that through 60 votes in the Senate.
Rob in Richmond, Virginia, Independent Line, you're on the air.
Good morning.
My question would be: is this, wouldn't we be better off going to, and this is just my perspective, if you went to a flat tax system?
So, and it's basically, this would be my pitch to all the average people.
You know, set minimum deductions higher per person.
The individual deduction, this has, say, goes up to $40,000 or $50,000 a person and has had like a 10% flat tax on all income, regardless.
No deduction, no write-offs or anything like that.
You know, on capital gains, earned income, everything.
I think they would collect more money and to be in a fairer system because back in the 1960s and 70s, the tax rate was essentially 90% on paper, but it never got to that because the businesses would always buy equipment and invest in things and then write it off, which was great for back then, but you didn't have stock buybot tax back then.
That was considered insider trading or illegal.
They changed the rules in Reagan.
So the only way I can see forward for everybody to have a fair system and everybody pays, you know, the government collects its money and everybody pays a fair way is what I just proposed.
What do you think about that?
So the motivation here, I think, makes a lot of sense, right?
We want to have a simpler tax system, so eliminating a lot of tax deductions, credits, a lot of the complicated things in the tax code makes sense.
Having lower rates by broadening that tax base is also a smart move.
The challenge, I think, is very much in the details when it comes to flat tax proposals.
One thing, of course, is by making the base so large, you can end up creating new distortions or inefficiencies.
For example, if we just tax effectively gross revenue for businesses or folks, you know, gross incomes without any deductions, that can cause other problems, penalties to investment on the other side.
The other challenge is just making the math work if we aim to make this revenue neutral or even raise revenue to cover our deficits.
Because in order to have a truly flat tax, because the system is so progressive right now, it would have to be a fairly high tax rate across the board.
And there's concerns about the distributional impact, how that would impact lower income folks, working class folks who have to pay that.
There are proposals to move closer toward a consumption tax system and provide, for example, a very large standard deduction, even larger than what we currently have, to protect working class folks, lower income folks, while also raising revenue.
Though doing it in a literally flat way may be challenging mathematically.
But there's still aspects of this that I think could be even done on a bipartisan basis because you could even move to a consumption tax that's simpler while also making it progressive in a variety of ways.
So I think that is one option.
In Oregon, on the line for Democrats, Sharon, you're next.
Hello.
Am I connected now?
Yes, you are.
You're on the air.
Hello.
Okay.
Now I'm kind of nervous because this is mathematical stuff.
But your guest, I'm sorry I didn't catch her name.
It's agreed that the 2017 tax cuts primarily or in a major way helped out the rich and businesses with minor help to the regular people.
Now they wanted those tax cuts continued, which is what this new big deal.
It continues permanently those, maybe adds a few more little carrots for them.
That's why millionaires were sitting behind the president at his inauguration.
Meanwhile, the tax cuts for the middle class and lower class, especially like tips and stuff, are temporary.
So they're going to go away.
And if you think of tips and et cetera, very few people, I worked my whole life for many jobs, so did my husband.
We never earned a tip.
So we would never get any benefit out of that, even temporarily.
Now, the idea was manufacturing would come back.
It didn't.
Actually, what happened in 2017, that money was reinvested in the companies.
They reinvested and bought their own stock back and made more money.
Manufacturing had no gains last year.
So what we did was we created a tax that was very regressive.
It really hurt the middle class and the lower class.
We nailed them again on this new one, only we made it permanent.
And then on top of it, tariffs were added, which really hurts the middle and lower class because we spend all our income in order to survive and the rich do not.
So tariffs completely hurt us more than the rich.
So didn't these two bills really end up widening the gap between the middle class and poor and the rich even more, making it harder for the middle class and poor to live?
All right, Sharon.
So a couple of points here.
One is, I think it is important to emphasize that most taxpayers from the 2017 tax law did see tax cuts.
It was something like 90% of folks saw a net tax cut.
And of course, that did vary depending on your tax situation and your income level, though it was a substantial tax cut for many middle-income earners overall.
As a portion of incomes, because a lot of higher-earner folks have businesses, right, or are paying those more progressive taxes, mechanically, when you do cut taxes under a progressive system, you're going to see them accumulate an increase in higher-tax income.
But it was a very broad-based tax law.
I think there's a good point, though, that with this new law, a lot of the new tax cuts, particularly these new deductions, are very targeted.
So for folks who are earning tips, say your occupation is primarily in tips, so you do a lot of overtime on top of that.
We're seeing reports of some folks with thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars in refunds from this if they're paying a lot of tax in and it wasn't adjusted for during the tax year.
Meanwhile, folks who are on a W-2 income, who don't qualify for these new deductions, may see only slight increases in their refund or a reduction in their tax liability due to this increase in the standard deduction and the child tax credit compared to last year.
So I think that is an important point.
And another important point, I think the collar is right, that the tariff regime very much does threaten to offset a good portion of the value of these tax cuts, particularly for lower-income folks who are more likely to face the higher costs related to tariffs.
And when we did the math there, a bunch of the, a good portion of the value of those tax cuts are offset by the tariffs.
So that's another argument to rethink that tariff regime.
It also offsets some of the economic benefits of the 2025 tax law.
So that's one thing we're trying to prioritize and emphasize to policymakers is to reconsider those tariffs.
And Garrett, you're going to be testifying at the Howell's Small Business Committee on the impact of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on small businesses.
Did this act stimulate investment as President Trump has promised?
Right.
So we have a little more evidence from the 2017 law, of course, because there's just been eight years plus to look at the data.
And what we find is, generally speaking, when you compare investment levels and projections from 2017 and compare it to the actuals, the actuals, there's some evidence that investment did increase.
Of course, there's a lot of cash that came into the U.S. repatriated from the change in the corporate side.
And we did see, of course, small businesses benefit from things like the 20% pass-through deduction through the lower rates and brackets, things like expensing of both R ⁇ D and equipment.
And so that was, of course, complicated by the pandemic, by tariffs in 2018 and 2019.
So the picture got very murky later on.
And of course, this new law in 2025 made permanent a lot of those cuts, added in these deductions on a permanent basis for R ⁇ D and for equipment.
That's really important for small businesses because they often don't have the liquidity to wait for a deduction for 10 or 20 years.
Big corporations can't.
They can wait for that.
They have the money to just take the deduction in five or 10 years.
New businesses don't have margins, often don't have profits at all.
And so having that immediate deduction can be helpful to allow for that liquidity.
That's something we're going to be talking a lot about, I think, at the hearing today.
Policy Analysis Director for the Tax Foundation, Garrett Watson.
You can find them at taxfoundation.org.
Iranian Blockade of Hormuz Strait00:02:45
Garrett, thanks so much for joining us.
Thank you.
Up next, will America's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz bring the Iranians back to the negotiating table?
We'll ask Evelyn Farkas, Executive Director of the McCain Institute.
That's coming up next.
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Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back to Washington Journal.
Joining us now is Evelyn Farkas.
She's Executive Director at the McCain Institute.
Evelyn, welcome back to the program.
Thank you for having me, Mimi.
Chinese Pressure on Oil Shipping00:15:14
All right, so let's talk about this blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
First, explain to us what's going on there right now.
Yeah, so basically, we know that the Iranians have been blockading it because they were trying to gain leverage over the United States and Israel.
The counter move now, because negotiations fell apart over the weekend from the United States, was to blockade the Gulf area outside of the Strait.
So now the United States is saying we'll try to help facilitate free passage, but the reality is that we really can't do it.
There are mines in the Strait.
The Strait is still very narrow and controlled by the Iranians.
So we need cooperation from the Iranians if the ships are going to go in and out.
There's a trickle of ships that the Iranians have allowed out.
The U.S. would have to escort these ships.
Again, too many physical dilemmas there, you know, in terms of security.
And then there are the issues having to do with this toll that the Iranians are charging.
If the ships pay these tolls on the back end, they will be violating sanctions.
So most of the international shipping companies are saying we don't even, even if there's an option to pay a toll to get through, we don't want to pay the millions of dollars on the other end that we'd have to pay in fines because they would be violating international sanctions.
So the Strait of Hormuz is pretty much, it's not entirely closed.
There's a trickle going through.
The U.S. play, however, is not a bad one because we had to do something to put pressure on the Iranians.
And at the end of the day, we want them to make a deal.
It seems like there is room for negotiation.
And we're just talking about how much time the Iranians have to, you know, to desist from their nuclear arms manufacturing activity.
Objective here of stopping all ships going in and out of Iranian ports is to target the Iranian economy.
Correct.
Which is the opposite of what was happening before, which was allowing Iran sanctions relief in order to sell its oil on the market, bringing down oil prices.
So now, this is the opposite.
Well, yeah, and that was actually kind of like a reaction because initially when we started the war, I think that it sounds like the administration thought it would be a short war.
So they weren't that worried about the impact on oil and gas prices.
And we know 20% of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas goes through the Strait of Hormuz.
They thought it would be over quickly, so they weren't that worried.
As soon as they saw that the Iranians weren't buckling, then the administration kind of had a knee-jerk reaction and said, okay, we're going to lift sanctions on Iran, and by the way, also on Russia.
Now, the lifting of the sanctions apparently just lapsed.
It was like a month that they gave the Iranians.
So I don't know what the status is right now.
And the Russian ones, I don't know either.
But that was a counterproductive move for the United States to make, frankly, because we then were giving a little pressure release to the Iranians, which we shouldn't do.
So what do you think is going to happen with this?
It's a total blockade, I guess, of the strait for ships going in and out of Iranian ports.
Other ships apparently can get through.
So what's going to be the outcome of this, do you think?
I think that we're going to have a successful negotiation.
I just don't know how long it'll take, Mimi, because the two sides have basically agreed.
It sounds like from what has come emerged from the talks in Islamabad over the weekend, the Iranians have agreed to put a halt to their nuclear weapons production, right?
To their enrichment activities.
And the question is how long?
The United States apparently asked for 20 years, and the Iranians, I think what I read was it was five years.
So, okay, the Iranians, are we going to agree about something in the middle?
The Obama administration negotiated also a secession and negotiated for time.
So maybe we'll get a better deal now and we'll get more time.
At the end of the day, when you're dealing with these regimes that want to try to assert themselves and they have aspirations, regional aspirations, and they're aggressive towards the United States, and they want nuclear weapons so that we can't stop them with their conventional arms aggression, with their terrorist activities.
The thing that we want to do all the time, whether it's North Korea, whether it's Syria, the Israelis bombed their nuclear facility in 2007, and in this case with Iran, is we want to get some time.
We want to destroy the physical capabilities, if we can, of course, the know-how, although that exists in people's brains.
But we want to destroy their ability to create a nuclear weapon and a nuclear weapons arsenal.
And so we try to get time because in the meantime, what we really want is a change in the regime.
We want a less aggressive regime.
We want the Iranian people or some combination of Iranian people and outside actors to bring about a change in the government.
So before we get to regime change, I want to ask you about Iranian oil and going back to that.
Is there any other way to get Iranian oil out of Iran and into the world market except through that Strait of Hormuz?
Most of it has to go.
They're almost completely blocked, is my understanding.
Most of it has to go through there.
You know, I confess I'm not an oil expert, so I would have to caveat it with maybe there are other ways they can get some of it out, but most of it flows through that strait, and that is really difficult.
So the Iranians are going to try to facilitate their trade, but again, if the United States is blocking at the other end of the strait, they can't get their ships through either.
And that will put pressure on them.
At the end of the day, the regime, right now, they've cut off the internet for 45 days inside of Iran.
The people of Iran are very upset about this.
They also are suffering economically.
None of that has changed.
In fact, it's worse now.
Plus, they were being bombed by the United States and Israel.
So the people of Iran are going to put pressure on the government.
And yes, of course, they have the upper hand.
This government has the security forces.
They can oppress the people.
They're starting to conduct, supposedly starting to conduct assassinations again, killings basically of opposition people.
So the regime needs to be pressured.
This isn't a bad idea, but we need to quickly convert it, if we can, to a negotiations win.
We've got a question for Evelyn Farkas of the McCain Institute.
You can start calling in now.
We're talking about Iran.
Republicans are on 2028-8001.
Democrats 202-748-8000.
And Independents 202-748-8002.
I want to ask you about China.
President Trump put this out on Truth Social this morning at 7.46 a.m.
He says, China is very happy that I am permanently opening the Strait of Hormuz.
I'm doing it for them also and the world.
The situation, this situation will never happen again.
They have agreed not to send weapons to Iran.
President Xi will give me a big fat hug when I get there in a few weeks.
We are working together smartly and very well.
Doesn't that beat fighting?
But remember, we are very good at fighting if we have to, far better than anyone else.
Talk about the weapons.
What kind of weapons has China been sending to Iran?
So historically, China has actually been an ally of Iran going all the way back to even before the 80s, I think the 70s.
They helped Iran and Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war.
The Chinese have benefited from selling weapons to Iran, and they never stopped.
But they tend to sell dual-use capabilities, so similar to what they're doing in the context of Russia supporting Russia in its aggression against Ukraine.
They provide drone capabilities, blades, turbine blades, things that are not necessarily offensive or lethal in nature.
However, there are some reports that they may have provided some shoulder-filed missiles, some missiles recently to Iran.
And that might be what President Trump is responding to.
And he's clearly trying to convey to the Chinese: don't do that again.
Don't send them anything lethal.
And frankly, what he should be conveying is don't send them any dual use either and include Russia in that calculation.
But why would China be doing this?
Do they want this war to continue?
What do you think?
What's their strategic interest here?
Right.
So their strategic interest is to maintain a relationship with Iran.
They have this alliance.
I mean, it's a loose tactical or transactional relationship.
Iran, Russia, China allied against the United States and our allies.
The interest, of course, they do want oil to get through and they want to continue doing trade with Iran in oil and gas.
And so that's in their interest.
They want to be viewed as a reliable partner and that's important to them.
So they're not going to cut off their support to Iran.
But they also want to do trade with the United States and with the world economy.
So they're trying to essentially project to the world that, oh no, we're not providing military support to Iran or Russia for that matter.
At what point does China put pressure on the regime in Tehran?
Well, they should be putting pressure at the point that I guess it becomes too painful for them.
The Chinese have a little...
It hasn't become too painful for them.
Is that what you're saying?
Yes, and the reason is because the Chinese actually have a really good strategic reserve of oil, and so they can sort of let this play out a little bit.
And they certainly don't mind seeing the United States squirm, seeing President Trump in a bind, because frankly, we don't have a good, quick way out of this, which is what President Trump wanted and what he sort of promised more or less to the American people.
Well, Energy Secretary Chris Wright was talking about oil prices and the conflict in Iran on Monday.
I'll just play a portion and get your response.
Well, by the summer is aggressive timeframe now.
You know, going into this, this is a 47-year-long conflict with Iran that's repeatedly not only been a threat to American soldiers and peace in the Middle East, but also a threat to energy supplies.
You know, the Arabian Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz have been important my whole lifetime.
And so the president knew going into this that if you disrupt the flow of energy through that, in the short term, you're going to push up energy prices.
In fact, I'm very proud of a president who in his first term and his second term has done everything he can to grow supply and therefore push down the price of energy, that he was willing to say, I'm not going to kick that can down the road as other administrations have.
I'm not going to let Iran become nuclear-armed with a massive weapons missile stockpile so that they can never be defanged.
We just have to live with this massive energy overhang in the Middle East that got worse.
He knew it was short-term disruptive, but he felt committed to end this threat that Iran is about to cross this threshold.
So I'm proud of that, but it does mean higher energy prices in the short term.
It absolutely does.
So what does short-term mean now?
Because you just said that by the summer might be ambitious.
So what is your thinking on when Americans can expect lower prices?
And I'm talking about lower prices and the extent of where they were before this war started.
Yeah, well, in the very long term, definitely this will reset prices down.
But we're going to see energy prices, you know, high and maybe even rising until we get the ships, meaningful ship traffic through the Straits of Hormuz.
That'll probably hit the peak oil price at that time.
That's probably sometime in the next few weeks.
So you think it'll go higher before it goes lower?
It depends how the conflict goes, but it's a very real possibility.
What do you think?
Well, President Trump has said as much as well, that the oil prices will go higher.
And the other thing is that oil experts, you know, I'm not one of them, but I listened to them, and they've said that there's also a backlog.
Like, it's not like all of a sudden the prices are going to stabilize.
They have to refill all the tanks, et cetera.
That's going to take some time.
So the price will stay high.
The demand will still be high.
But I also want to just say something, Mimi, about what the Secretary was saying there.
You know, he's saying that it was great that President Trump took this action to close the Strait or, you know, this new action.
But the reality is that we didn't need to be here today because we actually had a negotiation that was similar to the one that we just had this weekend before this new war started.
So President Trump's negotiators didn't understand what they had on the table in front of them, what the Iranians were offering.
And what were they offering?
Well, they were offering to cease their nuclear activities.
Permanently, though?
Not permanently.
So that was what should have been negotiated because we're back there right now negotiating, okay, not permanently, how long?
And it sounds like the United States now has pivoted to accepting the not permanently argument.
Because Iran said five years, the U.S. said how about 20 years.
Right.
And the Iranians said, no, okay, I mean, we'll probably meet in the middle, or maybe the Iranians will cave and we'll give them something else so that they can feel like they got a good deal.
I mean, at the end of the day, it is a negotiation.
But the other thing we have to remember is going back even farther, President Obama made a deal with the Iranians.
It wasn't a perfect deal.
You know, I've written op-eds about it myself saying, you know, it should have been a tougher deal.
It could have included more things like ballistic weapons, you know, restrictions on ballistic weapons because there were UN sanctions and UN resolutions on that issue as well.
But the reality was he did get a deal, and the deal was holding the Iranians accountable.
They were trying to cheat.
It was difficult for the UN to get in there and see what the Iranians were doing.
Make no mistake.
Again, the Iranians were, we knew they were going to try to cheat.
So President Trump could have come into office in his first term and said, I want to make that deal better, but instead he just said, I'm going to rip up that deal.
And then there were essentially very little restrictions on the Iranians, only whatever the Europeans could and the international community could hold over them.
Let's bring callers into the conversation.
Robin is on the Republican line in Pennsylvania.
Good morning.
Good morning.
First of all, Ambassador is a very smart man.
I've never in all my 71 years seen any administration take on Iran without paying them millions and billions of dollars.
Our president works 24 hours a day.
And I remember back in the day when all the people calling in used to say, oh, we need somebody that is new, somebody outside the political arena.
We got him.
Donald Trump, he is taking it on head on.
Religious Freedom and Iranian Control00:07:39
And the Democrats, all they want to do is pay their way.
Keep giving them money.
And where has it gotten us?
Nowhere.
They negotiate, negotiate.
At least they're doing something.
What did Biden do?
Nothing.
He did absolutely nothing.
What did his vice president do?
Absolutely nothing.
So why are you people complaining?
Give this a chance.
It's going to work out.
Stop complaining.
You Democrats got to wise up.
All right, Robin.
Well, I think the caller has a point that you have to essentially use your military leverage to bolster your negotiations.
And we didn't make headway over the last the Biden administration, as far as I could see, right?
With regard to Iran, Iran remained a big threat.
And then you had, of course, the attack on Israel on January 6th, you know, which changed everything.
October 7th.
I'm sorry, October 7th, thank you.
Different attack.
And so the reality is that she's right that we didn't put Iran in the nuclear box.
We were letting them get out.
But negotiations are preferable to using military force, especially if that military force causes a loss of life and doesn't result in the outcome you want and is not necessary.
A lot of scholars and frankly, you know, clerics, Catholic clergy have said this is not a just war because we started the war in the middle of a negotiation.
And that's not considered just.
And negotiations, they should be backed up by threats of military action, but you start with the negotiations and military should be a last resort.
Let's talk to Sylvia in Pennsylvania, line for Democrats.
Hi, Sylvia.
Thank you.
I wonder why they think about take care of the street first before they bothering them.
They should do that first.
And Treasure's been in Nazi.
He just wanted more land and more gas.
Thank you.
The planning for the street.
Yeah, so I actually went on television, I don't know, a couple weeks ago, and I said one option the president could consider is this blockade that he's doing right now as a way to pressure the Iranians.
So the caller is correct that the president could have, instead of launching a war with Israel, the president could have essentially said, we're going to blockade and bolster those negotiations that were occurring before this war started by Israel and the United States.
I want to ask you about because you mentioned regime change and the possibility of regime change.
I want to show you a commentary by Clifford May in the Washington Times.
He says, though Tehran's capabilities are being degraded, its theology persists.
He says this, that they're not rational actors.
They are not peace loving.
They don't prefer compromise over conflict.
They are not concerned that the people they rule face an affordability crisis.
They don't worry about elections.
Iran's rulers believe, literally, not metaphorically, that they are on a mission from God.
So how do you compromise?
How do you negotiate with people like that?
I don't think I would take the leap to say that they're not rational.
I mean, I think what they don't, it's true, they don't care about their people.
They care about maintaining control.
They have a theological view of Iran's role in the world.
You know, they're kind of neo-imperial in that respect.
But they are rational.
At the end of the day, they're going to have to make decisions that impact whether they survive as the rulers of Iran.
And economically, they have to pay the military.
They have to pay the security forces.
So while the Ayatollah are religious fanatics, they are not immune to normal human rationality.
So I think we can make a deal with them.
On the Republican line in Parks, Arizona, Jerry, you're on with Evelyn Farkas.
Yeah, I'd just like to say that I know Iranians.
I went to school with them.
I've worked with them.
And I've even had one that I became friends with pretty good when I was in a university.
And we talked a lot about his country and my country.
And at the end of our friendship, I asked him, I said, so if you, if we went to war, will you kill me?
And he said, no.
He says, I like you.
He said, but I got a cousin that would.
And everything that I learned from him is the people of America do not understand these people.
It would be like the Iranians coming into our country and telling us that you can't believe in your religion anymore.
And if you don't stop believing in your religion and start believing in ours, we will kill you.
And there would probably be a percentage of Christians that would give up their religion to live, but there would be others that would die.
And that's the kind of people that you're dealing with.
They will die.
They will let their people die because of what they believe.
And I hear people or reporters on TV all the time saying they don't understand why they don't want to make a deal or how they they don't want to make a deal.
They're just playing the game to keep themselves alive, to do what they believe that they need to do.
That kind of attitude, you have to wipe them off the face of the earth.
And I know there's a lot of people that hate that idea, but we as a human species, since we've been Homo sapiens, have been fighting for, you can go all the way back to Kenya 10,000 years ago before there was even any civilization where we were hunters and gatherers and they did war over territory to survive for food.
All right, Jerry.
You have to make a distinction between the Iranian people and this government.
And you have to also make a distinction between religion, which is, you know, people have the freedom to express their religion.
And frankly, in Iran, not everyone is a Shiite in Iran.
There's some, a little bit of freedom of religion.
They're very repressed.
But the issue is the autocracy.
These autocrats are using religion and using their fanaticism about religion to control the Iranian population.
The Iranian population, while most of them are Shiites and they believe in their religion, they do not like this government.
They want freedom.
They want the freedom to have a civil society, to have something that's democratic alongside their religion.
International Law and Ukraine Aid00:08:57
In the United States, we have, of course, freedom of religion and we have separation between church and state.
In Iran, there's not that separation.
But he's right.
You know, the ideology can be different.
In Russia, for example, it's this imperial ideology that the autocrats use to control the state and to control the people.
But the people themselves do not deserve to be eliminated.
And in fact, the people are aligned with us in terms of being most of them, as far as we can tell, opposed to the current government in Iran.
But they don't have the power to overthrow the government because for that, and we see it in Venezuela as well, you need to convince the security forces that the opposition can pay them and that they will not face retribution if they go over to the other side.
I want to ask you about the election in Hungary, Viktor Orban losing power after 16 years.
How does that election and the removal of Orban impact the Russia-Ukraine war, do you think?
Oh, significantly, Mimi, because the Hungarian government was the single biggest obstacle to EU support, European Union support to Ukraine.
And as we know, the United States, when President Trump came into office the second time, said we're not going to provide any more direct support to Ukraine.
There's some support still going to Ukraine, but most of the support now is being provided by the European Union.
And over the last four months, over $100 billion was blocked in assistance to Ukraine from the European Union.
And it was economic assistance to keep the government going and some assistance for them to buy and manufacture military weapons.
That was being blocked by the government of Hungary.
The new government has said when they were campaigning, and they've said it since they won, that we will release our block.
That doesn't mean that Hungary is going to completely become a big booster of Ukraine, but they're not going to impede the overall European Union policy, which is to support Ukraine and counter Russia.
So you expect Ukraine to get a whole lot more support from Europe now that Orban is going to be out of power?
Yes, and also it won't be blocked because I think over 50% of the blockages over time that the European Union has experienced in support to Ukraine, some of it was also sanctions related, was coming from Budapest, was coming from the Hungarians.
So now this impediment won't be there anymore.
It doesn't mean it's smooth sailing, but it just means that impediment won't be there.
And also, I should just say, Mimi, it shows a lot of people, even in Iran, that people power matters.
Of course, you need basic elections and free elections.
And the Hungarian elections, they were free.
They were not fair because the media was controlled, continues to be controlled.
They have to change that by the Orban party as well as the judiciary.
So that means it wasn't really fair.
It was kind of rigged.
But regardless, the balloting and the counting was fair.
And so the opposition won overwhelmingly.
Stephanie in New Jersey, Line for Democrats.
Good morning.
Good morning.
It's my understanding that in the Obama agreement with Iran, Iran agreed to not seek, acquire, or develop a nuclear weapon.
And they had 3.67% of enriched uranium.
Now they have 60%.
I don't understand Donald Trump's thinking.
What he considered a bad deal is not as good as a no deal.
I mean, all this is why we are where we are right now.
The Obama administration did the gaming, and they knew that Iran was going to close this trade and go after their neighbors.
And that's exactly what's happening now.
And could you please speak to the money that was given to Iran?
I mean, everybody, most people in the United States seem to think that it was our money that we were giving them.
Right.
That's a good point.
So on the frozen assets, so we had frozen Iran's assets.
And as part of the deal, the nuclear deal that the Obama administration negotiated with Iran, part of it was you can have some of your money back.
So she's correct.
It was not United States money that we were providing to Iran.
It was part of the deal.
And the sanctions component of the deal, so the money was frozen as part of sanctions on Iran for their nuclear activities.
The deal that the Obama administration negotiated also had what's called a snapback component to it, meaning if the Iranians were found to be in violation of the agreement, the sanctions would snap back into place.
So there were mechanisms that were in place in order to deal with cheating by Iran.
They weren't perfect.
And the enrichment, we had to allow some peaceful use of nuclear material for medical purposes, et cetera, that's allowed under the UN laws, under UN international law.
But we capped their enrichment capability because we knew if they got to 90%, which was prohibited, then they could manufacture nuclear weapons with it.
And the other part of it, as I mentioned before, were the inspectors.
So they would be the eye that would watch to make sure that Iranians weren't cheating.
Everyone expected they would try.
But this was the best deal that we could get at the time.
I think what President Trump complained about and other people, and again, as I mentioned, myself included, we bemoaned the fact that we couldn't have gotten a deal that included some of the other aspects of Iran's aggressive activity,
the ballistic missiles and the terrorists, the support to the terrorists in the region, which as I mentioned, came back in full force and has resulted really in the full-on confrontation between Israel and Iran with the United States also involved from the sidelines initially and now full force with this latest war.
One more call for you, Jonathan in Concord, North Carolina, Independent, you're on the air.
Yeah, I'd just like to really kind of get a definition of what a terrorist is.
If we took a piece of paper and laid it down and said this country has killed 30 million people with sanctions, has killed 4 million people with bombs and bullets, would we call them a terrorist organization?
You know, and it just seems like we've lost all view.
A pilot flies over top of a building, drops bombs, blows everybody up in that building.
We call him a hero.
Now, a guy that survived that building, who had his family destroyed, he goes, he doesn't have a military.
He doesn't have airplanes.
He doesn't have warships.
So if he goes out and straps on a bomb and blows up a building in vengeance, we call him a terrorist.
But yet we celebrate a pilot who drops a bomb and just goes, flies over to the next building and drops another bomb.
We call people proxies of terror.
If we would have quit funding that war in Ukraine, it would have been over in four days.
Every dollar we give to Ukraine is another death, another Christian death.
Evelyn.
Well, before I get to Ukraine, there are laws of war.
There are wars that are considered legitimate under international law.
If you are attacked by an outside country, so Ukraine was attacked by Russia aggressively.
They committed massive human rights on civilians, also counter to international law.
So Ukraine was in its rights to defend itself against Russia.
The war would be over if Russia stopped the war.
I don't need to say anything more on that.
With regard to whether a war is sanctioned by the international community, state-sanctioned versus a terrorist activity, that is the real crux of whether we allow nations to go to war.
What's happening right now, I mean, today in the Senate, they're debating whether this war is just because we didn't seek a UN resolution in support of this war, because President Trump did not go to Congress and seek authorization for the war.
He could have made a case if he hadn't done it during negotiations.
That's also important because, again, as I mentioned before, a just war really requires you to be using military force as a last resort, not in the middle of a negotiation.
That's Evelyn Farkas, Executive Director of the McCain Institute.
The Black Knight Negotiation Metaphor00:02:36
Thanks so much for joining us, Evelyn.
Thanks for having me.
And it is open forum after a break.
Anything that's on your mind politics-wise, you can start calling in now.
Republicans, 202-748-8001.
Democrats, 202-748-8000.
And Independents, 202-748-8000 and 2.
We'll be right back.
In a divided media world, one place brings Americans together.
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28% conservative, 27% liberal or progressive, 41% moderate.
Republicans watching Democrats, Democrats watching Republicans, moderates watching all sides.
Because C-SPAN viewers want the facts straight from the source.
No commentary, no agenda, just democracy.
Unfiltered every day on the C-SPAN networks.
C-SPAN is as unbiased as you can get.
You are so fair.
I don't know how anybody can say otherwise.
You guys do the most important work for everyone in this country.
I love C-SPAN because I get to hear all the voices.
You bring these divergent viewpoints and you present both sides of an issue and you allow people to make up their own minds.
I absolutely love C-SPAN.
I love to hear both sides.
I've watch C-SPAN every morning, and it is unbiased.
And you bring in factual information for the callers to understand where they are in their comments.
This is probably the only place that we can hear honest opinion of Americans across the country.
You guys at C-SPAN are doing such a wonderful job of allowing free exchange of ideas without a lot of interruptions.
Thank you, C-SPAN, for being a light in the dark.
Washington Journal continues.
We're back, and it is open forum.
So whatever you would like to talk about, as long as it's related to politics, things happening in Washington or around the world, you can give us a call now.
And we will start with Tom in San Jose, California, line for Democrats.
Good morning, Tom.
Good morning.
I would like all of the Trump supporters and Trump to think and remember of the skit with Monty Python with the Black Knight and King Arthur fights the Black Knight.
And all of you Trump supporters out there and Trump are just like the Black Knight.
Partisan Ideologues in Open Forum00:08:55
He gets his right arm cut off and he goes, oh, that's just a flesh wound.
He gets his next arm cut off.
That's just a flesh wound.
He gets all of his body parts cut off and he's just this torso laying on the ground.
He says, oh, I'll bite you to death.
That's what, you know, they're going to drive.
Trump supporters don't care what he does.
He's braggdocious.
He does everything he wants.
He's gotten us into a lot of trouble.
And gas prices could go to $20 a gallon and they would be the black knight on the ground going, oh, it's just going to take a little while and we're going to get out of this mess.
Go to that skit and see it and you'll see that Trump is the epitome and his supporters are the epitome of the black knight.
They can't realize what a fool this man is and what faux pause he's done and the lies and I don't get it.
So that's my statement.
What do you think of that?
All right.
And this is Fox News reporting this.
The U.S. military maintaining the blockade on Iranian ports as peace talks are set to begin.
It says the U.S. military is enforcing a blockade on Iranian ports at the order of President Trump as peace talks between Washington and Tehran are expected to begin.
However, this says that the U.S. has not agreed to extend the ceasefire amid peace talks, according to a senior official.
That's from an hour ago.
And here is Tim in South Carolina, Independent Line.
Hi, Tim.
Good morning.
I think the gentleman who just called was somebody that I could agree with 100% when it comes to foolish government doing something more than foolish when it becomes virtually suicidal or totally self-destructive, which I believe both political parties and their fanatical voters will do.
I mean, I look at President Trump as a Republican and I say, why can't we talk to our party and say, we don't agree with this, but it doesn't make us Democrats.
We agree with Democrats when they're right.
Like the gentleman who just called, I think that's correct.
When I look at the Democratic Party, I see his exact same analogy, his exact same example when it comes to the Constitution.
The Democrats just look at the Constitution and say, we're just not going to believe it anymore.
And we're just going to cut this country to shreds.
And people say, wait a minute, we want our First Amendment rights.
We want our Second Amendment rights.
We want laws that stop illegal people from coming into the country and then changing the word illegal into, ah, they're just visitors and they're going to turn visitors into citizens.
I think that we, the people, need to absolutely sit down.
That gentleman and I could sit down and I would say, you're 100% correct.
What about the fact that the Democrats, who really are the ones chopping off people's arms and legs, this is just like in Virginia.
We take over, we're going to be moderate, we're going to get together with anybody.
They get over, they take away the Second Amendment like it was just blowing your nose and throwing tissue in a trash can.
We can't have a government that just completely ignores the Constitution and the sensibilities of the rights of the people to absolutely have rights that they can't take away.
$20 gas?
California is already on its way to $7.
It's been over five forever.
I don't want the Democrats in power because they will absolutely use $20 in gas and never bring it down.
Notice when the Republicans have gasoline prices up, they bring them down eventually when the gas prices go down.
They don't keep them up like Illinois, a Democrat's.
But Tim, you're saying that it's lawmakers and politicians that are setting the price of gas?
Yes.
I mean, they're the ones that are not.
How do you come to that?
That they're setting the prices.
California and Illinois.
So you're talking about taxes.
Not people, let's like, if I can sell meat at $4, at $10 a pound, and then all of a sudden I get it for cheaper, and I don't lower the prices, we have to go after those people.
So you're saying that.
Okay.
So you're saying that it's the lawmakers and the politicians that set the taxes on the gas and they keep them artificially high, even though they could bring them down.
Is that what your point is?
What I'm saying is that the ideologues like your gentleman have just called are the ones that no matter what their government does, oh no, I'm a Democrat, so whatever the Democrats do is good, and Tim is a Republican, oh, whatever the Republicans do is good.
That's not true.
And Tim, you called on the Independent line, so you...
I called on the Republican line.
You did?
Yes, 8001?
8001.
Okay.
Charles, in Rosalind Heights, New York, Independent Line.
Good morning.
Yeah, you got to be right.
Independent line.
And I just want to point out that Roe Connor is like starting like a new party.
He's like getting all the people from the Democrats and the Republicans and the Independents, people who just want the truth and want some justice in our nation.
And the other thing I like to talk about is Iran, the war that happened.
We've got to hold on to the facts.
Iran did not attack us.
Trump attacked Iran.
It was an unprovoked attack.
Unfortunately, he lost, and they're trying to iron out things.
And one thing that's missing from a lot of these discussions is Israel, because Israel doesn't want any peace.
Israel just wants to grow and steal land and take over countries and kill people.
The reason, by the way, that they're angry at Iran is Iran is against Israel because they've been committing the genocide for the past two years and they can't stand that.
That's the only thing I want to say.
But Iran hasn't been against Israel just for the last two years.
It goes back farther.
Yes.
And Israel's crimes go back farther, too.
Okay.
Mike, Akron, Ohio, Independent, you're on the air.
Yes, good morning, folks, for C-SPAN.
I just have two concerns.
One is I believe we are a republic and a democracy.
The two terms are not incompatible.
You get people calling in and say that we're one or not the other.
You can prefer whichever term you can prefer.
That I don't care.
It's like you like Pepsi or Coke.
You can like either one, but you don't have to hate the other.
Sometimes you get people calling in and say we are not a democracy.
We are.
We're also a republic.
The two terms are not incompatible.
What you just simply need to tell people who call in and say, we can be both.
It's like saying, I'm not a Christian, I'm a Catholic.
Well, you know, it's possible to be both.
So I think both words are positive.
Prefer whichever you want, but don't say, you know, if you think we're not a democracy, I'm from Akron, Ohio.
A lot of Greeks, Akron is Greek for study on a hill.
I suggest you go to a Greek wedding and tell the father of the groom that, hey, guess what?
We don't live in a democracy.
We live in a republic.
See what happens to you.
My other concern, real quick, is about the Indiana football team who won the national championship a few months ago.
Has anybody contacted Kurt Sagdetti?
I wonder if he will ever be invited to the White House.
I believe there'll be some people on that team who might be afraid to shake hands with Mike Pence.
Mike Petz used to be the governor of Indiana.
I myself would shake hands with either one, either Mike Pets or Donald Trump.
I'm not that picky.
But the people on that team may have a strong preference.
I just wanted to look up, will Kurt Sanzetti, CIG NETTI, the coach of Indiana, has he accepted the invitation to the White House with his team?
And if he has, will Mike Pets be there?
Because like I said, if I were from Indiana, I might have more respect for Mike Petts than for Donald Trump.
But I don't think.
Okay, Mike, we got it.
And yesterday, Lana Drews, who is the woman who is alleging sexual assault against former Representative Eric Swalwell of California, she spoke to reporters about what she went through.
This was yesterday.
In 2018, while I was living and working as a model in Beverly Hills, and I also owned a fashion software company, I had contact with Eric Swalwell on three separate occasions after meeting him socially.
He offered me connections to further my software company.
And I also had an interest in local politics.
Sexual Assault Allegations Against Swalwell00:02:03
He invited me to two public events.
I knew he was married at the time and that his wife was pregnant.
He was my friend.
On the third occasion, I believe he drugged my drink.
I only had one glass of wine.
He, we were supposed to go to a political event, and he said he needed to get paperwork from his hotel room.
When I arrived at his hotel room, I was already incapacitated and I couldn't move my arms from my body.
He raped me and he choked me.
And while he was joking me, I lost consciousness.
And I thought I died.
I did not consent to any sexual activity.
We're in open forum, and we'll go now to Stan in Odessa, Texas.
Democrat, you're on the air, Stan.
Yeah, well, I was just going to say, you know, I used to watch C-SPAN, and I understand what the good that they're doing out there, but I can assure you, I mean, I'm a senior.
And after in the past, after watching cease being lying by the people, by the TOP, I mean, I just turned that off.
And I mean, I used to stay all hyped up the rest of the day and eat a week.
Speaking Absolutes and Epstein Files00:03:23
So how does that help this craziness that we're into?
That's all I got to say.
Thank you.
All right, Stan, let's talk to Christine next.
Republican in Maryland, you're on the air, Christine.
Hi, thanks for taking my call.
Just two brief points.
One, I was motivated to call in after the first caller.
I'm very, very frustrated when people of both sides speak in absolutes.
I voted for Trump.
I will not defend him to the end of time.
I think there's so many things wrong with what he does.
I no longer support him.
People who speak in absolutes are the exact problem I have with the political climate these days.
I am willing to see logic.
I am willing to have my mind changed.
People on both sides, when they're not willing to, when they will support their party and everything no matter what, that is what is wrong with this country.
Look for logic.
Like, even if your party does something wrong, admit it.
Be open to it.
And then the other point, it's so sad that we live in this kind of, like, I don't believe anything, anything anymore.
The government, whatever they tell you, I just don't believe it.
Everything with Epstein, all this stuff, it's very disheartening.
I feel very bad when these allegations come out about Swalwell because it's just, it's hard to not have doubt because of the timing.
I understand there's various reasons people don't come forward, but especially when it's around an election, things like that, why are you choosing now?
It basically plants that seed of doubt of how do I know you're not a plant?
How do I know you're not just coming up with this, you know?
And I just, I don't believe, first of all, you know, men get assaulted too, so I get disheartened when it's always that women are the victims.
But also, I don't believe that we need to believe all women.
There are many cases where people will make false allegations for whatever motivation.
It's very sick, and it's a spit in the face of women who are actually survivors.
So, Christine, can I ask you what you, when you said that you no longer support President Trump, can you tell us what it was, what the issue was, or what happened that made you feel that way?
Yeah, so I mean, the interesting thing is I've been like Democrat my whole life because of my family and where I've been raised, and conservative values just align more with my beliefs.
I guess what kind of changed it for me is Epstein files, but the biggest thing is just basically how he seems to be another puppet for Israel.
I'm not anti-Semitic, though.
What everyone wants to say, if you have any opposition to Israel, but I don't think there's any reason for us to be doing their bidding.
I think what they did to the Palestinian people is repulsive and a genocide.
So the fact that he is basically being another one of their puppets is just disgusting.
And I'm ready for the United States to be its own country again and not do the bidding of this unethical Israeli government.
Cancer Treatment Costs in India00:09:01
So how are things looking for you for the midterms?
How are you going to be voting in the midterms?
Have you thought about it yet?
I have been thinking about it, and I honestly don't know what I'm supposed to do.
I have no idea.
There's like I basically agree with the Democratic Party on nothing.
I think it's become very extreme, and they claim to be the party of love and acceptance.
But the moment you say, hey, I don't know if I agree with this, you're instantly a Nazi or a fascist.
So that's not very welcoming.
But I also really don't agree with the Republican Party and how they'll just go to the end of the earth to defend Israel.
It's just so transparent.
And I don't see how they can't just, how they sleep at night knowing how corrupt it obviously is.
So I don't want to be that person who doesn't vote because I know it's important to vote, but I honestly am incredibly torn and I don't know what to do.
So if you have any advice on how to figure that out, I don't have any advice for you, but I would like to hear from you again.
Maybe in the fall, Christine, when you've maybe come to a decision, or even if you haven't, let us know what your thought process is.
So give us a call back then.
Glenn in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Republican, you're on the air.
Good morning, Mimi.
Good morning.
I'm ready to blow my brains out listening to these Republicans and Democrats.
Don't do that, Glenn.
I just want to say something.
I am so tired of these two parties.
I hate these parties.
This is all the baby boomers' fault.
I grew up in the 50s and 60s when drugs went through the roof, the 70s, the 80s.
We wonder why we have a drug problem?
Because the baby boomers made it.
In 1992, we had a guy tell us that your jobs are going to leave the country if you vote for a Republican or a Democrat.
As soon as Clinton got in, he said, we're no longer a manufacturing company.
We're a service country.
I mean, I really hate to say this, but America has really turned into a fat, lazy, stupid country and now full of extremists.
And I'm really sorry to unload on you, but I just had a call.
I'm sorry.
Bye.
That's okay.
We're here to hear your unloading.
So here's Virginia, Houston, Texas, a Republican.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I'm just calling in to put my two cents in.
But we're having an election coming up, and the people cannot see that Trump is doing his best to make things better.
We got in to make America better, not destroy it, which it takes time.
And we're going to have a little extra cost on our gas and other things until things settle down.
And it's coming.
The people are very impatient.
The woman that's up there speaking about what all happened to her, this is just my opinion, but I believe she's been paid.
If all this happened to her, she would not have to sit there and read it off of a paper to tell what happened to her.
It would be very dramatic for her and know everything without having to read it off paper.
So, Virginia, but I will say that this is very emotional for her.
So I think having it written is probably keeping her more focused and more able to get through it.
If it's something that's hard for you to get through, just having it written in front of you is going to be easier.
That could be true.
But we have had incidents before where they paid women to come up before.
So that was just my two cents.
All right, Virginia.
Let's hear from Beverly and Democrat in California.
You're on the air, Beverly.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my call.
I am concerned about a few things with our president.
He calls everything fake, and I think he's fake for pretending to be a president of the United States of America and all the things that he's doing seem like it's totally against America.
I want groceries, not greenland.
I want gas in my car.
I want to be able to buy my medication.
I want to be able to travel and do things and live.
I worked 42 years of my life.
My family have served in the military.
It just seems like all of our efforts are in vain.
I just don't understand.
And I think, what can you expect from a 34-count fellow?
I guess that's what he's doing is what you can expect.
What do you think?
All right, let's hear from Thomas, Illinois, Republican.
Go ahead, Thomas.
I watch him MSNBC occasionally for laughs.
And I was watching him yesterday as they called for the 25th Amendment and impeachment because Trump was losing his mind.
I'm just thinking right now how his use in the blockade, he's been practicing blowing up drug boats coming from Venezuela, who happens to be the head of the military right now, an admiral.
He's been proving himself able to take care of plan all of this way ahead of time.
All right, Thomas, let's hear from Richard, a Democrat in Missouri.
You're on the air, Richard.
Yeah, good morning.
You know, I'm 89 years old, and I've seen a lot of history.
World War II, that's the reason the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor as one kind of fuel.
Now, World War II, the speed limit was 45 miles an hour, national speed limit, to save gas.
And then here comes Tricky Dick.
He made us drive 55 miles an hour to save gas.
Now, I hope nobody gets the idea to save gas that way again because that was miserable.
But Trump kind of reminds me of a guy, of a person you know called Rojo.
Do you ever hear Rojo?
Nope.
The rooster.
Rojo, the rooster.
He is a chicken fighter.
He got right to it.
He kicking out right at the end.
I'll let you go.
Bye.
Let's talk to Gregory in India, Independent Line.
Hi, I'm coming to just give a perspective on the Iran war.
As someone who's here in India having cancer treatment because I can't afford it in America, I am witnessing what's happening all over Asia, specifically here in India with 20% of the world's population.
It relies on the gas that comes from Iran in the Strait of Hamuz.
So every country from Afghanistan over to Thailand and South Asia are affected by this.
There has been a cooking gas shortage.
So America's policy of going to war without consideration for other countries really is, I feel, a little damaging to the brand of the country and to the other people of the world, people who don't have as much wealth or expendable income as we do.
Gregory, what part of India are you in right now?
I'm in Vrindavan.
It's a holy city south of Delhi.
And you said you're getting cancer treatment?
How long are you there for?
I've been here for three years.
And how much are you paying for your treatments, if you don't mind me asking?
I generally pay about $1,000 per treatment.
And for my one treatment for radio treatment, it was $5,000, which eradicated the lung treatment.
That would have costed about $35,000 to $60,000 in the U.S. All right.
Well, we wish you the best, Gregory, and thanks for calling in.
Expensive Radiotherapy Abroad00:00:36
We're going to be going to the House shortly.
They're going to be gaveling in.
The Senate will also be coming in shortly on C-SPAN 2, so you can follow everything there.
Just for your awareness, the White House Budget Director Russell Vogt will also be on C-SPAN 3 at 10.15.
That's it for us.
Thanks for watching.
Here's the House.
The House will be in order.
The Chair lays before the House a communication from the Speaker.