and events that tell the american story every weekend. saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on lectures in history, northeastern university professor william fowler on early atlantic exploration, christopher columbus, and of the discovery of the caribbean and the americas by europeans. sunday at 4:00 p.m. eastern on real america, the 1975 nasa film "who is out there?" exploring the possibility of extraterrestrial life and communication with intelligent civilizations in the universe. sunday at 6:00 p.m. eastern on american artifacts, see a mock world war i trench and a bunker, part of a living history exhibit of the u.s. army heritage and education center in carlisle, pennsylvania. and sunday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on the presidency, here how first ladies worked to preserve the historic nature of the white

house. exploring the american story, watch american history tv this weekend on c-span3. ♪ joining us this morning as a jesse eisinger, senior reporter and editor with propublica. their report on billionaires and income taxes has made a lot of headlines, there it is on your screen. so, jesse eisinger, why did you decide to look into this? guest: hi, thank you for having me. well, we received a vast trove of irs data. covering more than 15 years on the wealthiest americans, thousands of americans, but really just 1% of the 1%, we do not have nurses and plumbers and even doctors. we just have the elite of the elite. and we started going through this data and started trying to figure out what was newsworthy about it and came out with our

first story after several months of cleaning up the information and going through it and it was broad data and we had to assemble it into a form that we can understand. and then we presented our first story last week. host: how are you able to obtain private information like this? guest: well, it is unusual to get this kind of irs information. we are not explaining how we received it. we do not know the immense amount of about -- of sources and sources. we are seeking to protect the sources. -- we did look at that this was true or not, the most important thing at this was verifiable, true information. and we verified it in countless ways. before we went to the subject of the story, the initial story, and then we took all of the information that we had that we

were hoping to present and presented yet -- it to the subject's of the story and everybody verified it that way. nobody disputed the information. it is true information and we are being responsible stewards of the information and only calling it for what we believe is in the public interest. host: explain your rationale for publishing? guest: sure. we are in the business of finding out news and publishing it. and so the question is, we put this through a prism of trying to understand two things, whether it is true that the most important thing and whether it is newsworthy. that is equally important. information can come from anywhere. it can come from people's enemies, from people's friends, from people who are biased, who have an agenda, added usually does. the reporter's job is to sift

the biases and agendas on the just because you are biased does not mean you're wrong or peddling false information. we receive this information, we went through it, we verified it, it was true and we started culling it for what we believed was in the public interest and our findings are two fold and two simple ways. one, we found that some of the wealthiest americans, jeff bezos, elon musk, michael bloomberg, george soros page zero in federal income taxes in recent years. we thought that was something the public should know and the second thing is, we measured the 25 richest americans compared to their wealth growth, i am not going to -- i will explain why we did that in a second. they pay a fraction, a small fraction, of that wealth growth in texas. 3.4% of their wealth growth in taxes and we thought that was worth knowing to the public

because that is such a small percentage of their overall wealth growth compared to what normal people pay in taxes. host: we will get to that in a minute. what was the reaction from the billionaires? guest: some of them responded to us and argued that they paid all of the taxes they legally owed, which in fact we make that point very clearly, nothing that we pointed out in this first story was about illegality, this is all about a legal system. one, michael bloomberg, objected to has privacy being violated and we understood that the privacy of these people was going to be violated when we wrote the story, but we thought that the public interest outweighed it, clearly outweighed it, michael bloomberg is someone who was mayor of new york and ran for president, so we felt like has privacy was less important than the fact

that he paid zero in taxes and had such a low tax rate. effective tax rate and low tax rate compared to his wealth growth. and some of the billionaires said that they gave to charity. which is true and a way to lower your tax bills. but we did not think that was entirely relevant to the picture because charitable donations are a personable spending on society. it is a way to spend on society, but a way to spend on your own hobbies and policy preferences. and it is not of course paying taxes. and paying taxes is the way a democracy or any government really, but in our government, our democracy, is allocated in democratic ways that extracts from everybody and what we found in our finding, our major finding, is that the tax system is essentially unfair. because the superrich are not

paying their fair share. host: jesse eisinger to take your questions and comments about the pro-public art report. looking at billionaires and what they pay in income taxes. if you are a republican, dial in at (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000 and independence, (202) 748-8002. text us at (202) 748-8003. include your first name, city, and state and we will read some of those comments as well. jesse eisinger from the report, you write this, that the data provides an unprecedented look inside the financial lives of americans, it shows not just their income in taxes, but also their investments, stock trades, gambling winnings and the results of audits. why is it important to look at and know about their investments in stock trades, what is happening there?

guest: we have not published anything about that yet. we are continuing to cull that. you can imagine a lot of stories about the super wealthy stock trading that was relevant or business stories. i'm not going to get into the details of what we are planning to do, but we are planning to write the number of new stories over the course of the year. about a variety of aspects of the tax code and business stories because you can see business stories and financial stories and even of course societal stories in the tax information, so we are calling it very carefully and going through this. but we were trying to do is explain the vastness of the information we have, we have millions of rows of data and it is not just tax returns, but includes the schedules that go into those returns and the schedule cover things like their self-employment, and

partnerships and stock trading and things like that. and we are trying to explain to the reader what we have and why we are confident in the information we have. host: what did you learn about the billionaire's wealth growth? guest: we did not learn anything about their wealth growth, we think their wealth growth was clear. we understand from the wide variety of sources, academic and journalistic and government measurements that we were living in an age of great wealth and equality, and come and wealth inequality. and it is probably worse than any time since the gilded age. or even in the buildup to the great crash of 29. and we use forbes's measurement and they are the gold standard for measuring wealth and wealth -- changes in wealth. what we added to the picture was

the new information about taxes. we took this overlay of something that is commonly understood, that wealth is exploding, jeff bezos and elon musk and warren buffett and bloomberg and the list goes on and on, their wealth has really exploded and what we decided to do is look at this new information, there taxes compared to their wealth. host: from your reporting, i want to read this part of our viewers before we get to their phone calls. in recent years, the median american household earned about 70,000 household -- annually and paid 7% in highest -- jesse eisinger, is it really only the uber wealthy that is escaping playing -- paying taxes? guest: yes, only the uber wealthy escaping paying taxes. the average american are in the

tax system. and we get salaries and our salaries get taxed. typical americans as you said, get $14 extracted from every $100 that he or she makes and taxes. the very low income do not pay federal income taxes, but the low, working, poor payroll taxes or what we call payroll taxes, they go through social security and medicare, those are inescapable and highly regressive taxes, regressive means that more is taken out of someone's salary if they make less money. it is the opposite of what our structure should be. let's step back for a second, the ideal for our tax system, the way it is supposed to work and that it is supposed to be progressive, the more you may, the more that is taken out of taxes. we are not just talking about the dollars taken out, but the higher percentage, a higher

percentage is supposed to be taken out for that wealthy as you get wealthier and wealthier. that is not the way the system works and what the point of our story is, the cultural wealthy are outside of the system. we are all in the system, we get paychecks, taxes get out of our paychecks, the ultra-wealthy are outside of the system, they do not get paychecks, they do not get salaries, for any to speak up. what they do is they get income in the time and place of their choosing and that gives them an enormous leeway over there tax bills. and so, with that power, that leeway, that volunteer aspect, the voluntary aspect to their income, that means they essentially have income in a voluntary way as well. they do not really have to take taxes. unless they want to. host: maryland, in san francisco, and dependents. caller: yes, i want to say thank

you so much for doing that article. i make under $60,000 a year for the majority of my earning years and i made a donation to propublica because of this information. i think it is very timely and i think people, brave people who like you are taking the brunt from the billionaires who have the power in society, are really true heroes and i want to tell you that. i made that donation and i understand you do have more information and that you planned on making more stories out of information you have and i am really excited to see what those are and i may actually make those contributions to your organization every time you -- guest: we will get hard at work so we can get more donations. we really appreciate that, we are a nonprofit, so we run on donations from individuals. and we do much more than

business reporting, we do reporting on civil justice and health care and national security and it runs the gamut and we have operations around the country. so, and doing a lot of local reporting as well, which is really in a crisis. we appreciate every dollar that comes in. thank you. host: you heard her say this is timely. why? guest: well, we are at a potential inflection point in our nation's long history with taxes. our history oscillates from tax resistance, everybody grows up understanding about the boston tea party, to efforts to have progressive taxes. we had a progressive income tax, very people -- very few people know this, during the civil war and it was disclosed -- and there was a disclosure requirement, so the great barons of the era like vanderbilt reported their income publicly

and the new york times published it. we have seen -- we seem to be at an inflection point where politicians are seeking to raise taxes on the wealthy, the biden administration has made a series of proposals that would attempt to raise taxes on the wealthy, one point that we had is that they are modest proposals and when you talk about some things like raising the tax rate, especially on income, one of the biden proposals is to raise the top marginal tax rate from 37% to 39. 39.6%. and that would mean every incremental dollar over a certain amount would be taxed at two point six percentage points more and what we are saying as the ultra-wealthy do not take salaries. jeff bezos gets a middle-class salary of $80,000 a year and ceos that seem to be taking a sacrifice and only taking one dollar a year like mark

zuckerberg and larry page and sergei from google and others, steve jobs famously and that is not a sacrifice because salaries are taxed at the highest marginal rate. it is beside the point to talk about raising the highest tax rate. the biden proposals are a mix of modest measures and some good measures, but whether they are going to pass is really an open question because of course, republicans are resistant. host: you look at the 25 most richest americans and you write this in the piece, according to forbes, 25 people saw their work rise a collective 401 billion from 2014 to 2018. they paid a total of 13.6 billion in federal income taxes in those five years, the irs data shows. that is a staggering stump, but it amounts to a true tax rate of 2.4%. explain. guest: the conventional way of measuring the tax burden is to

measure taxes against income. in fact, we did that. for the billionaires, the 25 top billionaires and it turns out that there tax rate compared to their income is very low, in the last five years, it has been under 16%. which is lower than a person making $45,000 a year. that is pretty shocking in and of itself. they have a lower effective tax rate. we thought that was not the most important measure. what we thought was the most important measure was to compare their taxes to their wealth growth because their wealth growth is really essentially untapped in this american system of taxation. we tax income, not wealth. we tax things coming in, sales of stocks we do not tax when a stock goes up and depreciates.

what is important to understand about the super wealthy is that all of their power, all of their means at their disposal, comes from their wealth, emanates from their wealth, their wealth growth is what is important. and so what we did is measure the taxes that they paid against the wealth growth and we found that they paid 3.4% compared to that and some paid much less, so bezos paid about 1% and they tax avoidance is warren buffett, he pays about $.10 for every $100 that his wealth grows. the average american, the income is the relevant measure here because income is what everyone needs to work to live. we need to work to live and taxes get paid out of that. our income comes in and we pay about 14 -- $14 per $100 that comes in and warren buffett is paying $.10 for what -- every

$100 that has wealth grows. host: democratic caller. caller: good morning. my question is this. there has been a rash of -- among the billionaires that has been publicized in the papers suggesting that the reason for the avoidance is a garden-variety -- propublica -- has probably got -- has propublica considered that these divorces -- it involves the creation of a foundation that both parties contribute to. guest: that is a good question. i had not considered the divorces as a state planning, but state planning in general is

extraordinarily crucial to tax avoidance of the ultra-wealthy. the shorthand for what the wealthy do is called by borrowed dies. what it is is that you buy your asset or you build your company or you inherit -- they are heirs to great fortune, they do not build anything and then you borrow against your wealth, so you do not sell and you borrow and elon musk has pledged tens of millions of shares and collateral and borrowed something along the lines, in order of 50 or $60 billion worth of his stock and then at the very end, you have very careful planning, complex estate planning that involves opaque trust and charitable -- charitable organizations and you can avoid even the state taxes

at the end and so, these ultra-wealthy fortunes almost always go -- it is very hard to say how much tax avoidance they have because there are few measures about that. but it is possible that half or even more of these great fortunes end up being entirely untaxed. host: walter in mississippi, republican. caller: i have got a question. how many jobs do they create for people to pay taxes, that is what i would like to know. guest: it is a good question, not something we examined in the story. you could imagine that some of these companies do produce a lot of jobs. but a lot of these tech companies do not produce anything on the order of the job creation of the giant corporations of yore.

gm was creating vastly more job than amazon, a large jar producer today and labor had a lot more countervailing power in the 1950's and 60's compared to today, so that was something that constrained both executive salaries and great executive wealth. and great wealth from even the founders of companies, so we had much less income and wealth inequality in america in the 50's and 60's and much greater job production from corporations, especially the corporate giants. host: jesse eisinger, if they do not receive a paycheck, do they pay into social security and medicare? guest: very modestly. it is a rounding error for them. social security and medicare taxes are highly as i said regressive. and one of the reasons they are

regressive is if you make over a certain salary, it is capped, so you stop paying into it. workers, average workers pay much greater portions of their income in payroll taxes, social security and medicare, then well-paid workers and if you're getting your income through selling stock and you get capital gain or getting dividends, none of that as text for -- is taxed for social security or medicare. one of the great tax burdens on the average american is social security and medicare, something that the ultra-wealthy are almost entirely out of and do not fund and do not pay. host: do they use it? guest: they do not need it. i am sure they use it, i am sure they -- we do not have evidence of that in the tax record, but we do have evidence of things like jeff bezos making so little

in 2011 that he took a child's tax credit. i assume ultra-wealthy people will take social security when they can because everybody can use a nice bottle of wye -- of wine. they are probably getting good health care and medicare is pretty good, but i bet they have a health care that is slightly better than the average person. host: from wichita, she says she thinks this is a good argument to lift cap and make them pay for social security for all. guest: i was going to say that that has been a proposal that has been fooling around. that has been floating around. -- that has been floating around. if you do not have unrealized gains at all or wealth at all, you would not be taxing the

payroll even if you looked at the cap. you would not be extracting payments for social security and medicare from them commit even if you lifted the cap. host: ronald in new hampshire, independents. caller: thank you for taking my call. jesse, thank you for doing the research, this is valuable research. the main reason why these people do not pay taxes is because of all the deductions and exemptions you talked about some of them. the main problem is that businesses are not taxed on the revenue, they are only taxed on profit so they have all of these deductions and only pay taxes on the profit. the solution to that is to implement something like the uniting amendment, one of the provisions as to completely eliminate all of the exemptions and deductions in the tax code and limits the tax for the poor and middle-class to one half of

1%, everything else had to be covered by the businesses and stock trades and everything else. i would like to get your comments as to -- at that would work, to have a tax that a limited all of the exemptions, taxes businesses on the revenue, top line, text stock trades, text loans, -- taxed stock trades and loans from all of that. guest: i'm not familiar with the proposal, so i cannot comment on that. unfortunately, we do need a broad tax base. we cannot simply fund the government through taxing the ultra-wealthy. so even if we were to tax the ultra-wealthy in a much more significant way, both for funding the government and also for equity for fairness purposes, that would not get us anywhere close to funding what we need, raising the money we

need to fund the government. now, he also raised the question about deductions and deductions are a way that the ultra-wealthy reduce the income that they have. the main point of our story is that most of their income that should be thought of as income or can be thought of as income is wealth growth is outside of texas and you do not need a deduction because it is not taxed anyway but when they do take income, they take great numbers of deductions, one is the charitable deductions and you can debate the societal merits of that. another is interest deduction, so somebody like carl icahn, the famous billionaire investor, he has in 2016 and 2017 combined, half $1 billion in income, income the way the irs defines it, as income. and then what happens is he borrowed a lot of money to amp life has returned, he had -- to

amplify his investments. he gets leverage and the leverage amplifies, supercharges his returns and the interest cost on that are so enormous because the borrowing is so enormous that he gets the write up the interest from his investing on taxes and he wiped out the entirety of that happened a billion dollars in income income -- interest expense in deduction and what that means is the average taxpayer, you and i, are subsidizing carl icons borrowing so he can -- carl icahn's borrowing so he can become more of a billionaire than he already is. host: sue in ohio. if we know how the uber rich skirt taxes, why does not congress change the tax law so they can't? i know they like all the money they are given from them. guest: well, that is a good question. one of the answers is that the ultra-wealthy have

disproportionate influence and power in this country. and they would prefer not to pay more in taxes, they certainly would not like their wealth or their wealth growth to be taxed. and so, the ultra-wealthy fund think tanks and they fund political organizations and they fund candidates and often, those candidates are against taxing -- tax increases. one of the animating principles of the modern republican party has been for lower taxes. and the democrats have occasionally gone along with it, occasionally resisted it, occasionally gone along with higher taxes, or excuse me, pushing lower taxes. the most recent lowering of taxes, that went to the wealthy, was the trump tax cut in 2017. the effort, the political pressure, has not been to raise taxes on the wealthy, but often to lower taxes on the wealthy, the bush tax cut -- both

disproportionately lowered taxes for the wealthy. host: jesse eisinger as our guest, senior reporter and editor with propublica about their piece, the secret irs mild stroke, never before seen records revealing how the wealthiest avoid income tax. and from there reporting, our analysis of the tax data from the 25 richest americans quantifies how unfair the system has become. by the end of 2018, the 25 were worth 1.1 trillion. for comparison, it would take 14.3 million ordinary american wage earners put together to equal that same amount of wealth. the personal federal tax bill for the top 25 in 2018 was 1.9 billion. the bill -- for the wage earners, 143 billion. reed in the washington state.

caller: does are interesting statistics, but your guest seem to be coming from the angle -- she says the trump tax cut was disproportionately awarded to the rich. i am not the rich, i make $100,000 a year and i know the rich pay 82% of taxes and they are providing the jobs. their earlier color said something about -- caller said something about they should be taxing their revenue and not taxing just the prophets. he must not work for himself because if you are -- it takes a portion of your income, reinvested to keep your business running, so it is not just based on your profit, -- part of what you are investing in your business should be included in taxes. an important point i called in to say, in 2012, one president biden -- obama was running for his second term there was a

study done which i believe 14 different comprehensive agencies, -- not agencies, think tanks in the country, including the american enterprise account -- and brookings institute, i remember mitch mcconnell at the enterprise institute announcing the results. the results were at that time in 2012, at the federal government were to take all a millionaire's money or above and everything they own, not just text them 100%, but take everything they own, that amount of money would not keep the federal government running for more than 13 months and that was how many years ago? imagine what it would be now with this deficit? host: let's get a response. guest: no one is proposing totally confiscating the wealthy's money. i did nothing that should be a great fear. let me correct you on one thing,

the idea that the ultra-wealthy pay, i think he said 82% in taxes. that reminds me of the old saying that 62.4% of all statistics are made up on the spot. i do not think that is correct. in fact, when you talk about federal taxes, you have to include medicare and social security and when you include that, the wealthy do not pay the disproportionate amounts. the most important thing here, and i think there is a kernel of what you're talking about, which is that the highest tax burden today in america falls on people who are making $1 million to $5 million a year. those people are making very high salaries, income, excuse me, not salaries. that is a lot of income to have, it is is not the ultra-wealthy. a very strength -- a very strange thing happened is that the federal income tax is progressive, people making less and come payless, up to a

certain point and then, start becoming regressive again and then at the very top, the 25 billionaires, they are paying a very low, effective tax rate on their income. and that is pretty shocking and pretty stunning, so you think that even the very, very wealthy affluent people making a million to $5 million a year might object to the state of affairs too, so it would not just be it is a class war between low income and the super wealthy. host: let me read you from the main wire and get your reaction to this. they are critical of the report that you did. despite propublica does best effort to make the information seem damaging, the data tells us little we did not already know. the last year for which we have data, 2019, the top 1% paid 40% of federal income taxes. despite burning just under 21 percent of total adjusted gross income. the bottom 50% of taxpayers

earned 11.6% of total agi, but paid less than 3% of income taxes. the same story holds true when looking at all revenue sources too, so it is not just the income tax that is progressive. propublica writes that the wealthy are getting away with murder through the tax code. comparing growth and wealth over the course of a year to taxable income. they use this to calculate individual tax rate, but they write this, it is hard to overstate how -- our tax system does not tax growth in one's's wild until it is realized as income. it is -- guest: that is a mishmash of one million different mistaken notions with a lot of locating there, so it is hard to focus on which erroneous conclusion to

talk about, so i will talk about one thing, is the incompetent assertion that you can never tax unrealized gains or that would be somehow wrong. it turns out that the taxation of unrealized gains was not part of moses's tablets sent down from mount sinai, it is not a natural law. it is something that came about about 100 years ago when we were first formulating what we were going to tax on income and how to define it. it is not the only definition. in fact, there are proposals, well thought out, carefully thought out proposals right now in congress, one from ron that what tax unrealized gains and you can measure unrealized gains, especially in the stock market and you can text them and it does unrealized gains go, you can have refunds on the taxes. it is not monstrously complex

and it would not be something that would be so exotic. it would focus on the ultra-wealthy though and they do not want it. that is really what is going on here, it is not a question of doing something that is so exotic or so impossible that you cannot even imagine it and you would violate all sorts of precepts that passed down through history. host: donald in omaha, nebraska. democratic caller acorn. caller: i hear the smart guys spitting out all of these numbers and everything. did these guys do anything wrong? host: jesse eisinger? guest: it is a good point. i do not mean to be spitting out numbers, i hope i am trying to explain relevant numbers to understand what our system is. the main point of our story is that this is entirely legal. and if you are only -- and if

you're only present to understand society is whether somebody violated current law or not, then you can say that there is nothing wrong here. but if you want to understand the system that we have and the choices that we have and what the results of the choices that we have are, that is what our article is attempting to lay out, which is, this is the system we have, which allows for the richest man in the world to pay zero in federal income taxes in two recent years to allow the second richest man in the world, elon musk to pay zero in federal income taxes in 2018. to allow george soros and michael bloomberg and carl -- and carl icahn to pay zero in federal income taxes. after everyone fully understands the system that we have in place, and then everybody decides that that is fine with them, of course, that is ok with us, that we -- but we wanted to explain the system as it exists

today to let people see it with clear eyes. host: in texas, independents. caller: i do a little research because i hear the democrats talking about the top 1%, they do not pay their fair share, but the top 1% pays 40% of all of the federal tax. the top 2% pay 31% of all of the federal tax, the top 10% money earners pay 71% of all federal tax. the next 50% of people, working class, paid 29%. the bottom 40% do not pay any tax at all. to say that the top 1% do not pay their fair share is a big lie. what we need to do is get the bottom 40% working, which is a big drag on our whole economy and everything would be fixed. host: jesse eisinger, your thoughts? guest: i think that the point, a couple of points. the 1% is actually a relatively

big number for a country of 330 million with roughly 150 million households paying taxes. and what we were talking about is the top 25 him and the top 25 pay much less -- lower than they actually -- that even the 1% or the .001%. the .001% pays about 23% and the top 25 billionaires pay about, in federal income taxes, we are not talking the true tax rate, the federal income tax is about 15 or 16% of 2014-2018. so, they are paying much lower taxes. one of the talking points from the likes of the wall street journal editorial page is culminating that the top 1% pays

a significant portion of federal income taxes and as i say, that is not the measure of federal taxes that we should really look at them if it should be all federal taxes because payroll tax is highly regressive. even if you want to look at that , what we are saying is that the super wealthy, the ultra-wealthy, the top, top pay even less than as a percentage of their income then that 1% and the affluent. that is one of the points of the story. host: tom in jacksonville, florida. democratic caller acorn. -- democratic caller. caller: i just wanted to know that this discussion on income taxes, have they ever thought about the term accumulation tax? corporate nations -- corporations cannot accumulate without plans to use the money and if they do, they have to pay accumulation tax.

what is wrong with accumulation tax on the extra rich people. they are just hoarding money. his wine bill is probably more than the average american's wages. these people can accumulate wealth if they want to, but if they do not have any use like creating jobs, then i think they should have an accumulation tax. guest: it is an interesting idea, there is an excess profits tax notion in corporate tax. very few people have proposed that our individual -- that for individuals that are super wealthy. i am not aware of it. something along the lines of a wealth tax or a tax on unrealized gains, which have been proposed and are going frankly nowhere in washington today, but they have been proposed and they have been thoughtful. -- thoughtful proposes about that, those are ways to address accumulation of that wealth that we are talking

about here and it would be something that would not just prevent the accumulation of wealth, but try to address passing on dynastic wealth from generation to generation. so you could imagine something like that, but it is not -- no proposals are viable in washington today to address it. host: young's -- youngstown, ohio. democratic caller. caller: god bless you for your work. they use the roads, bridges, court systems unlike everybody else. they outsource all of their ex-pence and -- their expenses, they get all their information on how to get welfare and outsource that. one of the strategies of the business people is they contract their jobs to other companies to employ them so they can avoid paying any benefits, health care, sick time, and they use people like disposable entities

and that was -- it is what we feel like. thank you so much. guest: i appreciated that. you are making a good point and one that i wished i raised earlier is what are the stakes having on unfair taxes. the federal government has been -- been constrained for decades and our roads and bridges are crumbling and periodically, people are convulsed in fear that social security and medicare will go bankrupt and of course, the government funds the national defense and funds basic science and health care and we need to pay for that. and you can pay through borrowing and borrowing is very inexpensive right now. but we want to fund our government adequately and so, the consequences of billionaires not paying their fair share are really enormous. their response that they do fill out the pre-that -- that they do

philanthropy is not addressing the societal issues we have because philanthropy does not do the dirty work of fixing roads and bridges for incidents. that is something that only governments can do and governments can solve when it is working collective problems but philanthropy does not do. the consequences of not paying your fair share are really enormous. host: jesse eisinger, senior reporter and editor with reproach -- with propublica. you can read the washington jou.

host: this morning, happening in iran, presidential elections taking place and this morning on the washington journal, we want to talk about that and the impact on the middle east.