the trump tax cuts are finally upon us, except that the president and republicans in congress are breaking every promise they made to get those cuts through, and that's going to cost us. >> and how trump's regulation killing agenda is transforming the local news you read, listen to and watch in your hometown. i'm ali velshi. >> and i'm stephanie ruhle. we've got some huge news in the russia investigation at the end of the week, but for us, we are laser focused today on taxes. republicans in the senate rushed this tax bill through committee

and onto the chamber floor and did it with almost no debate or deliberation. >> we're not sure everybody who voted on it actually read it. it's another example of broken governance in washington. the result is a tax bill that is so complex and far reaching that not even they understand all of what is in it, which is where we start. >> it is high time to call out all the lies and mistruths about the legislation. president trump and the gop said their tax plan was designed to benefit the middle class, not the wealthy. but analysis from the joint committee on taxation and the congressional budget office, two nonpartisan score keeping bodies within congress say just the opposite. and the lies, they keep rolling in. the president keeps saying his tax plan will not be good for him and his family. no, it's going to be great for him. superb for super rich families like his own. when steven mnuchin promised that his treasury department would release analysis proving the great effects of tax cuts on economic growth, well, it turned

out, they did nothing. we're being deceived. >> we're entirely being deceived. the cbo, one of those scores, you can take any measures you want. there have been a lot of studies of this. the cbo and joint committee on taxation are within congress but there are other agencies that looked at this thing. by 2019 people making less than $30,000 are worse off. by 2027, everybody making less than $75,000 is going to be worse off. but 62% of the benefits of the tax cuts go to the top 1%. so again, you can like this tax bill for what's in it. you can't like it because it's good for the middle class. >> remember, steve mnuchin, he did it with the media, he did it when he saw different members of congress, said we are working on research and analysis within the treasury department to support the economics behind why this plan works. well, guess what, "new york times" reporting there are people within -- whistleblowers within the treasury department

saying treasury secretary steve mnuchin, he never asked them to do that research. those reports don't even exist. there is no analysis. >> now, typically historically big tax reform is hard and has actually been done with bipartisan support. >> and takes months. >> a long time. sometimes over a year to get this done. i don't really understand other than a self-imposed deadline of getting some major legislation done this year why we had this rush to do this, but it is really interesting to take a bill that is supposedly about tax cuts for everybody and make it this unpopular. 538 took an average of recent polls and found that the approval of this tax cut is at historic laws. take a look at the bush tax hike in 1990 and clinton tax hike in 1993. there was greater approval for something where taxes were being raised than this bill in which taxes are being cut. i think that's kind of amazing. when your tax cut bill is unpopular, you know you're doing

something wrong. >> people vote to get their taxes cut. what i find stunning is the deficit. if you take classic conservative republicans, the debt, the deficit is a huge problem for them and always has been. if suddenly those republicans are changing their tune and saying guess what, we don't care about the deficit, it doesn't mean anything to us, but they haven't. and the fact that this thing is going to blow through our debt, it's a problem. >> so typically, we'd be happy to debate any tax bill on its merits. but as we've said president trump and the gop have been marketing their plan on promises that don't hold up. one of the most egregious ones is that the huge tax cuts that we're about to see won't cost the country a penny. so listen to this. >> not only will this tax plan pay for itself, but it will pay down debt. >> and that pay for itself comes from that projected economic growth. >> that's correct. >> so the idea is that tax cuts are going to increase the debt, but the economic growth that is stimulated by this is actually

going to take care of it. that was treasury secretary steve mnuchin reporting that administration's no cost to this bill refrain in september. so for facts sake, mnuchin is just plain wrong. president trump and congressional republicans have made a lot of promises about their tax plan. it's focused on the middle class. it's not. it won't benefit the rich. it will. it's bad for trump's family fortune. not even close. they also keep claiming despite the $1.4 trillion price tag that the tax cuts will pay for themselves. even more, they say it will actually help pay down the national debt. how? by boosting economic growth so high that government revenues will increase from taxes even as businesses and households pay a smaller share of their incomes to the government. numerous republicans say that tax cuts need only boost the economy by 0.4 of 1% a year from current levels to cover the price tag of their tax plan. how hard can that be? well, apparently it's really hard. there have been huge changes

made to our tax code throughout u.s. history, yet we've seen no observable shift to long-term growth rates in the last 150 years, which have hovered at an average rate of between 1.8% and 2% growth per year. but don't take our word for it. studies by the tax policy center, moody's wharton school business found it will increase u.s. debt between $1.3 and $2.1 trillion over a decade. even the tax foundation estimates between $500 billion and $1 trillion of additional debt. to a t they all say that slashing taxes now while keeping government spending at current levels will only widen a hole in the u.s. budget. don't believe them? try this. a poll of 42 leading economists found that not a single one thinks this tax plan will pay for itself. tax cuts, any tax cuts sure

sound great, but if we're going to bust the bank to enact them, we should be honest about what they're going to cost us. now, the new analysis from the joint committee on taxation does say that the effect of this might be to increase economic growth by 0.8% over current levels, so that's good. that same analysis says it's going to increase the debt by a trillion dollars over ten years. so the bottom line is there is no analysis conducted inside the government or outside the government that backs up the administration's claims except the one report that was done by the council of economic advisers in which it said that the average household was going to gain more than $4,000 a year. we have studied that. we can't seem to understand how they arrived at those numbers. >> ali, at the end of the day this is hypocritical for those republican deficit hawks any way you slice it. >> i don't know where you find republican deficit hawks. it used to be people that said we aren't going to pass bills that increase the deficit by one

penny. the best estimates are half a trillion dollars, some of them go to $2 trillion. the government's own scorecard says $1 trillion. wrap your head around this, gop lawmakers railroaded a life-changing tax plan through the senate with almost no time to review it. the text of the final bill had not been released hours before the vote. >> how does this happen? >> this is not complicated. how this bill is supposed to become law. but president trump and the gop are so insistent on a political win on taxes that it doesn't matter what's in the legislation anymore. ali, this tax plan is going to impact our health care system, our social safety net, and even our energy and environmental policy in the arctic. a sweetener for alaska senator lisa murkowski. remember, there were supposed to be no sweeteners. no hook-ups to the right, to the left, to the middle. this was about simplification and improvement. >> so let's talk about the health care part of this because this will affect a whole lot of

people who wouldn't otherwise think this tax bill is really about them. this senate version of the healbill, this is important, it repeals the individual mandate which the cbo has said will lead to 13 million fewer insured and 10% premium increases in the individual market. again, we're going in the wrong direction with something we were trying to fix. if you didn't like obamacare, and there were lots of reasons not to like it, there were fixes to be had. here we're repealing the mandate. it's a bad thing to do. >> remember, cuts for individuals are only temporary, so when they expire, you may have to pay more for your health care. we also have to remember that these tax cuts, they're getting paid for somehow. they would trigger an immediate $25 billion cuts to medicare. so you're doing this to cut taxes for corporations and the rich. what are they going to do? >> medicare recipients, the worst out among us, are going to see benefits cut. then the other thing that's interesting is in st. louis when

the president was pitching this the other day, he brought up something that i hadn't heard in a long time. welfare reform. we hadn't really thought that was a thing that they were dealing with. but the fact is we have heard conversations about entitlement reform just this week. marco rubio, paul ryan, kevin brady have all started talking about it. when mick mulvaney was talking about it, you said months ago, fine, if you want to reform entitlements, let's see what it looks like. but just putting it in there is a bit of a dog whistle. the idea that we're going to cut your taxes and the way we're going to make this work is get rid of all those people leeching off the system. president trump talked about somebody he knows who holds three jobs and right next door there's somebody on welfare who's making more money than the person with three jobs. as you and i always ask for, can we get some specifics, and no person seems to exist. >> that's like don't give a homeless person on the street money because they're going spend it on alcohol. >> that's myth. >> if you're going to pull

programs from people who need them the most, then let's put programs in place of impact because right now this is just a pull. >> we're all about fixing these things. let's talk about welfare and entitlements is to lock up votes for a bill that gives a tax break to the wealthy and corporations. i'm not against giving tax breaks to wealthy and corporations, but just remember whose mouths you're taking food out of to do it. all right, i want to talk about something else, bitcoin. you know what i'm talking about, right? record highs this week followed by a very big drop the next day. i have said use extreme caution when investing in volatile digital crypto currencies. and big companies taking over the media world. president trump's justice department is standing in the way of one big merger but he is all for merger mania in your local news.

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there's been so much news that it's hard to keep track of everything that's going on but we've seen some high-profile developments in the media world lately. president trump's justice department is suing at&t over its proposed merger with time warner, the one that the candidate trump railed against on the campaign trail. meredith corporation is purchasing time inc. with backing from the koch brothers, big donors to conservative causes. >> but a decision last month by the federal communications commission that affects local news markets got a lot less coverage, and it may be even more important. the battle over who controls local air waves is exploding on capitol hill. the federal communications commission just reversed decades-old rules that prevented one company from owning tv and radio stations and newspapers all in one market. why does that matter? in large parts of america, local news is still king, even in the age of the internet. the pew research center found

that 37% of adult americans in 2017 said they watched local television news often. compare that to 28% who said they watched cable news or 20% who say they got their news from social media. >> this agency finally drags its broadcast ownership rules into the digital age. >> the idea behind the original rules was to guarantee all media outlets would showcase diverse viewpoints, but president trump's new regulation-busting fcc chairman claims traditional media outlets now face greater competition from online news resources. >> people who would support these deregulations would say that the ability to own tv, radio and newspaper in one market will make it less costly to produce news. >> mike annany teaches journalism at the university of southern california. he says that media consolidation

in local markets is eroding the diversity of perspectives in their news coverage and ultimately harming consumers. >> people are going to have less diversity in their media. people are only going to hear one voice. they're only going to hear one message across radio, tv and newspapers. ultimately that's a bad thing for democracy, it's a bad thing with citizenship when people are not hearing a diversity of perspectives. >> in 2016, five of the biggest companies in local tv, sinclair, nexstar, gray, tegna and tribune owned approximately 37% of all local tv stations nationwide. sinclair has seen the largest growth by far. it went from owning 62 stations in 2004 to 173 today. if sinclair's proposed media with tribune media goes forward, it will grow to 215 stations, boosting its presence in major markets and broadening its reach to 72% of tv households. >> how are people being able to

encounter diversity, be able to learn about other people and experience all parts of their community. we need media that are owned by many different kinds of people, have many different kinds of voices. i think long term that's the thing to be aware of. >> so you heard it, repealing decades-old rules. the fcc will make the argument these rules are archaic and we need to change those rules so we can compete. listen, we know the media is a very different place and their point is if you want to play in the world of digital now that the landscape is so different, this is what you've got to do. fcc thinks that. >> it's interesting except president trump said during the campaign that he didn't want so much media consolidation and he was against the at&t/time warner merger. but sinclair broadcasting, which is very favorable in its coverage to the president, has people that actually worked with the president, this is sort of a bit of a wet kiss to them. so i think if you really are consistent in your argument about media ownership and consolidation, then there is something to be said about that.

for instance, on a national level there are really only six major players of which comcast, which owns nbc, is one of them. nbc and comcast is a merger that happened, so, you know, these companies, these big companies are getting bigger and the president has expressed concern about media consolidation. but you have to address this holistically, you can't just give merger approval to your friends and not to those who are critical of you. >> but if the argument is we're concerned about media consolidation and superpowers, looking at at&t and time warner, this is backward looking. the answer is look at facebook, look at google. those are the super powers, the new venues where people are consuming content, getting their news, and they're not fcc regulated. >> and they're not regulated like the media is either. >> and they're only getting bigger. >> so that's a way we have to look at all of this. coming up, bit coin goes boom, then bust, then boom again. is anybody going to listen to me about using extreme caution with crypto currencies?

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welcome back. it has been a tumultuous week in an agency we talk a lot about. in his final act as director of the consumer financial protection bureau, richard cordray appointed a new director. she then declared herself acting director once cordray left. the move preempted president trump's appointment of mick mulvaney as acting director, who was promptly sued by english in federal court. in the confusion, cfpb employees received two introductory e-mails from two acting directors but a trump nominated judge sided with the president and his pick. mulvaney has been a vocal critic

of the cfpb and called it a joke in the sick, sad way. >> not the transition, the actual agency. >> in a sick, sad way but he promised not to blow up the agency under his watch although he has put in place a freeze on new rules and new hires. it doesn't matter if he calls it sick and hates the agency. president trump won. he has the -- he's going to put someone in place, whether it's mick mulvaney now or appoint someone later who is most likely going to dismantle the cfpb. sort of a foregone conclusion. >> right. that came with the election of donald trump. crazy time to own bitcoin. the highly speculative crypto currency shot past $11,000 on wednesday. at the beginning of 2017, it was worth $1,000 a unit. now, this is thanks to a growing one of investors, especially hedge funds. we don't know why for sure. bitcoin's price has skyrocketed

throughout the year but this is so volatile it plunged 20% the next day to $9,000. that coincided with multiple bitcoin exchanges reporting service interruptions. a federal court has ruled that the irs can now collect information on bitcoin owners in an attempt to recover unpaid taxes from them. i have to tell you, the fact that something makes money for you does not qualify it as a distinguish investme good investment. >> we're not saying it's good or bad, we're just saying buyer beware. amazon.com registered some gang buster sales during the first big shopping week around the holiday season. that has helped propel its stock price to a record high. you know what's not record-breaking, though? the number of women, women on amazon's executive and senior management committees. our colleagues at cnbc have

gotten a look at the company's organizational charts. of the 37 bigwigs who report directly to jeff bezos, only two of them, two are women. three are of asian descent and zero are african-americans at that level. which is absolutely contrary to bezos' own words last year when he told employees that diversity and inclusion are not just good for business, they are, quote, simply right. and i speak for the person who manages the amazon prime account in my house. more than 50% of households in america, it is women who do the shopping. how about having women, how about having amazon's management committee reflect their consumer. >> you and i have talked many times about a lot of companies that do a lot of business with women who do not have representation on their management boards or their actual board. so that is work that remains to be done. we're out of time. >> jeff bezos wants to get on a rocket ship.

let's make women part of the future. >> that does it for "velshi & ruhle." you can watch me at 3:00 p.m. eastern. >> and see me at 9:00 a.m. have a great weekend. we will see you monday. your brain is an amazing thing. but as you get older, it naturally begins to change, causing a lack of sharpness, or even trouble with recall. thankfully, the breakthrough in prevagen helps your brain and actually improves memory. the secret is an ingredient originally discovered... in jellyfish. in clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve short-term memory. prevagen. the name to remember.

good day, everyone. i'm alex witt here in new york at msnbc world headquarters. it is 1:00 in the east, 10:00 a.m. out west and here's what's happening. the flynn plea deal. the white house reportedly freaking out. but would you sense that today from the president's first public comments on flynn? >> what has been shown is no collusion, no collusion. there's been absolutely -- there's been absolutely no collusion. >> the president now here in the big apple for a flurry of fund-raisers fresh off a trillion and a half dollar victory in the senate. >> it's the largest tax decrease in the history of our country by