we must. think. well i'm tom hartman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture just on tax reform or class warfare against working americans alaska economist richard wolf just a moment and another slew of democrats including connecticut's richard blumenthal

came out in favor of single payer today on the cusp of having real universal health care in this country last brian pruitt and doug christian in tonight's politics. donald trump is a cable news president he just goes where the ratings are so after seeing the mainstream media's positive coverage of his debt ceiling deal with the democrats he's decided to give this whole bipartisan thing another shot tonight he's having dinner at the white house was six lawmakers three democrats three republicans the main topic of conversation will reportedly be tax reform too soon to tell of course where the trump's newfound interest in bipartisanship is anything other than a ploy for positive press coverage but what about his push for tax reform is it really about making the tax code simpler and easier or is this another bout of class warfare against working americans joining me now is richard wolfe

a visiting professor at the new school co-founder of democracy at work and the author of numerous books including capitalism is crisis deepens essays on the global economic meltdown professor wolfe welcome back. thank you tom good to be here it is great having you so first off richard do we have any idea of what this administration is talking about when they say tax reform i mean i assume they mean tax cuts for the rich but how can anybody think this is a real policy at this point in history. it's impossible to do so everybody left right and center has tried to get a clear idea just of what they are actually proposing all we have are very short documents some as short as one piece of paper with some suggestions we've had some leaks in the press and so on but the bottom line the reality is we don't know i can say however that lift you look at all of the leaks and statements made by trump by

valerie as members of his administration you would have to conclude that it's going to be business as usual that is tax cuts for corporations tax cuts for the wealthiest americans and then very small tax cuts for the middle and lower classes just to be able to say well we cut your taxes aren't you happy hoping that the middle and lower classes don't realize that if you cut taxes on corporations and the rich you're going to make the government and able to provide the services you've counted on something we've gone through now over and over again for forty years and therefore i have to conclude yes the tax reform programs will be more class war against average and low income people in this country which is what they've been for thirty and forty years and unfortunately the democratic party

has either been unable or unwilling to fundamentally challenge let alone reverse that policy the the genesis of this whole thing. the whole tax cut fever and trickle down economics and whatnot that george herbert walker bush in the one nine hundred eighty primaries referred to as voodoo economics reagan's sales pitch. is is being constantly revisited by concern. a bit of saying oh yeah reagan cut tax top tax rate from seventy four percent down to twenty five percent and unleashed an explosion of economic activity my recollection and please correct me if i'm wrong on this is that we had a decade to decade more than three percent g.d.p. growth per decade in the forty's the fifty's the sixty's and the seventy's and then since the eighty's we have not hit that three percent level or was it four percent

i'm doing this from memory here what what is the situation did reagan's tax cuts actually produce a positive benefit or they produce a negative or a negative outcome. the answer is very simple if you look long enough in history you can see more than one situation where somebody cut a tax and then after that there was some economic growth but in order to make the statement that there's a relationship between the two you have to see whether that's a regular occurrence and it isn't if you look at american economic history since the end of the second world war which is the key relative period of time most of the cases would taxes were reduced there wasn't an explosion of economic growth for every time that there was there were probably two times that there wasn't so if you are honest if you're not looking for an argument that can make your case regardless

of the facts if your an is you would understand that whatever the virtues you want to claim for cutting taxes on rich people boosting economic growth isn't one of them because that doesn't happen most of the time that you cut taxes and the year old the understanding isn't complicated economic growth has to do with how people are feeling about work how productive they are how well educated they are how much equipment they have to work with and a thousand other variables to focus in on that tax cut as if it were the magic bullet usually means that behind that lurks somebody with another agenda and in the case of the business community and of the wealthy that agenda has always been the same cut the taxes on the us shift the burden of taxation on to the middle and lower classes and that's what we've done for forty years you know and our roads are falling apart our infrastructure has gone in the crapper this is you know just over

the last thirty five years or so since reagan cut those taxes basically the reagan philosophy also froze our interest. or to speak of my last question was about economic growth this one's about quality of life when you look at the quality of life that people experience in their countries and what you find if you look at northern european countries where you know taxes. average thirty five to fifty five percent you know at the top end and in some cases much higher but even you know average people are paying fairly high taxes the quality of life is spectacular is there a affirmative definable confirmable relationship between raising taxes and improving the quality of life or is that just a fluke or a coincidence. it's not a fluke or a coincidence but again you have to look at the larger context if the reason you're raising taxes is to fight an expensive war in

a foreign corner of the world then raising taxes not going to improve the quality of your life probably the opposite but what you have in large parts of western and northern europe is a case where because of the pressure of the labor movement of the socialist and communist parties in those societies you had a pressure to raise taxes to do with that tax money progressive social service kinds of activities but you don't even have to go to europe go to the united states in the one nine hundred thirty s. roosevelt raised the taxes because the coalition of the c.e.o. of the american socialist and communist parties then forced it he raised the taxes and used it to do what create the social security system we never had that before the unemployment compensation system we never had that before passed the first minimum wage we never had that before and the cap it all off a public jobs program that employed fifteen million otherwise on the employed

people if you raise taxes particularly on corporations and the rich and you use it in those ways yes you produce a much better quality of life and the business community was so upset that they had to pay for it in taxes that the last fifty years have been a consistent effort to roll all that back and trump is just one more step in that effort well when taxes were higher here in the united states we historically had a pretty strong middle class in as we do we're just discussing as happens all over the world the higher the top rate on the very very rich it appears the stronger and larger is the middle class so wouldn't real tax reform involve explicitly emphatically enthusiastically raising the top marginal tax rate others raising taxes on the super rich back to at least where they were before reagan did all this damage. well we should go back to the forty's fifty's and sixty's we had

a much greater labor force participation rate more americans could and would go to work eager for the jobs and incomes they earned we had a much more robust economy we had much more productivity growth we had much more real wage growth we had a much better situation when the highest income tax bracket for example was between seventy and ninety percent it has come down to the twenty's and thirty's now a spectacular drop for the richest in america and do we have the kind of life we had in the fifty's and sixty's no we don't we have much poorer economic indications lower productivity growth lower rate of economic development lower labor force participation rate so yes america will have to go abroad america is an illustration where if you listen to big business and conservatives and you cut taxes on corporations and you cut taxes on individuals you don't get the promised land of

growth and job creation you actually got in america the opposite so what if you were writing tax policy if you were sitting in the room tonight when trump is having dinner with three democrats three republicans is custer tax policy what would you say to them. i would say to them it is immoral what you are doing you are discussing cutting taxes and either raising the money that you can't raise in taxes by borrowing or by cutting social programs if you cut taxes your government doesn't have the money to pay for social programs you're discussing as though those are the three options raising the debt of the government cutting programs or cutting taxes on corporations and the rich you're leaving out what ought to be the centerpiece what about taxing corporations and the rich the way we once did in america not that many decades ago why is that off the table why is that

not being considered what kind of leadership are you offering when you kindly remove the one thing that corporations and the rich don't want to have considered namely that they pay the taxes they once did by behaving in that way you're their servant you're not the servant of the people who elected you you know my understanding is that pre reagan corporate corporate income tax accounted for about a third of our budget and today it's around somewhere between nine and eleven percent can you reality check those numbers for me we just had a seconds left. those are the numbers that's the way it has been look the way i like to say it is at the end of world war two in the late forty's and fifty's for every dollar that washington got by taxing individuals it got a dollar and a half by taxing business if you look at the same relationship today for every dollar that the federal government gets from us as individuals it collects

a roaring twenty five cents from corporations we've shifted the burden of taxation from business to the individual and from the richest individuals to the rest of us and that's why americans are upset about the government and the taxes because of that shift on to them of burdens that used to be shared by those. most able to pay it makes perfect sense richard wolfe thank you so much for being with us my pleasure thank you coming up steve bana wants to go to war with the republican party but it really is influential as he says he is that and more and that adds big picture politics panel brian pruitt and doug christian right after the break. all the fear we know. every the world to your ear.

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support for medicare for all is growing by the day at progressive swung the democratic civil war or is the real battle for the heart and soul of the party of f.d.r. still to come let's ask tonight's politics panel. joining me for that as politics panel are brian prote contributor to red state and political commentator doug christian thank you both for being with us tonight great to have you with us tonight so another batch of democrats have come out in favor of single payer health care today mozzie her oh no and brian shots of hawaii richard blumenthal of connecticut and tammy baldwin of wisconsin all said that they would support bernie sanders medicare for all built with their support the list of senators in favor of single payer now stands at sixteen bernie would have won the presidential election but not and now it appears as though his policies are winning over the democratic party is single payer now all but inevitable at least as the

mainstream democratic position for sure is the mainstream democratic position but there's a reason you don't have all the democratic senators supporting them we're talking about a proposal that would eliminate an entire industry an entire industry would turn parasitic industry one that also provides you know almost eight hundred thousand jobs in the united states. it's not to mention the subsidiary agents and dealers you know that's a part of another couple hundred thousand employees so democratic senators that want to win reelection in either moderate or really red states are not going to be keen to be putting people out of work so you're telling me that the person who when i when i called my insurance company and said you know you're not paying for all of my wife's chemo what's going on and she was like wow you had in your lifetime limit maybe you know that that person is going to lose your job i'm horrified so there's you know she can go to work for medicare so there's not only the jobs issue but there's also the innovation issue there's a lot of democrats believe fundamentally that the free market in expression for

health care and health care delivery is the best way to to provide innovation why is there in there that i'm sorry go for kind of been of innovation has there been i mean the fact is is that we are stuck as walter ruther said this is not no policy is what he said and that's what it is it's like he likened it to a model t. ford right now he said that the that the. private sector is looking out for profits for innovation come on its service money with industry i don't think so at all and i think specifically about the democratic party you have you haven't even got to a tipping point yet where you're fifty percent of the elected officials what you do know is that this is going to be the biggest issue for democrats in two thousand and twenty because the people who are on board with bernie's medicare for all plan or all the senators that are looking at seriously challenging donald trump cory booker. kristen chilla ben brand signed on today so you know there's

a political piece to this as well as the whole you know issue of it all ok now that he's back at his old post at breitbart steve bannan says he's ready to declare war are on the leadership of the republican party white house press secretary sarah huckabee sanders however doesn't seem to think much of the former white house chief strategists influence in washington d.c. even though bannon himself says he still talks with donald trump every two or three days. sanders says their relationship is a little more limited. i don't think they speak certainly not that frequently i'm aware of a like two conversations that they've had nothing beyond that not three days everything is not going to begin i'm only aware of two conversations that are taking place so as bannon using his former association with trump to inflate his actual power or is he really capable of waging war on the republican party and i guess brian to you this is a question about where in the conservative ecosystem does breitbart exist i mean we

know that breitbart probably wouldn't be anything close to what it is without the money from the from rebecca robert mercer well it also would be very different if andrew breitbart were still alive he was a he was he wouldn't be anything that we would call a moderate conservative but he was a realistic conservative he certainly wasn't a nationalist so bright would not be bipartisan now steve bannon's website in his you know molded in his vision more importantly what this truly is is it breitbart is able to wage war against the modern republican infrastructure so breitbart motivates the trumper one hundred percent trump to wage war against the republican party that they voted for. what i don't quite understand is the ban and does have the economic background goldman sachs and all this but yet he's a protectionist and yet also the claim that they're somehow conservative again how

does protectionism and conservatism merge i mean why are they even called conservatives i don't think they call themselves conservatives they call themselves nationalists he said it in the sixty minutes interview. i don't think he's ever used that word to describe him so this raises a really important question you've even the billionaire mercer family supporting steve benen in fact they were rebecca mercer i believe was the person who introduced him to trump and got that whole thing going or recommended it at least from what i've read in the press and and you know they they own cambridge. analytical which did all the data crunching and fed all the information to facebook or from facebook to push the trump memes and things in ways that were parallel quite successful and then you've got the koch brothers and their organizations americans for prosperity and in particular but these are those are two very very don't know this ins of let me let me finish this thought then you've got the coax the billionaire coax with americans for prosperity that actually has more employees

more offices and more money than the entire republican party and that's a good thing well no what i'm wondering is at what point does the so-called freedom caucus which are all the people who are loyal to the coax we're at what point does the freedom caucus or some even possibly larger fractured republican party say ok that's it we're going to start a political party we're going to call it the prosperity party take that from americans for prosperity and you know we're going to we're going to swear or fail to you two to the koch brothers and or at least to their mission and i mean you know are we looking at the possibility that the banning could be leading the crackup of the republican party in the splintering into two the crackup has been going on for quite some time because republicans in washington didn't keep their promises to the american people especially to the conservative base promises they weren't fake promises of these but secondly. and it's critical to understand that that the koch. affiliated organizations do not believe in supporting or

praising the koch's there there's supportive of creating a level playing field in america i personally support that idea the take away actually ends and you can redistribute it to all the rest of us nationalist wing is about protectionism like doug suggested and so there are two different republican parties right now yeah well that's i mean that's that's that's a little history strange and i consider myself a protectionist so i don't think that that's the cleeve. if you i mean there's plenty is demonstrative soda for donald trump so doug same question to you only in reverse as it were i mean you've got the hillary faction in the burning faction or basically the burning faction in the institutional democratic party faction and now we've got you know two thirds two thirds of the democratic senators saying we're not ready for single payer and one third saying yeah glasgow is the democratic party and trouble yeah they are they also split i mean and you saw that the

democratic convention where you definitely saw a rift between between these two factions democrats haven't figured this out yet i mean it. there are a majority of senators democratic senators who are not supporting single payor are not really cleaving on to medicare for all one of them one quick point for the people to keep an eye on other democratic governors all the democratic senators are sort of leaning toward this medicare for all but i have yet to see any reporting that democratic governors that might be looking at two thousand and twenty cuomo except are really making that move although cuomo did free education in new york he's very proud of that so everybody seems to be stealing a little bit from bernie and turning it into any help republicans say they hate big government but the truth is that they're totally fine with big government bureaucrats as long as the big government bureaucrats are used to demonize poor people specifically working poor people case in point the plan house conservatives

are now pushing that would require anyone who applies for the earned income tax credit to get an audit before receiving their check from the government stance a bill is audit system will stop people from cheating the government but it's katherine pell points out in the washington post it would impose huge administrative burdens on low income workers and at a time when republicans are flogging tax simplification this would make tax preparation infinitely more complicated unless of course the goal is to discourage poor people from applying for the t.c. in the first place. now is that there's twenty nine million people who qualify for or get the earned income tax credit every year if the i.r.s. now has to audit twenty nine million people there is no manpower at all to audit rich people you'd be more businesses tom you're being a little disingenuous most likely this this quote audit as it was described in the article in the post article would probably be an electronic verification of income

but the bigger point is this is a really stupid idea like the people that are receiving the a.t.c. or hard working americans republicans got behind this program because it incentivizes work oh republicans helped pass it in one hundred seventy five making it more difficult to to get that credit if you're a low income worker is ludicrous this is a stupid idea on the part of the defense to lee grew the what is this then the then the follow up question of this is. we've got all these support systems for low wage workers if you're if you're working minimum wage you know wherever it may be but donal's walmart whatever you're working a low wage you qualify for food stamps you clot qualify for housing support you qualify for medicaid and you qualify for actual free cash from the federal government the earned income tax credit would it be a whole heck of a lot easier to simply say we're doing away with all these programs and we're simply going to require employers to pay a decent wage why should we the taxpayers be subsidizing wal-mart and mcdonald's in

the entire fast food industry in the big box industry why should be we should we be also have also now for the fifteen dollars minimum wage the minute you show me one democrat that's willing to eliminate even one of those programs much less the four you mentioned well i do feel that washington is a place where compromises can be made in an ideal world and as you said i totally agree that. we're subsidizing the walmart's for underpaying. their employees actually have to not pay your employer say you know i don't have to pay them all qualify for the earned income tax credit let's get these democrats sign on to your idea ok. brian. dog sparky brain fart great to have you both with us thank you thank you and that's the way it is tonight and don't forget the marker see is not a spectator sport get out there get active your.

just go if you're watching all of. us. in case you're new to the game this is how. the economy is built around. from washington to washington to meet. the. voters in business to run this country business if. you must it's not business as usual it's business like it's never been done before.

there's a real irony going. place in the people and there is always well that's what they thought it was it always seems. to be. ordinary now wholesale surveillance you feel you have already milo's you into two so this is the end trump has used to sell oil and always on the story because it's garbage real. welcomed on contact today we discuss the decline of newsprint and it's a facts on american journalism with former village voice writers tom robbins and michael musto they're writing now on lot of good stuff but as for why because you know it's for developers it's republicans it's for people who actually have a personal stake in the outcome as opposed to.