The Daily Show: Ears Edition - Al Franken on Funding the IRS | Heather McGhee’s “The Sum of Us”

Episode Date: May 20, 2023

Republicans want you to believe that increased funding and a greater workforce for the IRS means you'll have tax collectors breaking down your door and taking your money at gunpoint. In the latest installment of Long Story Short, Al Franken takes a look at what that new IRS money is really going towards, including updated technology and more people to handle the complex high-income audits. Plus, New York Times bestselling author, Heather McGhee, discusses some of the history that created the racial wealth divide, why she decided to adapt her book "The Sum of Us" for young readers, and the story behind the book's cover art. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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in new funding for the IRS to hire new employees and upgrade its technology and it's working. The IRS is doing much better at processing our returns and answering our questions about how to file correctly and that's great. Better enforcement of tax laws means more money for all the many many things the government does, Social Security, Medicare, infrastructure, not to mention scraping off the feces smeared on the capital walls by the many, many things the government does, social security, Medicare, infrastructure, not to mention scraping off the feces smeared on the Capitol walls by the proud boys. Clearly the new funding is long overdue, in addition to paying for immensely popular programs, it will help reduce the deficit.

So everybody's got to be happy about this, everybody, right? Am I right? Democrats want to spend $80 billion to be happy about this, everybody, right? Am I right? Democrats want to spend $80 billion to hire 87,000 more armed IRS agents to terrorize Americans. They want to add 87,000 IRS agents that can use deadly force to go after American families. They want to turn the IRS into the Gestapo. They are arming up the IRS like they're preparing to take Fallujah. A little like James Bond, but instead of hunting down evil maniacs, these agents hunt down and kill middle class taxpayers that don't pay enough?

What on earth are these people talking about if you forget to carry the one while you're calculating your return? Will the IRS actually come to your home, break down the door? to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to the to the the to the their their to their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their.... A. A. A. their their. their their tieie.e.e.e.euu.eu.I.eol.e.e.I.e.e.e.e. I.e.e.e.e. I.e.e. tie. tie. their.to carry the one while you're calculating your return will the IRS actually come to your home break down the door and gun down your entire family in a word no in six words of course not you Republican idiots idiots. So let's talk about what the IRS money is really going for and another installment of Long Story Short. The administration is trying to fix a whole host of problems that began back in 2011 after Republicans and Congress started cutting the IRS budget. Since then, the IRS's audit rate has dropped almost 60 percent, and the number of IRS agents, the same number we had in 1954, when the country's population was half the size it is today.

And pediatricians treated sick children by prescribing them menthol cigarettes. And the combination of understaffing and Stone Age technology has resulted in a very weird situation. You are more likely to be audited in the United States if you make $20,000 a year than if you make $500,000 a year. The less money you have, the easier it is for the IRS to come after you. This is because the IRS doesn't have enough money to hire the highly trained investigators needed to go head to head with the wealthy. Ultimately, it's easier for them to audit lower income people because it's cheap, can be done by mail and doesn't take a lot of time.

Can you believe that the IRS is so understaffed that they audit poor people more than the wealthy because they just don't have the experts to handle the most complex returns. They're going after poor people because it's easier. It's like a comic who only does your mama jokes. Sure, it's easy, but at what cost to my mama? Her life, her life, her life is difficult enough. Do you know how hard it is to find a belt the size of the equator? So how hard it is to findxes are we talking about here?

According to the former head of the IRS, it could be as much as $1 trillion a year. To put that in perspective, if you stacked a trillion dollar bills on top of each other, it would blow away. It'd be ridiculous to even try that. The solution is pretty simple and it's a bargain. Comparatively speaking, just adequately fund the IRS so it can improve its enforcement capabilities and collect that extra trillion dollars. Now, you would think Republicans would love an extra trillion dollars in revenue. They're the ones who are always complaining that America is spending money that we don't

have. Politicians in Washington cannot stop spending money that we don't have. Let's live in reality. We have a spending problem. We have a dramatic spending problem. If you had a child, you gave them a credit card and they kept hitting the limit, you wouldn't just keep increasing it. You'd first see, what are you spending your money on. So we're going to look at every single dollar spent. We're going to audit it. If you're

going to have a party, you have to pay the band. Come on, Senator, you don't have to have a band at a party. Just hire... hire your nephew's roommate to be a DJ. Just think what we could do with an extra trillion dollars a year. We could begin to retire our national debt and balance our budget or we could do some new things that would be worthy of a great nation. We could have Universal pre-K. Or subsidized child care like they do everywhere. We could eliminate federal income taxes completely for the bottom 90% of American household. And this isn't just lefty liberal pie in the sky stuff with a trillion dollars. We could do, we could fund an entirely new Iraq war.

And why are we the only fucking developed country that doesn't have universal health care. And it doesn't have to be single-payer. We can have a public option, which we should have done in the first place, F. Lieberman. The point is, polling shows that 93% of Americans believe it's every American's civic duty to pay their taxes, and I think you can guess who the other 7% are. So, let's give the IRS the resources to make sure that everybody does what we all should do for the right of living in this great country, a nation. We can make even better if we do the fucking rational thing and collect the taxes that

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The Smartest Way to hire. My guest tonight is an author who's New York Times bestseller. The Some of Us has just been adapted for young readers. Please welcome Heather McGee. Good to see you. Good to see you here. Good to see you. You know, I've been doing a podcast. A very prestigious podcast. Good to see you here. You know, I've been doing a podcast, a very prestigious podcast, for about four years now you're my favorite guest. You've been on three times.

You're my favorite guest. You're so brilliant. Thank you. Thank you. Now, you're an economist. And you're an economist, you, and you, the first time we met was during the banking crisis and we talked a lot about that, subprime loans, etc. And housing has always been a big part in the gap in terms of wealth between blacks and whites.

Can you explain where that kind of started? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I always say wealth is where history shows up in your wallet. So today, the average black college graduate has less wealth on average than the average white high school dropout. Makes no sense, right? Say that again. Yes. So if you're the average white high school dropout. Makes no sense, right? Say that again. So if you're the average white high school dropout, you are wealthier than the average black college graduate. So that's history showing up in your wallet.

We're talking about wealth, not a paycheck. We are talking about your home equity, your stocks, your bonds, your inheritances. And that all dates back to, that massive racial wealth divide that we have today, dates back to when most middle-class Americans' wealth began, which was in the New Deal era, coming out of the Depression. The progressive FDR government said, we want to commit to affordable housing and mass home ownership, and they created this massive system, this system of public subsidy and they based it on the never substantiated assumption that black people would be too much of a credit risk. And so they commissioned

maps of the entire country's largest cities and surveyed them down to the block level for their racial and ethnic character and said if there was a high Negro concentration we're gonna circle that with a red line and say i thi thi, and th th th th th out th out th out th out thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi their their their their their the their the their the the the their their the. And the. And the the the the the their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their the the the the the the the thean. thean. thean. thean. thean. thean. thean. thean. theateateateate. the. the the the block level for their racial and ethnic character and said if there was a high Negro concentration, we're going to circle that with a red line and say banks do not lend here. And that really only ended in the 1970s and it was quickly replaced by what people call reverse redlining, which is when those contiguous communities of lower wealth black communities were targeted with those high-cost loans. But that's what we were exactly and that's how we met.

Oh wait, yeah. But yeah, the red lining started during the progressive FDR in the early 30s. That's right. And you know, the way I see it, and this is really the kind of core idea of the some of us, you know, you and I met not just because black families were being disproportionately targeted early in the subprime crisis before it was a household word, you and I met once everything had followed apart, right? Once Lehman had gone bankrupt, once trillions of dollars in household wealth and eight million dollars had disappeared overnight. And for me, it was such an object lesson in the way in which racism can ultimately have a cost for everyone.

We ignored the canaries in the coal mine, what was going on with black and brown families, early in the crisis, and banking committee members just weren't focused on it, and then obviously we know how the story ended. Well, the sum of us is about how race intersects with economic inequality. And it became an instant New York Times bestseller.

And now you've done a book that's for school children. For toddlers. No, not for toddlers. But for like middle schoolers? Yeah, yeah, middle school, night school. And how do you explain this to them? How do, because these kids are able to understand this, right? I mean, I noticed this is the book,

and it's a little shorter than the other but it seems pretty sophisticated. Yeah, we really didn't dumb it down. That was the lesson I got. We did sort of casual focus groups of educators and middle school students and they were like, don't dumb it down. We actually have access to all the same information you do. And we have the same kinds of questions, right? The core question at the heart of the sum of us is us us us us us us us us us us, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, thus, thus, thus, thus, thus, the the the thi, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, the th, th, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I th, I th, I th, I the the the th, I the thin, the thin, the the, the, thean, thea, theauui, the theaui, the the thea, thi, thi, thi, thi at the heart of the sum of us is, why does it seem like we can't have nice things in America? Nice things like, not like flying cars,

but nice things like universal health care, and paid family leave and child care and a great school in every neighborhood. And they have those questions, too. And so in the sum of us, I use a lot of data and a lot of history, but ultimately it's a series of stories, like the story of the drained public pool. Now the cover of this is a boy jumping in a pool, a white boy looks like, and I think a black child there. Tell that story, because that's the first story you tell these kids, right?

Yeah, it is. It's the story of what happened to many of the countries nearly 2,000 lavishly funded grand resort-style public swimming pools that were built in that same New Deal era of public goods around when the big housing subsidies were happening. And I like to get the kids to picture what it would look like to have a community pool that was free and could hold over a thousand swimmers at a time. And most of them, you know, they kind kind kind kind kind kind kind kind kind kind kind kind kind kind kind kind kind kind kind kind kind their their their their their their their their their their their their, you their, their, you their, you their, you their, you're their, you're, you, you, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their. their. their. their. their. their. their. their. their. their. their. their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, te. te. te. te. the. the. the. te. the. the. the. the. the. And most of them, you know, they kind of gasp and they're excited about the idea. And then I tell them that they were usually for whites only. And they're sort of like, oh, you know. And then I say, but then in the civil rights movement, black families began to say, you know what, it's our tax dollars that have funded those........... And, their. And, their. And, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, is....... their, is. their, is. their, is. their, is. their, is. their, is. their. their. their. ta. ta. ta. ta. ta.a. And, ta. And, ta. And, their, their, their, their, their, their. And, the to swim and the court sided with them and progress was made and then many towns and cities not just

in the Jim Crow South decided to drain their public pools rather than integrate them. They literally drained out the water and backed up truckloads of dirt and I really see in the conversations they have the questions they get it. So unbelievable and they did they have, the questions they ask me, they get it. So unbelievable. And they did that all over the place. All over the country, yeah. In Ohio and West Virginia, all over the country. Yeah.

So and then they planted over. Yeah. So it's just so black and white people couldn't swim together. That's exactly right. It's this zero sum story story story story story story story story story story story story story story story story story story story story story story story story story thomeomeomeomeomeomeomeomeomeomeomeomeomeomeomeomeome. th. th. th. th. th. the. the. the. the. the. the. the. together. That's exactly right. It's this zero-sum story, this old story that says that progress for people of color has to come at the expense of white people, that we can't all sort of share in well-being, that we're in this competition for dominance and status. And you know what?

Young people get it. It's this story that it's actually quite believable. Because they understand that over their lifetime, public goods have really been atrophying, that they don't have those big beautiful swimming pools anymore, that there isn't free college the way there was. That was a kind of a public pool that was funded by the government. And they know that as the college-going population got more diverse, for them, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, the-and-and-s, th-and-they know that as the college going population got more diverse for them, right? They're already in a generation. The zero sum idea is basically that wealthier whites taught poorer whites that anything that helps African Americans hurts them. Yeah, yeah. That's zero sum. That's right. And the sum of us is about we all do better when we all do better, which is what Paul Wallstone

used to say. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The late great. The late great. You know, it's the part of the book that young people really resonate with is the hopeful part. They want to hear that we can fix this. And I truly believe that everything about the world that we see now, all the dysfunction, it's because people made decisions to make the world as it is, and so people can make better decisions.

And the core message is that through collective action, people coming together across lines of race, finding solidarity, recognizing that we all do better when we all do better, and that we all want big, beautiful public pools, we can really win and take on powerful interests, but we can't if we're divided. And they get that. And it's been a really fun trip across the country schools, libraries, middle schools. You've been going all over the country finding communities where this is happening in Minnesota. Yeah. And we have a town Wilmer, Minnesota. It's in Canada-Yohi County. It's the biggest turkey-producing county in Minnesota, which is the biggest turkey-producing town. Of course. The town, I went to the biggest turkey producing town. Of course.

I went to the graduation there, about half the class German Scandinavian, about a third of the class Hispanic. There's a big meat packing plant there. About 15% Somali. This was the most beautiful thing I'd ever gone to in the time that I was in the Senate. This town just worked together. Lewiston, Maine is doing that all over the country. This works when we all, when we realize the sum of us.

That's right. That's how we create wealth, that's how we create prosperity. That's how we create a good life for all Americans. That's right, you should really run for office, though. Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching the Daily Show, wherever you get your podcast. Watch the Daily Show weeknight's at 11, 10 Central on Comedy Central, and the the the the the w-e-weat, and that's, that, and the the the the the thweat, thweat, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that's that's that's that, that, that's that's that's that's that's th, that's th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, you th, you th, you th, you that, you the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, the the the the the the the the the the Daily Show Podcast Universe by searching The Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts. Watch the Daily Show weeknights at 11, 10 Central on Comedy Central and stream full episodes anytime on Fairmount Plus. This has been a Comedy Central podcast.