The Dan Bongino Show - The Bongino Brief - Dec 25, 2021

Episode Date: December 25, 2021

Two destructive leftist narratives about the economy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices...

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Metro Links and Cross Links are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals, be careful along our tracks, and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. Dan Bongino. Welcome to the Bongino Brief. I'm Dan Bongino. Listen, I love this cycle, okay?
Starting point is 00:00:34 I'm going to just put this out there in advance. Some of you love economics, some of you don't. But I was on my radio show yesterday, and I got a ton of good feedback about this. I had mentioned, this is an old thing on the podcast, you've heard about it a lot, but I'd mentioned that there are two really pernicious, destructive leftist narratives about the economy. And if there were two, I wish would just go away because I dream a genie style, you know, wiggle the nose or whatever. The first one would be that the Reagan tax cuts cost the government money. In other words, we went into debt because of the Reagan tax cuts. Why is that narrative? Why does that bother? Why do you care, Dan? I care. It's nothing to do with Reagan. Frankly, it's nothing
Starting point is 00:01:19 to do with tax cuts. It has everything to do with their ability to ingrain in the American psyche a narrative that is false, and they use it to discredit other tax cuts. In other words, this happened, the Reagan tax cuts from 1980 to 1988 over a series of years. The numbers are there. The Reagan tax cuts did not cost the American people any money. The federal government raised more tax revenue because the economy grew. So although the tax rates were lower, the economy expanded so much, we actually
Starting point is 00:01:52 raised more revenue. I'm going to prove it to you in a minute. The reason that's important now, Reagan's dead. The reason it matters now is because every time a tax cut's proposed, they keep bringing up the same argument. Oh my gosh, those Reagan tax cuts cost us money, went to massive government debt from the Reagan
Starting point is 00:02:11 tax cuts. It's false. The second narrative I'd love to dispel and I dream a genie style, make it go away, would be that there was a Clinton surplus. There was never a Clinton surplus. It didn't happen. I'm not going into that again. Just look at the national debt every year of the Clinton administration. It goes up every year. How the hell does the debt go up if there was a surplus? It went up every year. There's no surplus. It's made up. What do you mean they made it up? That's exactly, they just made it up. Yet liberals still believe it happened. Why is this important? Here we go. Joe Scarborough from Morning Shmoe. He was a former Republican congressman or alleged Republican congressman. He is now a full time leftist activist, and he was on his morning show claiming that some of the tax cuts he voted for, notably the Bush tax cuts, which also raised the largest four year increase in tax revenue in American history at the time that Bush tax cuts.
Starting point is 00:03:03 But he keeps bringing up again how these Republican tax cuts redistribute wealth from the middle class to the rich and are causing inequality, basically insisting that the rich get off while the middle class pay more. You doubt me? Listen to him say it right here. Well, the tax policies that I have supported through the 80s and 90s, and they continue to be supported by Republicans in the 21st century, have created the greatest income redistribution in the history of this planet from middle class Americans to the Elon Musks of the world.
Starting point is 00:03:38 It's grotesque. They did? Keep in mind, this guy, again, this is the reason why I tell you to never trust people in Congress. They are 535 between the House and the Senate of the dumbest people on planet Earth. Most of them, not all of them that managed to get. They don't know what this guy was a congressman. And he's just lying to you on his television show. So just to be clear about his premise, because we do facts on this show.
Starting point is 00:04:06 show. So just to be clear about his premise, because we do facts on this show, his premise is that the 80s and 90s tax cuts took money from the middle class and gave it to the rich. In other words, the rich paid less and the middle class played more. Okay, did that happen? Here we go, receipts time. It's all bull. Washington Examiner Christopher Tremogli,li working class won big under trump's tax cuts and jobs act he's insisting that the trump tax cuts did this too and made elon risk elon musk rich they did according to the heartland institute taxpayers with an adjusted gross income of 40 50 000 received an average tax cut of 18 under the trump tax cuts. Wow. Data show that taxpayers with an adjusted gross income of $1 to $25,000 decreased by more than $2 million in one year, while the number of households reporting incomes higher than $25,000
Starting point is 00:04:54 increased in every income bracket. So the middle class received a pretty massive tax cut under President Trump. Yeah. And it appears that people who are poor got richer. That's not what Joey Scarborough said. No, no, no. Former Congressman, morning schmo host. He's saying the rich people got all their money from the poor people.
Starting point is 00:05:16 Elon Musk stole it. Doesn't have any data to back that up, of course. Ah, you may be saying, all right, he's lying about the Trump tax cuts, whatever. But all right he's lying about the trump tax cuts whatever but he's definitely not lying about the reagan tax cuts you heard him he said the tax cuts in the 80s you heard him he said it right i support a tax so he's talking about reagan for the liberals listening who don't know reagan was president so did the rich get over on the poor in the 80s during the reagan tax cuts so i said ah let's be fair washington examiner's relatively right leaning let's let's try a leftist Examiner is relatively right-leaning.
Starting point is 00:05:48 Let's try a leftist source just to show you how dumb these people are. Here's Glenn Kessler, one of the dumbest human beings on planet Earth, but he writes for the Washington Post. He was trying to fact-check Rand Paul, except this fact-check didn't work out as planned. Here he acknowledges that the rich after the Reagan tax cuts paid more. The Elon Musks of the 80ies paid more, not less here. I'll read you the quote. Washington post.
Starting point is 00:06:08 Certainly the share of taxes paid by the top 1% went from 17.9% in 1981 to 25.2% in 1989. The Reagan years for an increase of 41%. According to, according to who IRS data. Oh my gosh. Well, it must be real but the income share of the top one percent increased even more from eight percent to fourteen percent a gain of
Starting point is 00:06:30 seventy one percent exactly that's the point so just to be clear glenn kessler's big bad because rich people paid a greater percentage of the tax load. Joe, wait for it. Because they got richer. Oh, my gosh. You can't have that happen. Hang them by the toenails. Il bastardo. Get them.
Starting point is 00:06:54 How do you? Oh, my gosh. How do you let this happen? What a bunch of turd burglars. My gosh. So the rich people paid more taxes, and Glenn Kessler thinks it's a problem. They not only paid more in number, but a greater percentage. But it's definitely a problem because they got richer in the Reagan years, along with everyone else.
Starting point is 00:07:12 How do I know that? Just go back to the tax brackets and the tax brackets that shrunk in the Reagan years. You'll notice something. The middle class shrunk in the Reagan years. Oh, my gosh, what happened? They got poorer? No, they all got richer. Look at the number of people
Starting point is 00:07:29 in the middle class tax brackets. And look at the number of people in the wealthier tax brackets after Reagan got out of office. You'll notice they all went up. Now, proving Joe Scarborough wrong on the, well, listen, we redistributed income
Starting point is 00:07:44 from the middle class and the government lost a bunch of money. He didn't say that, but the leftists will tell you that. Really? Wall Street Journal, Phil Graham and Michael Salon. When Reagan left office, real federal tax revenue was more than 19% higher than the day of his inauguration. Real revenue. That's inflation adjusted for you leftists a major recession was overcome inflation was broken the tax code was indexed and the largest tax cut of the post-war era had been implemented now do you understand why dunces like joe scarborough continue to attack the reagan trump and bush tax cuts because they don't want to admit the obvious that the economy exploded
Starting point is 00:08:22 and in a double whammy of success here, what happened? Tax revenue went up too. Even the government benefited. Now, let me give you a common critique here so you're ready. A common critique you'll hear from leftists is, well, tax revenue went up during the Reagan years because Reagan hiked the capital gains tax. Oh, he did. 20 to 28%. He cut the income tax and cut a number of other taxes, too, which is weird. That's kind of a stupid claim because when you go to the Tax Foundation and you look at the charts, you'll see that the largest increase in tax revenue by far came from, oh, income taxes. In 1980, $244 billion when Reagan gets into office. And in 1989, when he leaves, the income tax revenue is $445 billion.
Starting point is 00:09:11 So let's look at the capital gains tax revenue. Surely that was all of it, right? Well, no, not so much. You don't have that fact on your side either. Capital gains tax revenue, $12 billion when he got into office. And when he got out of office, 35 billion. So the overwhelming majority of taxes and the tax increases came from
Starting point is 00:09:33 individual income taxes from wealthier people who, although their tax rates were lower, were paying more. It just folks, they just make it up. They just get up all the time. The numbers are never on their side. Fact to it.
Starting point is 00:09:46 You know, data, it matters.

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