The Dan Bongino Show - The Bongino Brief - Dec 25, 2021
Episode Date: December 25, 2021Two destructive leftist narratives about the economy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices...
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Dan Bongino.
Welcome to the Bongino Brief.
I'm Dan Bongino.
Listen, I love this cycle, okay?
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
You know, data, it matters.