The MeidasTouch Podcast - Congressman Tom Suozzi Exposes GOP Tax Bill Scam at Hearing

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Democratic Congress Members led by Tom Suozzi calling out the Republicans massive tax bill scam during hearings and Meiselas interviews Democratic Congressman Tom Suozzi. Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. So Donald Trump's one big, beautiful bill that they're trying to ram through Congress was exposed today in perfect form as one big, beautiful, massive scam as Democratic members of Congress led by Democratic Congress member Tom Suozzi pointed out that all of Donald Trump's promises, when you actually read the bill, it turns out they are scams. So let me show you what Congress member Suozzi was asking an individual who's part of the kind of nonpartisan tax group that like ranks these pieces of legislation here. Take a look at this. Okay, on tips, the president said, your tips will be 100% yours. Does this tax bill continue the payroll tax on people's tips? Yes, it does, Mr. Barr.

Overtime, the president said, your overtime will be tax-free. Does this bill continue the payroll tax on overtime? It does not exempt overtime from payroll tax. The president said he's going to remove taxes on Social Security. Does this bill remove taxes on Social Security benefits? The legislation provides an increased exemption amount. But does it remove taxes on Social Security benefits as promised by the president? It does not change Social Security. The president and the Republicans.

That's how it's done right there. Let's also show you Democratic Congress member Doggett. Here's what he points out. Let's play it. Mr. Barthold, that this legislation fails to extend the enhanced tax credits that lower the cost of insurance for millions of Americans who purchase their own coverage through the marketplace. That's correct. And when the Republicans permit these credits to expire in a mere seven months, what is the effect on health insurance premiums for those individuals that rely on the marketplace today?

Work that our staff has done in conjunction with the Congressional Budget Office suggests that premiums will increase for individuals, sir. our staff has done in conjunction with the Congressional Budget Office, suggests that premiums will increase for individuals, sir. Yes, sir. They go up about almost 8%, I believe is the specific calculation that you did. And is it true that this failure on the part of Republicans will raise premiums, not just for those, not that they'll raise them really for nearly everyone in the marketplace, not just for those who receive the subsidies. That's that's correct. That's part of the analysis. If my understanding is correct, failure to extend this policy will result in an increase in the number of uninsured Americans.

Is that right? That's correct, sir. uh that's uh uh correct sir that's yes and i've let's bring in democratic congress member tom swazi congress members some great questioning right there talk to us about it this seems like it's one big scam what do you make of it you know it's like uh it's like as they say it's like bizarro world where you're just in a what completely two opposite worlds you've got the republicans saying the big beautiful bill and it's going to improve the economy. It's going to do all these great things. And then you have the Democrats, like myself, saying this is going to massively increase the deficit. You say you want to be the party working class, but you're cutting the taxes for the wealthiest people in the United States of America again. You're paying for it by kicking people off of their health insurance, some of

the people that need it the most, almost 14 million people estimated by the Congressional Budget Office. And there's a whole bunch of provisions that they promised they were gonna do. For me, the state and local tax deduction is the big one that the president said, we're gonna get the state and local tax deduction back. And they're not doing it.

They're only increasing it from 10,000 to 15,000, 30,000 if you're married. But there's at least four Republicans that have come out and said, we're not voting for this bill unless you make it higher. So it's the same old divided attitude. Why can't we just sit down and work together with each other? Why do you have to reduce the taxes for people who make a million dollars a year from 39.6 down to 37? I mean, why? They don't need it. And you can pay for some

other good stuff. Let's go through all those things one by one and break it down. So first, there were the promises made. And as you showed, promises not kept, right? So MAGA Republicans are out there and they're telling people that the tax bill contains the payroll tax on tips. You said, does this tax bill continue, rather, the payroll tax on tips? And the guy goes, it does. So that's not there. You talk about payroll tax on overtime. Can you just talk through what Trump was saying on the campaign and what you exposed first as not actually being in

this bill? Well, Trump came out and said, you know, 100% of the tips are going to be yours. And so what's going to happen is you're going to have to continue to report your tips. You're going to have to pay your social security tax and the other taxes you pay, your payroll taxes, your employer is going to have to pay those taxes. And then when it comes time for your income tax at the end, they're going to say, oh, you don't have to pay the other taxes on those. But the taxes are that. And it's a wonderful thing to try and reduce people's taxes, especially people on tips or people who are getting overtime. Same thing. You're going to still have to pay your payroll taxes. But why can't we instead pay for this by increasing the taxes back to what they

were before 2017, back to 39.6 for the people making a million dollars a year? That doesn't make any sense to me. I mean, why can't we just work together? How many times have we heard about the deficit? The deficit, the deficit is going to destroy our country. It's our biggest threat that we face in our country, the deficit. They're increasing the deficit by $4 trillion. So to put that in perspective, the deficit in the past when we had to do like some big projects and stuff was $1.5 trillion. They're going to do a $4 trillion deficit in one year. It's going to explode the deficit. It's just the – I don't get it.

So we first talked about promises made, promises not kept, but then let's talk about the threat to health insurance, the threat to Medicaid. How bad is this bill right now for people on Medicaid? It's awful. There are people that are on Medicaid. There are people that got the Affordable Care Act benefits when it was extended to their states. Like the chairman of this committee is from Missouri. And this guy, Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri, a big Republican, wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times yesterday and said, you know, we don't want to still be the corporatists in the Republican Party. Let's look out for the working families. And we passed a law, a constitutional amendment in Missouri, to give them the right to have Medicaid used to pay for

the Affordable Care Act for people at certain lower income levels. And they're going to be cutting it from the federal government. So they're going to have to pay for it at the Missouri level if they want to conform with their constitution. It's just it's just nonsensical. Why would you make think about that? 14 million people, you know, any individual stories that is of people like trying to get by and they have some tragic thing happened in their family. And then somebody's got cancer, they get hit by a car or somebody's got cerebral palsy. Somebody's

got dementia or something, you know, some major problem. And now they're going to lose their health insurance. It's just, it's rotten. Let's talk about SALT. When you talk about SALT, it's an acronym for State and Local Tax Deduction. What were you told was going to happen? And you have a lot of Republican Congress members from New York also who said that they wouldn't be supporting it unless certain things were done with SALT. Tell us about there. I don't want to take up too much time on this, but let me just tell people state and local tax deduction was the first deduction given to people in 1913. So when they first started the federal income tax code, they said, we're going to tax your income at the federal level. And the governors and the mayors said, don't do that.

Don't do that. We want to tax them at the local level because we've got to pay for the schools and garbage and things like that. We don't want you to tax the federal level. Just use tariffs the way you always used to in the old days. They said, no, we're going to deduct. You're going to let you deduct your state and local taxes, the money you've already paid in taxes from your income.

So you don't have to pay taxes on the taxes you've already paid. That was in place for 100 years. In 2017, Donald Trump and the Republicans capped that deduction at $10,000. That's a killer for people in New York and California and Illinois and Massachusetts and other places that have unions, other places that have low rates of uninsured people that insure our children, insure our adults. So we have higher taxes to pay for these. We have more mass transit, more infrastructure. So we have higher costs because of those things. Now they took it away. They said, we're gonna cap it at $10,000.

That made people's taxes actually go up. So a bunch of people came out and said they were against this. We wanna get the state and local tax deduction back again. President Trump came to Long Island in 2024 during the campaign and said that we're against this. We want to get the state and local tax deduction back again. President Trump came to Long Island in 2024 during the campaign and said, I'm going to get your salt back. I'm going to get it back. I'm going to make things better for people here. We're going to get salt back. And a bunch of Republicans in this Congress came out and said, we're not voting for this bill unless you give us our state and local tax deduction back. And they said, you've double crossed us. You've

only increased it from 10,000 to 15,000 for a person filing singly or 30,000 if you're a married couple. And they said, this is an insult. This is unfair to us. And it is unfair. So I'm hoping that these Republicans that have stood up and said, we're not voting for this unless we get salt, we'll stay strong and they will hold people's feet to the fire and get us our state and local tax deduction back again. And again, just raise the taxes on the richest people in the country back to what it was under Clinton, what it was under Obama when the economy was booming. 37 back to 39.6, it will generate hundreds of billions of dollars. Finally, what happens next? Because I know we're hitting that debt ceiling soon.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bettson put out some statement like the account. He said something even like the accounting games I'm playing right now, by the way, which is like a total red flag. I'm not going to be able to do them. I think he said come July or, you know, or whatever it was, it's coming up pretty soon. The bottom line, some Republicans are going to be able to do them, I think he said, come July or, you know, or whatever it was. It's coming up pretty soon. The bottom line, some Republicans are going to try and say this bill is going to pay for itself because we're going to have so much economic growth, their whole trickle-down thing, supply-side economics that never has worked ever before. It's not going to work this time.

And the cuts that we're doing is going to pay for it. It's not going to pay for itself. And how do we know it's not going to pay for itself? Because the Republicans are putting in this bill an increase in the debt ceiling to allow the president to borrow $4 trillion. I know you hear these numbers, trillions, billions, millions, $4 trillion. The total debt of the United States of America right now is in about 30 some odd trillion dollars. They want to add $4 trillion to it. They want to increase it by 10 percent in just one year. That's never happened before. It's the biggest increase in the deficit that's ever happened in the history of the country just from these tax cuts that

they're providing in this bill. So it's all it's all phony baloney. I mean, it's just really just it's heartbreaking how many people are going to have to suffer because of this bill and because of those, you said, the broken promises that have been made. Is this going to get passed, though? Or is this going to get this? I mean, I've heard senators say that they're not. What's going to happen? What do you think? I think that you're going to have a fight in the House first over the next week about whether to increase the state and local tax deduction or not. And people are going to try and get it increased. And there's going to be a bunch of other moderate Republicans who are saying you're cutting Medicaid too much. You're cutting Medicaid too much. Too many people in my district are going to suffer because of this.

Then it's going to go over to the Senate where there's going to be even more pressure on the cuts to Medicaid. They're not going to want to cut Medicaid. So a lot of these Republicans may be walking the plank in the House only to have the Senate try and change it later on. Or they're all going to walk, walk in single file and do what the president asked them to do when he calls them up and says, yeah, you got to do this. Well, great questioning today. And please come back and let's talk about what's happening. Keep our audience updated.

We appreciate it. Congratulations on the Webby. Thank you, Congressman. Congressman Tom Suozzi. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Have a good one. Everybody hit subscribe.

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