The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, November 2

Episode Date: November 2, 2017

House Republicans today released the first draft of their highly anticipated tax bill. President Trump is calling for changes to the diversity visa program after a terrorist attack in New York left eight people dead. And lawyers for Facebook, Twitter and Google testified on Capitol Hill this week about the role their platforms played in Russia's efforts to disrupt the 2016 election. And, can't let it go. This episode: guest host/congressional correspondent Susan Davis, political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, political editor Domenico Montanaro, editor correspondent Ron Elving, and justice reporter Ryan Lucas. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. And remember, you can start your day with Up First, the morning news podcast from NPR News. When news moves fast, Up First is there, your quick morning update on what's happening and what it means, your guide to each day's news. You can wake up with Up First tomorrow morning on the NPR One app or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, it's Max. And Anna Rose. or wherever you listen to podcasts. you hear it. Keep up with the latest NPR coverage at NPR.org, the NPR One app, or on your local NPR member station. Okay, here's the show. Hey, everybody, it's the NPR Politics Podcast, here with our weekly roundup of political news. Republicans today released the first draft of their highly anticipated tax bill. If it passes, it will be the most significant overhaul of the federal tax code

since Ronald Reagan was president. And if it fails, we'll get into that too. President Trump is also calling for changes to the diversity visa program after a terrorist attack in New York City left eight people dead. It's the same program the accused attacker used to get into the country. And lawyers for Facebook, Twitter, and Google were grilled by lawmakers on Capitol Hill about the role their platforms played in aiding Russia's efforts to disrupt the 2016 election. And as always, we'll end with what we just can't let go this week. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress for NPR. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. And I'm Ron Elbing, editor correspondent. Tam and Scott are off on reporting trips today. I have not locked them in the basement. I'm just

filling in. Although people often confuse Tam and I on air. So in theory, I maybe could have pretended to be her and saw which really, really good podcast listeners would be able to tell the difference. And I think Ron and I have only been in like one other podcast together. So you see, you know, we're not the same person. Yes. So Danielle will have to see if anybody confuses us today. I could affect an accent for the whole show, maybe a Russian one. And then, you know, then people will know for sure. And it will be fitting. So, you know.

And timely. Okay. So, Danielle, I want to start with you because I want to talk about taxes. So do I. So, a lot of buildup and maybe a little behind schedule, but Republicans finally released their tax bill today. And we have the name for it, disappointingly, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The sadly non-redundant Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Before we even get in... What kind of acronym is that? The TCJA? The TCAJA?

That's not good. They don't want an acronym because they want everyone to refer to it as the tax cuts and jobs bill. How is it not the MAGA? Before we get into the substance, we have to talk about what President Trump initially wanted to call the bill. Who wants to say it? You all want to say it? I think you all want to say it? I think you want to say it. Should we say it together?

Should we say it together? One, two, three. Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. So there was a great story, which I also confirmed with my own congressional sources, that when they were drafting the bill, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Kevin Brady, who's the top tax writer on this bill, were brainstorming and said, you know what, President Trump, he's such a good brander. Let's get him in on this. Let's see what he wants to call it. The White House came back. First offering, the Cut, Cut, Cut Act. I got to say, I remember the Cut, Cut, Cut Act. I don't remember. What is it? The TCGA? Let's call it. TKJA?

Can we shorten it to just Cut 3? Yeah. C3. Cut cubed. Once again, the establishment wins. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act released today. Danielle, you have been working your way through this bill. We know that it is tax cuts for both taxpayers and businesses. Right. I want to start talking about taxpayers because I think when people hear there's going to be a tax cut, their first question is, how does this affect my life? So how does this affect the regular taxpayer? Right.

So first of all, I mean, the big thing that Republicans will be touting is that this cuts the number of brackets. It cuts it from seven to four. So, you know, I'm not going to go through the numbers here, but, you know. What's the highest? What is the highest? 39.6, which is where the highest bracket is right now. The difference is that where that bracket starts changes. It is higher than it is. If you're, for example, a married couple filing jointly, it's much higher. Right now, that 39.6 bracket starts at around $470,000. If this bill would pass, it would start at $1 million. So you would have however many people there are in that gap between $500K and $1 million who would now no longer pay 39.6. So the top rate would stay 39.6% in the country. What would be the lowest tax rate someone would pay? That would be 12%. Yeah. So, I mean, and there are all sorts of other changes on top of that as well,

but that is the first basic change. Another basic change that's going to affect a lot of people is the standard deduction will be doubled. So right now it's somewhere around $6,000 for an individual and $12,000 for a married couple. That would roughly double. However, and this is where it all gets sort of messy. I mean, so that might sound great for a lot of people. It might mean you're less likely to itemize. But we're also getting rid of personal exemptions. You know, you get an exemption for every single person in your family, and you used to get to tack that on to your standard deduction no longer. So that could offset some of that. So whether your tax bill is going to be higher or lower depends on that. And whether your tax bill is going to be higher or

lower depends on that. And I think we should also point out that for roughly half the households in America, half the people in America, they don't make enough money to pay federal income taxes. They do pay payroll taxes, they pay social security taxes, Medicare taxes, which are totally unaffected by this bill. Those taxes are not going down for anyone. So, Daniel, let me ask you a question, because, you know, the big political talking point coming into this in some ways was that the middle class was the focus, right? Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House, would say that the middle class is going to get a tax cut. Really, the biggest cuts in this, obviously, are for corporations from 35 to 20 percent. But what about the middle class? Are there going to be people that are stuck, you know, in this sort of Neverland between these tax brackets like they'd

been talking about and then potentially some people seeing an increase? That's a great question. And there's honestly no great way for me to answer it yet, because, you know, listen, were this bill to be enacted or even once, you know, we all start reporting more deeply on it, I'm sure there will be all sorts of case by case by case things that we reporters will dig up and say, oh, this particular person would be way worse off. This particular person would be way better off. But I mean, because the thing is, they're also doing a lot of other stuff on the individual side. There's a bigger child tax credit. There's now a per person credit that would seem to offset some of that personal exemption stuff that I just talked about. And plus, they're getting rid of a bunch of little deductions.

The Republican Party and the Democrats sometimes like to talk about simplifying the tax code. So they're potentially getting rid of a bunch of deductions that a lot of people really like, you know, some smaller ones like student loan interest, medical expenses, and then, of course, big ones like the state and local tax deduction. If you are an itemizer, much of that is going away. They're keeping property tax deductions, though. Politically, though, the bill is intended to cut taxes, but Republicans are also saying they want to simplify the code, that it should just be easier to file your taxes. Though, Ron, I don't know how many people are really going to be excited by the fact that Congress just made it easier to file

if they don't see any discernible benefit? Like, how much do people really care about tax reform? I don't think people care a great deal about either the idea of reform or the idea of simplicity if they wind up paying more money. They're going to wind up feeling that somehow they were left out, or they're the ones who are paying more so that someone else can pay less, and they're going to identify the person they like least among those paying less. So maybe there will be some people who, because of the standard deduction changes, will actually no longer owe any federal income tax at all. And they're a beneficiary. No question about that. But there will also be a large number of people who are pass-through businesses who are suddenly going to be

seeing their taxes go down from 35 to 20 percent. That's a huge tax break. Plus, we're eliminating the estate tax. So the richest people who die under the eliminated estate tax, they're going to phase it out. But once it's eliminated, they would go tax free on the billions of dollars they may want to pass on to their inheritors. Now, we can have an argument about whether or not that money should be taxed at the point of death, but it is something that is paid by only a fraction of the richest 1% of the people in the country. And so that is a tax break for the wealthy, no question about it. So if you wind up paying more as a normal American middle-class family,

those are the people whose tax breaks your finance. But Domenico... Okay. Well, and to tack on to what we're talking about here, you know, only a quarter of Americans in a poll that came out from CBS News this week, only one quarter said that tax reform should be the top priority for Congress and the president right now, which shows you that, you know, Americans might be kind of excited about particular tax breaks they might get, but they're not exactly, you know, chomping at the bit to be like, yes, Congress, please do this. Not at all. Domenico, one of the things that struck me about this

politically is that this bill also, that I think for the first time in a very long time, also has the Republican Party conceding that maybe the wealthiest Americans don't deserve a tax cut, leaving that top rate at 39.6%, I believe it is. That's a concession in its own way, even if it seems small politically, it's still kind of big. It's a huge deal. And they even were talking about possibly raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans after there became the talking point that this bill benefits the wealthy far more than it does the middle class or any other group. And there's two things that are left out of this bill that I think are really interesting to talk about. First, the fact that the highest level is still 39.6%, although, as Danielle noted, the income level that would be taxed on that obviously goes up higher.

So those people will get some bit of a tax cut, but not as big maybe as people thought it could. But the other big piece of this is that there was a lot of talk about putting a cap on 401k contributions. Right now, you can put in about $18,000 a year tax-free. You can put in as much as you want, but tax-free, we're talking $18,000, right? Now, what they were talking about in some of the details of the conversation that got leaked was potentially capping that at $2,400 a year. That is a huge change. It would be a major shift and frankly, would create a talking point for Democrats who oppose this bill

to say, wait a minute. So you want to lower, you want to slash corporate tax rates at the expense of my retirement? Good luck with that one. I think we've identified why they didn't put that in the bill. It was phenomenally unpopular in polls. And one thing I can't believe we haven't even gotten to yet is the mortgage interest deduction, which tends to be a tax break that is considered untouchable. As someone who just purchased a house, that is certainly one of those things you never think about in your entire life.

And then it's the thing you clock most closely that Congress does. You are going to be doing a dance on April 15th. You're going to be looking forward to filing your taxes in like January. I'm just letting you know. Okay. Existing mortgages are grandfathered in anyway, as I understand it. Fantastic. That's right. But somebody who's buying a new home next year, and they're buying it in California or New York or any of the other places where mortgages are typically well up into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Absolutely.

Are going to discover that they better not try to buy the house they thought they needed. They're going to have to buy a smaller house. Right. Because to be clear, they're not getting rid of the mortgage interest deduction. That would be insane because lots of people, like Sue, probably kind of like it. Instead, they're changing the cap on where it starts. Right now, the cap is at a million dollars. So if you have a million dollars in home debt, then it would start there.

Now they're knocking that down to $500,000, which, you know, that's a pretty big change. And, you know, it won't affect a lot of people in America who just don't have that much in mortgage debt. But also it has bipartisan support to some degree. But this raises a great point, right? If you want to do tax cuts, you have to pay for them or you have to pay for most of them. You don't have to pay for that last trillion and a half that they decided to put on the cuff, but you do have to pay for the other three and a half trillion that has not been put on the cuff. And so that means that the final tax bill can't add to the deficit by more than one

point five trillion over the next 10 years. That is the way that Republicans approved a budget resolution. And the budget resolution is kind of what outlines these target numbers that they have to hold to in order to get a bill through the Senate in the end. And so that means there's some people today who are going to be thrilled about this bill and some people who are not going to be happy about this bill. Who's not happy about this bill? Home builders are not happy about this bill. That change in the mortgage interest deduction really has them kind of upset. The National Conference of State Legislatures sent out a release today saying they were

also heavily displeased with this because they are upset about getting rid of that state and local tax deduction, which is, you know, an indirect subsidy of states of state spending. It certainly means that you can no longer write off thousands and thousands of dollars, even tens of thousands of dollars, depending on your income in high tax states like Illinois or New York or Massachusetts or California. And those are, gee, I don't know, maybe a lot of them blue states, as it turns out. a lot of them blue states, as it turns out. A lot of the states also where people are going to get hurt most with respect to that mortgage deduction are blue states. So this is, among other things that you have to be able

to say about it, it's a favorable to the red states tax overhaul. I want to get to the politics of this. But before we get to that, Danielle, I want you to just also broad strokes talk about the business side of this, because this is really a lot of the prize for Republicans who have been eager to reform the business side of the tax code. They say this is what's going to jumpstart the economy and this is what's going to deliver higher wages and jobs. So what is I don't imagine there's a lot of corporate tax experts listening to our podcast, but if you are welcome. So for the non-corporate tax expert, what does this bill do on the corporate side of the tax code? It cuts corporate taxes. By how much?

From 35 to 20 percent. That is a big hit. And we can get into the ins and outs of what else happens beyond that. But, I mean, that is important to keep in mind, even though, you know, lots of people are going to focus on the individual income tax side. This is a huge part of this. It is going to be a hugely expensive part of this tax bill. And, you know, it's really kind of at the center of it, I would say. This is the prize. Yeah. I mean, and on top of that, you know, you have this other thing,

and I'm going to try not to allow people's eyes to glaze over. Okay. Give it your best shot. All right. All right. So pass-through businesses. I know. We're all excited already. All right. So pass through businesses. I know we're all excited already. All right. Pass through businesses. I mean, this is a thing that really had a lot of analysts worried coming up to the rollout of this bill. And the reason is some businesses, if you are the sole proprietor of your business, you pay taxes through the individual income tax code, not that 35%, you know, corporate tax rate. So Republicans had said, well, we're going

to put in a special rate for those people. But there were worries that, you know, people would say, well, well, now I'm an independent contractor. Right. Abuse in the system. Yes, absolutely. So what they did is there is a relatively complicated system that I'm not going to get into here. But they so they've introduced this 25% pass through rate, but they have put in some, quote unquote, guardrails to try to prevent people from gaming that. And I think that's going to be into here. So they've introduced this 25% pass-through rate, but they have put in some quote-unquote guardrails to try to prevent people from gaming that. And I think that's going to be a big thing people are going to pay attention to in the coming weeks is, do we think that that is gameable or do we not? I can tell you that the National Federation of Independent Business is another group that came out today, and they did not particularly like how this pass-through rate

is being implemented. So there are some business groups who don't tend to be inimical to Republicans, but who might not be happy about this. And for people who do want to see more about those numbers, you can go to NPR.org. There's a lot of dissecting of the tax bill if you really want to dig deep. But before we turn the page and talk about the next thing, I just we have to talk about the politics of this, right? It's November. Republicans have not delivered a lot of legislative wins. There was a very dramatic failure of the health care bill. And the things we've been hearing repeatedly is this is must pass and it can't fail. Why can't it fail?

What are the stakes here? Of course it can fail. Anything can fail in Congress. And we have seen must pass bills again and again and, not be passed. Just this year. Just this year. And now, of course, we're hearing that this is the be all and end all of the Republicans holding their House and Senate majorities next year. All of that talk is clearly overblown. We don't know yet what the political circumstances one year from today, when we're on the brink of that midterm election, will be. We could be talking about something totally different. But for the moment, we do know this is the biggest game in

town and that politically the Republicans feel they have to deliver on their promise of a big, big corporate tax cut that is supposedly going to create a lot of jobs. And this is going to be the real payoff of the bill, not so much the middle class tax cut, which appears to be kind of averaged out maybe 100 bucks a month for a typical family. And that's if you buy what Paul Ryan said. So 100 bucks a month for the average family. That's not what this has all been about. What it's all about is the corporate tax cut to create jobs. That's the big delivery for Donald Trump. He needs to deliver jobs for his Congress, for their reelection and for his own reelection. And more short term. I mean, this is what Republicans are supposed to be good at.

I mean, they are supposed to be the ones who, if nothing else, can, you know, deliver on tax cuts. Taxes is what they talk about. They're money guys. Right. And when it comes to a tax overhaul, this is coming at the end of a year in which Republicans in the Senate and in the House have been unable to pass a repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act, which they failed on three times in a very high profile way. And there are lots of fissures, lots of cracks within the Republican political apparatus. And right now, Donald Trump is the most popular figure within the Republican Party. It ain't Mitch McConnell. It ain't Paul Ryan. And we've seen President Trump turn on both of them in a heartbeat if needed.

And, you know, if they are unable to pass this tax bill, who knows what that could do to that relationship. And if they do, though, that's a pretty big win for President Trump. It's at least something for them to build on. Right. But speaking of the fissures that Domenico was talking about, and I think this can't be stated enough. I think one of the big questions here is, you know, what is the cost of this bill and how it is paid for? You know, one of the experts I talked to this morning said, you know, I look at this and I'm skeptical that that this can be paid for. And, you know, on the Republican side, you have plenty of people who really care about fiscal responsibility, as they call it, about the deficit, about blowing a hole in the debt. And, you know, there is good reason for that. You can make the argument because, you know, the question is this tax cut that you think is going to boost the economy or be rocket fuel, as our president says, very well may boost the economy. But long term, if you blow a hole in the debt, then do you slow down the

economy? And that is a big question that some right-leaning economists have wondered about. I always say the party that cares about the deficit is the party that's not in governing control. That's the party that always feels the most passionate about the deficit. Yeah. And we've suddenly seen that from the Democrats this week. So we should also caution that this is the first in a lot of steps that have to happen before this bill can move forward. This was just the House unveiling of the bill today. It's got to move through committee next week, the floor after that. The Senate still has to pass it, but we do know the stated goal as of today.

They want to pass this bill out of both chambers before Thanksgiving in three weeks. Or just the House before Thanksgiving. No, they want it out of the senate as well before thanksgiving i know oh they didn't he say by christmas no deciding the goal i think it's house it's not it's the gold by john cornyn this week said the goal is to get it out of the house and senate before thanksgiving to give themselves december to get it through conference get a final bill get it to the president okay all right you mean the first the first yes okay all right so it's going to get a final bill, get it to the president. Oh, okay. All right. You mean the first, the first go? Yes. So it's going to be a rough, a rough and tumble three weeks, and we're going to be hearing a lot more about it.

And before we go, because we're talking about Christmas, this is how President Trump described the tax bill. We are giving them a big, beautiful Christmas present in the form of a tremendous tax cut. It will be the biggest cut in the form of a tremendous tax cut. It will be the biggest cut in the history of our country. It'll also be tax reform, and it'll create jobs. So we're going to take a quick break. We're going to tap out Domenico. We're going to tap in justice reporter Ryan Lucas, who's going to join us to talk about all things Russia, President Trump's response to the terrorist attack in New York that killed eight people,

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And there's something else President Trump wants Congress to work on now. One very specific slice of immigration. Less than 24 hours after a man drove a truck onto a bike path in New York City that killed eight people, Trump again called for, in his words, extreme vetting. He said this. So we want to immediately work with Congress on the diversity lottery program, on terminating it, getting rid of it. We want a merit-based program where people come into our country based on merit. And we want to get rid of chain migration. Trump is singling out the diversity visa program and attacking Senate

minority leader Chuck Schumer in the meantime, because the man accused of driving the truck came to the U.S. under the program in 2010. And he's originally from Uzbekistan. Trump has also said he would consider sending him to Guantanamo Bay. And Trump tweeted late last night in all caps that he should get the death penalty. There's a lot to talk about here. Let's just start with the diversity visa program. Who wants to explain what that is? Well, I can talk about it a little bit. It's a lottery system that lets in 50,000 people get an opportunity to come to the country on a visa, get a green card out of something like 9 million people who were interested in doing this last year,

it was put in place in the 1990 adjustments to our immigration law, signed into law by George H.W. Bush. And Chuck Schumer's connection to it was that he was one of the sponsors to that 1990 law. However, more recently, 2013, Chuck Schumer was pushing for legislation that would have eliminated the diversity visa program as part of a comprehensive immigration overhaul. So it's not exactly something that was originally his baby alone, and certainly not something that he's been associated with more recently. He's been trying to eliminate it because many of the circumstances that created the perceived need for it back in the 1980s have changed a great deal. I will say, having spent a very long time overseas,

that this is a program that foreigners like, they appreciate. It provides people an avenue to get to a country that they very much admire and an avenue for people who often don't have another way to get here. So, of course, this accused attacker used the diversity visa program to enter the country and eventually obtain a green card. And the president is saying, let's get rid of this program. But it doesn't sound like there's much appetite to start an immigration fight again. This was originally put in place largely on the impetus of people who felt that the law as it stood in the 1980s was disadvantaging people from Italy and Ireland. And it was representatives who particularly cared about those nationalities who were pressing for it. In years since, it has come to be used

primarily from people from Africa and Asia. The proportions have changed a great deal. But this is really a minor part of the overall immigration program. It's not as though people who have come in on these visas have been an especially great problem or have been rife with terrorists. This is someone who has apparently been radicalized, as best we can tell, in the period of time since he came here in 2010. So this, in a very real sense, has very little to do with immigration law. Yes, this is a person who came from another country. This is an immigrant. But it does not have that much to do with the fine points of immigration law and which program which people come in under.

So there's this debate reviving about how he got here. But now we're also talking about what do you do with people like this when they come here and commit a crime, specifically a terrorist attack. And the president seems to have at least be open to the idea that he could be sent to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay. Yes, the president did signal that he was open to that idea. He was asked about it, correct? He said this in response to a question, and he said it was something that he could consider sending him to Guantanamo Bay.

He could consider it. It would face legal challenge were he to try to do so. Why? Because Seyfullah Saipov was here legally. And according to the legal experts that I've spoken with, that gives him constitutional protections, including due process. To be tried in the U.S. court system. Yes. This would most definitely face legal challenges that would make that very difficult to do. It also just seems like calling to send someone to Gitmo is just sort of a visceral, emotional appeal to wanting to go after these people, right? I mean, this is classic Trump. He's tough on law and order and crime, and he is going to crack down

on terrorism. Right. And it's possible he heard that went, you know, it's a possibility, yes, you know, and that perhaps the weight of that did not occur to him at the time. Let's listen to a little bit of the president, particularly because I think this is when he uses an opportunity to say we just have to stop being politically correct we have to get much less politically correct. We're so politically correct that we're afraid to do anything. And that's not only our country, that's other countries too that are having very similar problems. And we have to get tough, we have to get smart, we have to do what's right to protect our citizens. And here's more of how he talked about this. We have to get tough. We have to get smart. We have to do what's right to protect our citizens. And here's more of how he talked about this.

We also have to come up with punishment that's far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right now. They'll go through court for years. At the end, there'll be who knows what happens. We need quick justice and we need strong justice, much quicker and much stronger than we have right now, because what we have right now is a joke and it's a laughingstock. Ryan. So two things on this. One, on the question of Gitmo, the U.S. has never sent someone arrested in the U.S. to Guantanamo. Everyone who has been sent to Guantanamo has been picked up overseas. The second thing is calling the U.S. justice system a joke for people who work in the justice system is offensive. And on the question of terrorism, the U.S. justice system and the federal court system has proven quite effective at prosecuting terrorism suspects. Well, that's what's so interesting to me. I mean, we're doing a really good job at and the federal court system has proven quite effective at prosecuting terrorism suspects. Well, that's what's so interesting to me. I mean, we're doing a really good job at prosecuting terrorists. It's not as if the justice system is failing on that front. No. There is a great podcast in your feed from Monday about the first charges to come out of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation that involves former campaign aides to Donald Trump, Paul Manafort and Rick Gates were both indicted on 12 counts. Although we should note, none of those counts were related to their work on the Trump campaign.

And we also talk about one time campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos. We learned who pleaded guilty earlier this month to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russians during the campaign. So, Ryan, that was Monday. That was Monday. What has happened on this front since then? Well, Sam Clovis, who was an advisor to the Trump campaign, withdrew from consideration as a top scientist at the Agriculture Department, where he was under consideration. His confirmation hearing, in fact, was supposed to be next week. Clovis decided to withdraw after it became clear on Monday that one of the senior campaign advisors that Papadopoulos was corresponding with about his efforts to contact the Russians and his

ongoing communications with the Russians was one Sam Clovis. So this is fall out from the Mueller investigation that is now kind of having ripple effects across Washington and the Trump administration itself. You know, we might want to add here, actually, Susan, that the tentacles of this are reaching out in directions that a lot of people would not have foreseen. For example, Tony Podesta, the brother of John Podesta, who ran the Clinton campaign last year, has now left his company, the Podesta Group, because he had worked for Paul Manafort at one point and been involved with Paul Manafort in a business way. So that being touched on by this Mueller investigation of Paul Manafort has knocked down a major figure in Democratic lobbying circles here

in Washington this same week that had brought down Sam Clovis, or at least ended his potential role in the Trump administration. It also sort of, I think, inoculates any accusations that Robert Mueller is leading any kind of a partisan investigation, where it just seems to me to indicate that he's willing to go wherever he wants to go. And why not? And why not? He's well known for his time as FBI director. He is well known to be a lifelong Republican. So he feels as though he can pretty much do whatever he sees the evidence leading him to do. And again, there's a great podcast in your feed, and that goes into far more detail on this. Please, please check it out.

And in other Russia investigation related news, lawyers for Facebook, Twitter and Google testified before the House and Senate Intelligence Committees yesterday and the Senate Judiciary Committee the day before. Here's Senator Mark Warner. He's the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Candidly, your companies know more about Americans in many ways than the United States government does. And the idea that you had no idea of any of this was happening strains credibility. Ryan, you were covering all these hearings. What did you learn? We got a lot of numbers that we didn't have before. Facebook, for example, said that upwards of 150 million Americans saw Russian-sponsored sponsored pages, Russian sponsored content between 2015 and 2017.

That is a huge number. They also tried to put this in perspective by saying the amount of content that was linked back to Russian bots, Russian trolls is actually a sliver of the full amount of content that is on Facebook. So they acknowledge that there were large numbers of Americans who saw this stuff. But in general, this is a very, very small amount of Facebook's overall traffic. And that goes for Twitter as well. And Google, you had all three of the big social media companies on the hill, and they all basically said the same thing. They came out with numbers that were big, but then tried to put it into the context of the broader scheme of things. This is just a sliver. And to give that even a bit more context, 150 million Americans saw those ads. Now, there's no specification of those people were all voter eligible or whether

they were all voters. But around 136 million people voted for someone for president in the 2016 election. So just to give you some sense of how big that 150 million is, it's bigger than the number of people who cast votes. That's huge. Were the lawyers that showed up, I just am curious about like their posture. Did they come in defiant? Were they apologetic? Were they, you know, how were they sort of presenting themselves to Congress? Like, oh, we're sorry.

Or was it like this isn't our responsibility? There was kind of all of those things across the spectrum. There was certainly an acknowledgement from all of the companies that what has gone on, what the Russians did on their networks is a problem. They don't like to see that sort of abuse and they want to address it. They are very conscious of the fact that they have come under a lot of scrutiny in the past couple of months. Their public image has certainly taken a knock. And they are very wary of regulation, possible legislation. There's already been one bill that's been proposed by Mark Warner and Amy Klobuchar and John McCain, three senators, that would impose the same sort of transparency

requirements on online advertising on political issues that you have for print and broadcast. So what did we learn, if anything, about solutions, about what they're doing to combat this and what works to combat this? The companies all talked about self-imposing greater transparency on political advertising. They want to create a database where you can go back and see who paid for what ad and what other ads they've sponsored. They've talked about using artificial intelligence to try to weed out fake accounts and automated accounts from people who are not who they say they are. But this is a really thorny problem. There are no easy solutions to this. And this is something that the general counsel of Facebook, Colin Stretch, said, like, this is bigger than just

these three companies. This is a problem that stretches across the internet. You have RT and Sputnik. These are two media companies sponsored by the Russian government that have a reach beyond the Internet. RT is on cable providers. This is not just online stuff. This is a very tricky thing to deal with. There are no easy answers. What is the argument these companies are offering for why they shouldn't be subjected to the same disclosures that broadcast channels are, especially in a modern world where so much digital content is

what drives most of our election information. Because they're not, I'm putting this in quotation marks, media companies, unquote. We're not media companies. We can't be regulated as though we were media. We're just platforms. We're just a place where people, you know, have a chance to transmit messages. We're not media companies. We're not producing anything. We're not telling anybody what to think. And at another point, you know, they're saying we didn't have any way of putting together who the identities of these groups were with the messages they were putting out, at which point Senator Al Franken had a typical characteristic moment of fun by saying, is it not true that you were being paid at one point in rubles? Did you ask yourself why a group was paying in rubles? Was that not a pair of data points you might have connected? It's a reminder, too, that these are still relatively young industries, and they haven't been subjected to the kind of rigorous regulation that Congress has put other broadcast industries to. And I think that we may be seeing a sea change and that there's going to be a lot more regulation coming down the line.

People have always been kind of starry-eyed about these big tech companies, and that's changing. Totally. I mean, if you ask them the binary question, yes, no, are you a media company? I mean, you're leaving out, like, what if there's another classification we're just going to have to create or that someone will have to? I mean, that very well could happen in the coming years. A social media company.

So much more to learn here. And thank you for covering it for us, Ryan. So I didn't have to. My pleasure. We're going to leave it there. But before we leave you, we have to, of course, do Can't Let It Go, where we all share the one thing we cannot stop thinking about this week in politics or otherwise. I'm invoking host privileges. I'm going to go first unless anybody has any objections.

Fine. I think after that conversation, we need a feel good story. So I've invoking host privileges. I'm going to go first unless anybody has any objections. Fine. I think after that conversation, we need a feel-good story. So I've got one for you. Congratulations to the Houston Astros who won the World Series. Not really here to talk about baseball, but congrats to you and to all the fans who are listening. My favorite anecdote that came out of the World Series is the story of Evan Gattis. He is a player on the Astros. He's the designated hitter. And he's out of every sort of sports story, there's a hero, right? Or somebody who has the rough and tumble American story. And he had just, I think, a very tough young life in which he was a really promising baseball player. And his life kind of just went sideways. He had some drug

problems. He was crippled by anxiety. He had to go in and out of rehab. He spent several years just kind of wandering the country, working odd jobs. He was a ski lift operator. He was homeless at one point and living on the streets in New York City. And he had this moment where he called a friend and said, I want to get back into baseball. And he was so talented that after all that time, he was still able to get back in. And he was drafted by the Atlanta Braves in 2010. He was traded to the Astros in 2015. And last night, he won his first World Series on a team

that is the first time that they can win the World Series. And it's just a great story. It's a great American success story. And I think, particularly because we have a lot of younger people that listen to the podcast, it's a good reminder that sometimes you have to have the worst day of your life to have the best day of your life. And I like that story. Great turnaround story.

On the other hand, Ron, what do you have? Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the bookstore, there's another 2016 campaign saga. This one coming to us from Donna Brazile, who came on to be the interim head of the Democratic National Committee after the Democratic National Convention last year. We all remember that Debbie Wasserman Schultz, congresswoman from Florida, was kind of thrown out of the job just before the convention when it was revealed through hacked emails that Russians hacked and leaked through WikiLeaks that the DNC had been putting a very heavy thumb on the scales, no surprise, all the way through the campaign against Bernie Sanders, the independent running and strongly for the Democratic presidential nomination, and in favor, of course, of Hillary

Clinton, who was no one's surprise, pretty much the best choice of the DNC from early on. But now we learn from Donna Brazile that it was not only their preference for her, of the DNC from early on. But now we learn from Donna Brazile that it was not only their preference for her, but the DNC had become kind of a wholly owned subsidiary of the Hillary Clinton campaign back into 2015, when the campaign took over a $2 million debt for the DNC. And they signed a fundraising agreement that essentially joined their efforts, which was also offered to other candidates, but signed in special terms with Hillary Clinton because she took over these debts. And after that, really, the committee was just an extension of the Hillary Clinton campaign decision-making apparatus. And Donna Brazile learned all this after she saw the books,

when she became the new interim chairman of the DNC in September of 2016 and shared all that information with Bernie Sanders. Does not sound like Debbie Wasserman Schultz is going to want to read this book. This book is not particularly going to make the day of Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz, although much of this information was already pretty widely known. This is putting a pretty fine point on it and blaming her for the debt that the DNC had run in the first place for failing to raise enough money to keep the Democratic National Committee afloat. Now, this is only one part of a book that also goes into many other things that happened in 2016 that Donna Brazile has information to report on,

but it is the thing that is being teased out as Politico prepares to run excerpts of this at the end of this week. And then the book comes out and it'll be in your bookstore. So you can go in and pick that up alongside all the other tell-all books from 2016. Donna's got some things to get off her chest. Danielle, what do you have to get off your chest? I think we should talk about beer. More specifically, we should talk about Sarah Huckabee Sanders talking about beer. Because at the Monday press briefing at the White House, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, you know, she had a lot to talk about. There was a little thing about a guy named Paul Manafort. And so she got up to the podium and she said, you know, I'm going to start with the thing that I

know you all want to ask about. And she started like this. Suppose that every day 10 people, for our purposes, we'll say reporters, go out for beer, and the bill for all 10 comes to $100. If these 10 reporters paid their tab every night the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this. The first four, the poorest, would pay nothing. The fifth would pay $1. The sixth would pay $3. The seventh would pay $7. The eighth would pay $12. The ninth would pay $18. The tenth, the richest, would pay $59. So that's what they decided to do.

The ten reporters drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement until one day the bar owner threw them a curveball. Since you're all such good customers, he said, I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. Drinks for the 10 reporters would now cost just $80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes, so the first four were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get their fair share? These are the reporters after all, so they're concerned with fairness.

They realize that- So she goes on like this. And on. And on. And on. And on. Basically, let me just give you the too long didn't read here because it is too long. It's apparently four minutes our producer just told us, but she's essentially hammering home the point that the richest people in America bear a relatively large burden of America's income tax revenue. So she goes on to say, you know, that these 10 people for some reason buy 10 beers that are $10 each. Sure, why not? And that also they decide for some reason to pay their tab the same way that the American tax system is set up. And so therefore, blah, blah, blah, blah, moral of the story, rich people pay a lot, and so on and so forth. I thought the moral of the story was that the richest reporter should pay for everybody's beer.

Well, the whole thing is a false premise, because when 10 reporters go for beers, they expense it. That's absolutely true. It's a terrible analogy to start with. It should be like when 10 accountants go for a beer. Perhaps, yeah. Much better. So aside from the fact that I sat and listened to this kind of in stunned silence just thinking, how long can this go? Also, tax Twitter was just having a field day with it. Like, so is this after beer income or no?

And it was endless and delightful jokes at a time when real actual serious news was happening and that a serious tax bill was coming that we were all awaiting. So it delighted me. I can't let that go. More beer, less tax policy. There's tax Twitter? Oh, there is. There's everything Twitter. There's even border adjustment tax Twitter. You want to find tax Twitter? I'll tell you how. Hashtag T-R-I-H. Tax reform is hard. That's the hashtag for tax Twitter. So if you ever want to go down the loophole. See, I thought that was the hashtag for Twitter. Let me write that down.

That's the thing. Tax Twitter is a real thing. Ryan, what can you not let go this week? So this is something that it's not that I can't let it go this week. It's I have not been able to let it go for several months. I learned about it this summer. I have been sharing it with people left and right. Sometimes they appreciate it. Sometimes they I learned about it this summer. I have been sharing it with people left and right. Sometimes they appreciate it. Sometimes they don't appreciate it quite as much as I do. There's this guy who goes by the name of Spirit Giants

on Reddit who has taken to using either emails or letters or statements from members of the Trump world and setting them to song. Interesting. And the greatest hit of this is based off of Don Jr.'s email exchange with Rob Goldstone

about the meeting with the Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in June of 2016. Very apropos this week, since we had the first charges in the Mueller investigation. And what's the clutch line in the email? I love it. Especially later in the summer. Thanks, Rob. I appreciate that.

I am on the road at the moment. It's got like an Avid Brothers kind of... It does, it does. A little like Americana folk getting in there. I'm expecting them to burst out in harmony. Yeah, I'm like, ah. Big movement, yeah.

Have some time And if it's what you say, I love it Especially later in the summer It's like summer pop. It feels like a road trip song. Yeah. It's like windows down. It's like trying to subvert a nation pop.

Guys, I think Rod wants to take a solo. All right. That is a wrap for us this week. We'll be back in your feed soon. Of course, keep up with our coverage on NPR.org, NPR Politics on Facebook, and of course, as always, on your local public radio station. And there was a great live show in Chicago last week, and we're doing another one soon, this time in D.C. at the Warner Theater in January. That's in partnership with our friends at Washington's local station, WAMU. You can find more information and buy tickets at NPRPresents.org.

That's NPRPresents, all one word,.org. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress for NPR. I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. And I'm Ron Elving, mandolinist, editor, correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.