Do you get it by now? Guys, this is not a government of the people. By the people, for the people. This is a government of the donors, by the donors, for the donors. Well, the Trump administration is scheming up a brand new way to give wildly profitable corporations even more tax cuts. [00:00:16] Now, the Treasury Department plans to provide companies with a workaround that allows them to take full advantage of the research and development tax breaks that were baked into Trump's so-called big, beautiful bill. Before I give you the details, though, Jake, your $0.02. [00:00:34] Yeah. Oh, thank God, just what we needed. Another corporate tax cut. It's. This government's become a joke. It never represents us. All it does is represent foreign governments and corporate rule. And here they appear to be violating a massive international agreement, [00:00:51] and they're going to cheat on behalf of their corporate donors. It's disgusting. And I think it will lead to the destruction of Trump's, second term in office. So let's give you the facts and then I'll tell you why. And keep in mind the idea that Trump would seek to further minimize revenue [00:01:09] coming into the federal government at a time when spending has increased, just as it did in his first term, and we're drowning in $38 trillion in debt is insane. Now, this effort hasn't been officially announced yet. However, reporters at Bloomberg are on the beat, and people familiar with the matter [00:01:28] say say that it's likely to come soon. So at issue is that, you know, that super pesky corporate minimum tax that was implemented during the Biden administration. So if you're unfamiliar with it, the mandatory minimum tax [00:01:44] is basically mandating that firms with more than $1 billion in annual profits, not revenue profits, pay at least a 15% tax on the earnings that they report to their investors. Now, as Bloomberg says, the corporate tax or the corporate minimum tax [00:02:02] has vexed major corporations and their Washington lobbyists for months. They're vexed. And here's the issue. Here's why they're vexed. Now, many tech, pharmaceutical and manufacturing companies are upset because of the fact [00:02:18] that Trump's tax or Trump's tax bill allows companies to claim retroactive research and development deductions, which is insane, estimated to be worth $67 billion. But that change was so generous [00:02:33] that it would trigger the 15% minimum tax for a wide swath of companies. So I'll give you examples. Airbnb, Boardroom and Applied Materials are among companies that have disclosed [00:02:48] in regulatory filings that their super sized deduction could trigger the 15% corporate alternative minimum tax, or prevent them from claiming hundreds of millions of dollars in tax credits related [00:03:04] to past payment of the minimum tax. So the Trump administration is essentially coming out to save the day with, you know, save the day for their corporate buddies in some workaround that they're going to announce relatively soon. So they're creating a carve out that will allow these companies to take [00:03:22] full advantage of the R&D tax breaks, the research and development tax breaks. And what exactly that policy will look like has not been clarified in detail yet. But the reporting does suggest that it would allow companies to use the R&D expense deductions to lower adjusted financial statement [00:03:41] income when determining the corporate alternative minimum tax. Now Democrats are pretending like they're they're upset about this. And I do say pretending because usually it's like, oh, we wag our fingers, but do they ever really put up a real fight? So a group of Democrats in a letter, they love letters. [00:03:59] In a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent attack the the possibility of such a change, writing quote, we urge Treasury not to further rig the tax code in favor of billionaire corporations. Now, it seems unlikely that their strongly worded letter [00:04:16] is really going to do anything. But even without this additional carve out, corporations are already saving billions of dollars in taxes thanks to the Republican bill. And the federal budget is really taking a hit as a result of that. So between July and November, [00:04:32] the last full month of data revenue from the corporate income tax has dropped by roughly a third or $52 billion compared to the same period the year before, according to Treasury data. Jake. First of all, I thought we were going to get the supply side economics here, [00:04:50] that when we lowered corporate taxes, that magically we were going to get more money into the government. It turns out we got less money than the government. Oh, wow. It turns out it is voodoo economics, of course. Of course. We've been through this for 40 straight years. All these lackeys and yeah, they're mainly Republicans. [00:05:09] But yeah, the Democrats usually go along and saying there was nothing we could do. There was nothing we could do. I've been cutting taxes for corporations as long as I've been alive. They've been promising more revenue. It's never happened. We're in $30 trillion in debt. So this is a us. [00:05:25] American taxpayers borrowing more money to give more to corporations. So as if the corporations don't have enough already, it's in violation of a pact at 140 countries signed to have 15% minimum tax on oil corporations. [00:05:42] Because the corporations were doing is that they were, going and trying to find any cheesy country that would let them, slide with no taxes, and then they'd move their headquarters theoretically over there, and they'd get to avoid taxes through all these tricks. [00:05:58] And there was a double Dutch, there was a Irish sandwich. There was all these tax loopholes. Right. So and we were perplexed when Biden, Did this minimum 15% tax because we're like, wow, look at corporate Democrat Joe Biden [00:06:13] actually being tough on corporations. Way to go, Joe. We gave him credit. And then I looked into it and realized, oh, no, he was forced into it by the 139 other countries. And now Trump is saying, who cares about the other stinking countries? Let's let the corporations rob us blind. Right. [00:06:29] So what? They can't even pay 15%. So so many average Americans pay way more than that. 20%, 25%, 40%. You put in city and state, some people are up to 50% or more. But the most profitable corporations in the world only have to pay 15%. [00:06:46] Do you get it by now? Guys, this is not a government of the people, by the people, for the people. This is a government of the donors, by the donors, for the donors. So yes, they're going to rob you again. It'll probably pass again. But and I think that they're on the verge of destruction here because [00:07:01] unemployment is up, inflation is up. And and AI is about to wipe out a gigantic amount of jobs. And I think that once Humpty Dumpty falls off that wall, they're not going to be able to put it back together again. And when people look back at these tax cut after tax cut, not for the average guy, [00:07:20] but trillions of dollars in tax cuts for corporations, at some point they're going to get furious at what happened. Yeah. I mean, look, I, I really worry about the eventual I don't know when it's going to happen, but the eventual backlash to how rigged the economic system is [00:07:39] in favor of corporate interests, especially at a time when, you know, I know that this was a talking point by Republicans for a long time. And, you know, I'm guilty of clowning them for it, mostly because they were hypocrites and never actually cared to do anything about it. [00:07:55] But the the federal debt I am worried about. I mean, how how bad is this going to get? And if we're already spending $1 trillion on servicing that debt, like where does this end? There's no indication that there's any leader who has any real interest in doing [00:08:12] something about the federal debt, like, we're just going to keep printing money. Yeah, it's distorting the market. So and I've been consistent on this from day one. So I pissed off a lot of people on the left when I said, look, I don't agree with [00:08:28] Stephanie Kelton when she has this magical thinking on how deficits don't matter. And I disagree with Dick Cheney when he said deficits don't matter. So every once in a while, when the left is in charge of the right is in charge, all of a sudden they decide that deficits don't matter. [00:08:44] No. If you had a small amount of deficits that you were able to pay off fairly consistently without gigantic interest rates, etc., the deficit, it's not like you can't ever go into deficits. I get it, sometimes you need to invest in things, right? But having these kind of permanent, gigantic deficits [00:09:04] where we're basically giving the banks and Wall Street trillions in interest. Yep. It's just a robbery. It's. And we're we're almost forced into this debt by the system that we have and the financial system that we have. [00:09:19] And but the way to break that cycle is to have just one, just one president represent the American people. But we never get that. All we get is Obama bailing out the banks and making sure that they all got their bonuses after they destroyed the world economy and cost us 12 million jobs. [00:09:37] We have Trump cutting corporate taxes three times now, adding, at last count, about 8 trillion out of the 38 trillion to the deficit. That was actually in his first term. He's added 4 trillion more in corporate tax cuts this time. And this will add even more. [00:09:54] And at some point, like I said, we're going to wake up and realize that this was the great American robbery. The culture wars were the distraction and mainstream media was the getaway car. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets its wings. Totally not true, but it does keep you updated on our live shows.