Transcription
We've brought back Erica Payne from Patriotic Millionaires with an amazing update. There have now been two bills that have been introduced in Congress: the Equal Tax Act and the Working Americans Tax Cut Act. They are major, major proposed legislative bills that would create a tax code that treats income the same regardless of the source. And then there's another one that would create a federal tax exemption up to the cost of living for working-class Americans. Logical, makes sense, totally feasible. You're going to want to know the details about each of these and how to actually put some pressure on members of Congress to make these things a reality. Take a listen.
I'm thrilled to be able to bring back to Katie Fang News right now, Erica Payne from Patriotic Millionaires. Erica, you've got some very exciting updates. Let's start with the first one. Let's talk about these laws that have been introduced, these bills that have been introduced in Congress.
Very exciting news, >> Katie. It is so exciting. I mean, I think people are just, you know, buried under bad news right now. >> And we have a saying here at Patriotic Millionaires: "The journey of a thousand miles does not begin with a single step. It actually begins with a destination." And what I am absolutely thrilled about is that we have introduced two huge steps in both the House and the Senate. I'm so excited to tell you about them that are the northstar of where we want to get to. And so these are laws that would transform the economy overnight, make it work for working people, establish a basic level of fairness in our economy and our tax code. And they're out there and ready to be supported.
Let's start with the most recent one that was just a week and some change ago, not even the Working Americans Tax Cut Act, an Affordability Tax Cut paid for by millionaires. I know people are falling out of their chairs right now as they're listening to this episode, Erica, but it's a thrill to be able to describe this to our viewers. It would create a federal tax exemption up to the cost of living for our working-class Americans and shift responsibility for that lost revenue, as it would be called, to members like people in Patriotic Millionaires with incomes over a million dollars annually. It sounded great when we talked about it a few months ago, but now it's actually made it into a bill. So talk about some of the details because this Working Americans Tax Cut Act makes a lot of sense.
>> I mean, have you ever, Katie? This is the best idea since sliced bread. I love this. This should be the tent pole, the cornerstone, whatever word you want to use, of any serious presidential um candidate going into 2028. This bill is probably the single most efficient, effective solution to an affordability crisis that has 86% of people in this country worried about the price of food. This bill will give a tax cut, a substantial tax cut, in some cases thousands of dollars, to people who right now are struggling to make ends meet. And when I say struggling, not making ends meet, let's be clear about what that is. 130 million people will get a tax cut with this bill. It will be paid for by 650,000 multi-millionaires with a small surtax on the first dollar of their second million. So our members are out there and they've got a really simple message for working Americans across the political spectrum. I don't care if you're Trump, independent, Democrat, can't stand any of them, which I think is where most people are right now. We're a group of millionaires and we want to pay for your tax cut.
I mean, this is look, right now in America, you start paying taxes when you make $16,000 a year. >> We know it costs around $46,000 a year to live in most places in the country. So, Hawaii, it's much more expensive than that. West Virginia, it's actually a teeny bit less expensive than that, but the number according to all the studies is $46,000 a year. And Katie, that gives you $9 a day to feed yourself. So this is not how we live. This is basics. >> And so when you think about how do you structure an economy >> so it will provide a structural um foundation for the kind of rich, stable, and free country that the vast majority of people in this country want to live in, regardless of what political party they're in. Would you start a rich, stable, and free country by taxing people before they can support themselves? You would never do that. I don't ask my 10-year-old daughter to mow the lawn. She's not ready to push a lawn mower. What we want to do is build strong individuals, help those individuals get as strong and stable as possible. That builds good communities. And then when they've got that done, then you can start to contribute to the federal coffers. So this eliminates federal income tax up to the cost of living. It shifts the lost revenues. It's about $1.6 trillion. Shifts all those lost revenues. It's actually a little bit revenue positive. So it doesn't cost the federal government anything. Millionaires will not feel this tax increase. I want you to hear that. And working people will have several hundred, if not thousands of dollars in their pocket to cover basic expenses that have gotten more expensive every day, and even more expensive since Trump started doing whatever wackadoodle thing he has been doing with these tariffs. So people are paying enormous taxes right now, and this is a way to bring them immediately, immediately a level of relief that will be a big deal to people and their families.
>> Yes. Since you and I have last been able to hang out, Erica, listen, we had that big bill, as I call it, that was passed by Republicans, um, over the objections of Democrats back in July of 2025, that really already began to emphasize the strain on working-class Americans. And then now you have the tariffs, as you mentioned. And now we have a war, a war with Iran that is jacking up prices for not only our gas prices, but even natural gas, natural oil, and it costs, it costs gas and oil to be able to get food and other products from point A to point B. So everything is getting more and more expensive. What I found to be amazing about the Working Americans Tax Cut Act is the following: it literally contemplates not having people start in the hole and stay in the hole, as you just described. You're setting people up to fail if you're already beginning to tax them at only $16,000. If, to your point, it costs at least $46,000 on average to be able to just sustain yourself. And so it would give tax relief, and I love to say these numbers, Erica, to 104 million adults and even more importantly, from my perspective, 26 million children. And so even in light of all of the cuts we've seen to services for Americans, including childcare assistance, this type of tax cut, which was introduced in a bicameral introduction on March 16th with Senators Van Holland, Kelly, Gillibrand, Booker, Kim, and Representative Don Byer, it would really just be a practical solution to a problem that is being a burden disproportionately.
>> Well, it's 100% right. Look, we've got billionaires right now paying nothing in taxes while somebody who's making, you know, scratching out $23,000 a year is having to put into a federal kitty that frankly, they don't get any benefit out of, you know, in in some really basic level. We're spending $200 billion of whatever it is a week, a day on this Iraq war. So, so look, >> Patriotic billionaires have a very simple message: We want to shift the tax responsibility to people who can most and best afford it. And those are people like our members and people who are richer. We have a crisis in the country. We need to address the crisis. When 86% of people in the country are worried about the price of groceries, this is not a personal failure. This is not something that an individual is going to be able to solve. This is a systemic crisis. And what we have is an economy that guarantees that the country is not going to survive. I mean, we have an economy that is structured to make us even more unequal, even more quickly over time. And we are asking the most of people who are not able to hold this responsibility. And it's a dumb way to structure an economy. And so what we're trying to do is look out, look out and say, over the long term, 250 years from now, we're walking into our 250th year birthday coming up. How do we structure this thing so that it makes sense? And there are a few pieces. Number one, the federal government shouldn't tax you into poverty. That seems obvious. Number two, everybody's money should be treated equally. Why are Wall Street bankers getting a half-off coupon from working people? And number three, companies that are big and profitable should be required by law to pay people something they can live on. That's it. Those are the three ideas. The first two have been introduced in both the House and the Senate, and they are passable. And let me say this, they are passable on a 51 vote threshold. You know, not to climb too much into the details of legislation, but a lot of legislation requires a 60 vote threshold. So then you have this filibuster issue where everybody can block everybody's stuff. This, the laws that we are talking about can be introduced on a 51 vote threshold. So they can be passed by whoever has the majority. And I want to see the Democrat or the Republican who is going to look at their working-class constituents and say, "You know what? I know you're struggling. I know I'm taxing you thousands of dollars that you need to feed yourself and your families, but I really need to give those millionaires a break." No, no, no, no, no. It's time for politicians to decide. Are you going to tax the donor class or are you going to tax poor people, the working class, and the middle class? Those are the choices in front of them. So to any Democrat or Republican who is not on this bill, I want to see their voters say to them, "Explain to me why you don't think it's appropriate to shift this obligation from me to multi-millionaires. I think working people in America need a tax cut."
>> Yeah. And you just previewed the second exciting piece of legislation that has been backed by Patriotic Millionaires and has out made its way to Congress. That would be the Equal Tax Act. And just to kind of set the table, Erica, I wanted to share this information with our viewers who may or may not know this. Um, and again, knowledge is power, right? So, even if they do know this, we're just re-emphasizing this. The federal income tax was first enacted in 1913, right? And it was supposed to be a class tax that was supposed to be, and it was at the time, levied exclusively on upper middle class and wealthy households. Right? It made sense because it was supposed to be an offset to what others that were in that particular class were having to already suffer under. And yet, of course, there's been a perversion in this income tax system over the decades. And so the Equal Tax Act would actually say that wealthy investors would pay the same tax rate on their income that working people are paying on their income by taxing their investment income at the same rate as earned income for earnings over a million dollars annually. Explain that a little bit more, Erica, so people understand why the Equal Tax Act also makes just as much sense as WATKA, the American, the Working Americans Tax Cut Act.
>> Absolutely. So right now in America, we tax money differently depending on how you make it. >> Sure. >> If you work for a paycheck, you're under one tax regime. If you make investments and make money off of investments, you're on another tax regime. You get about half off if you're making your money from investments. And then the third kind is inheritance. If you make your money from inheritance, you basically don't pay taxes on it. Okay? The estate tax is a joke. The exemption is at like $14 million, something like that. In the Reagan years, by the way, it was $600,000. So that's how much has moved. So the Equal Tax Act says something really simple.
>> In a country where all people are created equal, all money should be treated equally. So right now, I went to Wharton Business School, big fancy MBA school. A bunch of my classmates manage money. Their the job that they do is to manage other people's money, to click buttons on accounts, to move money between investments. Those people doing their jobs pay half the tax rate that I pay, that you pay, that basically everybody in the country pays because they pay a capital gains rate. Even though their job, it's just because their job is managing other people's money. Then investors, here you go, sitting on a beach clicking a button. Here's a few million dollars coming into their income. They pay half the tax rate that somebody who's working in a coal mine pays. I want you to hear that, okay? Tough physical jobs pay twice the tax rate of these white-collar clicks and buttons on an trade account. That is ridiculous. And so the Equal Tax Act says enough. If you're making more than a million dollars a year, I don't care how you're making it. Everybody's paying the same tax rate. And it does something else really important, Katie. It closes what's called the stepped-up basis. Let me tell you what that is because it sounds, it sounds crazy. If I have a stock and I buy it for a million bucks and at the end of my life, it's worth $10 million. >> If I sell it the day before I die, I'll pay taxes on that $9 million of gain. But say I don't sell it and I die and I leave it to my kid. My kid inherits $10 million of stock, it's reset to $10 million. Those gains from $1 million to $10 million are never taxed. So basically, the stepped-up in basis hands my child, just because of being in the lucky DNA club, hands a huge amount of untaxed gains. So over time, what that does is it creates a society that just becomes more and more unequal because you've got the wealthiest people in the country can pass on these enormous fortunes tax-free because of stepped-up basis. And so this is the thing. This is literally a contest in this country about your money versus their sweat, or in the case of our members, our money versus their sweat. Who do you think should pay higher taxes? So, let's just make them all equal. That's what this bill does.
>> You know, Erica, you know what I find to be always compelling about not only the money agenda, which is the Patriotic Millionaires' kind of pillars of how they view our country should be moving forward together, it's the fact that the way that you explain things just makes sense. It makes sense on all the different viewpoints, right? It's this idea that, you know, you just mentioned the lucky DNA um, you know, lottery. I say that to my daughter all the time, right? I'm like, "Look, you know, you got lucky that you got born into our family." And yet, if you think about it, if you don't have the extra income because you're struggling to make ends meet, to put food on the table, do you really think you're going to be making investments in stock? Do you really think you're going to be taking that actual liquidity that would be made available for access in the immediate sense to maybe pay that medical bill if you needed it? You think you're going to be putting it in the hopes that it's going to build some type of value in the stock market? You're not. And so that divide gets greater and greater. And so people will always look at this and say, "Hmm, sounds like a good idea, but why in the world would Patriotic Millionaires care so much? What's in it for them?" What do you say to people that actually ask that question, Erica?
>> Can I tell you what's in it for these members? >> Yes. An awesome country. An awesome country. And that's what they're here for. And I, let me just emphasize this. Look, our members are rich. They like being rich. They have every intention of continuing to be rich. And they would be perfectly happy if everybody listening to the show got to be rich, too. >> This is about living somewhere great. This is our members in New York want to pay higher taxes like Mom Donnie wants them to because they want to live in the most awesome city in the world. So, this is a similar thing. We want to live in a rich, stable, and free country with an economy that can make sure that it continues to be a rich, stable, and free country. We have Donald Trump in the White House because over time, politicians of both parties created an economy that doesn't work for the vast majority of people in the country, that does not work for the vast majority of people in a country. They reject the political system that put the economic system into place. That's it. That's what happened. So the task at hand is to envision what does the appropriate economy look like. And as you said, Katie, the ideas at the heart of the money agenda are so common sense.
>> Yeah. Seem like big ideas because we've been doing so much stupid stuff in the economy for so long. Something that's actually common sense and awesome. People are like, "Wait a second. Where's the trick?" There's no trick. Okay? Bring some relief to American families. Shift the burden to rich people. They made $80 trillion. The top 1% since 1975, $80 trillion with a T dollars have moved from 90% of people in this country to the top 1% of people in this country. And now the vast majority of people are worried about the price of groceries. News flash: shift the tax burden from 130 million people to 650,000 multi-millionaires. That's a basic. That's number one. Treat everybody's money equally. Number two. Number three, connect the fortunes of business to the fortunes of family. And if you do those three things, we can kind of settle things down enough that we will have the ability to solve the actual problem that this country has, which is an oligarchy that is attempting to take over the world. And if they are allowed to take over the world, they will destroy it.
>> So the task at hand is really to get rid of the oligarchy. But the thing we've got to do first is stabilize things. And we need our political leaders to make a choice. And we need to help it make it very, very easy for people to see the choices that our politicians are making. Are you willing to tax the donor class in order to give working people in this country a break? And I have 30 Democrats that I still need to ask that question to. So, not a single Republican has answered in the affirmative, but I've got 20 Democrats across the ideological spectrum. Bernie Sanders and Chris Coons don't have a lot in common. Okay? This is from this biggest, most centrist, most conservative Democrats to the most liberal Democrats look at this bold, common-sense idea and say, "Let's start there." Strategy is knowing what door to open first. We have to stabilize this country. This is the best first idea I think I have seen in political discourse since I started working in politics. So, we got 30 Democrats who need to answer the question correctly. And we got a whole bunch of Republicans who need to answer the question correctly. And I think it's time for the American people to ask that question because that's the whole deal, folks. Is the donor class going to continue to get away with what they've been getting away with over the next 25 years? Are they going to take another $80 trillion of our dollars, or is it going to be $160 trillion of our dollars? What's the next step here? If we don't reverse the underlying, the underlying dynamics that guarantee life is going to be worse for millions and millions of people going forward, and so astronomically good and weird and all-esium-style for this random group of tech bros. Negative. We're not doing this, Katie. We're not doing this. So, it's just enough already. We're just going to stop doing it.
Where can people go to learn more, to get into the weeds on this? And then they can actually reach out to their own members of Congress, regardless if they're Democrats, Republicans, so that they can say, "Look, we like this idea. We need you to help back it. We need to help. We need you to help us equalize and move forward together to a more prosperous country together."
>> Absolutely. Go to patrioticmillionaires.org and you can do a couple of things. You can download the whole money agenda. You can click over and see who is on this bill and who isn't. And you can sign up for Team Money updates. This is the grassroots arm of Patriotic Millionaires. Team Money is a few hundred thousand people. This is the group of people we let you know every day: "This one's not on the bill. Here's their phone number. Call them. This is what's happening with this." So, they can be with us lock, stock, and barrel as we execute this strategy to save the country and the world.
Erica Payne, I am always, always excited to have these conversations. It also helps me feel inspired and rejuvenated because this is the type of activism and engagement that we need. This is stuff that actually shows that y'all are willing to put literally your money where your mouths are. And that is the type of honesty and transparency that we all deserve. Erica Payne from Patriotic Millionaires, thank you as always, my friend, for spending time with me and making us smarter. I appreciate you. Thank you so much, y'all. Have a great day.
>> Katie Fang here. We launched the Katie Fang News Channel in partnership with the Midas Touch Network so we could bring you the latest in legal and political news, straight no chaser. So, if you're a fellow truthteller, hit that subscribe button and share the word about this channel so we can build a high-information America.