We'll be fact checking Trump's lies on the economy tonight.

Follow along here ⬇️ #StateOfTheUnion LIE: Trump claims he wants to "make America affordable again"

FACT: Trump's plan raises costs for Americans

REPORT: Private equity is bankrupting companies, killing jobs, raising rents, gutting healthcare, and destroying the environment.

It's also making private equity executives insanely wealthy.

And our tax code is helping them do it.

Here's how 🧵 Private equity firms raise money from wealthy and institutional investors to take over and manage companies.

Once they take control, they extract short-term value—through aggressive cost-cutting, excessive management fees, debt-funded dividends, and selling valuable assets.

NEW: House Republicans just released their budget resolution.

Their plan spends TRILLIONS on tax cuts for the rich and corporations, and on detaining and deporting immigrants.

They pay for it by gutting Medicaid, SNAP, and education.

Here's what you need to know, a thread 🧵 The crux of this huge, 45-page bill is a $4.5 TRILLION tax break aimed at the wealthy and corporations.

Most working families would receive about $1 a day while the richest 1% walk away with folks' entire salaries.

This is what they did in 2017—and none of it "trickled down."

NEW: A giant, radical memo from House Budget Committee Republicans was recently leaked.

It’s a menu of all the tax breaks they want to give to the wealthy and corporations—and all the stuff they could cut to pay for it.

Everything you need to know, a thread 🧵 The memo outlines several expensive tax handouts for the wealthy:

—Repeal the 15% corporate profit minimum tax
—Eliminate the estate tax for millionaires
—Lower the corporate tax rate to 15%
—Reinstate corporate tax loopholes

These tax breaks altogether cost $1.2 TRILLION.

BREAKING: 150 billionaire families have now poured a record-breaking $1.9 BILLION into the 2024 election.

That's $700 million more than 600+ billionaires spent on the 2020 election.

Billionaires shouldn't get to buy our elections.

End Citizens United. Tax billionaires. Nearly $600 million was spent in support of the two major presidential candidates, with 75% of billionaire contributions benefiting Trump.

Trump has promised to renew tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

Billionaires are $3 trillion richer since the first Trump tax cuts.

BREAKING: America's 100 largest corporations raked in over $1 TRILLION in profits in 2023—and cut 55k jobs.

They used their profits & record-low tax rates to enrich shareholders—NOT to lower prices or invest in workers.

Corporate greed isn't patriotic. Paying your fair share is For the 12th consecutive year, Walmart tops the list with $648 billion in revenue.

That’s more than Belgium's entire economic output (GDP).

Guess where all those profits went?

BREAKING: Just 50 billionaire families have already spent more than $600 MILLION on the 2024 elections.

Instead of paying their fair share in taxes, they’re buying elections to rig the system on their behalf.

We really, really need to tax billionaires. The vast majority of the money—$416 million—is going to Republicans or conservative groups hellbent on renewing the Trump tax cuts for the wealthy and slashing vital services for working people.

This is how billionaires rig our tax code and our economy.

REPORT: Between 2018 and 2022, 35 major U.S. corporations—like Ford, Netflix and Tesla—paid their executives MORE than they paid in federal income taxes.

Many even had a negative tax rate—meaning we gave THEM a refund—while executives got 7- and 8-figure salaries.

A thread 🧵 29 other high-profile, profitable corporations also paid their execs more than they paid in federal income taxes in at least two of those five years, including:

AT&T
General Motors
Chevron
Marathon
Charter
FedEx
Whirlpool

These firms all made billions of dollars in profits.

BREAKING: Billionaires and centimillionaires held $8.5 TRILLION in untaxed, unrealized capital gains in 2022.

Unrealized gains are the largest source of income for the ultra-rich—but they're completely UNTAXED under our tax code.

This is why we need a billionaire income tax 🧵 Billionaires and centimillionaires now hold 700% of the amount of unrealized gains they held in 1989.

Today, over half of billionaire and centimillionaire wealth is made up of these untaxed gains, with each centimillionaire holding an average $132 MILLION.

BREAKING: U.S. billionaires now worth a record $5.2 TRILLION

America's billionaires are richer than ever before.

But under current law, their $2.3 TRILLION wealth gain since the 2017 GOP tax scam will go largely untaxed.

Here’s why we need a billionaire income tax. A number of billionaires—including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Michael Bloomberg—have gamed the system to pay $0 in federal income taxes in recent years, even as their wealth was skyrocketing.

Over 6 recent years, 26 top billionaires paid an average income tax rate of just 4.8%.

BREAKING: Permanently extending parts of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law—as Republican leaders have promised to do—would add at least $3.5 TRILLION to the national debt over the next decade.

All of their budget cuts would be canceled out by lost revenue from their tax giveaways. These GOP tax cuts would disproportionately benefit the wealthy.

Households with incomes over $4.5 million would get an average tax cut of $175,000 in the first year alone.

Households making <$50,000 a year would get an average tax cut of less than $200—about 50 cents a day.

BREAKING: Billionaires spent $1,000,000,000 on last year's midterm elections, setting a new record.

That's a 72% increase from the 2018 midterms.

These contributions aren't just drowning out voters' voices—billionaires are betting they'll make great returns on investment. The failure of America’s tax code to fairly tax billionaires leaves them with the excess cash—and the entitlement—to spend huge amounts on candidates and causes.

The 2010 Citizens United SCOTUS decision broke down campaign-finance regulation, encouraging big money control.

BREAKING: Harlan Crow and his family's average yearly political contributions went up 862% after Citizens United was decided in 2010.

Who provided a deciding vote for that case?

Justice Clarence Thomas, a "family friend" they showered with luxury travel and gifts for 20+ years. A bombshell @propublica report revealed that for decades GOP mega-donor Harlan Crow has hosted Thomas on luxury vacations worth hundreds of thousands of dollars—that Thomas never disclosed.

This is how billionaires manipulate our politics.
propublica.org/article/claren…

BREAKING: Congressional Democrats just introduced a bill to END Trump-GOP tax cuts for corporations that outsource jobs and profits.

(Yes, the 2017 Trump-GOP tax scam really incentivized that.)

Here’s what you need to know about the No Tax Breaks for Outsourcing Act 🧵 In 2017, the Trump-GOP tax scam created huge incentives for corporations to export jobs and profits offshore.

✅ It made the offshore tax rate HALF the domestic rate

✅ It gave corporations a tax break for shipping plants and equipment offshore

So much for America first.

There seems to be a lot of confusion out there, so let's clear it up.

Here are ten reasons why we really, really need to #FundTheIRS 🧵 1️⃣
Republicans have spent the last 12 years defunding the IRS.

The IRS' annual funding has been slashed by 20% since 2010. That includes a 25% cut to the IRS enforcement budget.

Why the budget cuts? To protect wealthy and corporate donors from having to pay the taxes they owe.

🚨 ALERT: New House GOP bill would abolish the IRS and replace federal income tax with a sales tax.

The fake Fair Tax Act will get a floor vote as a concession to holdouts during House Speaker negotiations.

The bill is a tax cut for the wealthy and a tax hike on working people. One of the most dangerous parts of this bill is it replaces the income tax with a sales tax.

Take a wild guess who pays the lowest percentage of their income in sales taxes. (Spoiler: It’s the wealthy.)

BREAKING: Corporations like Amazon, Ford, Microsoft are lobbying to extend Trump-GOP corporate tax cuts expiring this year. If made permanent, they could cost up to $600 BILLION.

58 national groups just sent a letter urging Congress to REJECT corporate tax cuts in the lame-duck. The letter states that at a time when corporations are making record-high profits, paying record-low taxes as a share of the economy, and price-gouging consumers, they should be paying more of their fair share, not less.

And they're right. Corporations don't need more tax cuts.

Meet DonorsTrust.

They're one of the biggest right-wing dark money groups in America, and in 2021 they received two $425 MILLION contributions.

These donations are among the largest ever, they're largely tax-free, and they're totally anonymous.

Here's what you need to know 🧵 DonorsTrust has been called the "dark money ATM" of the right, thanks to the millions it funnels to conservative causes on behalf of anonymous millionaire and billionaire donors.

Think Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society, Turning Point, Project Veritas.
politico.com/news/2022/11/1…

BREAKING: New analysis finds that 465 billionaires had pumped $881,000,000 into the 2022 federal midterm elections by October.

That's 27x more than they contributed before Citizens United was decided.

By the time this cycle is over, their donations could climb to $1 billion. But wait, there's more.

3/4 of that $881 million is coming from just 20 billionaire households.

And 59% of it is going to Republican PACs and candidates.

Top donors include Richard & Elizabeth Uihlein, Ken Griffin, Jeffrey Yass, Peter Thiel, and George Soros.

📺 NEW VIDEO ALERT

The richest 1% are cheating us out of $163 BILLION in unpaid taxes every year.

Democrats are funding the IRS so it can better serve taxpayers and crack down on wealthy tax cheats.

Kevin McCarthy says repealing the funding is Republicans' "day one" priority. "When you underfund the IRS, it's really a tax cut for tax cheats."

Thanks to GOP budget cuts a decade ago, the IRS' annual funding is down 20%, and its staffing is down by 22%.

Audit rates for corporations are down 54%, and audit rates for millionaires are down 71%.

REPORT: Club for Growth is one of the biggest super PACs backing MAGA Republican candidates.

It's already spent over $47 MILLION this election cycle.

Most of that money is coming from just 7 billionaires.

What do they want? To keep paying little or no federal income taxes. 🧵 Club for Growth isn't quiet about its priorities.

Its website lists their policy goals:
✅ reducing income tax rates, repealing the estate tax
✅ replacing the current tax code with a flat tax
✅ full repeal of the ACA

Billionaires stand to gain a lot under that platform.