I'm calling it the Unaffordable Don't Care Act.
Rep. Lloyd Doggett used his time during today's House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the GOP "Wealthcare" bill to reinforce the need to see Donald Trump's tax returns.
"The need for Mr. Trump's tax returns has become more urgent. They could reveal Russian entanglements. Every new revelation about Russian contacts including meetings with the Russian Ambassador by Attorney General Sessions heightens the need to see the returns."
"I will admit that we Democrats have perhaps approached this in the wrong direction that we've gotten it backwards. The question we should have been asking from the outset to make it easy is will any Trump campaign surrogate who did not meet with the Russians please raise your hand because this keeps coming out week after week."
"With revelation after revelation. it just is not sufficient to say there's nothing to see here. First, it was Paul Manafort, then ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn, now the Attorney General Jeff Sessions who met with the Russian ambassador at the Republican National Convention. Jared Kushner who joined Flynn for one meeting. If there's nothing to see here, Mr. Trump, then we need to see the tax return."
"President Trump said at a press conference last month that he has no deals with Russia. While that may or may not be true right now he may have never been able to close a real estate deal in Russia we can take him at his own word in his meeting on the David Letterman show in 2013 when he said quote, "Well, I've done a lot of business with the Russians, they're smart and they're tough."
"I would certainly agree with I'm on the tough part or take the word of Donald Trump Junior who in 2008 saying quote "Russians make up a disproportionate section [of our investments]."
"Accountability ought not to -- be a partisan issue, and shouldn't be in this committee. There's nothing more important than ensuring our democracy and checks and balances, that's what this is about. We have a statute that goes back decades that authorizes this committee to take a professional review of all of Mr. Trump's tax returns and of course it will take professional expertise.
"This is a president who brags about how he has bent the tax code to his whim in the past, who reportedly didn't pay penny in taxes and came off better than the insurance companies will come off after this title is approved. How did he manage to do that and what will it look like if he is over seeing the Internal Revenue Service? Now, there was a recent analysis by one reporter, series of reporters that said under what they think is in this bill though they don't have a score and they don't have all the data that President Trump stands to rake in $7 million."
"We can explore whether one of those is tanning salons, and is going to benefit from the tanning, and the two tax breaks near $7 million. I think it's important to adopt this amendment. ..."
He also did a great job digging into the tax break for insurance companies high salaries for CEOs. Turns out in the Republican bill, insurance companies can pay their CEO's and VP's tens of millions of dollars and write it off as a "business expense." REALLY.
