Speaker: Okay. Today we’re going to be talking about the Missouri GOP tax scam. Okay? The GOP is going to take more money out of your bank account and put more money into the bank accounts of their wealthy donors. I’ve broken this
scam down into three steps. First, they’re going to ask voters if they’d like to pay less taxes.
Then they’re actually going to raise taxes. Then they’re going to blame the voters. This
is a scam. So let’s meet the scammers first. We’ve got governor Mike Kehoe. He was elected last year.
He used to be a used car salesman. And he’s pulling one over on the voters of Missouri. Like
he used to pull one over on the people who pulled into his lot. He’s the visionary, the leader. He’s
the scam artist. Next we’ve got John Patterson. He’s the speaker of the House in Missouri. He’s
also a Republican, and he’s the one who’s going to be legislatively pulling off the scam. He’s the
foot soldier who serves the scam artist. He’s like the guy who calls your grandma and tells her that
you’ve been abducted by a foreign government, and she needs to wire him three thousand dollars in
target gift cards or something. There’s the GOP’s wealthy donors. They’re the ones who ultimately
benefit from this scam. And then the victims or the mark, which is the Missouri voters. They’re
the ones who are going to be injured or hurt by this scam. So let’s go through this step by step.
The first step is a ballot initiative in November of twenty twenty six, asking Missouri voters if
they’d like to phase out and then eliminate the state’s income tax. Hey, do you want to pay less
in taxes? The income tax is the tax that’s taken out of your paycheck every month, or that’s taken
out of your retirement accounts like your four hundred one K every year. The thing is, wealthy
people make more of their money from investments than they do from their salary. And all of that
money is subject to the income tax. Wealthy people stand to benefit the most from the elimination of
the income tax because they have a bunch of income. The GOP’s wealthy donors see their
political donations to Kehoe and Patterson as an investment. And if this ballot initiative passes,
that investment is going to show a huge return in the form of them not paying taxes anymore on their
massive incomes. But I think most logical people would vote to lower their own taxes. Right? Given
the choice, then yeah, of course you’re going to vote for no more income tax. But the problem is,
the question that’s going to be on the ballot is deceptively simple. The question to Missourians
will be clear. Should Missouri begin a phased elimination of the individual income tax with a
full repeal within the next five years? What’s not clear, and what they don’t want to make clear is
what happens after this ballot initiative passes. What happens after the state of Missouri gets rid
of their income tax? That brings us to step two, which is where the GOP actually raises taxes.
Unfortunately, this is the part of the video where a guy with a music degree tries to explain
macroeconomics and state budgets and revenues. Bear with me here. I really do apologize for any
oversimplifications or any research errors. I’m a guy on the internet, not a journalist. So take
everything I say with a grain of salt. I’ve actually got to clear the board for this one.
Okay, this is our state budget. It’s like a pie. I understand it’s very American to be like,
think of a pot. Think of our state’s budget like a hamburger. The state needs the budget because
we have roads and schools and public safety. And these things all need funding. Even the
bad versions of these things need funding. Even streets with potholes in them cost money. Even
unaccredited school districts cost money. So we have to pay taxes in order to live in a society
together. In our current system, about two thirds of the state’s general revenue comes from income
tax. This is the one that’s taken out of your paycheck each week. Quick side note here. The
state budget changes every year and we’re talking about billions of dollars. So these numbers are
approximate and can fluctuate. But one fourth of the state’s budget comes from the sales tax.
This is the tax that gets taken out every time you buy something. How do you spell receipt? Oh,
boy. For the purposes of not turning this into a boring and inaccurate macroeconomics lecture,
we’re going to call the rest of this just other. So if they’re going to eliminate the income tax.
They’re going to leave this huge gap in the budget. And there’s two ways to fill this gap.
They can make it smaller or they can increase sales and other taxes. You might have guessed
by now that they’re going to do both. I talked to representative Nick Kimball from Saint Louis.
He’s on the budget committee. Here’s what he had to say. For every billion dollars that we cut,
sales tax would have to be increased by, I think, one percent. So you’re looking at something as
high as nine to eleven percent just to offset any income tax proposal. So just to mark that down,
we’re talking about four point two percent to about eleven percent. Every time you go to the
coffee shop, every time you go to the grocery store, every time you go to the gas pump,
you’re going to be paying more sales tax. If you’re a reasonable person who lives in Saint
Louis or Kansas City, you’re just going to go across the state border to pay for
your groceries and stuff because it’s going to be way cheaper over there. It’s kind of like, okay,
we’re either going to go bankrupt like Kansas, or it’s going to be a massive sales tax increase on
eighty five percent of Missourians. I think it’s going to be both. The thing is, they’re not going
to ask us if they can raise taxes. They’re only going to ask us if they can cut them, then they
are going to raise them. I know I didn’t talk about this earlier, but they’re going to do it
using Hjr one seventy four. Hjr one seventy four, sponsored by Speaker John Patterson is the vehicle
in which they are going to do this. So this bill does two things. One, it puts the question on the
November ballot, hey, do you want to pay less taxes? But it also gives the legislature broad
authority to raise other taxes like sales tax without voter approval. This is the heart of the
scam. They’re going to raise your taxes without your permission. And that brings us to step three,
which is blaming the voters. At the end of the scam. You’re going to pay more in sales taxes
than you did in income taxes. There’s going to be more money taken out of your account for everyday
items, and the money that you save on your income tax is not going to make up for that
sales tax increase. Wealthy people. Absolutely. That income tax will make up for it, but not for
working folks. But here’s the thing. I don’t think it’s productive to tell people to vote against a
tax cut. Any logical person would vote to have their taxes cut. No one likes paying taxes. So
the thing that needs to be addressed is this scam bill, H.R. one seventy four. So I’ve built an anti
tax scam toolkit using fast democracy. The link is in the description. This kit gives you everything
you need to email your representative in Missouri and tell them to oppose the GOP’s tax scam. You
can also use Fast Democracy to follow H.R. one seventy four as it moves through the legislature,
and is debated in committees and on the floor. So if you get a chance, fill out the toolkit,
because we need to at least try to stop these guys from scamming us. Thank you for watching.
This was a weirdly ambitious video for me to try. I hope it was educational. If you liked it,
go ahead, follow subscribe. Like follow me on Substack. Uh, thanks for watching.