Leak Reveals Billionaire Donor Advising GOP to Spread Lies on Dem Tax Policies

Audio leaked this week by PoliticoThe revelation that Steve Wynn, a billionaire casino magnate, and GOP megadonor, offered Republicans some messaging advice recently as they tried to regain control of the Senate: amplify the lies about Democratic taxes policies.

On Wednesdays conference callhosted by The Republican National Committee, which is trying to gather big-money donations amid internal concerns that the party’s Senate chances are dimming, Wynn recommended “hard-hitting” ads with scripts warning ominously: “They’re coming after you if you’re a waiter, if you’re a bartender, if you’re anybody with a cash business… they’re coming after you.”

Wynn, once a prominent figure who has since been accused of sexual assaultAnd illegal lobbying, didn’t specify which Democratic tax policies he was referencing. But Steve Rosenthal (a senior fellow at The Tax Policy Center), disagrees. toldThe Washington Post Thursday that Wynn’s suggested messaging resembles GOP attacks on increased funding for the Internal Revenue Service, which Republican lawmakers have systematically deprived of resources for years — a major boon to rich tax-dodgers and large corporations.

“The lack of resources prevents the IRS from ensuring that large and sprawling operations pay their full tax bill,” Rosenthal said in an interview with the Post’s Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman. “The point of increased enforcement is to pursue these businesses.”

Wynn’s advice came after the GOP had already launched hysterical attacks on the $80 billion in IRS funding included in the newly enacted Inflation Reduction Act, which passed both chambers of Congress this month without a single Republican vote. House Republicans opposed the package in floor debate. falsely claimed the funding would enable “robbery” by gun-wielding IRS agents.

In reality, the money will go toward ensuring the agency is capable of mundane tasks — such as answering phone calls — as well as giving it the capacity and resources to audit ultra-rich taxpayers whose returns have gone under-examinedFor many years.

In January, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse published analysisIt was shown that the IRS audited low earners at a rate five-fold higher than all others in Fiscal Year 2021. This is a trend the IRS has been following. blamedAuditing wealthy taxpayers can result in higher audit costs.

In a letter to the IRS chief earlier this month, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen specifically instructed the tax agency to use the new funding from the Inflation Reduction Act to “increase equity in the tax system by enforcing the tax laws against those high-earners, large corporations, and complex partnerships who today do not pay what they owe.”

Rosenthal said it best Post, “Wynn is trying to push Republicans to scare the little fish into thinking the IRS is targeting them, when in fact the IRS has pledged to target the big fish.”

Sargent and Waldman argued in a column Thursday that “it’s pretty revealing for Wynn to be urging Republicans to attack those policies by arguing that their real victims will be waiters and bartenders.”

“Democrats should jump on this,” they wrote.

According to PoliticoThe 36-minute conference call featured Ronna McDaniel, Republican National Committee Chairwoman, asking wealthy donors to fund Senate races as GOP leaders openly requested. raise doubts about the party’s prospects of retaking the upper chamber in November.

Recent polling in the key battleground States of PennsylvaniaAnd WisconsinFor example, the following shows that John Fetterman and Mandela Barnes, Democratic candidates, have opened up leads against Republican opponents.

“Please help us invest in these Senate races specifically,” McDaniel told donors on the call. “Give to any of these Senate candidates, all of these Senate candidates if you can, so all of them can be on TV.”

Politico reported that Wynn “asked whether there are any dark-money nonprofits that contributors could give to.”

Donors, he said, “are self-conscious for reasons that are personal to them, business people and folks like that.”