I had someone on Twitter pointing out that like Matt was interrupting me eventually like no usually Matt is trying to stop me from interrupting him we're doing handsignals and they said okay.

I'm gonna call myself down by the next time I listen to the weeds just pretending you're all doing jazz hands the whole time.

Sure exactly. It's a Jewish family dinner.

Hello welcome to another episode of the weeds on the box media podcast network. I am Matthew Glacias joining me today we have my console who is a research fellow at the Roosevelt Institute as well as a frequent box com contributor and also darland who has been on the weeds many times a long time fan favorite and who I'm glad to say is going to be joining us regularly on Fridays bring some bring some stability to the cast and more Darra excellence.

I think hey how's it going so.

I'm going to be honest transparent that's how we do it in the digital media is a little bit weird because there is a text reform vote scheduled probably for later today sometime while the show is being edited maybe something is going to pass the Senate maybe it won't.

These Republicans if there's anything we know about them it's that they are really bad at whip counts and votes scheduling so anything can happen but we want to talk about something that I think we we do know from sort of the shape of the proposals that are out there which is whether they get sling done today or they need to kick it to next week there's going to need to be some we jiggering with the house there's concern about the fiscal parameters but something that's.

There's really going on in both versions of these legislations is a is a real effort to sort of.

Pick some winners and losers in American society decide what kinds of institutions what kinds of people are valued and valuable and it has.

You know profound implications for how America is going to work that sort of goes beyond the dollars and cents fiscal impact of it Mike Mike were to a big piece about this this for Fox I think you said they were weaponizing the text code.

Yeah thanks for me on a long time listen first time caller to step back for a second there's a reason that you can do this kind of thing because there's a lot of fuzzy ambiguity in the tax code.

You know there's practical problems that this tax code sort of addresses about just how do you deal with things like how corporations depreciate equipment how you deal with tuition assistance is that a form of income.

There's a more philosophical problem to go with that practical problem of just what should we be taxing what should the tax base look like should corporations be taxed at all which a lot of conservatives don't think.

And you know the fact that there's so aggressively cutting the tax code reflects that kind of basis and then there's issues with what how does the tax code work is a rule is part of the broader safety net and the broader kind of regulatory regime like.

You know do we have a tax penalty if you don't buy health care which is removed and I think what happens is every single one of these ambiguities is being pushed in a way that particularly harms democratic coalitions and blue state.

People and it benefits people who are traditional Republican donor base in each one of those ambiguities kind of pops up in each of the house and Senate versions is not ultimately what they're fighting about with whatever happens today.

So I kind of I'm interested in thinking about this as weaponizing rather than you know using something that is kind of inherently a weapon right like I think when there are a lot of areas when we talk about policy that we're talking about the government trying to engineer a particular outcome but that's not now coming control right it's kind of crossing its fingers and hoping that everything it predicts will happen is going to happen.

You know during the Obama care debate there was this kind of figure crossed hope that it was going to bend the cost curve and reduce you know increased health care spending that's that's how most policy works right there are certain things the government can do.

And then it hopes that people behave in the expected way when it comes to the tax code it's much more direct really it's you know the government really can control how much money it's taking and therefore what.

Behaviour is it's rewarding what kinds of people it's rewarding so it seems to me that this is something that's kind of inherently built into the system right that it's not something that is.

Just now kind of being used politically but something that's being used politically in a different way wait I mean you know one of the provisions from the house bill that's not.

It's not that significant in overall financial terms but people talked about a lot because it's sort of a radius is there they're taking away.

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