Hey, pitchfork listeners, you may be familiar with a recent report from pro-publica,

showing that America's billionaires are paying almost no taxes. While our friends at the Center

for American Progress recently held an event on the topic, featuring a conversation between

Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and John Podesta, the founder of CAP, we thought it was a great

conversation so we're just dropping it into our feed and we hope you enjoy it.

Good afternoon and thank you for joining us. I'm Lily Roberts, managing director for

Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress. Today we're discussing fairness in our

tax code and who better to discuss that topic than Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a champion

for tax fairness and for economic fairness. As a Clevelander myself, I know that Senator Brown is

also a champion for the people of Ohio. So I wanted to wish him well on a very special occasion.

This week is the five-year anniversary of the 2016 World Championship Cleveland Cavaliers.

I think the 2016 Cavs are almost as popular in Ohio as Senator Brown is, but back to taxes.

Senator Brown shares the committee on banking, housing, and urban development, especially relevant

for today's event, is that he's a senior member of the Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction

over the tax code. Taxes have been in the news lately for several reasons, including this month's

bombshell report from Propublica. We learned that in recent years, some of the country's wealthiest

people have paid a pittance in income taxes in relation to their massive gains in wealth.

In many ways, Propublica's report revealed what we already knew, or at least what we suspected,

that America has two tax systems. One is for the super wealthy, where they decide when,

and where, and sometimes if they pay taxes, while they pay special low rates on much of their

income. And there's another tax system for workers. Taxes are withheld directly from each

paycheck that's earned. The way the tax code favors wealth over work has worsened economic

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