GOT LIES? Pelosi AGAIN Repeats the Debunked Claim that 83% of Tax Cut Benefits Are Going to the Top 1%

Pelosi went on to say that it is "unconscionable" that 83 percent of benefits in the tax reform legislation would be going to the top one percent of income earners.



"So that's my point—it's not what it is, it's what it isn't," Pelosi said. "And what it is for the banquet of money at the top and extraction of money, but trying to sell it as something that you should just be so glad to get. No, our people deserve better."



Factcheck.org called the Democratic talking point about the top 1 percent getting 83 percent of the tax cuts "misleading" and said that the claim is only true in 2027 because most of the individual income tax changes expired by that year.



Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio used a version of the tax line in a Jan. 23 press availability, saying that "more than 80 percent of that tax cut went to the — goes to the wealthiest 1 percent." But he’s part of a long list of Democrats who favor the phrase.



House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi repeatedly has said that "83 percent of the benefits go to the top 1 percent." It’s a line included in Senate press releases and emphasized three times in one Democratic press availability in late December, by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (twice) and Sen. Bernie Sanders, who did note that this was "at the end of 10 years" and that the "middle class" tax breaks "expire at the end of eight years."



The important missing context is that the final tax legislation, which President Donald Trump signed into law Dec. 22, allows most of its individual income tax provisions to expire by 2027, making the tax benefit distribution more lopsided for the top 1 percent than in earlier years.