Cruz to Adam Carolla: "The Rich Have Done Well Under Big Government"; Young People Are Getting Hammered

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz phoned in on Friday's broadcast of the Adam Carolla Show to discuss his candidacy, the IRS and taxes, big government, his father's America compared to our current America, Jeb Bush and more.





ADAM CAROLLA: Thank you so much for calling in and thank you so much for wanting to eliminate the IRS. It's driving me nuts.



SEN. TED CRUZ: Well, I tell you April 16th is a day when a whole lot of folks want to move into a simple flat tax and just padlock the IRS. I think that is a powerful populist issue and today is the day when its on people's minds.



ADAM CAROLLA: Well, if you want to talk about an issue, and here we are always talking about gay rights, or immigration, or whatever it is, the trans-gender community or something, fine. But that doesn’t impact the entire country.



This impacts literally everyone who is born in this country so it is a good place to start, in terms of policy. Senator, you tell me. It seems really weird when politicians get caught up in nothing and they’re missing sort of the big picture, why do they do that?



SEN. TED CRUZ: Well a lot of the time what politicians are trying to do it to distract the voters with smoke and mirrors. Rather than talk about the issues that really matter to their lives.



ADAM CAROLLA: So what would you do, you always hear about the flat tax and all the kind of stuff. Of course we should – everybody should champion this cause, because the poor people are saying they are tired of rich folks not paying their fair share or even paying taxes. Can I tell you, by the way, Senator, as a rich folk, I am devastated.



I grew up my entire life with poor people going, 'Well, you know, as soon as you get rich you just buy a windmill and write it off and you don't pay a penny.' I get reamed for taxes quarterly. It's not once a year, it's four times a year I just punished and pummeled. I had no idea that it was going to be like this.



SEN. TED CRUZ: The sad reality is most of the political rhetoric you hear is just not true. For example, the Democrats love to say the Republicans are the party of the rich.



Here’s the truth of the matter: The rich do just fine under big government. Big business does fantastic under big government, it gets in bed with big government, it has armies of lawyers and lobbyists and accountants. The people who are getting hammered are the people who are struggling. Right now today, this is an astonishing statistic, the top 1%, the millionaires and billionaires that the president loves to demagogue earn a higher share of our national income today than any year since 1928.



The rich have done well under big government.



CAROLLA: Yeah, I better vote Democrat.



CRUZ: But the people who are getting hammered are young people, they're Hispanics, they're African-Americans, they're single moms, they're people who are struggling to achieve the American dream. There are people like my dad, who 57 years ago, fled Cuba with nothing. Couldn't speak English had $100 in his underwear and washed dishes making 50 cents an hour. Those are the people getting hammered right now.

SEN. TED CRUZ: If you look to American history, and American economic history, you can see a clear cause and effect. Every time the federal government pursues the policies of out of control spending, taxes, regulation, the result is economic stagnation, misery, malaise...



People who are struggling find it harder and harder to achieve the American Dream.



On the flip side, every time we pursue the policies of tax reform and regulatory reform, lessening the burden of Washington upon hard working Americans, the result has been incredible economic growth – the 1920s, the 1960s, the 1980s.



Think of all the young people right now, coming out of school, up to their eyeballs in debt, and they are scared of are they gonna get a job, are they going to start getting skills towards a career, or are they going to work part time as a barista at Starbucks, we’ve got to get back to an environment, an environment my dad saw as a teenager coming out of the University of Texas, where young people have 2, 3, 4, 5 job opportunities, and they way you do that is by getting Washington off their backs so they can have a better future.

ADAM CAROLLA: Hillary Clinton on one side, Jeb Bush on the other. What do you think of the two?



SEN. TED CRUZ: Oh look, I like Jeb Bush, I think he was a good governor in Florida, people are going to have to make a choice, whether they want to elect someone who is going to continue business as usual in Washington… or whether they are going to have someone who will stand with the people. And who is willing to stand up to both parties in Washington.



If you want someone to go along to get along, there are a lot of choices.



ADAM CAROLLA: Jeb Bush being one of them perhaps?



SEN. TED CRUZ: I’ll let the voter figure that out, and assess the record of each of ours, but I’ll tell you in my time I the Senate, what I have tried to do is, number one, tell the truth, and number two, do what I said I would do. And for that reason, you know, when we launched our campaign for president three weeks ago, The New York Times explained that 'Cruz cannot win because the Washington elites despise him.'



ADAM CAROLLA: That's the greatest compliment ever.



SEN. TED CRUZ: There you go. That's the central point of our campaign. If you want the Washington elites, go with someone else. But if you want to change things then we have to be willing to stand up and say this is not making any sense.



ADAM CAROLLA: This just in: Hitler and Charles Manson not a fan of Ted Cruz. I don't know if you know that. Put that on a bumper sticker.



TedCruz.org is where you go if you want to support Ted. I want to support Ted. I love me some Ted Cruz.

SEN. TED CRUZ: So, I have laid out broad principles, we have not yet rolled out a specific tax plan, we are developing it now, we will be rolling it out in the next several months. What I have said is we should have a simple flat tax that is fair that lets every American fill out his or her taxes on a postcard, a simple rate which applies to everyone.



And which would enable us to reduce hundreds of billions of dollars in compliance costs people are paying all around the country. Next, it would produce enormous economic growth, but number three it would enable us to abolish the IRS, to get government out of our lives in a very fundamental way.



It reduces the power of Washington politicians. Right now, where lobbyists in Washington focus the most is on special tax exemptions and loopholes. There are more words in the IRS tax code than there are in the bible.



A flat tax that applies to everyone: that means politicians have less power to extract and extort favors



(Adam Carolla Show, April 17, 2015)

Cruz on the differences between his father's America and 2015 America.Cruz on Jeb Bush:Specifics on the Flat Tax: