Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) used facts to counter the lies and propaganda being spouted by Fox News host Maria Bartiromo about a provision in a piece of legislation that would help the Treasury Department crack down on tax cheats, especially those who deal in large sums of money and use the banking system.

The proposal would require all banks to report the total dollar amount of transactions between bank accounts if the transaction is for more than $600. That information would then be utilized to flag the accounts of anyone who may have underpaid taxes.

However, many right-wing media outlets are trying to suggest that the IRS wants to spy on their bank accounts, which isn’t even remotely true.

All of this led Bartiromo to ask Congressman Khanna:

“Is this bank surveillance still in this spending bill?”

Khanna calmly replied:

“Maria, let me just put some facts out there. First of all, the bill does not in any way surveil individual transactions. There is no oversight of individual transactions. All it does is ask the banks to give the total amount that was deposited and the total amount that was spent. And the reason is because there are a lot of businesses in this country that aren’t paying the taxes that you and I pay.

“So if the banks have to give a statement on interest, why don’t they give the total net outflows and net inflows so people pay their tax?”

Despite what Khanna had just told her, Bartiromo continued to try and spread misinformation:

“You say it’s not transactions but you just said it’s the total deposit — what people are taking out and what people taking in. I mean, $600 or even $10,000 captures most Americans.”

Once more, Khanna explained the actual purpose of the new rule:

“It would be over $10,000. But it would not be, here’s what you spend it on and here was the deposit. It’s just going to say, did you make money in the year? And if you made money, pay your tax. Just like banks tell you if you made interest, you have to pay your tax. Just like you get a W-2. The idea is just that businesses should pay their tax.

“And I don’t think this is going to surveil or snoop into people’s privacy in any way,” he remarked. “Because banks won’t have the ability to go after the individual transactions.”

Bartiromo:

“But it is surveillance. Because the banks have to report that but I don’t want to get into the weeds.”

You don’t want to get into the weeds, Maria? That’s pretty much where you stay 99.9% of the time as you tell your viewers what you think they want to hear rather than the facts. No matter how you slice it, Bartiromo and Fox are only interested in twisting information to suit their purposes. The idea of being an actual “news” network has never been their plan.

Here’s the video from Fox:

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