[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 167 (Tuesday, October 17, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6422-S6423]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TAX REFORM AND THE BUDGET
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, on the GOP tax plan, as soon as today, we
will vote on the motion to proceed to the GOP budget resolution, which
includes instructions to increase the deficit by $1.5 trillion, slash
Medicare and Medicaid by $1.5 trillion, and sets up, unfortunately for
everybody, the same destructive, partisan process on taxes that the GOP
used for healthcare called reconciliation. It says: We don't need you.
We are just going to rush it through with our votes. It didn't work on
healthcare. It is not going to work on this either.
Tax reform--if it is real reform--or even just tax cuts are very
complicated. If you don't have the center coming together, everyone can
pick it apart, and they are setting themselves up to do just that.
Although the Republican tax plan is little more than principles at
the moment--and we have talked a lot about these principles of the
Republican plan--it is so far away from what the American people want
because of the process they have decided to use. When you don't want
Democrats and use just Republicans, the people of the hard right--a
minority in the Republican Party probably--can push the debate so far
over because they say: We are not voting for this unless you do it our
way. So we have a bill that really is so out of touch and harmful to
all but the wealthiest Americans that it is hard to believe the
Republicans are putting it forward with a straight face.
It is going to be the first time, my friends, that Republicans in
Congress will vote to increase our Nation's deficit by $1.5 trillion,
which is spelled out as clear as day in the budget. I hope, given this
dramatic increase in the deficit, all of the Republican deficit hawks
are out of their nests for this one.
For the sake of ideological consistency, the same folks who decried
debt and deficit under President Obama ought to denounce them under
President Trump, but we haven't heard much of a peep from a whole lot
of Republicans on this side with a few notable, brave, and leaderlike
exceptions.
Here is what Representative Walker, a conservative Member of the
House, said, lamenting what was going on:
[The deficit is] a great talking point when you have an
administration that is Democrat-led. It's a little different
now that Republicans have both houses and the administration.
There's been less talk about it this year with a Republican-
led administration than there has been the last seven or
eight years.
Representative Walker is exactly accurate.
[[Page S6423]]
The Republican leader on May 16 told Bloomberg TV that tax reform
``will have to be revenue neutral.'' These are his words. That is a
principle he has advanced for years.
We are not hearing much from Republicans about deficits now. Yet, I
repeat, this budget instructs the committees to increase the deficit by
$1.5 trillion. It will be difficult for many of my Republican friends
to say that they care about deficits and still vote for this budget.
The GOP budget resolution will also be the first time that my
Republican colleagues vote to slash Medicare. The budget spells out
over $400 billion in Medicare cuts, as well as over $1 trillion in
Medicaid cuts--even more than the healthcare bill, and probably the No.
1 reason for its demise was that huge slash to Medicaid.
So it is going to be difficult for my Republican friends and this
Republican Party to say that they want to protect Medicare and Medicaid
and still vote for this budget. Unfortunately, this will not be the
first time Republicans vote to advance a major piece of legislation--
changes to our Tax Code--through a hyperpartisan process known as
reconciliation. Reconciliation, as has just been documented in an
article--I believe it was in Politico, but in one of our leading
publications--was never intended for this type of purpose.
With this vote, though, Republicans are saying from the very outset
that they don't really want Democratic input on this bill because they
are setting up a process in which they don't really need Democratic
votes. It is honestly a shame. And just as the partisan reconciliation
process portended failure for the Republican healthcare bill, it is
likely to portend failure here as well.
It is difficult to pass major legislation in the Senate, as it should
be. That is what the Founding Fathers intended. That is the true
conservatism of our government: checks and balances, no rush. It is
even more difficult if you work only with the votes of one party. As I
said, that allows a small few, usually on the hard right, to dictate
what is in this bill.
My guess is that the vast majority of people here didn't want to vote
for Medicare and Medicaid cuts, but because they couldn't get enough
votes in the House to pass the budget without putting that in, because
maybe 30 or 40 Members there insisted on it, it is in there. It is not
going to serve you well. If anyone thinks it doesn't have real effect,
look at the PAYGO rules. This is not just the budget. PAYGO, after this
budget passes, would insist on slashes in Medicare, 4 percent. That is
the law; that is not a rule.
I hope that our colleagues will vote down this bill, and then I
promise you, just as we are doing on healthcare, we can come together
in a bipartisan way. That doesn't mean you get everything you like. It
probably means more of the tax cuts go to the middle class and fewer to
the wealthy, but there are lots of people on our side of the aisle who
want to see small business get a tax cut, who want to see money from
overseas come here and be used for jobs, and who want to see a middle-
class tax break. We could come up with a bipartisan bill that would
make, for the first time in a long time, this body shine.
The Republican Congress, at least at the moment on the path it is on,
has abandoned the grand tradition of bipartisanship, working together,
which has made this Chamber great through the decades and centuries.
When Republicans need Democratic votes, they come to us. The
President and the leader have said: Come vote with us. Make it
bipartisan. That is not what bipartisanship is. You don't craft a bill
just within your party and then say: Voting with us is bipartisan.
Bipartisanship means you sit down together and you come out with a
proposal that a majority of both parties can support. They are not
doing that.
Republicans will spend the entire first year of this Congress trying
to pass their major agendas through reconciliation or similar vehicles,
first with CRAs, then healthcare, now taxes. The majority leader
himself said in a speech, ``Restoring the Senate,'' in 2014 that ``when
the Senate is allowed to work the way it was designed to, it arrives at
a result acceptable to people all along the political spectrum.'' But
if it's an ``assembly line for one party's partisan legislative
agenda,'' it creates ``instability and strife'' rather than ``good,
stable law.''
The American people want to see us work together. We may not always
succeed. It may not be easy, but we can try.
As I said--and I would say this to my colleagues--there are areas in
which we can agree on taxes: Lower middle-class taxes; don't raise
them. Give some relief to small business. Try to bring the money from
overseas and put it into infrastructure and job creation. We can work
together, but not in this process and not with this awful bill, which
favors the wealthy dramatically, raises taxes on the middle class,
hurts the deficit--increases the deficit dramatically--and is a
partisan process. I hope my Republican friends keep that in mind when
they vote today. If you vote this down, I promise you that we will come
together in a bipartisan way and work for something that actually could
pass, instead of what happened with healthcare. Try it. Try it.
Reconciliation--working with one party--failed miserably for you on
healthcare, and now we are coming together. Let's not repeat the same
mistake on taxes.
Office of National Drug Control Policy Nomination
Finally, Mr. President, I just heard that the nomination of
Representative Marino to lead the Office of National Drug Control
Policy has been withdrawn. That is the right decision. The fact that he
was nominated in the first place is evidence that the Trump
administration talks the talk but refuses to walk the walk. The bottom
line is that this Congressman supported President Trump but is the
wrong person for the job, and I am glad they saw it and withdrew.
I want to salute two of my colleagues who were way out in front on
this: Senator Manchin, whose State has been ravaged by opioids, and
Senator McCaskill, who has similar problems, particularly in rural
areas, but all over. Senator McCaskill has legislation that I think
would correct the kinds of ills we have seen in Representative Marino's
proposals, and I hope that in a bipartisan way we can support them.
The opioid crisis demands that the next drug czar be solely focused
on getting communities across the country the help they desperately
need, and we hope the administration nominates someone who fits that
bill so we can pass that nominee quickly and in a bipartisan way.
I yield the floor.
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