[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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