[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 172 (Wednesday, October 25, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6787-S6789]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Tax Reform
Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, yesterday in the middle of the day, the
Presiding Officer and I and the Senator from Texas and others had a
chance to meet with the President and talk about tax relief. It seemed
to me very clear that the President and those of us who are advocating
tax cuts right now are on the same wavelength, which is, let's have tax
cuts for hard-working families, and let's do the other things we need
to do in the Tax Code to ensure that those very same families have
better jobs.
As I said on the floor of the Senate last week, there are two ways to
increase take-home pay. One is to start taking less out of the
paychecks people are getting now, and another one is to give them an
even better paycheck in the future. We need to look at both of those
ways to increase the opportunity for working families and working
individuals.
We are now into the eighth year of almost no economic growth. If
there is no economic growth, there is very little incentive for your
job to be a better paying job than it was the previous year no matter
what has happened to your other costs, and we clearly see that
happening.
We are into the first year of this new administration. We are looking
at 3 percent annual growth after 8 years in which growth didn't exceed
2 percent. Anytime you begin to talk like an economist, people begin to
wonder: Well, what does that have to do with me? Let me just say that
for taxpayers generally, for working families generally, the more
growth you have, one, the more revenue that comes in that takes care of
problems like the deficit. The way you take care of those problems--the
best way--is to grow the economy. Two, people are much more focused on
keeping the workforce they have, getting the best of the workforce that
is coming on board as their workforce moves on for retirement or
relocates or does other things.
Three percent economic growth is not good enough. The post-World War
II average--that is more than seven decades now of average--is, I
think, almost 3\1/2\ percent. There are very few economic problems in
our country that wouldn't be made substantially better, including our
own Federal deficit, if we see growth exceed or even get to the 70-year
average. There is no reason to believe that can't happen.
Yesterday, the President was talking about the two ways to
immediately relieve pressures on families. One is more take-home pay,
and two is a better job that also increases take-home pay. But the
first step we can achieve immediately by the kind of tax relief we
need.
There have been 8 years of stagnant wages. Half of the families in
the country are living paycheck to paycheck. Very few families can face
an emergency that is even $500 without having to restructure what they
are doing and how they are doing it. We can do a better job at this. We
need more jobs. We need higher wages. And the two principal goals of
this tax bill should be to do exactly that--create more wages now, more
take-home pay now, and create an environment in which we are going to
be more competitive. Simplifying the Tax Code is one way to meet that
first impact, having a tax code that people understand better, that
they think is fairer.
A tax code where people think they are being treated fairly is much
more likely to be complied with than a tax code where people see that
somebody else who makes the same amount of money as they make is paying
a lot less taxes than they are paying. The American tax system is
probably the greatest voluntary compliance. Sure, there are laws that
require people to comply, but most people are never impacted by those
laws. They know they could be, but the American people have shown a
willingness to pay their fair share if they know that their fair share
is, in fact, their fair share. A simpler tax system, a more easily
understood tax system, a system that has fewer than the seven different
tax brackets that people pay today are things we can and should
achieve.
Doubling the standard deduction helps a lot when people look at the
$12,000 deduction they have now. For a couple, as they look at that
deduction and realize that deduction, that standard deduction, has
doubled, suddenly, if you are a couple filing jointly, you are not
paying any taxes on the first $24,000 you earn. If you are a single
individual, you are not paying any taxes on the first $12,000 you earn.
Keeping enough of the family-benefiting exemptions helps make the
family do what the family would like to do. What if they would like to
give to their church and charity? There is no discussion saying we
wouldn't keep the standard charitable deduction as a deduction. There
is no discussion that we wouldn't keep home mortgage as a deduction so
we are encouraging homeownership or looking at how to make the child
tax credit bigger rather than smaller.
Many of the early analyses of what this Tax Code would do say that
for a family of four, they would pay more than they are paying now up
to certain income level. Generally, that will turn out not to be the
case--certainly, at the middle-income levels and below if you factor in
the child tax credit, which hasn't been determined yet.
Our tax-writing committee will be looking at that child tax credit as
an important addition to the individual exemptions because it costs
money to raise kids. The Congress surely should understand that,
appreciate that, and factor that into the deductions. Just like we are
doubling the deduction for individual earners, we also have to look at
what that child tax credit should look like.
Tax policies that benefit homeownership, tax policies that encourage
contributing to charities and community activities and church and
synagogue and mosque--your religious activities--all would continue to
be a part of this Tax Code.
Also, when talking about sending kids to school, one way to not have
student debt is to encourage families to have ways to better prepare
for what they, in most cases, would hope would be a goal or an
expenditure their family would make. We can do things like expanding
the Pell grants for poor families, but for families who don't qualify
for that, we can do things that allow the deduction early on for
putting money in a fund that prepares people to go to school.
Keeping well-paying jobs at home and encouraging more jobs to come
here is also an important part of the goal. You can't have the highest
corporate rate in the world and expect that you are going to be as
competitive as you would be with other countries. A corporate rate of
35 percent, in 1986, was fairly near the middle when that rate was
arrived at with President Reagan and others working on it the last time
we did a tax rewrite, and right in the middle is about where we should
be. However, now the situation is we see that right in the middle is no
[[Page S6788]]
longer 35 percent; it is about 20 percent. Ireland just revised its 15
percent rate to 8 percent. Great Britain is reducing their rate to a
little less than 20 percent. They have been, I think, a little more
than 20 percent. We need to be sure the products we make here and the
jobs that are created here--that there is a competitive ability to sell
that same product anywhere in the world, with the advantage, obviously,
of being made by our great workforce but also an advantage where our
tax system doesn't work us out of the marketplace, doesn't make us less
competitive.
A territorial tax system will be one of the things we are going to
hear talked about a lot. For most of us, that doesn't seem to have any
impact. We earn our money here, we pay our taxes here, but we also want
to be sure that if American companies sell products somewhere else and
earn money there, that they can, should, and would bring that money
back to the United States to reinvest it in the kinds of things that
create jobs here.
I think this doesn't have to be all that complicated. We need to
understand what the core principles are. We need to get to those core
principles. We need to get this done this year so people are planning,
in the first months of next year, on how to take advantage of a new,
simpler, fairer, and more competitive Tax Code. This needs to be job
one of this Congress for the next few weeks. We need to get that done
so job one for the country, beginning at the end of this debate, is
what we can do to create more and better jobs and create more take-home
pay for hard-working families.
I am joined by some of my colleagues who are going to talk about this
same topic, I hope, and others. We need to be focused. I can tell, with
the President's comments yesterday, he is focused on this. We are
focused on this. This is a job we need to get done.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Ernst). The Senator from Alaska.
Mr. SULLIVAN. Madam President, I wanted to reinforce and underscore
some of the comments made by my colleague from Oklahoma, Senator
Lankford, on what is happening in the Senate right now. It is actually
really important for the American people to understand what is going
on. Maybe we would finally get the press, who sit up there above your
chair, Madam President, to write about this topic.
Right now, we are debating a very well-qualified district court judge
nominee--a Federal district court judge nominee from Oklahoma. Senator
Lankford was down here, and he obviously knows the nominee, Scott Palk.
He is so qualified that the vote for cloture to move forward on this
nominee--who, by the way, was nominated by President Trump for a
Federal district court position but was previously nominated by
President Obama with fairly bipartisan support--was 79 to 18. That is
really strong bipartisan support. It just happened about an hour ago on
the Senate floor.
So what are we doing? Well, we are still going to be debating for 30
hours. We are not really debating the nominee because he is well
qualified. That is what we are doing in the Senate, supposedly. Anyone
watching, you know we are not debating him because he is very well
qualified, but we are still going to burn 30 hours. Why is this? Well,
this raises a much broader issue of the tactics that are happening on
the Senate floor right now. The minority leader and his colleagues will
not come down and explain what they are up to.
I gave a speech on this a couple of weeks ago, and I just asked: Come
on down. Let the American people understand why we are spending all
this time on nominees who are very well qualified and have enormous
bipartisan support. Why are we being required to go an additional 30
hours? Those are the rules, but normally there would be unanimous
consent to move forward. What is happening now hasn't been explained,
but it definitely hurts the American people, whether you are a Democrat
or Republican. What is happening now is, every single nominee from the
Trump administration, whether Federal judge or Assistant Secretary for
Health and Human Services, is being delayed. Here are the numbers.
Eight years ago, President Obama had about 66 percent of his nominees
confirmed at this period in the fall of his first term. People were
working through them. If you didn't like the nominee, you would just
vote against them, but you wouldn't say we are going to burn half the
week of the Senate to debate somebody who is not even controversial.
This judge, when we finally get through the 30 hours, is going to pass
with 80 Senate votes, but we are burning through it anyway. President
Obama, 8 years ago, had 66 percent confirmed. The number for President
Trump 8 years later is 33 percent. Imagine our friends in the media--
the New York Times--if Republicans were doing this to President Obama
during his first few months in office. There would be front-page
stories every day. The Republican Party is trying to undermine the new
President--delaying, delaying, delaying. You don't hear a peep from our
national press. They don't write about it.
It is a problem because we have work to do in this country. I have
asked the minority leader to just come down and tell the American
people why you are doing this. We have had numerous judges, very
noncontroversial, very bipartisan, where we essentially spent the whole
week ``debating'' them. We are not debating this judge, but we are
going to spend 30 hours on him.
Why are they doing that? And why are my colleagues on the other side
of the aisle agreeing to it? I asked them to come on down and explain
it to the American people, the people watching on TV or in the Gallery.
Why are you doing this? Does it help the country? Whether you are a
Democrat or Republican, it doesn't help the country. That is the whole
point, but nobody wants to come down and explain their delay tactics.
The press will not write about it because some of them like it, I
think.
Here is the truth. When we are spending all this time all week on
this judge who will get voted on--and he will pass because he is very
well qualified. Senator Lankford laid out his resume. He was previously
nominated by President Obama. We are going to vote for him after this
30-hour period, and he will pass with a strong bipartisan vote. What is
the challenge? What happens to the other issues we need to address in
this country--in this body? We can't get to them, if we wanted to turn
to other issues to start moving them.
My colleague from New Hampshire was just on the floor. She talked
about all the things we have to do. I agree with her 100 percent: tax
reform, healthcare, budget--we never do the budget here anymore--
National Defense Authorization Act, growing the economy, as my friend
from Missouri talked about, infrastructure, immigration, and the
Dreamer issue. We have so much to do, let alone getting Trump
administration officials confirmed and judges confirmed. That is a big
list, but because we are spending 30 hours on a debate, which really
isn't a debate on the judge, and we can't get consent from the other
side to actually work on these other issues, this is what we are doing.
We are just burning time.
The minority leader will not come down and explain it. I don't know
if he can explain it, but that is what we are doing. Again, if the shoe
were on the other foot, the press would be going crazy. Right now, they
just let it happen. My view is, it would be great if one of my
colleagues from the other side of the aisle would come down and say:
Here is why we are wasting all of this time. Just let us know.
As Senator Lankford mentioned, this judge was nominated by the
President in May. Now we are going to spend most of the week
``debating'' him, when that is not what is going on. It is just a delay
tactic. My view is, we should just say: OK. You want to play ball like
that? We will stay here 24/7 and keep the Senate open 7 days a week.
Let's get to work. Let's stay here until Christmas. See if the minority
leader and his team keep doing that, keep delaying. I think we should
call their bluff.
Right now, the delay tactics--which nobody on the other side wants to
explain--in my view, are not defensible, and they are not helping the
country. Whether you are a Democrat or Republican, you want to seat the
government. You want to get good people working for the American
people. Right now, that is not happening.
I just wish the other side would either explain it or stop doing it.
Let's get to work for this Nation.
[[Page S6789]]
Thank you.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
Mr. TILLIS. Madam President, I fully associate myself with the
comments just made by the Senator from the great State of Alaska. We
have to get to work here.