[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 176 (Tuesday, October 31, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6910-S6912]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Tax Reform
Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, tomorrow the House will announce its plan
for tax reform as a starting point. I doubt everybody here will agree
with everything that is in it, but I imagine we will find a lot of good
in it, and it will be a good starting point for this debate. But it
actually is about a broader
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topic that I hope will be a part of our conversation about tax reform
because it hasn't been enough of a part of our national discourse over
the last 20 years.
When we think about the history of this country, one of the things
that truly distinguishes us is not that we have rich people. Every
country in the world has rich people. We have an extraordinary amount
of success. We have earned success in this country, and we celebrate
it; we don't criticize it. But every society in the world has rich
people.
Sadly, we are also not the only country that has people who are poor,
who are struggling. That is something that challenges our principles,
as a nation founded on the idea of equal opportunity to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness. But the one thing that really
distinguishes America is that, by and large, the overwhelming number of
Americans do not consider themselves to be either rich or poor; they
consider themselves to be hard-working people. We can come up with any
term we want, whether it is middle class or working class, but these
are basically people who work hard every single day to provide not just
a better life for themselves--to be able to retire with dignity and
leave their children better off than themselves. They take pride in
that. What they value is not how much money they make or how many
things they own; it isn't even the title of the job. They value the
dignity that comes from the work they do, and, more importantly, they
value what it allows them to do, and it is not complicated things. It
allows them to own a home in a neighborhood that is safe--not a
mansion, but a home. We see that every weekend. People spend countless
hours to constantly keep up the home that they take great pride in, and
they take great pride in their children and their churches and their
synagogues and their religious organizations and the voluntary groups
that they belong to. This has been the fundamental core of our country.
That does not mean that others who do not fit that profile are not
important to the country, as well, but it is what distinguishes us
because most countries in the world don't really have that. In most
societies in human history, you are either rich or poor. There are a
lot of poor people and a handful of people in whom all of the wealth is
concentrated. That sort of dynamic is what has separated us from the
rest of the nations on Earth and, to this day, in many ways still does.
This is something I talk about not because I read about it or because
I saw a documentary about it last weekend, but because, in many ways, I
lived it. My parents were that. Neither one had much of an advanced
education. I don't know how far my dad went in school--probably not
beyond third or fourth grade; my mom, perhaps not much more than that.
They actually came to this country and barely spoke any English when
they arrived. They had to struggle to learn it, but they did. They
ended up being a bartender and a maid. People who know me or who have
heard me speak before know that story. It is one I tell not because I
want you to know more about me but because I want you to understand
what motivates me in public policy.
Even though my dad worked in the service sector his entire life and
my mother did as well, they owned a home and they retired with dignity.
All four of their kids went to college. That was possible through
a combination of things: jobs that paid enough and the ability to have
programs like Social Security and Medicare that allowed them to retire
with dignity--programs they paid into all of the years they were
working.
The reason I raise this is that people who fit that profile have been
hurt more than anyone else over the last 15 to 20 years. It is not
necessarily anyone's fault. The economy has changed. For example, the
jobs my parents once did don't pay nearly enough to afford today what
they could afford back then. As a bartender and a maid today--if my
parents were doing that now, I am not sure what house they would buy in
Miami-Dade County, where I live. I am not sure they would be able to
buy one anywhere near where we live now, not because our neighborhood
is some fancy place but because everything costs so much compared to
how much those jobs paid then.
So everything costs more, the jobs aren't paying enough, and then
they were hit with the recession. That is just the nature of changes in
our economy. Many people lost their jobs altogether. The industry they
were once in vanished. It went to another country or machines took
their place or they just don't need as many people as they used to
because they are able to do more with fewer employees.
Then they were hit with this recession, and it really hit them badly.
Maybe it wiped out their retirement savings; it cut in half the value
of their home, the most important investment they have, and to this day
they haven't fully recovered.
Then you add to all of that the idea that in American politics today,
we spend an extraordinary amount of time debating how we can help
everyone else except for them. I don't think we do that on purpose or
that people around here don't care about people like that. I don't know
why it happens; I am just telling you that it has.
The result is somewhat of a little bit of resentment, but certainly
there is a sense of isolation and the notion and the belief that they
have been left behind. They are upset about it, and they have a right
to be. It is not just about money, and it is not just about economics;
it is about the values of hard work and dignity and responsibility and
doing what you need to do to be a good citizen of this country and
contribute to its future but also doing what you need to do to raise
your family and instill in them the values you think are important.
I think it would be a terrible mistake to enter into tax reform--
perhaps one of the most meaningful public policy debates we will have
had in this city, certainly in the time I have been here and perhaps
for the better part of two to three decades in terms of our economy--
without in any way talking about what tax reform means for the millions
of Americans I just described. The one thing it should mean is that for
those jobs that have left, some of them should be able to come back
because, frankly, our own policies have forced some of those jobs to go
somewhere else. When other countries are making it easier to open up
factories and create jobs over there instead of over here, we are going
to lose some of those jobs. I am not saying all of them were a result
of that, but a lot of them were. If we have tax policies, as we do,
that do not allow us to compete and create those jobs here, we have to
reverse that.
Tax reform should be about that, but it also has to be about working
Americans--not Americans who are rich and can hire fancy accountants
and lawyers and even lobbyists to help them create special tax
statuses. I am not talking about Americans who are depending on
government programs. I am not talking about disability or Medicare or
Social Security--programs they have paid into; I am not talking about
programs that assist anti-poverty programs--a whole other topic that we
should talk about one day because some of them aren't working the way
we hoped they would in terms of helping people escape poverty. I am
talking about people who work and they make just enough to not qualify
for any of that stuff but not nearly enough to afford the cost of
living. That is just them. You add to that the cost of raising those
children. It is more expensive to raise kids today than ever before,
and the costs keep going up, and the paychecks are not keeping pace.
There is nothing we can do in tax reform by itself that solves all of
those problems, but there is no way we can do tax reform without
addressing the millions of Americans who feel as though every time
there is a debate in Washington, it is about helping everyone else
except for them.
Take, for example, the issue of the child tax credit, which is called
the child tax credit, but it really is about helping families--parents
and children. Take, for example, a married couple with two children.
Let's say one of them works in a warehouse and the other one is a home
health aide. These are not unusual jobs to find in the economy.
Let's say, based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics, their annual
income combined is going to be around $55,000 a year. Depending on
where you live--that is not a lot of money probably
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anywhere in the country, and it certainly isn't a lot of money where I
am standing now or where I am living now in Miami. If we do the whole
framework on tax reform but do nothing on the child tax credit and
leave it as it is, that couple making $55,000 with two children--if we
do nothing--they are going to have a tax increase of $738. I cannot
imagine a single person here voting for a tax reform package that does
nothing on the child tax credit and thereby raises taxes on a couple
making $55,000 a year with two children by a penny, not to mention $700
a year.
What if we do a little less, as some people are suggesting? Let's
just raise the tax credit to $500, but let's not make it refundable
against payroll tax. They will get a tax cut of about $263. When you
compare that to some of the tax cuts we are going to see in other parts
of this tax reform, I would say that is not nearly enough, certainly
not enough to make a difference.
But what if you do this: What if we double the value of the tax
credit from $1,000 to $2,000 and make it refundable toward payroll tax?
That couple with those two children will have a tax cut of $1,263. That
doesn't solve all of their problems, but it makes a difference.
I can give other examples. Others we will get to in the weeks to come
and the days to come, but let's just take a family like the one I grew
up in--a bartender and a maid. The median income of the bartender and
the maid is about $42,000, $43,000 a year. They have three children.
Without anything in the child tax credit--we just leave it the way it
is and do the framework--they are going to pay $1,276 more in taxes.
Can you imagine a tax reform plan that raises taxes on a bartender and
a maid with three children, making $43,000 a year, and it raises their
taxes by almost $1,300 a year? Who here is going to vote for that? I
dare you. You won't. Actually, I don't dare you. I don't want you to
vote for that. That is not what we are going to do.
So let's just do this symbolic thing: Raise it by $500 and make it
nonrefundable. They will get a tax cut of about the same--$233. You
might as well keep it because it won't make any difference. But what if
we doubled the value of the child tax credit and made it refundable
toward payroll tax. Then, their tax cut is $1,733. That is a tax cut.
That is the direction we have to go.
I have heard some people say we shouldn't make it refundable to
payroll tax because that is just more people who aren't paying anything
in taxes. They are talking about the income tax. That is the way people
here talk and think. That is the way economists think and the way
accountants might think. But for the people who work and get a paycheck
every week or every two weeks, when they get that paycheck, it shows
that money came out of their paycheck. It doesn't matter if that money
went into income tax or payroll tax; that is money they earned that you
took away, using the power of government. They are paying taxes.
Whether they are paying income tax or payroll tax, they are paying
taxes. If you want to help people who are working but who don't make
enough, then the only way--and they are trying to raise a family--the
child tax credit is the best way to do it.
So as we move forward, I truly hope that some of these voices I hear,
treating the child tax credit as some sort of welfare program or
giveaway or gimmick, well, reconsider that attitude. Reconsider that
attitude because the child tax credit applies only to families who are
working, who make less than a certain amount of money, and who are
raising children, our future taxpayers.
I am going to ask this: If our Tax Code does not help working
families, given all the other challenges they face, how--that is
inexcusable. How can we pass tax reform that is loaded up on how we are
going to help the business sector--and it should, because it creates
jobs and it will have higher pay down the road and billions upon
billions of dollars to help the poor--but do nothing for the backbone
of our economy, the one thing we all say that we take extraordinary
pride in, the working class, the working people of this country? There
is no way we can have a tax plan that doesn't do those things--no way.
If we do head in that direction, that will convince millions of
Americans that they were right all along, that the people in charge of
this country, in both parties, and the people who advise them don't
care about, look down on, and have no idea about what life is like for
people like them, who work hard every day, who seek nothing from the
government other than a fair chance. That is all they want.
All I am advocating for is that we allow them to keep more of their
own money so that they can provide for their families and a better
future and rebuild those working-class values and that working-class
backbone that I believe are what has made America so great.
I look forward to continuing to work in this direction. We better do
something real, and we better do it right; otherwise, I don't know how
we pass tax reform. I am hopeful that is where we are headed. I know we
still have some work to do, and I know tomorrow is only a starting
point. But I will repeat, once again, any tax plan that doesn't cut
taxes for working families with children is not one worth supporting. I
hope that is the direction in which we will move.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, the American people depend on the Federal
judiciary to be fair and unbiased. A judge should decide a case based
on the facts at hand and the law, not in service of a particular
ideology.
Over the past 9 months, I have been deeply concerned that President
Trump is nominating judges to lifetime appointments on the Federal
bench, people who share his ideology rather than judges who apply the
law fairly and follow precedent. President Trump has made his ideology
very clear during his first months in office: He is anti-immigrant,
anti-union, anti-worker, and anti-woman. He prioritizes the interests
of corporations over the rights of individuals. I am not often given to
hyperbole, but in this case I am so alarmed by Donald Trump's nominees
to the Federal bench that calling them extreme is not extreme.
Congress has a constitutional obligation, through advice and consent,
to fight back against these types of appointments. This is particularly
important for circuit court judges, but under Republican leadership,
the Senate is shirking its responsibilities. Too often, we are forced
to consider too many judges at one hearing.
The Judiciary Committee has already had nearly as many hearings with
two circuit court nominees on the hearing agenda in 9 months as the
Obama administration had in 8 years. Sometimes they even add district
court and Department of Justice nominees to an already crammed hearing
agenda. That is not right. Each circuit court nominee should be
considered in a separate hearing.
There was a time when there was consensus that controversial nominees
needed more scrutiny. Apparently, this President is sending us who he
deems the best and the greatest nominees, and we are supposed to trust
him that they will safeguard our rights and treat all Americans fairly.
In short, this I cannot do.
The Senate Judiciary Committee has an obligation to vigorously vet
and question these nominees, and we expect them to be honest, candid,
and complete in their replies. We have had a number of very frustrating
exchanges so far at these nomination hearings.
On several occasions, nominees have disavowed direct quotes of their
past writings and comments, even when members of the committee repeat
them word-for-word and follow up with specifics to the contrary.
Sometimes the nominees will acknowledge their past statements, but they
think we are naive enough to believe them when they say that, if
confirmed, they will ``follow precedent.''
Give me a break. As circuit court judges, they will be involved in
setting or rewriting precedent if the judge goes in that direction--
which a judge could very well do. Some have even written that they
think that is what lower court judges are permitted to do. I am talking
about district court judges.