[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 177 (Wednesday, November 1, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H8304-H8305]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      AMERICANS BEWARE OF TAX BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Maryland (Mr. Raskin) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I rise to talk about a job-killer tax bill 
that is coming to Congress this week, and if you don't watch out, it 
could be coming to your hometown soon.
  Up until yesterday, Mr. Speaker, I thought the new GOP tax plan was 
just run-of-the-mill, upside-down class warfare waged by the wealthiest 
people in the country against everybody else. I knew 80 percent of the 
windfall of the tax cut would go to people making $912,000 a year or 
more--the richest 1 percent of the country. I knew it would repeal the 
alternative minimum tax, the only reason that Donald Trump paid any 
taxes at all in the 1 year we know he paid taxes over the last few 
decades in 2005. I knew it would repeal the State and local income tax 
deduction, which would be terrible news for tens of millions of middle 
class people in States across the country, including mine in Maryland.
  I knew it would repeal the estate tax which only affects the 
wealthiest one-half of 1 percent of the country. All of these 
provisions would help to create a

[[Page H8305]]

hereditary oligarchical elite like the hereditary oligarchical elite in 
Russia today.

  This huge penthouse suite party will be paid for by the rest of us 
and blow a record-smashing $2 trillion deficit hole into our economy 
and programs like Medicare and Medicaid. I knew all of this. It is 
predictable enough.
  But then I noticed a provision yesterday that is absolutely 
gobstopping, shocking, startling, eye-popping, unbelievable in the GOP 
tax blueprint. It is called the territorial system, and what it means 
is simple. We will tax American businesses only when their operations 
are here in America. Here is what that means: if I am a businessman and 
I am going to set up a manufacturing plant on main street in my 
hometown, I have to pay the full freight of taxes. I pay everything.
  If I set my business, my new manufacturing plant, up in Mexico, or 
Bangladesh, or Ireland, I pay zero taxes. Let me repeat that: if I 
decide to set up my business in America, I pay 100 percent of the taxes 
I am going to owe. If I decide to relocate my business and all of the 
jobs abroad, I will pay zero taxes. That works even if I have already 
got the business in place here and I decide to ship everything 
overseas. Suddenly, I get a 100 percent tax break for all the profits 
that I earn overseas.
  Mr. Speaker, perhaps I misunderstand it. I am not a professor of tax 
law. I am a professor of constitutional law. So maybe I am not 
interpreting it right. I would love nothing more than for one of my 
colleagues from the other side of the aisle to get up and tell me it is 
not true, and correct me, and explain what I have got wrong.
  But if I have got it right, this shocking provision tucked into the 
bill that we are about to see is a job killer, a national emergency, 
and a dagger pointed at the heart of the American economy and our jobs. 
It is only a few, small, big businesses, a few big businesses that will 
benefit.
  Small businesses are not going to be benefited at all. The small 
businesses do not set up tax-dodging corporate subsidiaries in the 
Cayman Islands, or the Bahamas, or in Ireland. They don't ship 
overseas. So this is for a tiny percentage of the largest corporations 
in America, leaving the small businesses behind and taking millions of 
American jobs with them.
  Why would the majority do this to us when Donald Trump campaigned on 
a platform of putting America first and promising to bring American 
jobs back home--not export millions more with a devastating tax plan?
  Now I see why they are hurdling this through Congress. In 1986, with 
the tax reform plan, there were 63 days of hearings, and more than 450 
witnesses in Ways and Means and the Senate Finance Committee. It took 2 
years and 10 months. This plan they want to slam through Congress in 
less than 2 weeks, with barely any witnesses, maybe no hearings, maybe 
one or two hearings; and you know why? Because they are tucking the 
most massive job-killing provision anyone has ever seen into this bill.
  If anything, we should be imposing higher taxes on those businesses 
that ship our jobs overseas--not lower taxes--or they should pay the 
same. But this plan would wipe out any taxes at all, and it is 
dumbfounding that they would think this is something that Congress 
would put up with--just like they tried to slam through Congress the 
ACA repeal and we stopped it when people got the word.
  We have got to make sure, Mr. Speaker, that every American 
understands what is really in this tax bill coming our way.

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