[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 182 (Wednesday, November 8, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7082-S7084]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Tax Reform

  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, 1 year ago, the American people went to 
the polls. The American people demanded a change. They demanded a 
change from 8 years of too little economic growth and too much 
government control and regulations. The effect was immediate, and the 
effect was incredible.
  In the past year, we have gotten a lot of very good news about the 
American economy. Right after the election, businesses became much more 
optimistic about the direction of our country and they started hiring. 
Last Friday, we learned that in the United States we have created more 
than 2 million jobs since election day 2016. Someone said to me: Well, 
you shouldn't count it from election day. You should count it from 
Inauguration Day. Certainly, in my home State of Wyoming, on election 
day there was a confidence, an optimism, a positive feeling that 
started just at the moment it was announced that Donald Trump had been 
elected President of the United States.
  Right now we have the lowest rate of unemployment since the year 
2002. We have seen the economy grow at more than 3 percent for the past 
2 quarters. Consumer confidence just reached the highest level in 
almost 17 years. All of this is happening since President Trump was 
elected, and this is very good news for America.
  We can't stop now. We have to do all we can to keep on this path 
toward a more prosperous country. Americans are optimistic because they 
know that President Trump is focused on easing the regulations that 
have held back our economy for the last 8 years. We know that 
government can create opportunity or crush opportunity based on a 
combination of regulations, mandates, and taxes. We are now in the land 
of opportunity, eliminating the regulations and pulling back on taxes 
to helping our economy grow.
  The President has signed legislation that we passed in this Congress 
repealing one after another of the Obama administration's rules, 
regulations, and restrictions. President Trump has issued Executive 
orders cutting back on excessive redtape. President Trump has appointed 
very good people to important jobs who are committed to reining in 
Washington's out-of-control bureaucracy. All of these things are 
important and critical to keeping our economy growing.
  Another big part is what we are trying to do now in terms of cutting 
taxes for the American people. People want to keep more of their hard-
earned money in their own pockets.
  Here in the Senate we now have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to 
cut taxes in a way that will actually help American families. We can 
help families directly by raising their incomes, and we can help them 
indirectly by growing the economy. Here is how we can do both, because 
that needs to be our goal.
  The first thing we can do is to give people a raise by doubling the 
standard deduction. If we raise the deduction, people keep more of 
their hard-earned money, and it makes taxes simpler. Right now, the 
standard deduction for a married couple is $12,000. Two-thirds of 
Americans take this deduction. If we roughly double it, people will not 
pay any Federal income tax at all on the first $24,000 they earn. That 
is a big cut. It means that a lot more people will decide to take this 
deduction instead of having to go through the painstaking process of 
itemizing their deductions on their tax return. It saves them a lot of 
time, it saves them a lot of headaches, and it saves them the cost of 
accountants and lawyers who have to help figure out the very 
complicated tax system in this country. Millions of families will be 
better off just from this one tax cut alone.
  A second thing Republicans are looking to do is to reduce the tax 
rate for small businesses, the people who are creating jobs all across 
the country. If someone owns a small business in my home State of 
Wyoming, she probably ends up paying the taxes on her personal tax 
return rather than on a separate business tax return. If we cut her tax 
bill, that is money she can then use to give her workers a raise, to 
hire more people, and to create more jobs in our community. She can put 
money back into the business to help grow the economy as well.
  When you leave more money in people's pockets, they get to decide how 
to use that money--what they decide to spend, what they decide to save, 
and what they decide to invest. People are much better watching their 
own money than the government ever was, giving people value for that 
money.
  So we want to make sure that tax reform includes a break for small 
businesses. Around here, they use the

[[Page S7083]]

words ``tax reform.'' To me, it is about tax reduction, tax relief, and 
tax cuts. Republicans also want to bring down the rates that Washington 
charges other businesses. If we can cut the rate businesses pay from 35 
percent down to 20 percent, that could be an enormous boost to the 
economy. Economists who look at this say it is like giving the average 
American family a $4,000 a year raise. That is how much the average 
household's income would go up, because workers actually bear most of 
the burden of taxes that businesses pay.
  Now, Democrats actually think the money belongs to Washington. It 
doesn't. It belongs to the people at home who earn it. Democrats often 
think that if you give Americans even a single dollar in tax cuts, you 
are taking away Washington's money. It is not Washington's money. The 
money belongs to the people at home.
  We know the exact opposite of what the Democrats believe to be true. 
Republicans know that giving Americans a tax cut is the same as giving 
them a raise. Every dollar a family doesn't have to send to Washington 
in taxes is a dollar they can use for something better. It is a dollar 
they can use for food, for shelter, for kids, for education, for things 
that matter to their family. It is another dollar a small business can 
use to pay its workers more or reinvest in the business to help grow 
the economy in that community. Tax cuts mean that people decide how to 
spend their own money; Washington doesn't decide. Families know how to 
use money much better than Washington ever will.

  As we debate these issues and ideas with regard to tax relief, we 
have an exciting opportunity to give the American people a raise and to 
give the American economy a boost. This is something a lot of people 
have been working on for a long time in the Senate. Over the past 6 
years, the Finance Committee has held 70 hearings on how to make our 
Tax Code better for all Americans.
  Republicans are working, and we are listening to make sure that we 
get the tax reform right that the American people and families need. 
When it comes to tax cuts, I believe the more the better. The more 
people who get a tax cut, the better. The more we grow our economy, the 
better. It is our job. It is about paychecks. It is about jobs. It is 
about prosperity. It is about a strong and healthy economy for America. 
That is what we as Republicans are committed to. We cannot let this 
opportunity pass.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, whether one is a progressive, a Democrat, 
a conservative, a Republican, or somewhere in between, there is a deep 
understanding in this country that we are living in a rigged economy, 
and people are increasingly angry and frustrated about the growing 
inequality and unfairness they see all about them.
  It is hard to believe, but in the United States of America today, the 
top one-tenth of 1 percent now owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 
90 percent--one-tenth of 1 percent, bottom 90 percent. A study came out 
fairly recently indicating that in the United States of America today, 
the three wealthiest people in our country--Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and 
Warren Buffett--now own more wealth than the bottom half of the 
American people. Three people own more wealth than the bottom half of 
the American people.
  Meanwhile, while the very, very rich get richer, some 40 million 
Americans are living in poverty. These are people who are struggling 
today to figure out how they put food on the table for their kids, how 
they put gas in the car in order to go to work, how they pay their 
electric bills, how they deal with childcare. There are 40 million 
people living in poverty. The middle class is disappearing. People are 
working two or three jobs. For the first time in the modern history of 
this country, young people may well have a standard of living lower 
than their parents'.
  On top of all of that, we remain the only major country on Earth that 
doesn't guarantee healthcare to all of our people. Twenty-eight million 
people today have no health insurance. Many more are underinsured. And 
if our Republican colleagues get their way, they are going to throw 
another 20 or 30 million people off of their health insurance.
  It is not only the reality of grotesque levels of inequality that is 
making the American people despondent and angry; it is the reality that 
the people on top, with their wealth and power, can access lawyers and 
accountants who are able to manipulate the system to benefit themselves 
at the expense of everyone else. That is the essence of what a rigged 
economy is about and what I want to say a few words about today.
  In my view, one of the great crises facing our world--and we are in a 
world of many crises--is the rapid movement toward international 
oligarchy in which a handful of billionaires own and control not just a 
significant part of the American economy but a significant part of the 
world economy. Needless to say, this is an issue that does not get a 
whole lot of discussion because, in general, the more important the 
issues are, the less discussion they get within the corporate media or 
within the political world that we live in here in the Congress.
  Let me reiterate. One of the great crises that we face is that a 
handful of billionaires are moving this entire planet toward an 
oligarchic society in which the people on top not only have incredible 
wealth but incredible political power as well.
  This last Sunday, a group of investigative journalists released over 
13 million files known as the Paradise Papers exposing just how 
horrific this situation has become. These papers show how a handful of 
oligarchs in the United States and throughout the world get richer by 
hiding their wealth and their profits offshore to avoid paying their 
fair share of taxes. The list of individuals implicated in the Paradise 
Papers include billionaires such as the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, 
Carl Icahn, and Robert Mercer. It includes large financial institutions 
such as Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and Bank of America. It includes large 
multinational corporations such as Apple, Nike, and ExxonMobil. It 
includes members of the Trump administration, such as Secretary of 
State Rex Tillerson, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, chief economic 
adviser Gary Cohn, and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.
  Let's be clear. Offshore tax evasion is a major problem not just for 
the United States but for governments throughout the world. This is 
really quite unbelievable. In the year 2012, the Tax Justice Network 
estimated that at least $21 trillion--$21 trillion, a number almost 
beyond comprehension--is being stashed in offshore tax havens around 
the world. Imagine that. There is $21 trillion flowing into tax havens 
in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Luxembourg--all these places around the 
world where the billionaire class and large corporations are stashing 
their money not only to avoid taxes in the United States but to avoid 
taxes in Great Britain, France, Germany, et cetera.
  There is a funny thing about these guys. All of these billionaires 
love veterans, and they love the military. They want to see us rebuild 
the infrastructure, and they want to see our kids get a good education. 
But you know what, they don't want to pay taxes to make that happen. 
They want ordinary people to pay the taxes. Republicans here want to 
increase military spending by $50, $60 billion. It is not the 
billionaires who are going to pay the taxes on that--they have their 
money in the Cayman Islands. It is the working class, the middle class, 
upper middle class who will pay, not the billionaires. They love 
America--except when it comes to accepting their fair share to make 
sure that we continue to provide the services our men, women, and 
children need.
  The situation has become so absurd--and this is really how crazy it 
is--that one five-story office building in the Cayman Islands is now 
the home of nearly 20,000 corporations. This particular building in the 
Cayman Islands is called the Ugland House. It is five stories. I know 
that you can squeeze people into a building--sometimes three or four 
people live in a room--but I think it is a little bit hard to 
understand how 20,000 corporations function in a five-story building. 
Of course the answer is that 20,000 corporations do not function in 
this five-story building.

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It is all a fraud. It is simply a mailbox address for 20,000 
corporations that are in this building in order to avoid paying their 
taxes. They are stashing their profits and their wealth in corporations 
that use this building as a mailing address.
  I know we are busy talking about so-called tax reform here, but in 
the United States alone, offshore tax evasion costs our government 
about $166 billion in lost revenue each and every year. That is a lot 
of money that could be used to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure--
our roads, our bridges, our water systems. One trillion dollars--that 
is 8 or 9 years of that $166 billion--could create up to 15 million 
good-paying jobs. That is money that could be used to provide universal 
pre-K for our children so that when kids get ready to go to school, 
they will be prepared to do the work there. But instead of cracking 
down on offshore tax schemes, President Trump and my Republican 
colleagues in Congress are working overtime to pass legislation that 
would make this absurd situation even worse.
  At a time when corporations are making recordbreaking profits, my 
Republican colleagues want to slash taxes for companies that are 
shifting American jobs to China and American profits to the Cayman 
Islands. At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, President 
Trump and the Republicans in Congress want to cut taxes for 
billionaires by repealing the estate tax on families who inherit over 
$5.5 million. I think the American people grasp the unfairness and the 
absurdity of the Republican tax proposal.
  The top one-tenth of 1 percent own almost as much wealth as the 
bottom 90 percent. The very, very rich are getting richer while the 
middle class is shrinking, and the Republican response is to give 
massive tax breaks to the top two-tenths of 1 percent--two-tenths of 1 
percent. These are families like the Walton family, the wealthiest 
family in America, who owns Walmart, who would get up to a $50 billion 
tax break; and the Koch brothers, who have enough money to spend 
hundreds of millions of dollars trying to elect rightwing candidates to 
Congress.
  There are massive tax breaks for billionaires and at the same time, 
an effort to throw up to 30 million people off of the health insurance 
they have, massive cuts in education, in nutrition, and in the programs 
that working families desperately need.
  Instead of providing even more tax breaks to very profitable 
corporations and to billionaires and President Trump's Cabinet, maybe--
just maybe--it might be a good idea to close offshore tax loopholes and 
demand a fair, transparent, and progressive tax system.
  I hope the American people are catching on--as I believe they are--to 
what a fraud the Republican tax proposal is. Today, one out of five 
major, profitable corporations already pays zero in Federal income tax. 
You can't do much better than paying zero in Federal income tax and be 
a profitable corporation, but that is what is going on. Republicans 
want to make that even worse, and then they want millions of middle-
class people, by the end of the decade, to be paying more in taxes. 
That is absurd, and I hope the American people stand up and demand that 
we do not go forward with that proposal.