[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 183 (Thursday, November 9, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H8679-H8682]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM

  (Mr. HOYER asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. 
McCarthy) for the purpose of the majority leader telling us the 
schedule for the week to come.
  (Mr. McCARTHY asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. McCARTHY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, on Monday, the House will meet at noon for morning hour 
and 2 p.m. for legislative business. Votes will be postponed until 6:30 
p.m. On Tuesday and Wednesday the House will meet at 10 a.m. for 
morning hour and noon for legislative business. On Thursday, the House 
will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business.
  Mr. Speaker, the House will consider a number of suspensions next 
week, a complete list of which will be announced by close of business 
tomorrow.
  In addition, the House will consider the conference report to 
accompany H.R. 2810, the Fiscal Year 2018 National Defense 
Authorization Act. This bipartisan agreement will strengthen our 
military, give our men and women in uniform a 2.4 percent pay raise, 
and ensure America's fighting forces have the resources they need to 
secure peace both at home and abroad.
  I want to thank Chairman Thornberry and the entire House Committee on 
Armed Services for their hard work on this important bill.
  Mr. Speaker, the House should also look forward to voting on the most 
significant tax reform in over three decades, H.R. 1, the Tax Cuts and 
Jobs Act, sponsored by Representative Kevin Brady.
  America is among the highest taxed nations in the developed world. 
Americans pay more in taxes than we spend on housing, clothing, and 
food, combined.
  Our current Tax Code is almost 2,600 pages long, with an additional 
70,000 pages of forms and other regulations. That is just unacceptable.
  We want to see economic growth in this country. Instead of ``closed 
for business'' signs, we want to see ``now hiring'' signs.
  We want to double the standard deduction.
  What does that mean?
  It means, for every American, the first $12,000 of income for an 
individual is tax free; for a couple, that is $24,000 tax free.
  We want to simplify the Tax Code so you can file it in minutes--
instead of spending weeks--on a form the size of a postcard.
  We want to bring back the trillions of dollars of American wealth 
that is forced to sit overseas, have it come back to America and invest 
in Americans.
  That is what voting for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will accomplish. 
That is why I look forward to the House passing this critical bill 
without delay.
  Lastly, Mr. Speaker, additional legislative items are possible in the 
House. If anything is added to our schedule, I will be sure to inform 
all Members.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for that information.
  I am going to have some specific questions about the tax bill, but 
before I do that, it is our understanding that substantial changes are 
being made in the tax bill that was put on the floor last Thursday, a 
week ago.
  Does the gentleman know whether that is accurate or not?
  I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. McCARTHY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  I would not use that term, ``substantial,'' because, as you know, we 
have gone through this process for quite some time. We are all writing 
to the same number: $1.5 trillion. But, as you know, any bill, when it 
moves through regular order, where it gets introduced in committee and 
we have a markup, just as Ways and Means has done all week long--they 
will come to the final vote today--whatever amendments pass will be 
added.

[[Page H8680]]

  You will then see that bill posted. You will then, next week, see the 
Rules Committee take it up, and then you will see that bill on the 
floor, just as with any other regular order bill in the process.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, regular order is having hearings and 
witnesses, is it not?
  I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. McCARTHY. Mr. Speaker, for the last three decades, we have done 
that, and I don't think the American people want to continue to wait.
  I know we go through this every week, time and again, and so I can 
quote you back the number of hearings. I can quote you back what people 
even ran a campaign on and put out to the American public. But what is 
most important that I can quote to you is the lack of growth that has 
happened, how much people have to pay in taxes, the trillions of 
dollars that are sitting overseas.
  What I have found time and again, and I know we have talked about 
this before, but just by the introduction of our bill, I was sitting in 
the Oval Office last week and there was a company there, Broadcom, that 
was created in America, but because of our Tax Code, they were forced 
to leave America to try to be competitive.

                              {time}  1130

  They looked at this bill, and they told me a couple of days before: 
If you really believe this bill is going to pass, we will come back.
  When they come back, that is $20 billion in revenue each year. They 
will spend another $3 billion each year on R&D. Then they will spend $6 
billion in manufacturing.
  The gentleman and I have had so many discussions about how to bring 
manufacturing jobs back. That is why I am so excited about this bill 
coming to the floor the next week.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his remarks.
  I don't share his enthusiasm for this bill, which I think will be 
very harmful, will explode the debt, and be a bait-and-switch on the 
middle class whether it will get a tax cut early and a tax increase 
later on.
  Is the gentleman aware, when he talks about growth, that in the 
comparable 9 months of 2016 to the same months in 2017 under Trump, 
that there were 326,000 more jobs created in 2016 than have been 
created in 2017 in those analogous months?
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. McCARTHY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, I am a little confused that the gentleman is not 
enthusiastic about this bill. I have read what some people on the other 
side of the aisle have said about this bill. I heard one phrase that 
the gentleman recently used about the middle class. I would just 
caution my friend in inferring anything negative to the middle class 
with this bill because there were some on the other side of the aisle 
that made some comments.
  Like most things we say, we get fact-checked. The Washington Post, to 
a few Senators and my own Senator from California, tried to claim this 
was poor for the middle class.
  Do you know what happened?
  She did not receive one Pinocchio, she did not receive two 
Pinocchios, and she did not even receive three Pinocchios. She received 
four Pinocchios on that statement. That is the most Pinocchios you can 
get.
  Mr. Speaker, if I may, I wanted to do the research. I wanted to look. 
Is this tax bill good for all of America? Especially because I want the 
gentleman to be enthusiastic about it, I looked at Maryland's Fifth 
District. Now here are just a few facts:
  Currently, in the Fifth Congressional District of Maryland, 47 
percent of the filers take the standard deduction. So not only will 
they be better off, it will actually double, and they will see the 
increase in their pay on day one, January 1.
  Another 11 percent have itemized deductions. They will no longer with 
our new higher standard deduction, so they will also save more money, 
not to mention the time and confusion by not having to itemize. That 
means, before we even look at lowering tax rates, 58 percent of my 
friend's district is better off on day one.
  Now, how about the median family of four?
  A median family of four in Maryland's Fifth Congressional District 
earns $123,000. For the 20 percent of those families that don't itemize 
today, they will receive a tax cut of $5,000. For the 80 percent who 
are itemizing today, they will get, on average, $2,200 in a tax cut.
  But those are not the only people I am worried about. How about the 
single mother who is earning $30,000 in your district?
  Well, she will no longer have to pay any tax under this plan. In 
fact, she will receive a refund of about $500 to $700.
  How about the small business, the entrepreneur, the factory creating 
jobs?
  The small-business owner making about $400,000 in Maryland's Fifth 
Congressional District will see a savings of nearly $19,000.
  So what I am confused about is: How can't you be excited about this 
bill?
  In short, Mr. Speaker, to the people not just in my friend's 
district, but all of America, let me state this: under our plan, the 
average family of four earning $55,000 a year will not pay any tax.
  For so many days and so many years, I have heard from the other side 
of the aisle and my friend talking about the middle class. We have a 
bill that is on the floor that is going to help the middle class, the 
single mother not to pay any tax and getting money back; the median 
family there getting $5,000 back; the small business getting 19--I 
don't know how much more we have to do to get my friend excited, but 
next week he will have the opportunity.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, a lot more is the answer.
  Why is the NFIB, Mr. Speaker, against this bill if it is so good for 
small business? Why is the AARP against this bill if it is so good for 
small business? Why is the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which is 
worried about the national debt, against it?
  Mr. Speaker, since I have been here, my Republican friends have been 
talking about we have got to balance the budget. The President said he 
is going to balance the budget in 9 years. That was hooey.
  Our Republican friends have said they are going to balance the 
budget. They said it in the Price budget. They said it in the Ryan 
budget. The budget deficit keeps getting bigger, and they have been in 
charge of economic policy for a long time.
  The fact of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, I have got a list of 50 
groups that are against this bill because they think it hurts both the 
debt and middle-income people.
  The distribution, according not to fact-checkers but the Joint 
Committee on Taxation, $1 trillion of the tax cuts go to business, $230 
billion to individuals, and $170 billion on estates essentially. Now, 
that doesn't add up to the $1.7 or $1.8 trillion that has been computed 
to be the deficit created--the additional debt--by this bill.
  In fact, that is why this bill is being rewritten right now. I 
guarantee my friend--and he can call me this next week--that the bill 
that was introduced last Thursday will not look like the bill that we 
will consider on the floor. It won't.

  It won't because, first of all, the debt is a problem for, 
apparently, some people. It is a big problem for me. We ought to pay 
for what we buy. That is what the chairman of the Ways and Means 
Committee, Mr. Camp, did: a bill that was paid for--an honest bill that 
was paid for, as was the 1986 tax reform bill. It did not add to the 
debt.
  This adds an extraordinary amount to the debt. As a matter of fact, 
it adds in one fell swoop the debt that was created on the Reagan 
administration approximately $1.7 trillion. It is being rewritten now.
  My presumption is, as we have done 49 times this year, that this bill 
will be presented under a closed rule in a transparent Congress, where 
everybody's views are going to be considered. I stand here and say that 
the gentleman is not going to bring this bill to the floor with an open 
rule where amendments can be offered, where people can discuss options, 
and we can see what the ramifications are to middle class taxpayers.
  The Joint Committee on Taxation also pointed out that, of this 
figure, individuals are going to get a tax cut of

[[Page H8681]]

which Mr. Ryan talks about of $1,182--a typical family, he refers to 
them--but that figure will start to go down in 2019 and will go down 
further in 2020 so that it is a bait-and-switch. You get it up front, 
but we are going to take it away.
  In the Ways and Means Committee, one of the reasons, Mr. Speaker, I 
tell the majority that I am not very enthusiastic is because they 
asked: Do we also do this for businesses? Do we also do it for the 
estate tax? Do we also do it for the wealthy?
  The answer to that question is no. Only the middle-income worker has 
their tax cut reduced over the next 5 years, but not so with business, 
not so with the wealthiest taxpayers in America, and not so, obviously, 
with the estate tax. So that, I can tell the gentleman, is why I am not 
nearly as enthusiastic about it as some others would be.
  We limit State and local tax deductions, which the middle class 
takes. We limit the mortgage interest deduction used by homeowners. We 
eliminate the student loan deduction and we eliminate the medical 
expense deduction. So if you have a major medical expense, you are 
going to lose under this bill.
  It eliminates the deduction for moving expenses if your employer 
wants you to go more than 50 miles from your home. It eliminates the 
deduction for the adoption tax credit. That could be a credit of 
$13,570 per eligible child that you will lose. It eliminates the 
deduction for teachers that helps them purchase pencils, papers, 
rulers, and other materials for students.
  It eliminates the deduction for dependent care assistance--a 
substantial challenge for many of our families in America. It eliminate 
personal exemptions, which Americans can currently deduct for 
themselves, a spouse and dependents that grows to the size of the 
family. If you have a large family, you lose under this bill. If you 
have one child, the majority leader may be right. When you get to two 
children, three children, and four children with no deductions, you are 
going to lose under this bill. That is why I am not very enthusiastic 
about it.
  I tell this leader, Mr. Speaker, perhaps the changes will make me 
more enthusiastic. Perhaps there will be a recognition that this is not 
the bill that is going to do what it is purported to do.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. McCARTHY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  I just caution the gentleman on some of the things that he says 
because I do not want him to end up with any Pinocchios. The gentleman 
knows my fondness for him. Just today in The Washington Post we had a 
joint editorial about our trip down to Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, 
and to the Keys in Florida.
  The one thing I do want to say to the gentleman is I know he 
mentioned a few people in the very beginning, NFIB, whether they 
support the bill or not, I say: Just stay tuned.
  When the gentleman talks about will there be changes in the bill, 
this is the process. When you go through committee, do you not want to 
have the committee to have input?
  So there will be some changes. Substantially? No. But I do want to 
also advise my good friend--maybe I could refer the gentleman to clause 
5(a) of rule XXI of the House Rules. That will tell my friend how a 
bill comes to the floor coming out of the Ways and Means Committee when 
it deals with taxes.
  Now, I know the gentleman talks about debt. I know the gentleman 
brought up teachers, that it is a $250 tax credit. The only concern I 
have is that it is only in Washington that they could be opposed to a 
bill because they think we are eliminating a $250 tax deduction while 
we are giving somebody $12,000 more tax free. There is a lot more there 
going around, and I think that is a much bigger gift. If you ask the 
American public what they wanted, I will guarantee you which side they 
would pick.
  Now, the gentleman talks about debt--and I have great respect for my 
friend--but just a few weeks ago, the gentleman voted for a budget that 
called to raise taxes by $3.9 trillion. That same budget would also 
increase the deficit by $6.8 trillion--that is not what the gentleman 
said on the floor; that is what he did on the floor--over 10 years. It 
assumed a $764 billion deficit in 2027.
  Now, we had a budget on our side. A budget lays out the framework for 
the future. The Republican budget resulted in a $197 billion surplus in 
2027 and a $2.6 trillion deficit over 10 years. So I am concerned about 
the budget, and my votes show that. I want to put us on a path where we 
balance.
  We had this debate just a couple weeks ago, and that debate set up 
the mechanism to go to tax. And the one thing I have learned time and 
again--and my friend and I have had this discussion--we have got to 
protect the entitlements for the future, but we know that is what is 
going to break us if we don't do something about it.
  We have got to grow the economy. As we have watched the history of 
America, every generation has improved on the generation before it. But 
75 percent of Americans believe this generation will not.
  Why?
  Because of the last 10 years. It has been our lowest growth that we 
have seen in decades. We have always averaged more than 3 percent GDP, 
but we didn't then. We have just gone through two quarters at 3 percent 
where we had five hurricanes.
  I watched the Atlanta Fed look at this and say that we could be above 
4 percent.
  Do you know what opportunities we have?
  So it just won't be the Maryland Fifth District that is getting that 
money back or the small businesses that are hiring more with that 
$19,000.
  But imagine what that family will do with that $5,000. They will get 
to determine that. They will buy more than just a pencil. They will 
invest in their kids' future.
  So I think that it is an opportunity for all of us to come together, 
put people before politics, and let's make sure this bill goes out in a 
very strong vote.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his remarks.
  Mr. Speaker, I heard almost word for word the majority party intone 
that vision and prediction when we passed the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts--
almost word for word. That economic policy stayed in place until 2009.
  Why?
  Because the Republicans controlled the House, the Senate, and the 
Presidency.

                              {time}  1145

  And what did it bring us?
  An almost Hoover-like depression. Not quite, because when we came 
into office, we invested in bringing back a declining economy.
  Mr. Speaker, the majority leader didn't respond when I said the 
growth of jobs was better in 2016, under Barack Obama, than it has been 
under Donald Trump.
  We are going to have an opportunity to debate this bill, but I will 
tell my friend, when he says this is the process, the process is going 
to be that the chairman of the committee will come in with a major 
amendment to this bill that none of us on this side will have seen, and 
the bill will be brought to the floor next week.
  My friend, the majority leader--and I want to say something: he is my 
friend, and we do cooperate on a positive fashion--and I disagree 
strongly on this issue. I am against the creation of debt.
  He mentions the budget. Okay. That is a fair point. But I have been 
pretty consistent throughout my career to join with the Peterson 
Foundation that says we have got to get a handle on this debt. We have 
a growing economy and 4.4 percent unemployment. The stock market is 
going up.
  So what do we have here?
  An extraordinary stimulus bill with $1.5 trillion, $1.6 trillion, 
$1.7 trillion, $1.8 trillion of debt, presumably, as the majority 
leader admits, to stimulate the economy. Very frankly, if Democrats 
were doing this, we would be savaged by the other side.
  We will debate this, and we will look forward to seeing how the bill 
is going to be when it comes to the floor. Hopefully, we might get the 
manager's amendment, or, better said, the chairman's amendment, prior 
to its coming to the floor. I would hope we would have, at least, maybe 
even 48 or 24 hours' notice of what that amendment is going to look 
like so that not only

[[Page H8682]]

we, but the American people, who will have no opportunity to come in 
and give their opinions or testify, at least they will know what we are 
voting on. We will try to make sure they know.
  One other issue I would like to speak about, Mr. Speaker, before we 
end, and that is the request that the President of the United States 
made to us.
  He talked about the order issued by President Obama dealing with 
childhood arrivals who came here as minors, not on their own volition, 
called DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. There were a 
number of Republicans who had a press conference today, and they said 
we ought to pass that bill before the end of this year. I urge the 
majority leader to pass this bill by the end of next week, before the 
Thanksgiving break.
  This, Mr. Speaker, I believe is an issue on which, as Mr. Barton 
said, who is one of the senior Members on the Republican side of the 
aisle, if it is brought to the floor, it would have over 300 votes.
  Representative Barton said that, not me. I said that last week. I am 
glad that Mr. Barton agrees with me.
  We need to take care of this issue at the request of the President of 
the United States, who said: I love these kids. He didn't follow that 
with: I am not going to send them out of the country. What he said was 
that they were not protected the proper way and asked the Congress to 
take care of this.
  I have urged the majority leader, Mr. Speaker, for the last 2 months, 
to bring this to the floor. I know that a task force has been 
appointed. I don't know that the task force has reached a conclusion, 
but I would urge the majority leader and Speaker Ryan, who urged the 
President not to rescind the protection of these young people, urged 
him not to rescind President Obama's order. But when he did, the 
President said: I am going to do it because it wasn't done properly. It 
is the Congress' responsibility.
  Mr. Leader, I would urge you to bring to the floor the Dream Act, 
which is the manifestation of the response to that. There are other 
options as well. We understand that. But something ought to be brought 
to the floor so that these young people are not twisting in the wind 
through Thanksgiving and Christmas. This is the country they know. This 
is the country in which they have been brought up.
  When Rush Limbaugh says, ``We are not going to send these kids 
home,'' I can't believe that any of us on this floor are going to vote 
to send these young people home. We need legislation to pass to protect 
them and to give them the confidence.
  There is a wonderful editorial--I urge all of you to read it--from 
Bob Gates, our former Secretary of Defense under both Presidents Bush 
and Obama. He wrote an editorial about the thousands of, essentially, 
DACA children, young people, who have served in our Armed Forces 
valiantly. As a matter of fact, he said the attrition rate is a lot 
less with DACA-protected individuals than it is with others.
  Bob Gates is right. We ought to act. President Trump, in this 
instance, is right. It is our responsibility. We ought to act. Fred 
Upton said that today in the press conference. Joe Barton said that in 
the press conference. The gentleman from Washington State, who led the 
press conference, said that.
  Mr. Leader, this is an issue I think on which we agree. The tax bill 
is going to be an issue on which we are in contention. Let's give the 
American people another example, as we have in the past, of a place 
where we can work together, get something constructive and positive 
done for our country and for these young people.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend.
  Mr. McCARTHY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  The gentleman does know that we have put a task force together. I 
happen to serve on that task force. We have met over a half dozen 
times.
  It is true that when the President made his decision, he made it 
based upon whether it was legal or not for an action the executive 
branch took. The courts said it was not. So it was, rightfully so, 
moved back into this body, which is the legislative body.
  He gave us 6 months to get the job done. That i what we are 
continuing to work on. I look forward to continuing to work with the 
gentleman to get this done. I believe we will be able to.

  There is one point I do want to bring up to points the gentleman made 
prior. I do know that he is concerned about this.
  As the gentleman does know, if we just get 1 percent of growth in the 
GDP, that will add over a trillion dollars of extra revenue. The 
Atlanta Fed is already saying we are going to get 1\1/2\ trillion 
dollars. Who knows how high we can go, but I would never want to put a 
ceiling on America. I will always bet on America. I just want to 
unshackle the things that hold us back.
  You are correct; you talked about how we now have the lowest 
unemployment in decades. For the 58th time since the election a year 
ago, the stock market broke a record. Business confidence is at an all-
time high.
  Most of that is happening because America has the anticipation of us 
passing a tax bill. That is why I think this is a moment that will be 
significant for every Member.
  They will look back on their vote for next week as one of the most 
important votes they would ever take. What is the future you want to 
have for your children; what is the opportunity you want to give them?
  Did you put the rhetoric aside; did you look at the bill based on 
constitutionality; did you look at the bill based upon your own 
constituents?
  Take your partisan hat off, and when you look at that at the end of 
the day, if it empowers your small businesses, if it gives every 
American more money in their own pocket, if the projections are that it 
is going to grow the economy, do what is right. Do what is right for 
America, and I believe, at the end of the day, history will treat you 
well.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his remarks.
  I will say on this floor--the fact-checkers check me--millions and 
millions and millions of middle class taxpayers will get a tax increase 
under this bill. Check me. Millions of people.
  Why do I say that?
  The Joint Committee on Taxation tells me that. Other think groups 
tell me that from the conservative side of the ledger.
  So we will argue this bill, but I will repeat again that I have heard 
that argument over and over and over again. I heard it in 1981, and we 
exploded the debt. I heard it in 2001 and 2003, and we exploded the 
debt. We had the deepest recession anybody on this floor who is sitting 
here now has experienced. I hear it today.
  The reason the Peter G. Peterson Foundation is against this is 
because they believe exploding the debt by another $1.5 trillion will 
be an extraordinary detriment to our country.
  I want to say to every Member, Mr. Speaker, when you get up and say: 
I don't want to hurt my children, there may be people who get a tax cut 
under this bill, but I guarantee you the people who are getting a tax 
increase, in addition to the middle class I have just talked about, are 
the children. They are going to have to pay off this debt. We will not 
pay it off.
  When you speak on this floor and say it is an immoral act to put our 
children more deeply into debt, if you believe that, you will not be 
able to vote for this bill.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________