[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 186 (Tuesday, November 14, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H9184-H9185]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          REJECT THE TAX BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Doggett) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, after a treacherous extended game of hide-
and-seek, Republicans this week are rushing through this House a 
wretched tax bill. The future of this sneak attack on America depends 
upon how quickly the truth can catch up with so many lies.
  This bill is just a way to curry favor with Washington's special 
interests, awarding tax windfalls to large multinational corporations 
and the fortunate few who sit way up atop the economic ladder.
  ``Don't worry,'' Republicans say. ``What middle class people lose to 
pay for this unbalanced tax cut, will eventually trickle down. With a 
little fairy dust magically, it will appear in your pocket, and you 
will get more than ever.''
  This is a massive corporate tax break where the tail is wagging the 
dog of a corporate tax break. The Republican gimmick that Americans are 
being asked to swallow is the same experience we have had previously. 
The middle class will not enjoy the benefits of this bill. Both history 
and arithmetic tell us that.
  First, they are borrowing this money--much of it--to finance this tax 
break from the Chinese and the Saudis, and others whom we have looked 
to to pay for our immense national debt in the past.
  Second, we know from experience that tax breaks like this do not 
create lasting jobs. But it is even worse than all of that because 
Republicans are creating a special new loophole for outsourcing so many 
more American jobs.
  Candidate Trump, last year, made a central theme about protecting 
American jobs and stopping outsourcing, but he has endorsed a tax bill 
that does just the opposite. It creates a gaping new loophole to 
encourage greater outsourcing of our jobs and our profits abroad. Here 
is how it all works:
  A multinational investor has a choice to make. Do I invest with new 
manufacturing in San Antonio, or do I choose Stuttgart or Shanghai? If 
I invest in America under their proposal, it will be a 20 percent tax 
on my profits; but if I invest abroad in Shanghai or in Stuttgart, the 
most I pay is 10 cents on the dollar, and more likely, I don't pay 
anything because of the way this bill is constructed. The bill will 
create some new jobs, no doubt, but it is a mighty long commute to 
Europe or Asia to get one of those jobs.
  With the help of Washington's special interests, they have rigged up 
an even more complex international tax-dodging system that pretends to 
tax foreign investment at half the U.S. rate. In

[[Page H9185]]

fact, it permits many of these companies to funnel even more of their 
profits into tax havens where their liability in America will end up 
being zero, and much of their profit will not be taxed anywhere, by 
anybody.
  Whatever happened to making America great?
  For Republicans, it is not enough to reward future tax dodging. No. 
They want to go back and reward tax dodging from the past. And we sure 
have had plenty of that because, for years, large multinational firms 
have exploited these island tax havens, setting up artificial offices 
in the Bahamas or the Caymans to get their tax bill down to little or 
nothing, leaving working families and those American-oriented 
businesses, small businesses, large domestic-oriented businesses, to 
pay the bill for our national security that they decline to pay.
  The recent revelations of the Panama Papers and, more recently, the 
Paradise Papers, have exposed how these companies use these tax laws.
  How did the Republicans respond? By granting multinationals with 
hoards of taxes that they hold in separate accounts they call offshore 
but sit right there on Wall Street, by letting them pay less than half 
of what they owe at a rate much lower than most middle-class families 
pay. It is another Republican myth meant to convince working families 
to go along with this proposal. Many of these profits come from those 
companies that claim they are trapped offshore, but it is only the 
American people who are trapped by this proposal.
  Goldman Sachs, itself, has said repatriation is likely to have a 
limited effect because repatriated earnings are already working here 
for domestic activities. There is nothing patriotic about repatriation. 
This is a tax bill borne by the middle class to benefit the wealthy few 
and these multinationals, to reward them for what they have been doing 
in the past, and it must be rejected.

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