[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 187 (Wednesday, November 15, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7231-S7234]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Republican Tax Plan

  Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, all year the majority has tried to ram 
through legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it 
with proposals that, in effect, cut healthcare for millions of people 
to finance tax cuts for those who make millions of dollars in income. 
All year the American people have made it perfectly clear that this was 
the opposite of what they wanted. Fortunately, those repeal efforts 
failed.
  Now, instead of listening to the American people and learning from 
that failure, the majority has doubled down on its tax plan. Like 
healthcare, they have made no attempt to bring both sides together. In 
the Senate, we only saw the bill last Thursday. I am on the Finance 
Committee. I have been on there for years. It wasn't even in 
legislative language on Thursday.
  I remember back in the healthcare debate, 9 years ago, when people 
were saying: Read the bill. Read the bill. We came to the markup 
yesterday to offer amendments. There still wasn't a bill. There was not 
a bill.
  Thomas Jefferson used to say--and it didn't happen--that he hoped 
that when these legislatures were put together in the U.S. Congress, 
you would have to introduce a bill and, then, it would take 365 days 
before it could be enacted into legislation. Maybe that is where the 
tea party got the idea in 2009. Where are they now? We have not had a 
single hearing on this bill.
  Now they are marking up the most consequential tax policy in 31 
years, one affecting every single American and moving around trillions 
of dollars in this economy.
  Remember back during the healthcare debate when it was 16 percent of 
our economy and people were saying: Read the bill. You had better read 
this bill. There is not a school board in Colorado that would accept 
this process. There is not a city council that would accept this 
process. We have more process for a small decision about where parking 
meters should go than we have had in this process.
  People are upset for good reason. When you rush big things, when you 
don't listen to different views, you get bad policy. I have heard the 
majority leader say that on this floor.
  There is a reason why they are trying to rush it through. There is a 
reason why they don't want America to have a chance to read the bill or 
for their representatives to this Chamber to read the bill. That is 
because, just like the healthcare proposals they made, the majority's 
tax plan is fundamentally flawed. Over the course of the campaign, 
President Trump--then Candidate Trump--promised the American people: 
``No cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid.'' That is not fake 
news. That is what he said.
  He said that ``everybody's got to be covered,'' speaking of health 
insurance.
  He said:

       Everybody's got to be covered. . . . Everybody's going to 
     be taken care of much better than they're taken care of now.

  He promised the public: ``You're going to end up with great 
healthcare for a fraction of the price.'' That is what he told the 
American people.

[[Page S7232]]

  Yesterday, a year after the election, and after 8 years of saying 
repeal and replace, repeal and replace, repeal and replace, it turned 
out that, because there was no idea how to replace it--there was no 
consensus on the Republican side about how to replace it; they failed 
twice to do it until yesterday--they added changes to a tax bill, 
literally in the middle of the night, that would cause 13 million 
people, according to the Congressional Budget Office, to lose health 
insurance. It would increase premiums by up to 10 percent, according to 
the Congressional Budget Office, on the individual market each year. 
You can't make it up. It would lead to a $25 billion cut in Medicare. 
That is what is happening here while people are distracted by what is 
going on in the Senate race in Alabama.
  How does this proposal in any way square with the President's 
promises during the campaign? All year we saw tax cuts masquerading as 
a healthcare point.
  I went home to Colorado and people said: Michael, you work with 
people in a bipartisan way all the time. Why aren't you working on this 
healthcare bill? There is no one in Colorado, including the critics of 
the Affordable Care Act, who said to me: Michael, I have a good idea 
for helping me with my healthcare: Give the wealthiest people in 
America a tax cut. Nobody came and said: Let's cut Medicaid by 40 
percent when we are facing the opioid crisis that we are facing.
  So they masqueraded it as a healthcare plan, and now we have a 
healthcare plan masquerading as a tax plan. On top of that, this plan 
doubles down on the claim that tax cuts for the wealthiest people in 
America and businesses not only trickle down to everyone else but also 
pay for themselves. That part is not surprising because that has been 
the Republican answer for what ails our economy.
  When our economy was up and our deficit was down, they cut taxes for 
the top 1 percent of Americans, making an average of $2 million. When 
our economy was down and our deficit was up, they cut taxes on the top 
1 percent, making an average of $2 million. Now, they are embracing 
exactly the same game plan in their tax plan.
  The Senate bill overwhelmingly benefits people and businesses who 
have done extremely well in this economy. As a former businessperson 
myself, I have nothing against that success. In fact, I embrace that 
success. My issue is that trickle-down economics as a theory for 
economic growth has been entirely discredited by our own experiences. 
This is not a theoretical exercise anymore. It is not as if these 
arguments haven't been made time and again and then proven to be false. 
That leaves me to wonder why this plan or at least the version we 
debated yesterday--I am not as sure about it today--gives roughly 
$50,000 in tax cuts to those making over $1 million.
  For Americans earning under $200,000, which is 19 million households, 
they would actually see a tax increase. Another 54 million households 
would see virtually no benefit at all.
  I agree that America needs tax reform. It is not about a political 
imperative for doing tax reform. America needs tax reform. That is why 
I joined the Finance Committee. Tax reform means we should clean up 
special interest carve-outs.
  I have to stop for a minute and pause on that point. For years, as 
part of the Gang of 8, as the Simpson-Bowles Commission came through 
and was crushed, and as there were bipartisan discussions, always what 
people said was that, on the corporate side, what we are going to do is 
to lower the rate and broaden the base. That was the plan. The way we 
were going to do that was by getting rid of a whole bunch of special 
interest loopholes.
  What this bill does is to lower the rate, but it forgets about the 
second part of the equation. If you look at the broadening of the base, 
you actually have to take away someone's loophole, and that is hard to 
do. So instead, what they are doing is lowering the rate and leaving 
the loopholes where they are--what a disaster. It took 31 years to get 
tax reform in this Chamber, and that is the answer?
  Today, if you don't like the situation, we have the highest published 
corporate rate in the world. I don't like that because that is 
uncompetitive for the United States at 35 percent. But one of the 
things we know about it is that, because of all those loopholes, very 
few people pay the 35 percent. Some do, and that is very unfair. The 
average effective rate is more like 23 percent, not 35 percent, and 
that is because companies can use loopholes. They can move money 
overseas. If you are a newspaper company or you are a trucking company 
here, you can't do that. That is why you pay the 35 percent. That is 
not fair, but this bill does nothing to take on those challenges--
nothing.
  We need tax reform to get rid of those special interest carve-outs. 
We should take steps to help our businesses compete, to unlock our 
energy economy, and to modernize the electric grid. We need 
comprehensive and bipartisan reform.
  This cannot be done. I want to give Republicans the chance to blame 
Democrats for things they don't like and Democrats to do the same, so 
we can actually get a result that is real reform, not something crammed 
through with 51 votes and a healthcare bill on top of it. It has been a 
terrible thing to see this Senate slide into the place where it is 
today.
  Mr. President, I say to the Presiding Officer, I know enough about 
you to know that you are not satisfied with the fact that we have been 
running this government on 30 continuing resolutions for the last 10 
years and that we can't pass a proper budget. We don't have an 
appropriations process anymore in the Senate. It is disgraceful. We 
would not accept it for any other institution of government or business 
on the planet. Certainly, we wouldn't accept it in Colorado.
  When I was superintendent of schools, if I had told people: Well, we 
have a little bit of a disagreement; so I am going to shut the 
government down until we can deal with this continuing resolution, they 
would have thrown me out. But that is what we have been doing here for 
the last 10 years.
  Now we have sunk to a new low. There has been no attempt to bring the 
parties together on this--none. The result is a deeply flawed proposal, 
completely at odds with what our economy needs.
  If you accept the logic of the Republican plan, the problem with our 
economy is that the wealthiest institutions and individuals in the 
United States don't have enough money to invest and create high-paying 
jobs for everyone else.
  Sometimes I hear people at home say: I don't have anything against 
rich people--neither do I. But the logic that somehow, if you give 
somebody at the top a tax cut, that is going to result in an increase 
to other people's income is completely contradicted by the facts.
  Here is what has happened in America since 1987, over the last 30 
years. This is the median family income. This is middle class in 
America, which basically for 40 years hasn't had a pay raise--has not 
had a pay raise. This can't be blamed on some Socialist who is named 
Barack Obama; this is 40 years of American economic history--no pay 
raise.
  Over that period of time, here is what has happened to corporate 
profits. If the logic were true, if the logic were correct or right, we 
would see the middle-class income rising more and doing better as 
corporate income statements and balance sheets hit alltime highs, which 
they have. Shown here is the great recession. Here is where we are 
today. Here is where we were before the great recession. Here is median 
household income--stubbornly flat.
  The balance sheets of the biggest companies in this country are awash 
in cash--awash in cash. It has not led them to help lift this line. The 
result of this has been a huge widening of the income gap in America.
  If trickle-down economics really worked, every American would do 
better as incomes at the top rose. Instead, what has happened is that 
the top 10 percent, which is roughly 11 million people out of a total 
of 330 million people in America, are earning an average of $475,000. 
That top 10 percent now represents a larger share of America's wealth 
than everyone else.
  Look at this. Here is the 10 percent. These are the folks who on 
average are making $475,000. Obviously, many people in here make a lot 
more than that, but that is the average. They now earn more than the 
bottom 90 percent of earners in America. That is not the way this 
country has been. You have to

[[Page S7233]]

go back to 1928--the year before the Great Depression--to see that 
level of income inequality in America. In between then and now, what we 
saw was a rise in the middle class, an economy that benefited everybody 
and lifted up everyone and gave them a chance to save and provide for 
their families. That is not happening anymore. The top 1 percent are 
earning about 20 percent of the income.
  It seems to me that the challenge with our economy is not that the 
folks at the very top don't have enough. They have more than they have 
ever had by a lot. The top 10 percent have over 50 percent of the 
income in America. The bottom 90 percent--it seems crazy to even say 
bottom 90 percent. It is not the bottom 10 percent; it is the rest of 
America, it is 90 percent of America who earns less. That is the 
challenge we confront, the challenge that incomes for everyone else 
haven't kept pace with the rising costs of housing or healthcare or 
higher education or childcare.
  Several months ago, I met a mom in Rifle, CO, at an early childhood 
center. That is on the West Slope of Colorado. She and the other moms 
were so happy that they had this early childhood center because before 
that, they had to drive 30 miles to Glenwood Springs for childcare. 
This mom said to me during the course of our conversation: ``I have a 
job so I can have health insurance, and every single dollar I earn goes 
to pay for this early childhood center so I can work.''
  There are families all over my State who are stuck in that place, 
where at the end of every month, they have to decide what they are 
going to go without. They can't afford housing. They can't afford 
college. They can't afford early childhood education. Their not being 
able to afford housing is increasingly becoming a huge issue. There are 
too many Americans who are facing those unbelievably difficult choices.
  Those of you who are here might say: Well, just tough it out. That is 
your issue. Work harder.
  These folks are killing themselves. They are killing themselves, but 
they are having to make choices and decisions because our economy is 
not working well enough for everybody and not working at all for 
everybody. They are having to make choices their parents and 
grandparents never had to make.
  Erin Barnes is another one of my constituents. She lives in Thornton, 
CO, with her husband and two kids. Both Erin and her husband have 
college degrees and middle-class jobs. They are working. They are 
educated. Erin works in marketing, and her husband runs an IT 
department.
  Earlier this month, she wrote to my office, describing how they 
``don't have luxuries like cable television, haircuts, lattes, 
manicures, or even new clothes. . . . My children all wear hand-me-
downs from friends. And yet, we make $1,200 less per month than we 
spend. . . . It's not that we're irresponsible: our monthly mortgage 
payment is only 25 percent of our income. How are the pieces not 
fitting together?''
  As the Presiding Officer knows, in America, consumer spending drives 
70 percent of our economy. When costs rise and middle-class families' 
wages stay flat, families like Erin's cut back, forgoing books for 
their kids, birthday presents, healthcare. Multiply that across 
millions of Americans--the 90 percent we are talking about here--and 
that has a dramatic effect on our economy because they are the folks 
who drive the 70 percent of our economy that is driven by consumer 
spending. That is the problem we need to solve. That should be our 
focus for their sake but also to drive our economy, not folks who have 
done the best in the economy and who are doing great. I am glad they 
are doing great.

  One way to help families like Erin's is the American Family Act, 
which I wrote with Senator Sherrod Brown, which triples the tax credit. 
Under our plan, Erin's family would gain $300 per child each month. Not 
only does the Republican plan largely ignore families like Erin's, it 
burdens her children with another $1.5 trillion in debt for the favor 
of doing nothing for them.
  You will hear over and over again the Republicans' claim that their 
tax cuts pay for themselves. We heard that in the committee today. 
Anybody who has lived through what has happened since President Clinton 
was President of the United States knows that is false. It was the 
logic that was used in 2001, the logic that was used in 2003, and it is 
what took us from having a $5 trillion projected surplus--you don't 
hear that word around here very often--when Bill Clinton finished being 
President to the record deficits we have today.
  Let me make sure I have the right chart up here. I do.
  In 1981, Ronald Reagan signed major tax cuts and claimed they would 
pay for themselves. By the end of his term, our national debt had risen 
62 percent.
  In the 1990s, President Clinton raised taxes at the top and cut 
spending to balance the budget, and the economy boomed. That was with a 
Republican Congress, I was reminded today by Chairman Hatch--one of the 
truly decent people in this place.
  By 1999, the U.S. Senate, believe it or not, actually held hearings 
on what to do with a $5.6 trillion projected surplus. I am not making 
this up.
  I know that Democrats have a reputation for not caring about fiscal 
matters and that Republicans have a reputation for taking them 
seriously. I don't know how that happened, but that is not the history. 
That is not the history.
  When George Bush was elected President, he passed two tax cuts, 
prosecuted two wars that were not paid for, and signed a $400 billion 
prescription drug benefit without paying for any of it. Medicare Part 
D--didn't pay for a dollar of it. The reason that today we collect $1 
for every $3 we spend in Medicare is largely because of what was done 
under President Bush.
  When President Obama assumed office, from day one, he inherited a 
$1.2 trillion annual deficit and an economy in free fall. We were 
losing 800,000 jobs a month, and unemployment was climbing to 10 
percent.
  Back then--and I was here--during the worst downturn since the Great 
Depression, Republican leaders all of a sudden remembered their 
conservative fiscal discipline, just when the American people needed 
their help the most. It was not when the economy was going well at the 
beginning of the Bush administration, not when we had a surplus, but 
when we had a $1.2 trillion deficit caused by the policies of the 
previous administration and a failure in the housing market. That drove 
us into the worst recession since the Great Depression.
  Citing the debt that we had then, which Barack Obama had not put on 
the balance sheets of the U.S. Government, every Republican opposed 
President Obama's economic recovery package to stabilize our economy, 
and not only that, they called it a Bolshevik takeover of the United 
States of America.
  Now, after inheriting a booming stock market and 4 percent 
unemployment, Republicans propose to add $1.5 trillion to our debt to 
give roughly $50,000 in tax cuts to those making over $1 million in 
this country--again, to this line, as shown on the chart.
  Today, America's debt is over $20 trillion. We could face another 
economic downturn 4 months from now or 6 months from now or an armed 
conflict on the Korean Peninsula. The debt suffocates our ability to 
respond, just as it has suffocated our ability to deal with the opioid 
epidemic.
  When I got here, there was barely an opioid epidemic in America, and 
over the last decade, it has flooded our country. But if you live in a 
rural part of my State, if you live in the San Luis Valley in Colorado, 
your access to addiction treatment is the same as it was 10 years ago 
because we are broke, because we can't work in a bipartisan way to deal 
with these issues. It is disgraceful, just as it was disgraceful to cut 
taxes in 2003 just after we sent our troops into Iraq. That was maybe 
the height of disgraceful.
  When we know there may be something imminent on the Korean Peninsula, 
when we know the Middle East is in the turmoil it is in, is this really 
the moment we want to do this?
  I will say this on this floor: If my colleagues vote for this plan, 
they forfeit any right to claim they are fiscal conservatives. And I am 
sad to say this--I really am; I think my colleague from Colorado would 
know I am telling the truth when I say I am sad to say this--but I have 
learned over the past 9 years that the only time the majority seems to 
care about fiscal responsibility is when they are not actually 
responsible

[[Page S7234]]

for it. In a sense, it is a devastatingly brilliant political strategy. 
You come to Washington arguing that the government is incompetent, then 
you explode the debt, then you point to the debt as evidence of 
Washington's incompetence. And here is how it all ended in 2016: You 
elect a President who promised that he would eliminate our debt ``over 
a period of 8 years,'' that he would deliver ``a giant, beautiful, 
massive'' tax cut, pass ``one of the largest increases in defense 
spending in American history,'' while saying, ``I'm not going to cut 
Social Security . . . and I'm not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid.'' 
Why not, he told the American people, since our national debt can be 
solved by ``eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal 
government, ending redundant government programs, growing the 
economy,'' and ``renegotiating all of our deals.''
  Here is the real problem. And I realize my colleagues are here. I am 
going to take a few more minutes, if that is OK.
  Last year, two-thirds of the Federal budget went to Medicare, 
Medicaid, Social Security, and other mandatory spending. Of the 
remaining third, half goes to national defense. After interest on the 
debt, that leaves just 10 percent for all of our investments in the 
future--in our future and our children's future--in infrastructure, 
research, innovation, and education.
  Over the years, because of the insanity around this place, Washington 
has slashed that part of the budget--which is called the domestic 
discretionary part of the budget--by 35 percent as a percentage of GDP. 
We have been really good at hacking on the stuff that is easy to get 
to.
  This should all seem deeply unfair to Americans in their twenties and 
younger to know that we are investing--simultaneously, we are investing 
less in them than our parents and grandparents invested in us, and then 
we have the nerve to say you need to pay back the debt we accrued; we 
are not going to pay it back. We are not going to invest in you, and we 
are going to make you pay it back. We are going to live in the house, 
but you are going to be stuck with the mortgage.
  When I served as the superintendent of the Denver Public Schools, we 
had to make hard choices to close schools, to modernize curriculums, 
and to fix unfunded pensions. We had intense fights. Like here, people 
had strong and principled disagreements, but unlike here--unlike in 
Washington--in Denver, the next generation was cause enough for us to 
set aside our differences and move forward. We understood that our 
children had no voice in our townhalls. Their future had no votes at 
the school board meetings. They only had us to do it for them.
  We have forgotten that here in Washington, in these marbled halls and 
on the carpeted floors of the Senate and the House. We have abdicated 
our duty completely to the next generation. Instead, we impose on them 
all the hard questions we fail to answer in our time.
  We are burdening the future with our debts. We are burdening them 
with the hard choices we avoid, with the easy path we follow, with the 
baseless claims we accept that tax cuts for folks who are doing great 
somehow trickle down and pay for themselves. That is false.
  If this plan passes, Washington will once again encroach on the 
rights of our children and our grandchildren to enjoy the same freedom 
and opportunity our parents and grandparents handed us. What a shameful 
legacy that would be. What a surrender of our responsibility as 
Americans.
  We have to set aside this flawed proposal and this broken process and 
instead have an honest, bipartisan effort that contends forthrightly 
with the substantive challenges of our fiscal condition and the 
political difficulties attendant to solving them. I may be wrong, but I 
suspect what history will prove is, no meaningful solution can be found 
by one party alone.
  I thank my colleagues for their indulgence, especially my friend from 
Missouri who is here.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cotton). The Senator from Missouri.