[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 187 (Wednesday, November 15, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7253-S7255]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Republican Tax Plan

  Mr. President, I started by talking about the tax bill. I want to get 
back to making a few more remarks about that tax bill. There is one 
thing that is in common between the nomination of Mr. Otting to oversee 
much of the banking system and the tax bill. Both of them are part of 
an effort to provide big gifts to big banks and to corporate America. 
We are seeing the Trump administration trying to use government power 
to help these large financial institutions at the expense of consumers 
and at the expense of taxpayers.
  Let's just take a look at what happened yesterday and is continuing 
to happen in the Senate Finance Committee. Republicans on that 
committee and the Republican tax plan couldn't have sent a clearer 
message than they did just yesterday; that the Republican tax plan puts 
big corporate interests first and leaves the rest of the country 
behind, including millions of people in the middle class who will be 
left holding the bag.
  Under the new tax plan, the tax cuts for corporations--those big tax 
cuts, reducing the rate from 35 percent to 20 percent--go on forever. 
They go on for the first 10 years. They go on for the next 10 years. 
They go on forever, but for everybody else, for those other Americans 
who get some tax cut under this bill, all those tax cuts go away after 
10 years. They get sunsetted.
  If you are one of the folks in the middle where Republicans say: Hey, 
this bill is for you; you will get some benefit, it is going away, but 
the corporate tax cut is there forever.
  I want to be clear. There are lots of folks in the middle--millions--
who aren't going to get to see any initial tax benefit. In fact, they 
are going to be paying more in taxes. We also saw, as part of this bill 
yesterday, an effort to repeal important provisions of the Affordable 
Care Act, changes that will result in 13 million Americans losing 
access to the Affordable Care Act and premiums being jacked up by 10 
percent on the individual market.
  Let's do the math here. Thirteen million Americans lose access to the 
Affordable Care Act; premiums go up by 10 percent; middle-class 
families--millions of them--pay higher taxes, all to finance a 
permanent corporate tax cut.
  Let's take a moment and look at who these multinational corporations 
are because ultimately the benefits, the profits, go to the CEOs, the 
executives, and of course they go to the shareholders.

[[Page S7254]]

  Let's look at who some of these shareholders are who are going to get 
this whopping big tax benefit from cutting the corporate tax rate. When 
you dig under here a little bit, you discover that 35 percent of U.S. 
corporate stock is owned by foreigners--people who aren't Americans. So 
35 percent of the people who get the benefit of that gigantic corporate 
tax cut are foreign stockholders. According to the Institute of 
Taxation and Economic Policy, those foreign stockholders are going to 
get a $31 billion windfall from the Republican tax plan in 2019 alone. 
You have the sunset of the individual taxes, but corporate tax breaks 
go on forever. Millionaires and billionaires are the biggest winners 
under the plan.
  President Trump reportedly made this phone call to a number of 
Senators just the other day, saying: Hey, guess what. I am going to be 
a ``big loser'' under this Republican tax plan. That is what President 
Trump said. Well, Mr. President, prove it. President Trump, release 
your tax returns, as Presidents have routinely done for decades, and 
show the American people that this plan doesn't enrich the Trump family 
and the Trump businesses because here is what the Chicago Tribune says: 
``Trump says he's a `big loser' in GOP tax plan; experts say it could 
save him tens of millions.''
  In fact, just one part of the Republican tax plan--cutting the taxes 
on large estates--could give President Trump's heirs a windfall of $4.4 
million. That is because the plan doubles the amount of money that is 
exempt from estate taxes. I am talking about the Senate plan. The 
Senate plan can provide that $4.4 million windfall because the 
exemption today is for estates under $11 million. In other words, if 
you are a couple with an estate under $11 million, you don't pay a 
single penny in Federal estate tax. The Senate Republican plan takes 
that up to $22 million, and in doing so will provide President Trump's 
heirs with a big windfall. In fact, if you use the House plan--which 
repeals it entirely--we are talking about a windfall of over $1 
billion.
  The Republican plan also eliminates the alternative minimum tax. That 
was a provision put in the Tax Code to provide some equity because a 
lot of wealthy people with good lawyers are able to take advantage of 
lots of deductions that many Americans in the middle are not able to 
claim. We wanted to make sure folks who made a ton of money couldn't 
escape all of their responsibility to the rest of the country and paid 
their fair share of taxes. That is why we adopted the alternative 
minimum tax.
  Well, we know that back in 2005, President Trump, when he filed his 
tax returns, had to pay a tax in that year because of the alternative 
minimum tax. In fact, in that year it was $31 million. So let's get rid 
of that provision. That will help a lot of very wealthy people escape 
any tax obligation--even as folks in the middle pay theirs.
  There is another way the Trump enterprises will benefit from this 
Republican tax plan, and that is through the so-called passthrough 
business provisions. These are businesses that don't pay corporate 
taxes. Their profits are passed through and taxed on the individual 
returns of their owners. A lot of people want the public to think all 
these passthroughs are small mom-and-pops.
  I want to be there. We want to help mom-and-pops. We should be 
providing some tax benefits and relief to mom-and-pops, but everyone 
who looks at this knows a lot of those passthroughs are not mom-and-
pops. Many of them are on the Fortune 500 list in the United States--
the 500 wealthiest entities. In fact, some of these passthrough 
entities are in the Fortune 100 list--not mom-and-pops. Guess who owns 
more than 500 passthrough entities--the Trump Organization. They will 
get a big windfall.
  President Trump, show the American public your tax forms before you 
go around telling people you are going to be a ``big loser'' from this 
plan.
  Now, it is not just about President Trump; it is just one example of 
the very wealthy Americans who are going to get a windfall under this 
plan.
  A provision that was put into the Senate Republican plan will help a 
lot of very well-heeled lobbyists here in Washington, DC. Under the 
Senate Republican plan, if you are a married lobbyist making up to 
$500,000 a year, you get to claim a deduction for 17.4 percent of your 
income. That is an $87,000 tax deduction if you are making $500,000 a 
year. But if you are the secretary working for that lobbying firm or if 
you are somebody hired to help clean up the firm, sorry--you are out of 
luck. You don't get that special lobbyist passthrough tax rate.
  The question is, Who is going to pay for all of this at the end of 
the day? We are providing this huge tax giveaway to big corporations. 
We are providing tax breaks to the very wealthiest estates in the 
country--which, by the way, are only about 2 out of 1,000 taxpayers. 
There are fewer than 5,000 taxpayers in the country each year who end 
up paying that estate tax, the very wealthiest in the country. Who is 
going to pay for all of this? Well, millions of middle-class taxpayers 
are going to pay under this plan.
  We know from the Joint Committee on Taxation that in 2019, the Senate 
Republican plan will raise taxes on more than 13 million middle-class 
families, people with incomes below $200,000. By 2025, more than 21 
million middle-class families are going to get a tax hike. This is a 
plan that is being sold to the public as something that provides 
middle-class tax relief, but the Joint Committee on Taxation--the pros, 
the nonpartisan experts here in Congress--tells us that plan is going 
to raise taxes on 21 million middle-class families.
  One of the biggest sources of this increase in taxes for middle-class 
families is the complete repeal in the Senate bill of people's ability 
to deduct State and local taxes. More than 100 million American 
families use this deduction today. Repealing it is double taxation, 
pure and simple. Those taxpayers now pay a dollar in tax to their 
State, whether it be the State of Maryland, the State of Oklahoma, 
whatever it may be. Now they are going to be paying Federal taxes on 
the dollar that they sent to support the State government.
  The Senate bill is even worse than the House bill. The House bill is 
bad on this issue, but it is hard to believe that the Senate actually 
made this provision even worse.
  If you look at this chart, it is interesting because what you find is 
that the huge corporate tax cut helps a lot of foreign investors. In 
fact, as I indicated, approximately 35 percent of all the stockholders 
are foreign investors. So that is going to give them, in just the year 
2019, a $31 billion tax break. This is money we are sending to 
foreigners, foreign stockholders. In that same year, we find out that 
Americans--many folks who are in the middle, middle-class Americans--
are going to pay $34 billion more in taxes. So you are asking middle-
class American families to finance big tax cuts for foreigners who own 
stock in American corporations. What a gift to American middle-class 
taxpayers. That is a direct transfer from them to foreign stockholders.
  When you deny people the ability to deduct their State and local 
taxes, you are also taxing decisions by State and local governments, 
which is ironic since our Republican colleagues have always said that 
it is best to leave most decisions to our local and State leaders 
because they are close to the people. Now you are taxing the decisions 
that they make to support their schools, to support their firefighters, 
to make investments locally. Now taxpayers in those communities have to 
pay their local government or pay their State, and then they have to 
pay the Feds on that same money that they just paid to their city or to 
their State for important services, such as schools for our kids.
  Here is the crazy thing about this Republican tax plan. Even after 
you ask middle-class American families to pay more--millions and 
millions of them--so that foreign stockholders get can get a tax break, 
even after you do you all that, it raises the national debt by $1.5 
trillion.
  For many years, I served as the senior Democrat on the House Budget 
Committee. At that time, the current Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, 
was the chairman of that committee, and he talked all the time about 
the dangers and risks of adding to our national debt. You know what. 
That is actually an area in which we found some agreement, because we 
shouldn't have an

[[Page S7255]]

ever-rising national debt. Yet this Republican tax plan is calculated 
to increase the national debt by a whopping $1.5 trillion.
  People cared about our national debt when that was used as a reason 
to propose cuts to Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, but when 
it comes to financing tax breaks for foreign stockholders and big 
corporations, apparently that debt doesn't matter.
  I have a prediction to make. I have a prediction that if this tax 
bill goes through and we blow up the national debt by $1.5 trillion, 
Speaker Ryan and everybody else who told us about the risks and dangers 
of a big national debt--all of a sudden, they are going to rediscover 
their commitment to reducing the national debt. They forgot about it 
when it came to financing big tax breaks, but you know what--gosh, 
really, it is a big deal. And then they are not going to talk about 
rolling back the tax breaks they just gave the big corporations; they 
are going to go about cutting important investments--cutting Medicare, 
cutting Medicaid, cutting education.
  Do you know why I am very confident that we can predict that is what 
is going to happen? Because our Republican colleagues have told us. It 
is right there in the budget. It is in their budget that passed the 
Senate and passed the House. Just open up those budgets. There is 
almost a $500 billion cut to Medicare--$473 billion to be exact. There 
is a $1 trillion cut to Medicaid in the Republican budget. There are 
big cuts to domestic investments, and that is the category of our 
budget that funds education, modernizing our infrastructure, and 
medical research. It is all right there in the Republican budget.
  I hope that the American public is going to have a chance to focus on 
this. I understand why people are trying to speed this through--speed 
it through the House before Thanksgiving, speed it through the House 
and Senate before the end of the year--but people are beginning to wake 
up to this. I can assure my colleagues that when they find out exactly 
what is in this Republican plan, they are going to be very, very angry 
because all those middle-class families who were sold a bill of goods, 
thinking they are going to get this big tax cut--uh-uh. Millions of 
them are going to see a tax increase to finance tax breaks for big 
corporations and very wealthy Americans and will pay for it by rising 
national debt and ultimately cuts to important health and retirement 
and security programs, as well as education.
  I hope people will turn back now. The way to do this is the way tax 
reform was done in 1986--in a bipartisan, transparent fashion. Let's 
get back to doing this the right way.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.