[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 188 (Thursday, November 16, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7283-S7285]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Republican Tax Plan

  Mr. REED. Mr. President, it is our responsibility to ensure that 
future generations will have greater opportunity and greater security 
than we inherited from our parents and our forebears. To accomplish 
this, we must put aside political expedience and take a sober look at 
the health of our national economy and our ability to keep our 
commitments at home and around the world. With this in mind, I rise to 
urge my colleagues to reject the partisan and fiscally irresponsible 
Republican tax proposals in the so-called Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. When 
we strip away the rosy, but false, economic projections and 
ideologically motived economic theories the Republicans have been using 
to hype this bill, it is clear this bill trades away our nation's long-
term economic health and the well-being of working Americans, the poor, 
the sick, and the old in order to benefit the wealthy. Moreover, this 
bill will take us trillions of dollars deeper into debt at a time when 
the costs of 16 years of debt-financed wars continue to mount. 
Republicans owe it to our country and to future generations who will be 
stuck with the multi-trillion-dollar cost of this bill to go back to 
the drawing board and produce a balanced and permanent bipartisan path 
forward on our Nation's broken Tax Code.
  It does not take an economist to see that the Republican tax bill is 
a historic $1.5 trillion transfer of wealth from poor and working 
Americans to the very wealthiest among us, but a few of its glaring 
injustices are worth mentioning. According to the Center for Budget and 
Policy Priorities, it gives over twice as much tax relief to 
millionaires as it does to Americans making under $50,000. Just 5,000 
of the wealthiest American families will receive hundreds of billions 
of dollars over a decade in the form of estate tax breaks at a time 
when income and wealth inequality in this country are at historic 
highs. This transfer of wealth through estate tax repeal alone requires 
us to go back to the drawing board. On the other hand, the bill

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raises taxes on 19.4 million households earning under $200,000 by as 
much as $500. Forty-six percent of households making under $100,000 and 
50 percent of households making under $75,000 will either see their 
taxes go up over the next decade or see no change at all, and that is 
just the tip of the iceberg. While tax cuts for big corporations are 
made permanent, the Republican bill plans to claw back what little it 
gives to everyone else after a few years, setting up even bigger tax 
hikes for the middle class down the line. This does not even begin to 
cover the return of TrumpCare that has been added to this bill, which 
would take healthcare coverage away from 13 million Americans and drive 
up costs substantially for the poor, the sick, and the elderly.
  This bill is a bad investment and, frankly, it is one we can ill 
afford. According to the Penn Wharton Budget Model provided by the 
University of Pennsylvania, the bill will reduce Federal revenue by as 
much as $1.7 trillion and increase our national debt by $2 trillion in 
the 10-year budget window. By 2040, this becomes $3.6 trillion in lost 
Federal revenue and up to $6.9 trillion in debt. We would take on all 
this debt for an estimated 0.4 to 0.9 percent boost in GDP. For $1.5 
trillion, we could make needed repairs to our streets and highways 
across America--creating tens of thousands of jobs in the process. We 
could pay off every American's credit card or student loan, or lift 
every American above the poverty line for years. Instead, this bill 
would put yet another massive charge on America's credit card that will 
not create jobs, will not trickle down, and most certainly will not pay 
for itself. We still have a $5.6 trillion in deficits and interest 
payments from the Bush tax cuts to prove it. With over $20 trillion in 
national debt, it is long past time to stop experimenting with people's 
lives and livelihoods to prove yet again there are no merits to supply-
side economics. America has pressing needs and very real bills coming 
due.
  Mr. President, I would like to spend the remaining time of my remarks 
addressing something about which we have heard far too little in this 
debate, and that is the impact on our national economic health of the 
unavoidable and compounding cost of 16 years of military conflict paid 
for almost entirely through debt. For the first time in our history, 
the United States reduced revenue--in the form of the Bush tax cuts--
rather than the usual pay-as-you-go approach to financing the post-9/11 
wars. While we debate potentially adding trillions of dollars to the 
debt for an ill-conceived tax bill, the costs of war are coming due.
  According to calculations in the thorough report by the Costs of War 
Project by the Watson Institute at Brown University, ``[e]ven if the 
U.S. stopped spending on war at the end of this fiscal year, interest 
costs alone on borrowing to pay for the wars will continue to grow 
apace . . . [f]uture interest costs for overseas contingency operations 
spending alone are projected to add more than $1 trillion to the 
national debt by 2023. By 2056, a conservative estimate is that the 
interest costs will be about $8 trillion, unless the U.S. changes the 
way it pays for the wars.''
  In a sense, what we are doing is mortgaging the future of our 
children and grandchildren as we continue to add debt, and this is 
unavoidable debt in so many cases. We know we cannot immediately stop 
our engagement in countries throughout the world--in Afghanistan, in 
the Middle East and other areas. And, frankly, we are facing tremendous 
challenges in the Korean Peninsula. The approximate combined 
President's budget request for the Departments of Defense, State, and 
USAID for fiscal year 2018 is $14 billion for Iraq and Syria, and $48.9 
billion for Afghanistan.
  Furthermore, these costs do not account for much needed maintenance 
and modernization of our military assets. For example, modernizing, 
operating, and sustaining our nuclear triad--which includes submarines, 
bombers, and ICBMs--is projected to cost $1.2 trillion in 2017 dollars 
over the next 30 years. We are debating taking $1.5 trillion and giving 
it to the wealthiest Americans when we know that we need an additional 
$1.2 trillion over 30 years to secure the safety of the United States 
and the civility of the world through nuclear deterrence. This begs the 
very simple question: If we want to borrow $1.5 trillion, why don't we 
invest it in a cost we know will come due--protecting our country and 
the world through the renovation and reinvigoration of our nuclear 
triad.
  The Navy recently validated a requirement for 355 ships. This would 
require the Navy to purchase around 329 new ships over 30 years--an 
average cost of $102 billion per year through 2047, which is 13 percent 
more than the $90 billion needed to build and operate the current 254-
ship fleet envisioned in the Navy's 2017 plan. Once again, we are 
committing ourselves to billions of dollars of costs to our Navy 
shipbuilding program while we are entertaining a 1.5 or more trillion-
dollar tax giveaway to the wealthiest Americans. We know these costs 
are coming due, but we are fooling ourselves into thinking we can 
continue spending on credit forever.
  We can expect even greater costs if our military increases end 
strength, as so many on both sides of the aisle are proposing. This is 
because of high operational tempo, which is not likely to diminish. For 
every additional 10,000 servicemembers, it costs roughly $1.8 billion 
per year for pay and benefits, and to train and equip these personnel. 
If the Army grows to 580,000 personnel, it will cost an additional $18 
billion per year, but we are taking that money, and we are giving it in 
tax cuts, the prominent amount of which is going to the wealthiest 
Americans. We are not investing it now in increasing our military 
forces. If the Air Force grows by 30,000 personnel, it will cost an 
additional $6 billion per year. If the Marine Corps grows by 20,000 
personnel, it will cost an additional $3.6 billion per year. If you 
talk to the Commandant or Chief of Staff of the Air Force, they will 
tell you they have to increase the size of their force because of the 
operational tempo. Indeed, if you talk to the Chief of Staff of the Air 
Force, he will tell you they are in a desperate situation maintaining 
sufficient pilots to fly our aircraft. So we could be buying hundreds 
of new F-35 aircraft at a significant cost and watch them parked 
because we can't afford the flight crews to fly them and to maintain 
them. We know these costs are coming, and we are ignoring them until 
they come due. We are ignoring them now for the benefit of these tax 
cuts.
  If we do not chart a responsible path forward on economic policy, we 
will leave all these costs to the next generation, to the detriment of 
our children, our national security, and our position of world 
leadership. Frankly, it might not be even that long before serious 
issues materialize. Once the markets determine that $1.5 trillion is 
just a small fraction of what we still must pay to protect ourselves; 
to continue our commitment in Afghanistan, to continue to support 
allies across the globe, markets may learn very quickly that the 
deficit is beginning to devour us. The markets will react, as they have 
in the past. So we could see a serious problem long before even our 
children confront these debts.

  That is why earlier today former Secretaries of Defense Leon Panetta, 
Chuck Hagel, and Ash Carter sent a letter to congressional leadership 
and the House and Senate Armed Services Committee leadership that 
warned us that the fiscal irresponsibility of the Republican tax 
proposal will contribute to a growing budget crisis. The letter urges 
Congress to instead address the sequester that threatens to ``hollow 
out'' our military's ability to sustain the commitments of its global 
missions.
  Mr. President, tax policies have real consequences. We can debate the 
value of one tax proposal over another, but that is not the debate 
before us. The simple facts are that this tax bill will give breaks to 
the people who need them the least, take money from working Americans, 
leave millions of Americans sicker and worse off, and further strain 
our ability to keep America safe from growing and changing threats 
across the globe. It also threatens expenditures on healthcare, 
education, infrastructure, and other vital domestic needs as the debt 
balloons due to this bill's unaffordable tax breaks for corporate 
titans. This is not what we owe the next generation. It is not even 
what we owe our children today. I urge my colleagues across the aisle 
to consider our Nation's future and join us in opposing this 
legislation.

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  Like so many here, I was here in 2001 when President George W. Bush 
proposed his tax cuts, which I opposed, and assured us that our economy 
would grow, that jobs would multiply, that we would be fine. Let me 
remind my colleagues that he said this after we had made the tough 
decisions in the Clinton Administration that led to a projected surplus 
in the billions of dollars. The mantra from many people at the time 
was, let's give the money back to the American people.
  We don't have a surplus today. We have a significant deficit. It will 
grow with this bill because this bill says that we are going to 
increase it by $1.5 trillion at a minimum, and it will not be just $1.5 
trillion.
  I suggest that, unless we abandon our commitments to the men and 
women of our Armed Forces, unless we decide to disengage from the 
deterrent that we must have to defend the Nation from a nuclear 
Armageddon, unless we decide to leave Afghanistan--after the President 
announced that no longer are we basing our decisions on time but on 
conditions--there will continue to be trillions and trillions of 
dollars of unavoidable costs that should be included in this debate.
  This is not the time to take trillions of dollars and give a 
disproportionate share to the wealthiest Americans. This is the time 
for us to work together, to provide the resources for our military, to 
provide investments for our people, and to deal with the issue of 
inequality between the wealthiest 1 percent and everybody else. None of 
that is accomplished by this bill. In fact, this bill will complicate, 
compound, and make even more difficult the problems we face in 
defending the Nation and giving people a chance at having better 
futures.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Iowa.