[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 193 (Tuesday, November 28, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H9457-H9462]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               TAX REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Smucker). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I rise to talk about a bill that poses a 
great danger to our country and a great danger to our people, 
particularly our people who are struggling, who are living from 
paycheck to paycheck, because this bill, contrary to the assertion of 
our Republican colleagues, will not help them, and we are going to talk 
about that.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin), a 
senior member of the Ways and Means Committee, and my friend.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank our whip for trying to whip some 
common sense into this debate.
  I want to focus on the claims of the Republicans that this is a 
middle class tax cut. Halloween is over, but the masks of the 
Republican are still on. I think the largest and the most dangerous one 
is the claim that this is a middle class tax cut.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to quote the President: ``It is a tax bill for 
middle class.''
  Again, the President: ``We will cut taxes tremendously for the middle 
class--not just a little bit, but tremendously.''
  The Speaker: ``The focus is on middle class tax relief.''
  The chairman of the committee: ``The truth is this is whole tax 
reform is designed for the middle class family that is working so hard 
or that Main Street business that is working so hard.''
  The majority leader in the Senate:

       To keep growing again, like we need this code to do, to get 
     new jobs, opportunity, and significant tax relief for the 
     middle class.

  Mr. Mnuchin: ``On the personal tax side, middle-income people are 
getting cuts and rich people are getting very little cuts or, in 
certain cases, increases under the Republican bills.''
  Mr. Mnuchin again: ``Any reductions we have in upper income taxes 
will be offset by less deductions, so there will be no absolute tax cut 
for the upper class.''
  Senator Hatch: ``Tax reform will provide relief and bigger paychecks 
to low- and middle-income families, make America a better place to 
start and grow a business, and allow American businesses to compete in 
the global marketplace.''
  The Joint Tax Committee and other entities have shown that this is 
not at all a middle class tax cut. The main beneficiaries are the very, 
very wealthy.
  Also, in terms of passthrough, there is so much talk that this will 
help the small-business person. The truth of the matter is that the 
vast majority of the benefit for passthroughs is going to go to the 
very wealthy.
  Mr. Speaker, Mr. Hoyer has been taking the lead on this and I salute 
him.
  Mr. Speaker, I just want to close by saying one thing about the 
deficits. You know, I don't think they called Mr. Hoyer a deficit hawk 
because he always wanted a balance, and he always said: ``Look, 
deficits by themselves aren't the only issue, but they are deeply 
relevant.''
  Mr. Hoyer and I have stood together with others. When bills came up, 
which seemed so attractive, but were unpaid for, hundreds of billions 
of dollars, we said to the Republicans and anyone who voted with them: 
``You are increasing the deficit, and it is very risky.''
  Mr. Speaker, as true as that may have been--and Mr. Hoyer and I 
thought it was some years ago, or last year included--it is now even 
more relevant and more dangerous because here we have a proposal in the 
House and it is going to be duplicated in the Senate. It is going to 
increase the deficit at least $1.5 trillion, and the notion is it will 
be taking care of growth.
  Mr. Speaker, I close by saying maybe that is the second biggest 
Halloween mask on the bill here and in the Senate. The notion of 
``Don't worry about tax losses all of a sudden, don't worry about the 
deficit increasing, because growth will take care of it,'' we have seen 
that mask before.
  Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to join Mr. Hoyer, but also to salute him 
for his dedicated and endless determination to really talk sense and 
talk the truth.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Hoyer for yielding to me.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his kind comments 
and for the information he gave. As a senior member of the Ways and 
Means Committee he is, I think, as knowledgeable about the history of 
these tax cuts as anyone can be, so I thank the gentleman for joining 
us in this effort to educate our friends and colleagues and the 
American public on the consequences of this bill.
  Mr. LEVIN. And I will keep doing it.
  And now Mr. Hoyer is going to yield to another champion who has 
worked how many years on these issues?

  Don't say it is a long time.
  Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Several.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Connecticut 
(Mr. Larson), one of the senior members of

[[Page H9458]]

the Ways and Means Committee, who has been very focused on sound tax 
policy, on policy to save Social Security for generations yet to come, 
who is one of the more responsible leaders in this House, and my 
friend.
  Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Democratic leader 
for yielding, and I thank the gentleman from Michigan for joining us 
here.
  As Mr. Hoyer stated at the outset, this is a very dangerous bill and 
a very dangerous precedent for this body and the other body and for 
Congress in general.
  It was Lincoln who said: ``A House divided cannot stand.''
  And in this bill, when you pit the sick against the well, the poor 
against the wealthiest 1 percent, blue State against red State, small 
business against large corporation, you begin to see the inequity in 
the bill.
  Rich Neal, the lead Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, 
lamented that this was a lost opportunity--a lost opportunity because 
there was ample time to come together both in the committee and here on 
the floor to do something constructive for the country, put the Nation 
back to work, and resolve issues that President Obama had put forward 
that I know have been on the front burners of everyone's concern to get 
lower taxes, and greater fairness in equity across the board, but that 
didn't happen.
  Now, much is said about process, and people pooh-pooh that, but here 
are the facts:
  It was Ronald Reagan who said: ``The facts are a stubborn thing.''
  Back in 1986, the last time we impacted policy of this nature, the 
Ways and Means Committee, in fact, had 30 hearings in the committee, 12 
subcommittee hearings, 450 expert witnesses, and 26 days of markup 
before it came to the floor for debate.

                              {time}  1930

  It was done bipartisanly, in fact, done between Ronald Reagan and Tip 
O'Neill because they knew that this would be the best way to get 
cohesive, comprehensive tax reform.
  That is not what happened here. There were zero hearings in the 
committee on this bill, zero subcommittee hearings, no expert 
witnesses, not a single person from the State of Maryland or 
Connecticut.
  Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a letter from the Commissioner 
of Revenue Services from the State of Connecticut that details 
factually, not based on averages, what happens to people in States who 
use itemized deductions like the State and local property tax 
deduction, like medical deductions, et cetera, all of which have a 
direct impact on them, all of which are going to find our citizens 
paying more money, in fact, not getting a tax cut, getting a tax 
increase so they can pay for lowering the rate of an individual who is 
already receiving $11 million from an estate tax gift.

                                                 November 8, 2017.
     Hon. John B. Larson,
     House of Representatives,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Congressman Larson: Thank you for opportunity to 
     comment on the federal tax changes being considered in H.R. 
     1. We appreciate your leadership in trying to set the record 
     straight as this partisan effort is rushed to judgment with 
     no real input and much fiscal uncertainty.
       Unfortunately, what we see so far from a national and state 
     perspective is very troubling. Some of the proposals to 
     reduce taxes on corporate and pass-through business income 
     could provide needed economic stimulus nationally and for 
     states like Connecticut. Unfortunately, on balance, H R. 1 is 
     fundamentally flawed:
       Even the low estimate of a $1.5 trillion cost is not paid 
     for and is really massive federal tax deficit spending. The 
     nation has been down this road before and surely we should 
     have learned something from the worst economic recession in 
     modern times.
       Otherwise unaffordable tax cuts have long been part of a 
     political strategy to ``starve the beast.'' Due to its long 
     term unfunded cost, this Republican tax plan will compel big 
     cuts in federal funding, such as Medicaid, that are important 
     to states like Connecticut.
       Contrary to all the talk of a ``middle income tax cut,'' 
     the plan actually represents a huge windfall to the very 
     wealthiest federal taxpayers and is truly regressive. For our 
     own state of Connecticut, over 75% of the tax cut goes to the 
     top 1% who would pay 8.5% less on average. Everyone else 
     would see a trivial 1.2% reduction in federal tax liability 
     and many will actually owe much more in federal income taxes.
       As discussed more specifically below, the proposed plan 
     shifts most of the tax cost and the least of any tax benefit 
     to states in the Northeast, Great Lakes and West Coast 
     regions of the country. Thus, Connecticut and similar states 
     will even more disproportionately pay in federal taxes far 
     more than is received in federal benefits--further 
     subsidizing regions of the country where states make far less 
     of a state and local tax effort.
       Drilling down a bit further, several aspects of this 
     partisan plan will hit especially hard:
       Eliminating deductibility of state income tax paid is worth 
     an estimated $8.7 billion to mostly 1 middle income 
     Connecticut taxpayers
       Capping deductibility of local property tax paid at $10,000 
     will increase federal income taxes for a significant 
     proportion of Connecticut taxpayers who claim $4.9 billion.
       Any benefit to lower and lower moderate income taxpayers 
     from higher standard deductions and child care credits will 
     likely be more than offset by the shell game of imposing a 
     higher lowest rate bracket of 12% and replacing the current 
     $4,050 personal exemption with a $300 deduction that is 
     proposed to end in 5 years.
       Eliminating deductibility of medical/dental expenses will 
     be $1.6 billion hardship for Connecticut taxpayers at all 
     levels who are out of work and have catastrophic medical 
     costs.
       Eliminating deductibility of student loan interest only 
     adds a further financial burden for primarily younger 
     taxpayers and their families already struggling with 
     educational indebtedness.
       Sadly, these and many other significant issues of fiscal 
     irresponsibility and tax unfairness seem to be of no concern 
     in the partisan rush to pass legislation before taxpayers see 
     through the slogans and realize the costs. Indeed, glimpses 
     of what may be in the Republican Senate version suggests that 
     it will only get worse. Thank you for your efforts to speak 
     out for our Connecticut taxpayers and set the record 
     straight.
           Sincerely,
                                                Kevin B. Sullivan,
                                                     Commissioner.

  Mr. Speaker, I will tell you, if that weren't the cruelest cut, what 
is built into this legislation, and it is why process matters, because 
of the way this bill came to the floor through budget reconciliation 
primarily so the other body can get around their other arcane rule of 
cloture, but so that they could pass something with the minimal amount 
of votes.
  So no hearings, no expert witnesses, and only a minimal amount of 
votes--51 in the Senate--to pass a bill.
  I say that because there is a trigger mechanism here that the 
gentleman from Maryland knows better than anyone else in either Chamber 
called PAYGO, PAYGO provisions that he fought for to make sure were in 
the bill because of our ongoing concern about staggering deficits. It 
is why most people call for this bill minimally, including most 
Republican economists, to be revenue neutral. We would add that it be 
distributionally neutral as well so that it doesn't impact the middle 
and the lower classes.
  But this bill here, the cruelest cut of all is that it triggers an 
automatic response that will result in a $25 billion cut to Medicare. 
Nobody at home recognized this. Many people in this Chamber didn't even 
know that it existed because there were no public hearings, there were 
no expert witnesses. This was jammed through so that people could 
achieve a political win.
  How about we focus on the American people winning for a change and 
doing something that is not going to put them in jeopardy?
  I wondered why so many on the other side had professed to be 
concerned about the deficit but turned a blind eye as we passed what 
amounts to be $2.3 trillion in new deficits. Then it dawned on me. This 
provision that is in there would allow sequestration to go forward 
without a vote and would cut Medicare by $25 billion. I have asked 
people when we have held forums back in our district. People are 
writing, people are calling, people are calling their Senators in an 
effort to stop what is a blind, dangerous precedent that would take $25 
billion out of a program that desperately needs this.
  I know the gentleman from Maryland knows this better than most. I 
know the State of Maryland, like the State of Connecticut, also 
itemizes deductions, and I believe it leads the country in that 
because, as they noted back in 1913, it would otherwise be double 
taxation.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for allowing us the opportunity to 
come down here and speak to the dastardly nature of this bill and what 
lies ahead, and I thank him for his continued leadership in making sure 
that we wage this fight in every way to the end until we are able to 
stop that.

[[Page H9459]]

  

  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Connecticut for 
his comments and particularly highlighting how the majority party, in 
considering this legislation, cut out the public entirely.
  Speaker Ryan, when he took the speakership, talked about 
transparency. He talked about regular order. He talked about doing 
things so that the people would know what we are doing.
  Not only were there no hearings in the House, not only were there no 
witnesses in the House, as the gentleman knows, there were no hearings 
in the Senate, there were no witnesses in the Senate.
  In a short timeframe, the Republicans are trying to pass a massive 
increase in the national debt so that, in effect, as the gentleman 
knows, they say they are cutting taxes. I am going to talk about how 
that is not really true. Particularly for the middle class it is not 
true. But they are substantially raising taxes on every one of the 
children in this country who will become more indebted and in their 
time will have to pay back the money that is borrowed to give this tax 
cut.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for highlighting those very 
important facts and I thank him for his service on the Ways and Means 
Committee.


                             General Leave

  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, at this time I ask unanimous consent that all 
Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and 
to include extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Maryland?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, the subject of my Special Order, as we have 
seen, is the very dangerous tax bill that this House passed and that 
the Senate is now considering. In fact, of course, the Senate bill is 
worse than the House bill, if one can imagine that.
  On November 16, the Republican majority in this House passed a bill 
to raise taxes on 36 million middle class households and place our 
country another $1.7 trillion in debt.
  Now, you will hear $1.5 trillion and you will hear $1.7 trillion.
  What is the difference?
  The difference is about $200 billion that we will pay in interest to 
others to effect this tax cut. So not only is it going to be the $1.5 
trillion immediately impacted by the tax cut itself, it will be the 
$200 billion additional that we will have to pay to borrow the money to 
give the tax cut and, as I am going to point out, give that tax cut 
essentially, for the most part, to the wealthiest enterprises in 
America.
  227 Republicans voted to do that to their constituents. Every single 
Democratic representative who was present, joined by 13 Republicans, 
did what, in my opinion, many of their colleagues wanted to do, but for 
political reasons, not policy reasons, chose not to do.
  They did so, Mr. Speaker, following impassioned remarks by Majority 
Leader McCarthy and by Speaker Ryan. Both addressed this House and the 
American people and claimed to be pushing these tax bills in order to 
help the working people of our country, a worthy objective, an 
important objective.
  Perhaps one could justify this extraordinary escalation of the 
national debt, probably the largest increase in the national debt of 
any single bill that has been passed. They cited struggling families 
and the need to provide a leg up to those in our middle class. Those, 
of course, are very resonant messages, very important messages. 
Frankly, we ought to be talking about how we create jobs, not debt. 
They are being employed to sell a tax plan that would do exactly the 
opposite of what they say.

  In his speech on the floor, Speaker Ryan lamented: ``Seventy-eight 
percent of our workers in this country today are living paycheck to 
paycheck. . . . Instead of thinking about getting ahead, families are 
struggling just to get by.''
  He is right about that and he is right to be concerned about that. 
What he is wrong in is his response.
  Those living paycheck to paycheck will be the ones hurt the most by 
this tax scam. Let me repeat that. The Speaker talks about those living 
paycheck to paycheck. That concern is an absolute legitimate concern 
for every one of us in this House and every Member of the Senate.
  Unfortunately, he has offered a bill, however, that will hurt the 
very ones he says that he wants to protect. They will see their taxes 
go up over the next decade. In that same period, as middle class 
families are struggling to get by, they will watch the wealthiest get 
farther and farther ahead.
  This is not about class warfare. This is about a judgment of who 
needs help, who needs lifting up.
  He talked about the people who need lifting up. The problem is that 
he didn't lift them up. They will watch the wealthy be lifted up, and 
they are very high right now. God bless them.
  Why, I ask, would the Republican tax plan take $1.7 trillion away 
from our children and grandchildren and give 62 percent of it to the 
top 1 percent?
  Mr. Speaker, the people get it. The people think this bill is not 
going to help them. That is what polls show, and they are right.
  Under the Republicans' plan, it is wealthy individuals like Donald 
Trump who win, and regular working Americans and our middle class who 
are trying to get ahead who lose.
  House Republican leaders cajoled their members. Cajoled is a very 
polite word. They pressured and they scared their members. They said: 
If you don't pass this bill, you are going to lose the election not 
because the people are for it, but because, as one Member said from New 
York, their donors demanded it.
  They urged their members to vote for a flawed bill many of them did 
not want and that none of them believed would become law. They did that 
so they could hand the reins to the Senate to send back a version no 
one had yet read or contemplated. They put their House majority on the 
hook to accept whatever the Senate would pass word for word. We will 
see whether they do that.
  That Senate bill that is now being considered would deeply harm 
middle class families, particularly those in congressional districts 
across the country where more taxpayers choose to deduct their State 
and local taxes, like my State and other States.
  Dozens of House Republicans from such districts voted 
enthusiastically to move the process along. In other words, they voted 
against their taxpayers and for their party--party above people--to 
move it along by supporting the House tax bill with the promise that it 
would be improved in the Senate.
  These members would be asked to make further concessions against the 
interests of their constituents to vote for the Senate bill, were it to 
come to this floor, because it is worse for their constituents, not 
better.
  That is not how Congress is supposed to work, Mr. Speaker. That is 
not regular order.
  The American taxpayers and American businesses seeking to grow in our 
economy have been asking Congress to enact tax reform that is 
bipartisan and permanent.
  You heard Mr. Larson talking about the 1986 bill. It was a bill that 
was worked out between President Reagan; Speaker Tip O'Neill; Chairman 
Dan Rostenkowski, a Member from the Democratic Party from Illinois; and 
the gentleman from Oregon, the chairman of the Finance Committee, a 
Republican.
  The Republican bills in the House and the Senate can be called 
neither bipartisan nor permanent.
  So what can we call them?
  In his floor remarks before the vote on their House bill, Speaker 
Ryan called it: ``The single biggest thing we can do to grow the 
economy, to restore opportunity, and to help middle-income families 
that are struggling.''
  That is not true, Mr. Speaker. However, it is the single biggest 
thing we can do to put our children and grandchildren further into 
debt. I have heard so many of my Republican colleagues stand on this 
floor and say that we cannot spend this money because our children will 
have to pay the bill, and they are right.

                              {time}  1945

  We have a pay-for problem, Mr. Speaker. We ought to be paying for 
what we buy. Here, we are not paying, we are borrowing $1.5 trillion, 
as I said earlier, to give to some of our wealthiest citizens; for that 
is what their plan would do, raise taxes on the middle class today, and 
on our children and

[[Page H9460]]

grandchildren tomorrow, to pay for the wealthiest few to get tax cuts 
that they don't need and that won't grow our economy.
  Let me stress, I think everybody in this room, everybody in the 
country, would like to be wealthy. This is not talking about penalizing 
the wealthy. It is simply to say: God bless you. You have done well, 
but we need to make sure that others do well as well.
  The University of Chicago's Booth School of Business released a 
survey, Mr. Speaker, on November 21, just a few days ago, in which 42 
expert economists were asked whether the Republican tax bill would 
produce the higher economic growth promised by its authors; 42 of the 
most prominent economists. Only one--only one--said that it would do so 
and, ironically, later admitted he had misread the question.
  None of the 42, not one, agreed that the tax cuts for the very 
wealthy included in the Republican bill would eventually pay for 
themselves; and that is why we say, it is one of the greatest debt-
creating pieces of legislation that any of us have considered.
  Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who presided over the basis 
for 4 years of balanced budgets, so he has some real credibility on how 
to bring balance to our fiscal posture in America--he served at the 
time of historic budget surpluses. He pointed out this fallacy in his 
op-ed in The Washington Post on November 15. He said this: ``The tax 
cuts,'' he wrote, ``will not increase growth and, given their fiscal 
effects, would likely have a significant and increasing negative 
impact.''
  He went on to make several compelling arguments about the dangers of 
the Republican tax proposals. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a 
copy of his op-ed piece.

                  [From the Washington Post, Nov. 15]

          Op-Ed: The Republican Tax Plan's Five Worst Dangers

                          (By Robert E. Rubin)

       The deficit-funded tax cuts advancing through Congress are 
     a fiscal tragedy for which our country will pay a huge price 
     over time. While the details of the tax plan remain in flux, 
     its fundamental contours will not change. Nor will its $1.5 
     trillion of deficit funding, the amount stipulated in the 
     recently passed budget resolution.
       Perhaps it's hopeless to expect those in Congress who have 
     long bemoaned deficits and the debt to oppose the plan. If, 
     however, as a matter of conscience or renewed reflection they 
     decide to take heed, here are the fiscal dangers posed by the 
     plan.
       To start, the tax cuts will not increase growth and, given 
     their fiscal effects, would likely have a significant and 
     increasingly negative impact. The nonpartisan Tax Policy 
     Center's latest report estimated that, over 10 years, the 
     average increase in our growth rate would be roughly zero, 
     counting the crowding out of private investment by increasing 
     deficits but not counting other adverse effects of worsening 
     our fiscal outlook. The Penn Wharton Budget Model, using the 
     same approach, estimates virtually no increase in long-term 
     growth. Goldman Sachs projects an increase of 0.1 percent to 
     0.2 percent in the first couple of years and an average 
     increase over 10 years of just 0.05 percent per year, not 
     counting any of the adverse fiscal effects.
       These estimates reflect three underlying views held by 
     mainstream economists. First, individual tax cuts will not 
     materially induce people to work more. Second, corporate tax 
     cuts will likely have limited effect on investment or 
     decisions about where to locate business activity, given the 
     many other variables at play. Third, deficit-funded tax cuts 
     will have little short-term effect on growth, except perhaps 
     for some temporary overheating, because we are at roughly 
     full employment.
       With no additional revenue from increased growth to offset 
     the tax cuts' cost, the publicly held debt of the federal 
     government would increase by $1.5 trillion. An additional 
     danger is that the actual deficit impact would be increased 
     by abandoning the Congressional Budget Office's nonpartisan 
     evaluation that has been used for decades by both parties in 
     favor of partisan calculations by those pushing the tax cuts.
       Adding $1.5 trillion or more to the federal debt would make 
     an already bad situation worse. A useful measure of our 
     fiscal position is the ratio of publicly held government debt 
     to economic output or gross domestic product, called the 
     debt/GDP ratio. In 2000, the debt/GDP ratio was 32 percent. 
     The ratio is now 77 percent. Looking forward, the CBO 
     projects the debt/GDP ratio to be 91 percent in 2027 and 150 
     percent in 2047. After $1.5 trillion of deficit-funded tax 
     cuts, those future ratios have been estimated to increase to 
     roughly 97 percent in 2027 and 160 percent in 2047. These 
     estimates likely substantially understate the worsening of 
     our fiscal trajectory. That's because they do not account for 
     the increasingly adverse effect on growth of the difficult-
     to-quantify effects of fiscal deterioration.
       Exacerbating our already unsustainable fiscal trajectory 
     with these tax cuts would threaten growth in five respects. 
     These are highly likely to be substantial and to increase 
     over time.
       First, business confidence would likely be negatively 
     affected by creating uncertainty about future policy and 
     heightening concern about our political system's ability to 
     meet our economic policy challenges.
       Second, our country's resilience to deal with inevitable 
     future economic and geopolitical emergencies, including the 
     effects of climate change, would continue to decline.
       Third, funds available for public investment, national 
     security and defense spending--a professed concern of many 
     tax-cut proponents--would continue to decline as debt rises, 
     because of rising interest costs and the increased risk of 
     borrowing to fund government activities.
       Fourth, Treasury bond interest rates would be highly likely 
     to increase over time because of increased demand for the 
     supply of savings and increased concern about future 
     imbalances. That, in turn, would raise private-sector 
     interest rates, which could also increase due to widening 
     spreads vs. Treasuries, further reflecting increased concern 
     about future conditions. And even a limited increase in the 
     debt/GDP ratio could focus attention on our fiscal 
     trajectory's long-ignored risks and trigger outsize increases 
     in Treasury and private-sector interest rates. The ability to 
     borrow in our own currency, and to print it through the 
     Federal Reserve, may diminish these risks for a while, as 
     might capital inflows from abroad. But these mitigating 
     factors have their limits; at some point, unsound fiscal 
     conditions almost surely would undermine our currency and 
     debt markets.
       Finally, at some unpredictable point, fiscal conditions--
     and these market dynamics--would likely be seen as 
     sufficiently serious to cause severe market and economic 
     destabilization.
       We have an imperative need to address our unsustainable 
     longer-term fiscal trajectory with sound economic policies. 
     Few elected officials want to face this fact, but, at the 
     very least, they should not make matters worse. We can only 
     hope that responsible elected officials will prevent this 
     irresponsible tax plan from being adopted.

  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, furthermore, according to the Joint Committee 
on Taxation, a nonpartisan group, Speaker Ryan was flat wrong, flat out 
wrong, to say that their plan would ensure that ``the average family at 
every income level gets a tax cut.'' The Joint Committee on Taxation 
says that is not true.
  I presume the Speaker was misinformed, because taxes would go up on 
all income groups below $50,000. Perhaps the Speaker misspoke.
  Speaker Ryan said: ``I am a chart guy.''
  Well, I like charts myself, Mr. Speaker, and I want to bring up this 
first chart. I will bring this a little closer so I can explain this.
  The Speaker claimed that a family of four making $59,000 would get a 
``$1,182 tax cut in the first year alone.'' Well, now if you hear that, 
that sounds, I suppose, like a pretty good deal.
  Unfortunately, for that family, their cut would shrink every year. 
This is the shrinkage. And then it would drop precipitously. By 2024, 
it would become a tax increase, increase, increase, increase. And, as 
you see, that increase escalates the 4 years: 2024, 2025, 2026, and 
2027. So starting in the seventh year of this program, middle America, 
$50,000, you get a tax increase.
  But guess what? That is not what happens to the wealthiest in 
America.
  It is even worse. The Speaker mentioned the family making $59,000 a 
year, and what he said is: They get $1,182 a year in a tax cut. What he 
didn't say is what the upper 1 percent get. They get $1,198 per week--
52 times more than the middle class families that the Speaker spoke 
about and lamented the fact that they needed more dollars in their 
pocket.
  He didn't talk about the wealthiest. He didn't say what they got. I 
don't blame him because, in his bill, he decided to give $1,198.52 a 
week to the wealthiest, and $1,182 a year to that middle class family 
he says is struggling and living paycheck to paycheck.
  What kind of fairness is that? What kind of rationale is that? What 
kind of real help to the middle class is that?
  That is about, by the way, $25 per week versus $1,198.52 per week.
  Speaker Ryan showed us a chart that highlighted how, under the House 
bill, those middle class families promised a tax increase get to see an 
extra $1,182 in savings the first year. We put it down, and then we put 
52 layers above that for the people in the upper 1 percent.
  Under that same plan, as their cut shrinks--you saw that in the last

[[Page H9461]]

chart--the wealthiest taxpayers would see an average tax cut of $1,198 
every week. And it is even a wider disparity under the Senate bill. 
Now, that is a gulf of disparity, a gulf of unfairness, a gulf of not 
helping the average working person in America. But the Senate bill--the 
Senate bill--is even worse.
  The Senate GOP tax scam would increase taxes on 82 million--remember 
I said in the House bill, 36 million middle class taxpayers got an 
increase? Well, the Senate has doubled that, actually more than doubled 
that. Eighty-two million middle class households will get a tax 
increase under the Senate tax bill.
  And with substantial tax increases on 36 million middle class 
households over the next decade in the House bill, it is hard to 
imagine a worse plan, yet, somehow, Senate Republicans achieved it.
  The Tax Policy Center, another nonpartisan analytic group, found 
that, under the perverse structure of the Senate bill, sunsetting 
individual benefits in a few short years, even as it offers permanent--
get this, follow this. We are talking about--Speaker Ryan spoke from 
that rostrum, talked about these struggling Americans living paycheck 
to paycheck. He offered a bill, and the Senate is now doubling down on 
the proposal of making sure those struggling Americans got, over the 
life of this bill, less and less and less, and then finally, paid more 
and more and more, while the wealthiest had no cut.
  The Tax Policy Center said that the sunsetting individual benefits in 
a few short years, even as it offers permanent corporate tax cuts, 82 
million middle class individuals and households will pay more in taxes 
than they would under the current system.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to make that point again. The Tax Policy Center 
says people are going to pay more under this tax bill, some 82 million 
of them, than they would under the current system.
  On top of that, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has 
pointed out that, under the Senate bill, undermining the Affordable 
Care Act--so not only will their taxes be increased over the life of 
this bill, but 13 million Americans would lose their healthcare under 
the Senate bill--not the House bill, but under the Senate bill. And 
that is what the House is going to be asked to vote on. I hope the 
Senate doesn't pass that.
  Mr. Larson talked about sequester and the PAYGO Act requiring a $25 
billion cut in Medicare as a result of this bill. The Senate has added 
in there legislation to adversely affect the Affordable Care Act, which 
will adversely affect 13 million Americans; some of them may be the 
same people who get the tax increase, some may not. They would kick 13 
million off healthcare.
  So the Republican tax plan is not bipartisan, and it is not permanent 
tax reform. The way you achieve those, as I said at the beginning, is 
through bipartisan cooperation. But, as Mr. Larson pointed out, there 
was no intention to do that, no intention to include the public, no 
intention to have markups over a period of time. They did have markups, 
but they were very short in duration, and no American had the 
opportunity to weigh in and give their opinion. There were no hearings, 
and there were less than zero witnesses. I guess there can't be less 
than zero. There were zero witnesses.
  So the bill is not a tax cut. Speaker Ryan has also tried to describe 
it as a job-creator. Now, again, we are talking about, correctly, the 
folks in this country who are living paycheck to paycheck and having a 
hard time, and we need to help them. We need to work on creating them 
jobs.
  By the way, there is no jobs bill that has been sent down here from 
the President, but they claim this is a jobs bill. As a matter of fact, 
they claim that it not only explodes the debt, costs taxpayers $1.9 
trillion, but it would create, they say, 890,000 new jobs.

  Now, in order to create what they say are 890,000 new jobs--and, by 
the way, going back to Secretary Rubin, he does not believe that will 
happen. He is the one that led us to balanced budgets.
  In fact, every one of those jobs, every single job is going to cost 
$1.9 million to create. That is what the Speaker said. This is going to 
create 879 million, we are going to borrow $1.7 trillion to do it. By 
golly, you could give everybody 100,000 bucks, and you would be way 
ahead of the game. But that is not what was done.
  We are creating large, large debt, and we will not create the jobs 
the Speaker said. And if we did, they would cost $1.9 million per job.
  According to the conservative Tax Foundation, using the most 
optimistic model projecting economic growth so far presented, that may 
be technically true, over 10 years now.
  But with a price tag of $1.7 trillion in added debt over the same 
period, that means that each job would cost $1.9 million, while 82 
million working Americans, those struggling Americans of which Paul 
Ryan spoke, would get a tax increase under the Senate bill--nearly $2 
million of added debt to create a single job. Nearly $2 million of 
added debt to create a single job. So this clearly isn't a jobs bill 
either.

                              {time}  2000

  This has already been discussed, but let me reiterate the key point I 
made earlier.
  It can't be called bipartisan. Republican leader after Republican 
leader after Republican leader has lamented the fact that we passed the 
Affordable Care Act without it being bipartisan. The difference, of 
course, was we had literally thousands of meetings, scores--well over 
60--of hearings, amendments offered by Republicans and Democrats. It 
took over a year of consideration by the country, well vetted--
controversial, but well vetted. This bill has been rushed through 
without hearings, without any kind of consideration and input from the 
public--in 1986, 30 hearings; in 2017, zero hearings.
  I am repeating what Mr. Larson said, but it is important to 
understand the dramatic difference: a bipartisan bill with President 
Ronald Reagan and Speaker Tip O'Neill leading the way for 
bipartisanship and agreement on a bill that, by the way, was revenue 
neutral, it did not create any new debt, as opposed to the $1.7 
trillion--that is with a T, trillion--that will put every child in 
America deeply in debt for decades to come.
  In 1986, 450 witnesses; in 2017, zero.
  Bipartisan support, yes; bipartisan support, no.
  Markup, I mentioned markup. That is when you put the bill together, 
when you give it thoughtful consideration. You offer amendments. You 
try to perfect it. Twenty-six days in 1986; 4 days in 2017.
  This is a bill of over 600 pages. I remember everybody saying how 
long the Affordable Care Act was and you possibly couldn't do it. 
Again, over a year and a half of consideration of that bill; 4 days, 
introduced, the next week markup, 4 days, on the floor.
  I was here in 1986, Mr. Speaker, the last time we rewrote our Tax 
Code. That was a truly bipartisan process. I hope everybody read the 
remarks of Senator John McCain when he came back to the Senate and 
voted to move the process forward on the Affordable Care Act but then 
voted against the final product.
  He voted, and he gave a speech in which he said, speaking to the 
president of the Senate:

       Mr. President, I have been here for some period of time, 
     and my experience has essentially been that, when we did 
     things in a partisan way, they were neither lasting nor very 
     good. But when we do things in a bipartisan way, they are 
     much better and they are much more permanent. There is much 
     more competence in that product that was reached in a 
     bipartisan way.

  Speaker Ryan made a point in his remarks about how long overdue we 
are for a tax overhaul, and he said it has been 31 years since we last 
did this. Now, of course, he didn't say: I was chairman of the Ways and 
Means Committee for 11 months and didn't report out a single tax bill.
  I am not sure why, but that was the case.
  We did bipartisan in 1986. We did permanent tax reform. We did it 
together, and we did it in a way that was paid for. That is not what 
this is. Neither the House bill nor the Senate bill achieves those key 
aims.
  The Republican tax overhaul process is dangerously flawed precisely 
because it is partisan, because it rejects the benefits of compromise 
in favor of the pitfalls of expediency.
  I called it, in my speech in opposition to its adoption, ``reckless 
and feckless.'' It was reckless because it would

[[Page H9462]]

heap that $1.7 trillion with a T, $1.7 trillion of additional debt on 
our party, on our country, on our children, on our people. Bob Rubin, 
in that column which I referred to, said that that debt would undermine 
expansion because it would rob the capital markets of money that could 
be used to build small businesses and to build medium-sized businesses 
and invest in large businesses to create and keep jobs.
  It is feckless because the same people who used to call themselves 
fiscally responsible--Senator McConnell, Speaker Ryan, Senator Hatch, 
others whom I could name--have all stood on the floor of the House or 
in a press conference and said we need to have the debt reduced, and 
yet they offer a bill that adds $1.7 trillion to the debt; feckless 
because the same people who used to call themselves fiscally 
responsible are now choosing to ignore fiscal sustainability in favor 
of a short-lived political win.
  This is not about policy. It is about politics. It is about appealing 
to a relatively small group of very, very connected people, but it is 
our country that will lose.
  I told people during that speech that I have been in office for some 
time. I served in the State senate and now in the House. It takes no 
courage--no courage--to vote for a tax cut. What takes courage is to 
pay for what you buy, whether it is national security, which I support, 
whether it is education, which, if we don't invest in, our country will 
not be great. It is great in part because we have invested in our 
education system.
  Unless we invest in the health of our people, which is the health of 
our society, we will not be great, and unless we invest in the security 
of our people domestically, in law, in order, enforcement, in 
protection for our people.
  It will not be great unless we invest in basic biomedical research to 
make sure that the diseases that exist now and that may exist in the 
future can be met with medical cures and palliatives.
  We will not be great if we sink our country deeply, deeply, deeply 
into debt and do not have the courage to say, in this generation, we 
will pay for what we need and not simply buy and pass the debt along to 
our children and to our grandchildren, because that is what we are 
doing in this tax bill.
  It is not only an intellectually bankrupt policy, it is an immoral 
policy that we pursue. As the Senate version takes shape, Mr. Speaker, 
Republicans who voted grudgingly for the House bill ought to be deeply 
concerned; and I hope, for the sake of their country, they are good 
people.
  There are good people on both sides of this aisle. There are 
conscientious people on both sides of this aisle. There are Americans 
on both sides of this aisle, Americans who have sworn to protect and 
defend the Constitution of our country and have, as well, sworn to 
protect the people of this country.

  There ought to be deep concern among people of good conscience, 
concern that it does not meet the very same criteria that Speaker Ryan 
set forth in laying out what tax reform ought to achieve and what he 
claimed their House bill achieved. Neither does it adhere to the 
Speaker's clear promise not to package together separate matters into 
the same legislation.
  Make no mistake, the Senate bill House Republicans will be asked to 
vote for isn't just a tax hike for the middle class, although that it 
is. It is also a repeal of a significant component of the Affordable 
Care Act, which will hurt that same middle class. It may have been 
difficult for Republicans to cast their votes for vague promises on 
November 16, but I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, it will be even more 
difficult to do so for a legislative product that puts their 
constituents, those the Speaker talked about struggling just to get by, 
people who, if they have a $500 debt, are not sure they can pay it, it 
will affect those folks and put them in even greater danger should the 
Senate bill make it back to the House.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues in the Senate to reject this bill. 
I urge my colleagues in the House to look deeply into their souls and 
not at their polls and reflect upon what they are doing to their 
country by perpetuating the fiscally irresponsible policies of 
borrowing, of borrowing, of borrowing and not having the courage to pay 
this generation's bills now and not pass them along to our children and 
to our grandchildren.
  Every Member of this House and of the Senate, Mr. Speaker, ought to 
look themselves in the mirror and say: When I gave those speeches, when 
I referenced that to the press, was I being honest? Am I following a 
policy today that is consistent with that assertion? I think they will 
come to the inexorable answer: No. If I vote for this tax bill, I am 
not.
  Therefore, I hope that all of us will reject this partisan piece of 
legislation that vastly increases our debt, increases the taxes on 
middle class workers, threatens Social Security with a $25 billion cut, 
and threatens our economy.
  Let us have the courage to serve our people honestly and take the 
tough vote and then come together in a bipartisan fashion and do what 
we showed we could do in 1986: pass a bipartisan bill that, yes, makes 
our corporations competitive internationally and, yes, gives the bulk 
of the tax cuts to those who the Speaker referred to as struggling. 
They are the ones who need relief, and we could do that in a bipartisan 
fashion, and we can pay for it.
  David Camp showed us the way. I didn't agree with all of his bill, 
but he showed the courage--a Republican from Michigan who was chairman 
of the Ways and Means Committee--and put up a bill on tax reform that 
was paid for. The Republicans were in charge of this House and they 
dismissed it out of hand, too tough.
  Mr. Speaker, let's do the right thing. Let's reject this bill.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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