[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 193 (Tuesday, November 28, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7363-S7364]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2018--MOTION TO 
                           PROCEED--Continued


                Orders for Wednesday, November 29, 2017

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the 
Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 12 noon tomorrow, 
Wednesday, November 29; further, that following the prayer and pledge, 
the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be 
approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for 
their use later in the day; finally, that following leader remarks, the 
Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to 
speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                         Order for Adjournment

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come 
before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned 
under the previous order, following the remarks of Senator Casey.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Pennsylvania.


                          Republican Tax Plan

  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I wish to go back to a point I made earlier 
when I was describing--both in terms of the substance of the bill and 
the process that has been undertaken to pass the bill--why, the week 
before Thanksgiving, I used the expression that the bill was, in fact, 
``a thief in the night'' and what I meant by that. In the same bill, we 
have these inequities that I just described where the wealthiest are 
getting $34 billion in a tax cut--a giveaway, really, just in the first 
year, and then that continues--and 90 million Americans get less than 
half of that. That is, in my judgment, robbing those families of an 
opportunity to get a bigger tax cut and to have the wealthiest among us 
sacrifice a little bit for the middle class and for those trying to get 
to the middle class. It gets worse from there because, in addition to 
that, repealing of the individual mandate has a healthcare consequence.
  We know that the Congressional Budget Office told us that because of 
what would happen as a result of the repeal of the individual mandate, 
4 million people would lose their healthcare in the first year and 13 
million over the course of 10 years. So it is entirely possible--we 
don't know the exact number, but it is entirely possible--that lots of 
Americans would, in the same year or certainly over time, have two 
adverse consequences. One, they would either not get much of a tax cut 
or their tax cut or any tax change would turn into a tax increase, and 
they would lose their healthcare because of the effects of one part of 
the bill. So, at the same time, in the same bill, some will lose their 
healthcare because of the bill and others will see their taxes go up, 
or worse, maybe the same thing will happen to the same individual, the 
same family. All that is happening in a bill that is speeding through 
this Chamber.
  Here is how defective the process has been. The Senate bill was 
introduced on a Thursday, and then voted out of the Finance Committee 
the following Thursday, and now the majority is trying to pass the bill 
this Thursday. So from Thursday to Thursday to Thursday is the entire 
consideration of a bill that has not had one hearing--not a single 
hearing. Oh, yes, we had time in the committee the week before 
Thanksgiving to pose questions to the Joint Committee on Taxation--tax 
experts--or to staff, and that is part of the process. But a tax bill 
like this, which comes around every three decades and will have an 
impact, by one estimate, of $9 trillion to $10 trillion, doesn't have a 
single hearing and doesn't have the kind of due consideration that 
would allow people to examine it and allow taxpayers to examine the 
detail of this bill and the consequences that would flow from that--the 
adverse consequences--and be able to say: Hey, wait a minute. Maybe I 
am one of those people. Maybe I am one of those individuals whose taxes 
will go up or I don't get much of a tax cut and, on top of that, I lose 
my healthcare. I think any American who would be so adversely affected 
should have the time and the opportunity to examine this legislation, 
either themselves or through the debate that is undertaken by Senators 
or through reading news accounts.
  The only good news here is that newspapers across the country, 
especially, and think tanks who are analyzing this bill are providing 
the American people information. But the debate is so limited that very 
little of the debate here in the Senate will land on the kitchen tables 
of Americans who will be affected.
  So when I say that this is a thief in the night, I mean it by way of 
the substance of the bill where people are robbed of healthcare, 
potentially, and certainly robbed of an opportunity to either get a 
substantial middle-class tax cut or, in some cases, they get no tax cut 
at all because their taxes go up and, at the same time, they are losing 
healthcare.
  This whole process has been cloaked in darkness and has been infused 
with secrecy. I got a letter the other day from a taxpayer who said to 
me: I am worried about the impact on--it was from a mom talking about 
her family--on my family and my children. She said: I don't know enough 
about this. I can sympathize with her because Democratic Senators were 
in a committee 2 weeks ago when this bill was presented to us, with not 
a single hearing on the bill.
  My colleagues may recall what happened in 1985 and 1986. President 
Reagan came up with a proposal that was almost 500 pages in length. 
There was a lot of detail about his administration's priorities on tax 
reform. His proposal got 27 hearings in the Finance Committee. Later, 
when the House passed a bill in--I guess it was in the beginning of 
1986--they passed a tax reform bill that went to the Senate, and that 
House bill in 1986 got six hearings in the Finance Committee. So if you 
add the review of the detailed Reagan proposal--almost 500 pages--to 
the actual hearings on a specific bill, we are talking about 33 
hearings. That is the kind of review one would expect. I would settle 
for 10 or 15 hearings on something this substantial.
  So we are basically saying that we are supposed to accept a bill that 
has gotten very little review and no hearing, and then wait for 20 
years from now or 30 years from now to have another opportunity.
  This is a joke. This is an insult to the American people, when we 
have a bill that will have such an impact on every American and is 
getting very little in the way of scrutiny.
  I know the hour is late. I will just make a few more points, 
especially when it comes to our children. There has been a lot of talk 
about what this bill could do to help children. A lot of Americans know 
about the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit. Those two 
provisions alone in our law have lifted more children out of poverty 
than almost anything we have ever done in the Congress in decades,

[[Page S7364]]

literally. It has had that kind of an impact. So shouldn't we use these 
two vehicles that have lifted millions of children and families out of 
poverty--the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit--and 
strengthen them? Shouldn't we make them more robust so that more 
children could be lifted out of poverty? The answer is yes.
  We have an opportunity here. Senator Brown and Senator Bennet 
introduced a bill that then became an amendment in the debate, which I 
and so many other Democratic Senators joined them on, to strengthen the 
child tax credit, as well as the earned income tax credit.
  Here is the basic information about where we are with the child tax 
credit. The proposal by some Republican Senators to strengthen the 
child tax credit in the bill is also woefully deficient and woefully 
short of what families should expect from a big tax reform bill that is 
supposed to help folks with the child tax credit.
  The Senate Republican plan increases the maximum child tax credit 
from $1,000 to $2,000 per child. It sounds pretty good so far--$1,000 
up to $2,000. It sounds pretty good so far, but because the bill limits 
refundability, a mom working full time at minimum wage will only see an 
additional $75 in the child tax credit, while a married couple earning 
$500,000 would become newly eligible. So in the Republican bill, 
wealthy families earning up to $500,000 of income are newly eligible 
for help, with the child tax credit, for the maximum credit of $2,000 
per child. The working mom who has a low income gets a child tax credit 
of $75, which is not much help, but the family making $500,000 would be 
getting a $2,000 child tax credit. Anyone knows that is woefully short.
  We can do better than that. We are a great country. We have the 
greatest economy in the world, we have the strongest military in the 
world, and we have a lot of good tax policies that have helped lift 
families out of poverty. Both parties have helped support those 
provisions over the years. This isn't just a Democratic priority; a lot 
of Republicans make this a priority as well.
  This is the moment to do it. This is a big tax bill. We could make 
the child tax credit so generous and so substantial that you could 
turbocharge--use any word you want--you could turbocharge the effort to 
get young children out of poverty. But the Republicans won't do it 
because they are stingy on the child tax credit changes, just as they 
are stingy on the middle-class tax cut.
  The source I cited earlier for the November 27 report, the Center on 
Budget and Policy Priorities--you can go to their website. It is easy. 
Just type in four letters--CBPP--and you can find these reports. What 
do they say about the child tax credit provisions? The Center on Budget 
and Policy Priorities says that 10 million children live in families 
who would get $6.25 or less per month in additional child tax credit 
help--less than 1 hour of work at the minimum wage. So for 10 million 
children, this brandnew proposal on the child tax credit adds up to 
$6.25 or less per month. Even in a very low-income family, $6.25 a 
month doesn't get you much in terms of help for your children.
  We have a lot to do in a short timeframe to let the American people 
know what is in this bill. Whether it is very limited tax relief for a 
lot of middle-class families or whether it is the outrage that so many 
Americans' taxes will go up--over time, especially--or whether it is 
the giveaways to the richest among us, there are so many outrages and 
so many insults in one bill, it is difficult to catalog all of them.
  I hope that if we have a vote on the Senate floor, this bill will be 
defeated. Guess what can happen then. We can get to a different chapter 
on tax reform, just like we started to get to on healthcare. After the 
healthcare bill was voted down in July, everyone said that somehow 
there would be no engagement on healthcare after that, that the two 
sides would go into their corners and there would be no discussion. 
Within hours, if not days, of that happening, Democrats and Republicans 
came together on healthcare. On that topic on which there is supposed 
to be very little, if any, consensus or cooperation or bipartisanship, 
they came together and then had hearings in early September. People 
forget this, but it happened. In the first 2 weeks of September, we 
listened to Governors from both parties, insurance commissioners, and 
healthcare policy experts. Guess what we got. We got a bipartisan bill 
to help stabilize the market, to make sure we were coming together to 
try to solve at least one substantial problem in our healthcare 
system--not to cure every problem but to come together in a bipartisan 
way to fix the problem.
  We could undertake a similar process on tax reform. We could start in 
December or January--whenever the majority wants to start--have lots of 
hearings, examine these issues, and figure out whether there is a 
bipartisan way to make the child tax credit more generous.
  We have a moment here. We have a big bill. We could lift a lot more 
children out of poverty. Isn't there a way to make the middle-class tax 
relief much more robust and substantial? Instead of giving a $300 or 
$400 tax cut, maybe we could say: Let's come together on a bipartisan 
bill and give a tax cut that is worth $1,000--or maybe several thousand 
dollars--to the middle class and to middle-class families. We could do 
that. Democrats and Republicans could come together.
  We could even come together on providing corporate relief. No one on 
our side doesn't believe that corporations should get a break, but when 
you reduce a corporate tax rate from 35 to 20--just do the math. It is 
$100 billion per point, so that is $1.5 trillion. That forecloses the 
option of making middle-class tax cuts even more generous. It limits 
the options to help families who are struggling to get into the middle 
class, who are going to work every day, sometimes working two jobs, 
making the minimum wage or higher than minimum wage, and they need a 
little bit of help with the child tax credit or other provisions.
  We have an opportunity here to do tax reform the right way--not in 
the dark of night, not a one-party fiat or a one-party bill that gets 
rushed through and then we are supposed to accept this as good tax 
policy for the next 10, 20, 30 years. That is not the way to do tax 
reform. That is not the way it was done when Ronald Reagan was here, 
working with Democrats and Republicans. That is not the way we should 
do it.
  We will have more to say later in the week.
  At this time, I yield the floor.

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