[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 194 (Wednesday, November 29, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H9512-H9514]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          THE TAX REFORM BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be 
here for a Special Order. The issues of the day in Washington, D.C., 
are many. Tonight I would like to choose to talk about what is 
happening with the tax reform bill that is coming before the United 
States Senate. We are hearing rumors that it will be here this week, 
maybe a possible vote on Friday.
  It is important for us, as we look at the first tax reform bill in 31 
years, to understand that we do need changes to our Tax Code, that the 
Tax Code has become too complicated and too complex. It needs to be 
simplified. The Tax Code has become burdensome to small and medium-
sized businesses. It is not always the most cooperative Tax Code for 
entrepreneurship or innovation. It lacks incentives for helping us in 
certain sectors of the economy to help us grow.

                              {time}  1645

  But the most staggering problem in the Tax Code today is that it has 
direct and substantial benefits for the wealthiest people in the 
country.
  I am of the mindset that we need to have a Tax Code, an economy, and 
public policies that are going to allow the free enterprise system to 
work efficiently, that will allow for growth, especially in communities 
that have been distressed for many decades and are looking for the 
private sector to come in and hire our workers. It is very important.
  Like most issues in the United States, like most issues that we face 
here in Congress, we have to look at these issues in the context of 
what is happening in the free market and what is happening in the rest 
of the economy.
  So it is important for us to know that over the last 30 years, since 
the last time we have done tax reform, we have had a lot of growth in 
the country. Globalization and automation has led to enormous amounts 
of wealth being created, and that wealth has gotten concentrated. It 
has gotten concentrated into a small group of people in the country and 
it has gotten concentrated in certain areas of the country.

[[Page H9513]]

  Over the last 30 years, we have seen 96 percent of income growth in 
the United States has gone to the top 10 percent of the people in the 
country, the wealthiest 10 percent of the people. That is a fact. 
Ninety-six percent of income growth has gone to the top 10 percent.
  For the majority of Americans, we have seen wages that are stagnant. 
We have seen pensions that have collapsed. We have people who go from 
making $30 or $40 an hour down to $15, $10, or $12 an hour.
  So the great middle class of the United States has seen its wealth go 
up to the top 10 percent of the wealthiest families in the country. 
That is a fact. We have seen now that the top 1 percent of the people 
in the country own 90 percent of the wealth in the United States. The 
ultimate statistic shows where most Americans are. It is the one that 
tells us that 63 percent of Americans families could not withstand a 
$500 emergency.
  Now, think about that. Sixty-three percent of American families can't 
withstand a $500 emergency. We have had this huge wealth creation over 
the last 30 years that has gone primarily to the top 10 percent. Now we 
come back to the idea that we are going to reform the Tax Code.
  We look at charts like this. This is corporate profits after tax, 
going back to 1950. We see that, as globalization took hold and we 
started moving in that direction in the seventies and into the eighties 
and up into the nineties and then into the 2000s, corporate profits go 
up.
  In 2001 and 2003, we implemented a new round of supply-side 
economics, per George W. Bush. He cut taxes for the wealthy. They will 
take that money and reinvest it back into the United States, drive up 
wages, hire people, and we will get growth. That was the philosophy.
  Well, what we saw happen is a huge increase in corporate profits from 
that moment on until the collapse of the economy in 2009-2010. So the 
philosophy was: We are going to cut taxes for the wealthy and milk the 
corporations, and the wealthiest families will put that money back into 
the economy, wages will go up, and we will get growth.
  We saw huge increases in corporate profits and the slowest decade of 
growth in our country since the Great Depression.
  You don't have to be a Philadelphia lawyer to figure out that what 
our friends on the other side of the aisle were telling us back then 
about what the big tax cut to the wealthy was going to do didn't work.
  This is what happened. Funny. If you cut taxes for the wealthiest and 
you help corporations, their profits go up significantly. But growth 
for average families has been stagnant to the point where, today, 63 
percent of families can't afford a $500 emergency.
  That is what the Republican Party is now talking about doing again. 
It was already proven not to work, but let's not let that stop us. 
Let's keep going.
  So we are now going to see a tax cut that will make permanent a lower 
corporate tax rate. Any benefit at all that may go to the lower classes 
of people will not be permanent. That will go away.
  Not only that, but here is the kicker: in order to do this big tax 
cut, the United States is going to have to borrow the money because we 
can't afford it. We are going to give this huge tax cut to people who 
are primarily the wealthiest people in the country. We can't afford it, 
so we are going to go to China and borrow the money from them and bring 
it back to the United States and give it to the wealthiest people in 
our country.
  Then we are going to pay China back, with interest, the money we 
borrowed to give to the wealthiest people in the United States, all 
under the premise that it is going to get the economy going and it is 
going to lift up wages, when we already tried that and we know it 
doesn't work.
  So what are we doing?
  Not to mention the fact that the Chinese are aggressively plotting 
slowly the erosion of the United States of America. They are going to 
take our money that we have already borrowed from them and we are going 
to borrow more and pay interest on it and they are going to take that 
money.
  They are building islands in the South China Sea. They are building 
islands. Yes, islands, in the South China Sea. They are building 
airports and military bases on the island so they can continue to 
project out force in the South China Sea. We just borrowed a bunch of 
money and we are going to pay interest on it so they can go and build 
more islands.
  They are making huge investments in cyber. They are making huge 
investments in submarines, in their navy, and in their military 
apparatus, financed primarily by money they lend out to us.
  So not only do we borrow money and have to pay it back, our bank, 
China, is going to use the interest that we are paying to fund their 
war machine. They already moved into Africa, where they are digging out 
a lot of the minerals and natural resources that they are using to feed 
their industrial machine, putting a base in Djibouti, projecting force 
into Africa. They are going to continue to do that, and the United 
States is going to go into an extra $2 trillion in debt and continue 
the concentration of wealth here.

  China is putting a ton of money into wind and solar. They just 
announced a few weeks ago that they are going to move to battery-
powered cars, renewable energy. They are putting billions of dollars 
into things like additive manufacturing.
  This is our competitor. We are getting everything wrong. Everything.
  At this point, this tax bill is not going to be good for the middle 
class. It is not going to grow the economy. It is going to put us $2.3 
trillion in debt and it is going to feed the beast that is China, which 
is trying to come after the United States in every which way.
  Then we see on the news today that North Korea is firing another 
missile.
  Who do we have to get to talk to North Korea?
  We have got to get China to talk to North Korea. President Trump has 
said China has got to help us with this. China is not going to help us 
with anything. We owe them. That is the problem. That is the problem 
you get into when you borrow so much money.
  When corporate profits are at the highest they have ever been, we 
can't ask these folks to help us.
  Do you know how much one-fifth of the Fortune 500 corporations paid 
in corporate tax?
  One-fifth pay zero in corporate tax.
  The corporate tax is a mess, too. But this is where the wealth is 
concentrated: the owners of these businesses, the shareholders of these 
businesses.
  We have a situation where capital and capital gains has been given 
preference over labor. If you make money off of money, you are good, 
you pay a lower tax rate. Warren Buffett said it a million times that 
he pays a lower rate than his secretary pays. That doesn't seem fair.
  We stack the burden on top of labor. This is a huge concentration of 
wealth, and then we have a huge concentration of opportunity, too, in 
the United States. A lot of it is through geography, where Silicon 
Valley is doing really well and Wall Street is doing really well. We 
have little tech pockets here or there in Austin, Texas, and up in 
Massachusetts, to the point where venture capital, which is the money 
that makes that engine go for growth, is concentrated in three States. 
Eighty percent of venture capital goes to California, New York, and 
Massachusetts; ninety percent of it goes to men; and only 1 percent 
goes to African-American people in this country. Opportunity is being 
concentrated.
  We need a new energy grid. We need broadband in the United States to 
reach to every corner of our country to plug these communities back in 
that have been unplugged from the global economy and globalization. 
They need plugged back in. They need investment. They need technology. 
They need business incubators. They need research at their 
universities. Their kids need access to broadband at their schools and 
in rural communities across the United States, where kids literally 
have to go to McDonald's to plug into the WiFi to download their 
homework and do it.
  Is that where we are in the United States? Is this what we are 
settling for? Are we okay with this?
  I am not. This stinks and we have got to do something about it.

                              {time}  1700

  I want to make just one or two last points. You think about who is 
going

[[Page H9514]]

to benefit from this tax cut, and one of the prime beneficiaries is 
going to be the President of the United States and his family members, 
one of the prime beneficiaries.
  One of the provisions is to get rid of the alternative minimum tax, 
which means that, if you have got enough lawyers and you have got 
enough accountants and you can find every loophole, at the very least, 
you'll pay the alternative minimum tax. And if the bill were passed--we 
are talking about passing here--passes and was applied to the only tax 
returns we have for the President, he would save $30 million just on 
the alternative minimum tax repeal.
  The Donald Trumps of the world are going to get a huge tax break, and 
wages are stagnant for middle class families. And if you talk about the 
Donald Trumps of the world passing on their wealth, his family will 
save $1 billion--$1 billion under this provision will benefit the 
Trumps.
  Now, look, I am not mad at anybody for being rich. I don't care. I am 
happy for you. God bless. But my goodness gracious, in a time of such 
great income inequality, at a time of stagnant wages for 30 years, and 
60 percent of families in the United States can't afford a $500 
emergency, can't blow a couple of tires on your car or have your car 
break down, and your world unravels. Somebody gets sick, your world 
unravels, and we are going to give the Donald Trump family a $1 billion 
tax cut?
  We have communities that are dying from the inside. There are 
dilapidated homes all over communities that need to come down, no 
broadband, no nice roads, no nice schools, no new schools, teachers who 
haven't seen a pay raise for 10 years, erosion of the tax base. We need 
investment, public investment, to stimulate private investment into 
these communities.
  And we are going to borrow money from China not to rebuild our own 
country, not to say: We are going to borrow $2.3 billion from China; we 
are going to do roads, bridges, airports; put everybody back to work; 
drive up wages; broadband in every community; new energy grid; jobs 
that are in the ground that can't be outsourced to China. That is not 
what we are borrowing money for. We are going to borrow the money, and 
we are going to give it to families like this.
  I just don't think this is the direction we need to be going in. The 
benefits for the middle class sunset and the benefits for the major 
corporations are made permanent. There is even a provision, in the 
House bill for sure, that allows companies to write off an expense 
shipping their jobs overseas.
  Now, can you imagine? Who is writing this stuff to where we are going 
to give the company and a big corporation the ability to expense moving 
equipment and people and all kinds of other things from the United 
States to China, to Vietnam, to Mexico, to somewhere else?
  This is some dark stuff what is happening here. I will tell you that 
if somebody could prove to me that borrowing $2.3 trillion from China 
was going to create jobs in Youngstown; in Akron, Ohio; Warren, Ohio; 
Niles, Ohio; Gary, Indiana; Buffalo, I would be the first one to say: 
We have got to do something. We have got to do something. Let's talk 
about that.
  Maybe it is worth it for us to borrow that money and make an 
investment like you would borrow for your kid's education or you would 
borrow for your house or you would borrow for your business to 
reinvest, maybe it would make some sense for us to do that, but there 
is no evidence that that is the case.
  So I say, let's start over. Come talk to the Democrats. There is no 
reason why this has to be done by the end of the year. What is the 
rush? What is the hurry? We haven't done this in 31 years. Let's do it 
right. Congressman Ro Khanna and I and several others have offered a 
trillion-dollar tax cut for working class families. People who make 
$75,000, $80,000 a year and have two or three kids would get thousands 
of dollars back. Let's approach that.
  How do we expand the affordable housing credits? How do we expand the 
wind credits for the renewable industry and wind and solar industries 
that are growing at 20 or 25 percent a year and then target those 
investments to distressed areas? Let's sit down and talk about that.
  Let's sit down and talk about how we can get all these government 
jobs out of Washington, D.C., and spread them around the country. There 
is 300,000 here. Let's get a good chunk of them and move them out. 
Everyone doesn't need to be in Washington, D.C. These jobs could be 
done: 1,000 jobs in Youngstown, 1,000 in Akron, 1,000 in Biloxi, and 
1,000 in Tallahassee. Stabilize these communities and then rebuild. 
Let's sit down. There is a way out if we come together.
  This is going to get rammed through. No Democrats are even at the 
table. President Trump said he invited our leadership over, come down 
to talk. And he tweeted before that: I am not going to accept any of 
the Democratic provisions, but come on over. I am happy to talk.
  I don't think the coffee is that good at the White House if we are 
not going to have a serious conversation. This is a wrong move for our 
country. You know, you start to think--not to be doom and gloom, but we 
are already trillions of dollars in debt. We already have the highest 
level of income inequality we have had since the Great Depression.
  We have Republican control of the House and Senate and the White 
House, and they are going to pass a tax bill that borrows another $2.3 
trillion from China, feeds that beast, feeds the Chinese beast all over 
the world in Africa, in the South China Sea, while here in the United 
States we have communities that are collapsing.
  How much longer can we go? Because I know in communities like mine, 
we have been dealing with this for 40 years, and it is time both 
parties step up with a grand solution or series of strategies to fix 
it. And I will tell you one of those strategies is not to give a huge 
tax cut to Donald Trump and his family, to the wealthiest corporations 
who have the highest corporate profits in the history of our country. 
That is not the solution.

  We need to come together, sit down, make this right, start over. Both 
parties need to be a part of this grand solution, this grand strategy.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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