[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 194 (Wednesday, November 29, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7392-S7393]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               TAX REFORM

  Mr. TESTER. Mr. President, I have long supported efforts to reform 
the Tax Code--tax reform that gives a break to working-class Americans 
and small businesses so that they can create more jobs and keep more of 
their hard-earned money in their pockets, tax reform that provides 
permanent, long-term certainty for job-creating businesses and middle-
class families so that they can plan for the future, and tax reform 
that doesn't burden future generations with loads of debt. 
Unfortunately, the bill that we are going to vote on this week is not 
tax reform.
  The majority and the administration can call this proposal whatever 
they want, but from where I come from, which is north central Montana, 
we call it how we see it. This is a tax giveaway to the wealthy--a tax 
giveaway that will cut taxes for the wealthiest families while raising 
taxes on nearly 14 million middle-class Americans. This tax giveaway 
benefits wealthy out-of-staters at the expense of hard-working 
Montanans. In fact, folks making less than $30,000 a year will see a 
tax hike in 2019, and folks making less than $40,000 will see a tax 
hike in 2021. That pattern continues climbing until every individual 
will see a tax hike in 2025.
  Why is this important?
  We haven't done tax reform in 30 years, and 2025 will be here 
tomorrow. A tax break for the wealthiest will continue not only to add 
to our debt, but it will continue to take money out of the pockets of 
hard-working middle-class families. All the while, the large 
corporations will enjoy permanent tax giveaways.
  It doesn't have to be like this, but the majority has chosen, once 
again, to write a bad bill in secret--no bipartisanship, no input from 
working families, no regard for how this bill is going to impact folks 
down the road. This tax giveaway to the wealthy reeks of the swamp, and 
it represents everything that folks hate about Washington, DC.
  So why are we rushing this process?
  During the Reagan tax cuts in the eighties, the House and the Senate 
combined to hold over 20 committee hearings before bringing a bill to 
the floor. Why was there no public input in this process today? Why 
aren't we waiting for final estimates from the Joint Tax Committee to 
let us know what the impacts will be? Why don't we know what the long-
term impacts--past the first 10 years--are going to be? Why are we 
voting before we have analysis on what happens to those folks 12, 14, 
16 years from now? Why are we voting on a bill before we have even had 
time to read it?
  There is an appetite in this Senate for good tax reform--a tax bill 
that will cut taxes for middle-class families and small businesses and 
will not add to the debt, a bill that will actually drive our economy. 
I don't understand why folks in this body are rushing to pass this tax 
giveaway that is going to hurt the folks who need a tax cut the most. 
This is not the first time we have been down this road. Next year, 
nearly one-third of our national debt will be a direct result of the 
Bush tax cuts--over $5.6 trillion. Yet here we are again, a decade 
later, and we are about to make the same mistake.
  Most folks who serve in this body will say that they came here to 
provide more opportunities for the next generation, that they came here 
to work on bills and pass bills that will help our kids and our 
grandkids succeed. I am here to tell you that actions speak louder than 
words. This bill saddles our kids and our grandkids with even more 
crushing debt by adding, at a minimum, $1.4 trillion to the debt. Why? 
It is so that we can give tax giveaways to the wealthy and big 
corporations and so that some politicians can claim a political 
victory. If you vote for this bill, you are putting $1.4 trillion on 
the credit card that our kids and our grandkids are going to be forced 
to pay. That is a fact. Where are the deficit hawks? Where have they 
flown? My, how times have changed.
  We can do better than this. Our kids and our grandkids deserve better 
than this. Hard-working families in this country deserve better than 
this. We need to do the right thing and pull this bill from the floor 
and work together in a truly bipartisan way to pass real tax reform--
get public input, get support from both sides of the aisle--and get a 
bill that Democrats, Republicans, and, as far as that goes, 
Independents can support.
  The truth is apparent. The other side of the aisle doesn't want to be 
bothered by differences of opinion or public input, so we end up with a 
poorly written bill that doesn't do what it is advertised to do. Let's 
help businesses create more jobs and raise wages, and let's make sure 
that hard-working folks can keep more of their money in their pockets. 
That is the kind of tax reform that America deserves. Instead, we are 
stuck with a partisan gimmick that makes the rich richer while the rest 
of us pay the bills.
  I am voting no on this bill, and I am voting no for Montana's kids 
and grandkids. I encourage my colleagues to take a look at this bill, 
by the way, that we don't even have yet. Take a look at it, what is 
there, and vote no to avoid, at a minimum, a trillion and a half 
dollars being added to our national debt.
  When I go home, one of the things that folks ask of me is to work 
together--to work together and find bipartisan solutions. Don't just 
cast off those on the other side as being wrong. Listen to them. Try to 
find that middle ground. That hasn't happened here with this bill. 
Anything but that has happened. We have a bill that has been crafted by 
one party in secret and has been put in front of us, and they have 
said: Here. Take it or leave it. We don't even know the impacts of this 
bill, and they don't know the impacts of this bill. Once this passes, 
it will be too late. This is the most deliberative body in the world. 
We ought to do a little deliberating and get some public input and find 
bipartisan support and move forward with a bill that works for America.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.

[[Page S7393]]

  

  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, a number of Senators have been inquiring as 
to what will happen next with respect to the handling of the tax 
legislation. My sense is that, in a relatively short period of time, 
the Senate will be voting on the motion to proceed to this legislation. 
I just want to take a couple of minutes to talk about why I am going to 
oppose the motion to proceed.
  The fact is, right now, on a topic that will involve $10 trillion 
worth of tax policy changes--the biggest change in the Tax Code in 31 
years when the U.S. Senate votes on the motion to proceed--we, 
essentially, will not know yet what the Senate will be debating. There 
are rumors; there are whispers, but the fact is, as the ranking 
Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, which has authority over 
taxes, I haven't seen the text of the bill that we will actually be 
debating.
  The bill seems to have changed practically every half hour. It has 
certainly been a moveable feast for the super lobbyists, but there are 
a couple things we already do know. We know, for example, it is not 
going to give a fair shake to working families. What we have talked 
about again and again in the Senate is that the Senate leadership is 
committed to a double standard with respect to the American economy: 
temporary breaks for the middle class--they vanish in a few years--and 
permanent breaks for those at the top.
  We can do better than this. The middle class is responsible for 70 
percent of the economic activity in our economy. They are the ones who 
buy the cars, who buy the houses. They send kids to childcare. Instead, 
many of them certainly fairly soon are going to be further in the hole 
than they already are.
  So this is a piece of legislation, both on the substance, from the 
standpoint of what my colleagues have been talking about in terms of 
the double standard--I mean, we already have in our economy essentially 
two tax systems, one for the cops, the nurses, autoworkers, and timber 
workers. Their tax system is compulsory. Their taxes come right out of 
their paycheck. There are no Cayman Island deals for them. The people 
at the top pay what they want when they want to. The reality is, what 
it looks like we are going to get--as I say, I don't have the details--
is going to make this work.
  So a number of Senators have asked, for example, about the 
passthrough provisions, important to small business. We don't have the 
details on that. We have Members who care about how we are actually 
going to not rack up hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of debt in 
the years ahead. Some Senators have suggested that there be triggers. I 
happen to think they are gimmicks in all of the approaches I have 
heard. They just don't seem to add up. We don't have the details on 
that.
  What we do know--and I know there are several other Senators who 
would like to speak--is, we have never had negotiations in the Senate 
Finance Committee over the specifics of this legislation or any other. 
We have never had a legislative hearing. When Ronald Reagan and 
Democrats got together in 1986, they had more than 20 of these 
hearings.
  I will just tell my colleagues in the Senate, Bill Bradley, the 
former Knick and basketball great who was on the Finance Committee--and 
I like to kid colleagues that he was another tall Democrat on the 
committee with a much better jump shot than I--he always would tell 
stories about how he would fly across the country to meet with 
Republicans to talk about the specifics of tax reform. Back then, 
Senators went to great lengths to talk to each other about the 
specifics of tax reform. In this instance, the majority hasn't been 
willing to even walk down the corridor of the Dirksen Senate Office 
Building to talk about the specifics of tax reform.
  The Senate is better than this. I was part of the bipartisan group 
yesterday, and Senator Donnelly, our colleague from Indiana, really set 
out what became an outpouring of good faith among something like 17 
Senators who said we can find common ground here. I happen to know we 
can find common ground here because with two Senators, who happen to be 
very close to the distinguished majority leader, Mitch McConnell, I 
wrote two full bipartisan Federal income tax reform bills--my former 
colleagues, Senator Gregg and Senator Coats.
  We can do this. This is what the Senators said yesterday. We can find 
common ground. There is not a Senator here who doesn't agree that the 
Tax Code is a rotting economic carcass. It is a dysfunctional mess. 
Every single Senator understands it is broken. Since it has been 30 
years since the last reform, there have been scores of changes to the 
Tax Code that really cause as much confusion as they do benefits. So I 
know we can do this. That is what Democratic Senators said yesterday. 
They said we want to work together in a group led by our colleagues 
Senator Manchin and Senator Kaine, who brought us together.
  So we are going to vote, and I think it is going to be soon, on a 
motion to proceed. I would just tell Senators, as of right now, we 
don't yet know what the Senate is going to be debating, and on those 
crucial issues I just mentioned, we still don't have any information. 
Yesterday, the Joint Committee on Taxation told me they hoped to have 
what the Republicans said was the essence of why their bill works: a 
dynamic score of the tax legislation. We haven't seen that either.
  I hope our colleagues will vote no on the motion to proceed because I 
don't think it is too much to say that as Senators, when we are talking 
about going to a bill that involves $10 trillion worth of tax policy 
changes in the Senate, we ought to know what the Senate will actually 
be debating.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. PERDUE. Thank you, Mr. President.
  When President Trump took office, he said that job No. 1 this year 
was getting the economy growing again. As a business guy--I am going to 
speak very quickly because I think the majority leader is on the way 
down to the floor--he said the first thing we had to do to get the 
economy going were three things: No. 1, pull back on the onerous 
regulations. Well, so far this year 860 rules and regulations have been 
reversed. No. 2, he said we have to unleash our God-given energy 
potential. So far, Keystone Pipeline, the Clean Power Plan, and ANWR 
are underway.
  Finally, we have to change the Tax Code, and that is what we are here 
debating this week. I am very optimistic that this plan will absolutely 
put people back to work, put money back in their pockets, and make our 
American economy and the people who participate in it competitive with 
the rest of the world.
  With that, I notice that the majority leader is on the floor, and I 
yield back.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

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