[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 195 (Thursday, November 30, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H9563-H9567]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    PROGRESSIVE CAUCUS: GOP TAX SCAM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Garrett). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2017, the

[[Page H9564]]

gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin) is recognized for 60 minutes as 
the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to be here this evening on 
behalf of the Progressive Caucus in Congress, which is in very strong 
opposition to both the House and Senate versions of the tax scam that 
is speeding through the United States Congress this week. We have 
several members who would like to participate in this.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. 
Cicilline). He is a passionate representative of the people of Rhode 
Island and a real champion of the American middle class.
  Mr. CICILLINE. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the gentleman from 
Maryland, for yielding.
  I want to quote Congressman Raskin, who has said before, and I think 
it actually accurately captures what is happening: The Republicans are 
moving at the speed of light in the dark of night to jam through this 
proposal which will visit so much harm upon our economy and upon the 
American people, and particularly onto working families.

  I think it is important to say, at the outset, that the process that 
has produced this piece of legislation that is now under consideration 
in the Senate--their own version of the same proposal--is an important 
thing to understand.
  The last time that we did comprehensive tax reform--it was before I 
arrived in Congress--there were hundreds of people who testified. There 
were hearings to really understand the implications of these proposals.
  Our economy is complicated. Tax policy is complicated. You want to be 
sure that you are making the right decisions based on good information, 
good evidence, and the guidance of experts.
  This proposal in the House and, similarly, in the Senate happened 
with no hearings. Not a single witness testified. In fact, it was 
drafted even without the participation of some of the Republican 
Members of Congress. It was presented as a finished product and then 
brought to the floor for a vote.
  One of the reasons I would say, Mr. Speaker, that my Republican 
colleagues are trying to get this done so quickly is because the more 
the American people learn about this proposal, the more they realize 
that it is not something they support, and it undermines the long-term 
health and prosperity of our country.
  What does it do?
  It provides a huge, gigantic tax cut for the people at the very top. 
About 50 percent of the proposal goes to the top 1 percent.
  It creates greater economic incentives to ship American jobs 
overseas. Think about that. It creates better incentives to send good 
jobs overseas.
  It raises taxes on 82 million middle class families.
  It imposes $1.5 trillion additional debt on the next generation.
  To pay for all of this, it imposes deep cuts on things that are so 
important to the economy and important to working families: Medicare, 
Medicaid. We will see more cuts in infrastructure, education, and all 
the things that are necessary to build and strengthen our economy.
  This is a gigantic giveaway to the biggest corporations and the 
wealthiest people of this country, and it is paid for by the middle 
class. It is paid for by hardworking Americans.
  There are, as I said just a moment ago, millions of people who lie 
awake at night worrying about whether or not they can make ends meet, 
take care of their families, and pay their bills because they are just 
not making enough money.
  But instead of addressing that with a real tax reform proposal that 
provides real tax relief to middle class families and incentivizes the 
creation of good-paying jobs, this does just the opposite. It makes the 
situation worse. In fact, what the bill does, although its name is 
something about job creation, it does just the opposite because it is 
premised on this economic theory called trickle-down economics: if you 
let people at the very top hold on to more of their money, keep more of 
what they make, it will somehow just trickle down to the rest of us.
  We know that is an economic theory that doesn't work. It doesn't work 
because what you really need to create jobs and to grow the economy is 
for people of the middle class to have a good-paying job and have money 
in their pockets so they can buy the goods and services businesses 
produce. That is how you grow the economy.
  If you go to any small business in my State and ask, ``What do you 
need to create another job to add to your number of employees?'' they 
will tell you, ``I need customers. I need people to buy the things I 
make and sell.''
  That is why having a tax policy that invests in rebuilding the middle 
class and provides tax relief to middle class families and doesn't rely 
on this trickle-down economics is the way that you grow the economy. 
This does just the opposite.
  In addition to that proposal on the Senate side, they have inserted 
another proposal that will strip away healthcare from 13 million 
Americans.
  Think about this: Just when you thought this bill or this approach 
couldn't get any worse, the Senate Republicans have done that.
  We had a rally today with folks from all across this country who are 
standing up to say: This is not fair. This makes our Tax Code worse. 
This provides no relief for the people who need it. It doesn't help 
small businesses. Instead, it is a reflection of what a swamp 
Washington is.
  All those folks who have a lot of political power, who spend a lot of 
money on elections, have allowed or have demanded that a tax bill go 
forward that benefits them.
  Shame on my colleagues. This is a disgrace. What this is going to do 
to our economy and to working families is something that everyone who 
votes for this will be responsible for.
  We are still hoping that we can defeat this proposal in the Senate 
and move forward in a bipartisan way for serious tax reform that will 
grow the economy, that will provide relief to middle class families, 
that will help raise people's wages and not be a huge giveaway for the 
richest people in the country, the most powerful corporations, 
incentivizing shipping American jobs overseas and then giving the bill 
to the next generation and to working families in this country.
  This is dead wrong. We have to defeat it.
  I thank my friend, the gentleman from Maryland, for organizing this 
Special Order hour so we can continue to bring attention to this 
horrible piece of legislation, which, by the way--I will end with 
this--is not tax reform. This is a scam being visited upon the American 
people. We need to do everything we can to stop it.

                              {time}  1745

  Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Cicilline for his strong 
leadership for the people of Rhode Island and his dedication to the 
middle class of America, which is besieged and under attack today in 
Washington, D.C. You know, the former Secretary of the Treasury, Robert 
Rubin, came and said that this is the worst piece of tax legislation he 
had seen ever in the history of the United States of America.
  Now, the good news is that the American people have taken a look, and 
they don't like it. By more than 2-1, the American people in public 
opinion polls are rejecting this plan. The Quinnipiac poll found that 
American voters are rejecting the plan by more than 2-1, with 52 
percent disapproving and only 25 percent approving. Every day, the more 
people find out about it, the more that they hate the guts of this bill 
and what is inside of the tax plan.
  We are in a situation of ``beat the clock'' now. Can we get the 
information out to the people, Mr. Speaker, about what is in this bill 
before it is rammed through the United States Congress?
  So let's start with this: 82 million middle class households are 
going to see their taxes go up over the next decade. They are going to 
completely obliterate the State and local tax deduction, which States 
like mine, Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut, California, Illinois, are 
going to be killed by, because if you make investments in your 
educational infrastructure, if you make investments in the 
transportation infrastructure, now they want to abolish the State and 
local tax deduction and make you pay twice for the same money that you 
have earned, while driving pressure down on the States to eliminate 
investment in the people who live in the States.

[[Page H9565]]

  Well, so they are going to raise taxes on millions of middle class 
families. Why? So they can slash taxes for the wealthiest corporations 
and the wealthiest people in the country. They want to slash the 
corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent at a time of record 
corporate profits in America.
  They say that everybody is going to get wage increases by that. But 
we have already got record corporate profits, and we have seen wage 
growth be stagnant under the policies that are being propounded by the 
GOP in Congress.
  If you want to increase people's wages, increase the minimum wage. 
Have some courage. Have some honesty. Let's increase the minimum wage. 
Let's give America a raise. That will work, not just showering billions 
of dollars more on the richest people in the country.
  By the way, it is not just the richest people in the country. One-
third of corporate ownership in America goes to foreign investors. That 
is right. So if we decide to give $1\1/2\ trillion to investors in 
America with a corporate tax break, one-third of that money is going to 
leave America immediately and go to China or Saudi Arabia or wherever 
the rich corporate investors are.
  The purpose of this bill isn't even just to enrich the wealthiest 
people in America. It is to enrich the wealthiest people on Earth 
because the money is going to be flying overseas as soon as we 
institute this corporate tax cut.
  Then they build up record deficits: $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion in 
deficits on the House and Senate plans--which are twiddle dumb and 
twiddle dumber--$1.5 trillion to $2 trillion that the children, the 
grandchildren, and the great-grandchildren of the middle class are 
going to be paying back for decades so there can be a party on Wall 
Street; so there can be a party among the 1 percent; so Donald Trump's 
family, according to The New York Times, can collect up to $1 billion 
in tax relief.
  How are they doing it?
  Well, for example, they want to abolish the estate tax, which right 
now applies only to two of the richest 1,000 families in America. You 
take 1,000 families, only two of them are even paying the estate tax 
because it applies only to the wealthiest people in the country. They 
want to abolish that; totally in contradiction to the design of the 
Founders of America who did not want to see the transmission of 
millions, much less hundreds of millions, much less billions of dollars 
from one generation to the next because they understood that the 
intergenerational transmission of that kind of wealth is a threat to 
democracy.
  At a certain point, people have enough houses, they have enough 
yachts, they have enough helicopters.
  And now what do they want to buy?
  They want to buy a governorship. They want to buy a Senate seat. They 
want to buy a whole institution like the House of Representatives or 
the U.S. Senate.
  That is not democracy, and the Founders knew it. That is plutocracy.
  So the radical economic inequality, which they want to cement into 
place with this tax bill, is a direct threat to the Democratic values 
of country, the Democratic values of the Founders of America.
  They want to eliminate the student loan interest deduction and 
lifetime learning credits, a direct assault on middle class upward 
mobility. They want to make it much more expensive for young people to 
go to college and then to pay their loans back.
  They want to eliminate the medical expense deduction, which millions 
of families have used in order to take care of a loved one who has a 
serious long-term illness or is in long-term care. They just want to 
get rid of the medical expense deduction. You should read the letters 
and the emails that I am getting from families that are saying: ``This 
will bankrupt us.''
  Right now, under the medical expense deduction, if you are spending 
more than 10 percent of your income on medical expenses, you can start 
to deduct it. They want to get rid of that.
  Oh, guess who else that hits as collateral damage in the war against 
the middle class.
  Families with children with special needs. Right now, families with 
children with special needs can go to a private school and they can 
deduct the tuition and expenses of that education as part of the 
medical expense deduction.

  Well, the GOP wants to get rid of that, too, because I suppose life 
is just not hard enough on families in America who have kids with 
autism or kids with muscular dystrophy or kids who face any other 
manner of physical or neurological or mental or emotional problems.
  We should be on the side of the families who are struggling with 
special needs children. We should be on their side. We should be on the 
side of the State and local governments that are trying heroically to 
address it. Instead, this legislation will pull the rug out from 
beneath families with special needs.
  They want to impose dramatic new limits on the mortgage interest 
deduction, which, again, has been essential for the middle class to be 
able to partake of homeownership, which has been so much a part of 
building the middle class in our country.
  Now, because the public is rebelling against this terrible tax plan 
the way the public rebelled against their terrible ACA repeal plan, 
which would have stripped 30 million Americans of their healthcare--by 
the way, the Senate plan now has smuggled into it a provision which 
would go back to the discredited ACA repeal plan by trying to throw 
millions of people off of their healthcare by overturning the 
individual mandate.
  Well, the public has figured this out, and, here, in Washington, it 
is a race against the clock.
  Will the tidal wave of public opinion reach Washington in time to 
stop them from passing a special interest tax scam, which appeals only 
to the top 1 percent of the country? Or will they be able to get it 
through in time?
  But I appeal to my colleagues across the aisle, I beseech them, and I 
beg them to revisit the whole thing. This is not how we accomplish 
successful tax policy in the United States of America.
  We did it in 1986. The Democrats and Republicans came together to do 
it.
  You know how we did it?
  With more than 2\1/2\ years of hearings, discussions, policy debates, 
town hall meetings all over America. We invited the best ideas to come 
from all sides, and it passed overwhelmingly in the House of 
Representatives. It passed overwhelmingly in the U.S. Senate. The tax 
reform proposal, at the end, had been vetted and debated so much, 
everybody had contributed to it, it was so uncontroversial that it 
passed the House on a voice vote overwhelmingly, maybe unanimously. 
Nobody even asked for a rollcall vote. The Senate passed its version by 
a near unanimous vote of 97-3.
  You see, that is how you do real tax reform. You bring the parties 
together to do it. There were more than 250 witnesses who appeared in 
the House Ways and Means Committee, who appeared before the Senate 
Finance Committee. Sure, there were some knockdown, drag-out fights; 
sure, the Democrats and Republicans were fighting like cats and dogs, 
but we were committed to coming up with a consensus product that would 
work for America, and we did it.
  What we are seeing in Washington today is the exact opposite. The 
determination is to pass a completely partisan piece of legislation at 
all costs, with a very narrow majority running over the minority 
completely, and it is not going to work because America is a democracy. 
Taxation is the way that we support our government; the projects that 
we develop together. In taxation of all fields, we need to make sure 
that we are getting the best ideas from all sides. You can't ram it 
through and you can't crush the opposition.
  What we are going to end up with--if they do manage to power this 
through with every manner of a backroom deal and a sweetheart contract 
and special interest strings attached, if they do manage to get it 
through, what you are going to have is a plan that is going to bankrupt 
the middle class the way that Donald Trump bankrupted four or five 
businesses.
  The difference is that if you bankrupt a hotel, if you bankrupt a 
casino, if you bankrupt a corporation, well, there were laws that allow 
you to get back on your feet, and Donald Trump used them handsomely. He 
got back on his feet through the bankruptcy laws.
  But what happens if you bankrupt the middle class of America? What 
happens if you bankrupt the government of the United States?

[[Page H9566]]

  This is irresponsible. This is not responsible governance that is 
taking place, to be advancing a plan that a recent Secretary of the 
Treasury has called the worst tax plan ever ventured forth in the 
history of the United States of America.
  We asked the majority in the House and the Senate to pull the plug on 
this terrible assault on the middle class, pull the plug on the tax 
scam, and let's go back to the hearing rooms and let's have some real 
hearings, let's have experts come in and let's look at how to relieve 
the tax burden on hardworking middle class taxpayers, relieve the tax 
burden on families that have special needs children, relieve the tax 
burden on people struggling to go to college and graduate school.
  Why don't we try to bolster and strengthen the charitable sector and 
colleges and universities and schools across the land instead of trying 
to undermine them in order to occasion a dramatic shift of income in 
wealth up the ladder in the country?
  Let's get back to work together, because if you are able to muscle 
this plan through the House and the Senate using every trick in the 
book except for negotiation and compromise and cooperation, it will be 
a disaster for the American people.
  It will come back not only to haunt the political careers of people 
who assented to it and participated in it, but it will come back to 
haunt the entire country because the deficits and the debt will be out 
of control. We know that from every nonpartisan budget estimate and 
economist that has looked at it, every single one across the spectrum. 
Even the ones who are using the GOP's preferred method of dynamic 
scoring are saying it is going to be hell in terms of deficits and in 
terms of the debt.
  So we are going to end up having to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and 
Social Security. That is what they are going to target next.
  Whatever happened to the budget hawks? Are they an extinct species 
now? They are certainly an endangered species. Or have they just become 
budget ostriches?

                              {time}  1800

  They are hiding their heads in the sand while this highway robbery 
takes place in the Halls of Congress. Then they will come back next 
year, and they will say: Oh, look at these terrible deficits; we have 
got to cut Social Security; we have got to cut Medicare; we have got to 
cut Medicaid.
  Now, suddenly, we are reborn as budget hawks again. We are born-again 
budget hawks. We can expect that to happen.
  In the meantime, economic inequality in the country will continue to 
deepen and spread, and economic desperation will spread. We don't need 
to do this, Mr. Speaker, we do not need to do this. We are at a time of 
record corporate profits; record corporate prosperity. Wall Street has 
never been riding higher than it is now.
  Why do we need to cut corporate taxes from 35 to 20 percent? Why do 
we need to start exporting more jobs abroad by instituting this new 
territoriality principle for taxes? A very fancy name that they 
assigned to it, do you know what it means? It means that if a business 
person is going to set up a factory on Main Street America with 1,000 
jobs, they are going to pay full taxes on their business; but if they 
set it up in Hong Kong, or Singapore, or Mexico, or Switzerland, or the 
Cayman Islands, they are going to pay zero on it because it is not made 
in the United States. That is in this bill.
  Now, they say they are going to recapture some of the money if it 
gets really obscene, but why should we have that principle at all now? 
In fact, the law today is compromised enough. It says that if they 
relocate their businesses abroad, they don't pay taxes until the 
profits are repatriated--until the profits come back. Now, all of it is 
on paper. The companies haven't really moved anyplace. That is dubious 
enough as it is.
  They want to make the current system worse. They want to say that if 
you set up your business abroad, if you ship it overseas, either really 
or on paper--like to the Cayman Islands, or something like that--you 
escape taxation completely. Maybe we will be able to recapture a little 
bit of it later through some accounting tricks, but basically this is a 
massive invitation to corporate America to outsource jobs overseas--to 
ship our jobs overseas.
  Now, I know the President of the United States is not much of a 
policy wonk. I am not sure if they have apprised him of this provision 
yet.
  Mr. Speaker, I hope someone who is in touch with the President of the 
United States gets in touch with him and tells him that his campaign 
promise to put America first--promise to put American jobs first--and 
the tax plan that he is about to append his name to, if this actually 
happens, will be responsible for outsourcing and offshoring millions of 
American jobs, and profits, and taxes. That is built into this 
legislation, with a lot of other nasty surprises that surface every 
single day, as we try to figure out what is happening on this speeding 
train of the tax plan.
  This process has nothing to do with representative democracy; it has 
nothing to do with integrity in the work of the people's 
representatives.
  So, we ask our colleagues: Let's take a breather. The American people 
don't like what they see. They are rejecting it by more than 2 to 1 in 
all of the polls.
  I have spoken to my colleagues across the aisle, who are getting very 
nervous about their emails, and their letters, and their calls right 
now, just like they got very nervous about the ACA repeal--which seemed 
like a great idea, until they had a majority in Congress--and then they 
realized that they were going to throw millions of people to the 
streets.
  Now it is a question of whether or not you want to outsource and 
offshore millions of jobs, whether you want to drive a $1.5 trillion or 
$2 trillion hole in the American deficit and in our economy, and 
whether you want to, basically, loot the middle class for the purposes 
of a big payday on Wall Street, and among foreign investors from Hong 
Kong to Saudi Arabia?
  Well, that is the question. That is the choice that faces America 
this week, Mr. Speaker. That is what we are looking at. And who are we 
as a people? And do we have some sense--some semblance even--of 
community such that the GOP would want to try to get even 10 votes or 
15 votes from the Democrats? No. All of the Democrats are opposing it.
  Fortunately, 13 Republicans have crossed the aisle to say that they 
cannot stomach what they are seeing in this bill. We understand that 
there may be more coming this week, who are saying that they simply 
cannot tolerate what is taking place with this legislation.
  But, as always, Mr. Speaker, this is a democracy that we are aspiring 
to be, not a plutocracy, not a theocracy, not a family government, not 
a royal government, but a democracy, which means that we place all of 
our faith and hope in the people to speak up, to talk to their 
representatives, to get in touch with them, and to ask them to read the 
fine print, so that we are not voting for a tax scam, instead of a tax 
bill.
  All of the American people have a responsibility to get in touch with 
their legislators, Mr. Speaker, to ask: What is in the bill, and how is 
it going to affect us and the more than 80 million middle class 
families, who are going to end up seeing a tax hike over the next 
decade? And how is it going to affect people who take the State and 
local tax deduction and people who use the medical expense deduction 
for their families? And how is it going to affect people who have 
graduated from college and now are struggling to buy a house, or to get 
an apartment, or to move out of their parents' basement? And how is it 
going to affect them when the deduction for college student loan 
interest is abolished?
  We need to slow down. We need to examine the priorities and the 
values that are built into this bill and see whether they actually 
square with the values, the beliefs, the priorities of the American 
people, and the needs of the American people.
  We think this legislation is way off, Mr. Speaker. We ask the GOP 
majority to consider the unanimous opposition of the democratic block 
in Congress; we ask them to consider the public opinion polls, which 
show the American people rejecting the details of this bill by more 
than 2 to 1; and we ask

[[Page H9567]]

them to start over. Let's do it the way Congress did it back in 1986, 
when Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan got together, and the Democrats and 
Republicans talked about it, fought about it, and debated it. But they 
came up with a plan that, in the end, the vast majority of Congress and 
the vast majority of the people could support.

  Let's not walk the plank for the 1 percent here. We know that there 
are some tiny interests in America that want to see this pass. Let's 
not walk the plank in Congress for a bill that reflects the interests 
of only the tiniest group of people. Let's do the job imagined by that 
great Republican President, who served in this body, proudly, from 
Illinois, in the House of Representatives: Abraham Lincoln, who spoke 
of ``government of the people, by the people, for the people.'' That is 
the part of that great triad that we will be betraying if we pass this 
bill, because it is not for the people, it is for the 1 percent.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________