[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 197 (Monday, December 4, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7810-S7811]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Republican Tax Plan

  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, in the early hours of Saturday morning, 
under the cover of darkness, the Republican majority rushed through one 
of the worst, most hastily considered pieces of major legislation I 
have seen in my time in the Senate.
  The bill will cause one of the greatest transfers of wealth to 
corporate America and the already wealthy, while working America picks 
up the tab. Millions of middle-class families will pay higher taxes 
under the Republican plan in only a few short years. Because the bill 
is unpaid for, the deficit will skyrocket, cannibalizing resources for 
education, scientific research, infrastructure, and our military, 
endangering Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

[[Page S7811]]

As I said last week, I have not seen a more regressive piece of 
legislation so devoid of a rationale, so ill suited for the condition 
of the country, so removed from the reality of what the American people 
need.
  The text of the bill itself was released in the early evening, only 
several hours before a final vote took place. Lobbyists had a chance to 
read and change the bill before Members of the U.S. Senate. When we 
received the bill, there were sections of text handwritten in the 
margins concerning some of the most complex tax provisions. The Joint 
Committee on Taxation was not even able to produce an analysis of the 
bill until after the final vote took place at around 2 or 3 in the 
morning.
  Amid such haste, the Republican majority likely made drafting errors 
and inclusions that will have unintended consequences, even severe 
ones. Amid such secrecy, such cloak-and-dagger legislating, the 
majority slipped in several additional goodies for big corporations and 
the very wealthy that are already being uncovered. I am sure even more 
will come to light in the coming days.

  The appalling process we all witnessed led Bloomberg News--a middle-
of-the-road, business-oriented publication--to write the following in 
an editorial today:

       In their rush to pass something, anything, that they can 
     call ``tax reform,'' congressional Republicans have achieved 
     the impossible: They have made an awful plan even worse. The 
     end result is sheer absurdity: a reform that actually 
     complicates the tax code further, and that must contradict 
     itself and partially self-destruct to attain some semblance 
     of the fiscal discipline Republicans claim to value. It's 
     hard to imagine a more egregious waste of time and energy, or 
     a worse outcome for taxpayers and the broader economy.

  That is Bloomberg News, not some leftwing publication. It is a 
business publication. If they can say that, imagine what average 
Americans are saying. What a condemnation from a publication that would 
be inclined to favor tax reform. In short, my Republican friends ought 
to be ashamed of the process and the product that emerged from the 
Senate last week.
  As the two Houses of Congress prepare to go to conference, I suggest 
that my Republican colleagues reconsider their efforts and think again 
on how much better of a product we could produce through a bipartisan, 
open, and transparent process. Regardless, with so much left to do 
before the end of the year, the Republicans should not be devoting 
their energies toward the conference on tax reform because this bill, 
in both the House and Senate, needs dramatic repair.