[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 198 (Tuesday, December 5, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7828-S7829]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          REPUBLICAN TAX BILL

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, even as my Republican friends move to 
reconcile their two tax bills in a conference committee, their problems 
are far from over.
  At the heart of their bill is a toxically unpopular idea--giant tax 
breaks on big corporations and the very wealthy, paid for by cutting 
care and raising taxes on millions of middle-class families. The new 
Republican Party is the party of tax hikes on the middle class to 
subsidize corporate welfare. That menacing idea at the core of its bill 
is a problem that, like Hydra, spouts many heads.
  Slashing the State and local deduction remains a massive problem for 
House Republicans from suburban districts like Virginia, New York, 
Illinois, Washington, and, of course, California. Multiple analyses 
have shown that, despite the so-called compromise that allows families 
to deduct up to $10,000 in property taxes, the pain inflicted on 
suburban families will not be much mitigated. States like California 
and

[[Page S7829]]

New York will still experience an exodus of taxpayers, which will drain 
local resources and impact services. For those House Republicans, 
voting for the conference report is a poisonous vote, substantively and 
politically, not to mention that home values will fall in those 
districts of those House Republicans. If they are voting to decrease 
home values by 10 or 8 percent for every homeowner in their districts, 
that is political suicide. Why would they do it? That is what will 
happen, and the homeowners will start seeing that right away.
  Another problem: The last-minute inclusion of a corporate AMT has 
Republicans and corporate leaders scrambling to figure out if it will 
have the unintended consequence of functionally eliminating the value 
of the R&D tax credit. Remember, the corporate AMT was added at the 
last minute because Republicans needed more revenue to offset a 
generous rate on passthroughs.
  That is what Republicans were working on in the waning hours of last 
week, not trying to figure out how we could help middle-class families 
with kids in college, with kids who have serious medical expenses, and 
not reducing the impact that it would have on our deficit. Oh, no. They 
were busy figuring out how to make tax cuts for the wealthy even more 
generous as 70 percent of our passthrough income already flows to the 
top 1 percent, not the top 20 percent, not the top 10 percent--the top 
1 percent. There is 70 percent of passthrough income that goes to the 
top 1 percent of earners. The Republican tax bill already slashed the 
rate on passthroughs, but several Republican Senators withheld their 
votes until that loophole was widened further.
  I understand that they wanted to help smaller businesses, but take 
the time and figure out how to help the small businesses without 
helping the hedge funds, corporate law firms, the big lobbying firms, 
and other wealthy individuals. Take the time to figure it out--but no. 
In the rush to get a crumb for small business owners, they are giving a 
whole, big, nice chocolate layer cake to the wealthy. It is wrong, very 
wrong.
  The inclusion of the corporate AMT is another reminder that 
Republicans cannot have it both ways. You cannot cut every conceivable 
tax on big corporations and the wealthy without blowing up the deficit. 
If Republicans are forced to go back and look at the corporate AMT, 
they will have to find revenue elsewhere. Will they slightly lessen 
another corporate tax break or will they ask working Americans to pay 
more, which they have done in previous iterations on this bill?
  Yesterday, we learned the Republican leadership circulated talking 
points that questioned the legitimacy of the Joint Committee on 
Taxation--the nonpartisan, independent scorekeepers of tax legislation. 
Rather than confront the awful truth that their bill will not pay for 
itself as it, instead, costs about $1 trillion even with dynamic growth 
estimates, the Republican leadership asked its Members to shoot the 
messenger. The JCT, which is widely respected and always accepted by 
both parties, is, all of a sudden, a pariah in Republican circles 
because it told the truth--that this bill would not cause the growth 
they projected, that this bill will increase the deficit far more than 
the Republicans had hoped.
  The Republican leadership tried to discredit the nonpartisan umpire 
it had long praised and had appointed. What a disgrace. It brings up 
that what has happened in the last week or two here has been one of the 
most disgraceful episodes in the history of the Senate--a major bill 
done behind closed doors, rushed through. Then, adding insult to 
injury, the truthtellers--the independent, appointed-by-Republican 
monitors--were discredited because our Republican colleagues didn't 
like hearing the answer.
  There is still time to avert this awful bill. If my Republican 
friends vote no on the conference bill, we can do a bipartisan tax 
reform bill. We can pursue a much better process and get a much better 
product and go so far as to heal a Senate that has been wounded by 
partisanship and strife, greatly aggravated by the majority's actions 
on this tax bill.

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