[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 198 (Tuesday, December 5, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7830-S7832]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            Tax Reform Bill

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, we know last Friday night, into the wee 
hours of Saturday morning, this body did something remarkable, 
something people said would never happen. We actually got some very 
important work done and passed a very important piece of legislation--
the first overhaul of our Nation's Tax Code in over 30 years.
  People said it couldn't be done. It is too hard. With Democrats 
opposing us at every step on the committee and on the floor, people 
said there were just too many obstacles in our way, and it was 
impossible to accomplish. People said there were too many special 
interests down on K Street that would make it impossible for us to 
figure out this Rubik's Cube of a tax code, there were too many moving 
pieces in this giant tome of our tax law. People warned us, if we did 
this, we would take political flak from all sides.
  Well, to the cynics and skeptics and doubters, I will say: You were 
wrong. We did get it done. Families and job creators woke up the next 
day after the final vote feeling a little bit more confident about our 
Nation's fiscal future. Now that the bill has passed the Senate, they 
will be less weighed down by the yoke of government. They can breathe a 
little sigh of relief knowing we are doing our job. We are doing what 
we said we would do when they gave us control of the government.
  Of course, it took no time for our major victory to be mocked, 
denigrated, or simply misrepresented. Sometimes the false rumor 
spreading was done deliberately by our friends on the other side of the 
aisle, which is ironic because Democrats used to support many aspects 
of this plan, such as lowering taxes for the middle class and 
eliminating incentives for corporations to ship jobs overseas. I guess 
we must conclude that they were happy with the status quo, a slow-
growing economy, stagnant wages, jobs being shipped overseas because of 
our self-destructive Tax Code. I guess we would have to conclude they 
thought that was a good thing. Well, they know it was not a good thing, 
but they just couldn't stand the possibility that we were going to be 
able to make this major accomplishment on behalf of the American 
people. Because they were so mired down in the politics of the day, 
they lost sight of the forest for the trees.
  We all know it is easier to criticize than to contribute, such as 
when many on the other side feigned outrage about small tweaks that 
needed to be made to the bill. It is interesting. Back in 2010, there 
was an amendment called the Durbin amendment No. 3989 where, during the 
course of the debate, it was necessary to make some changes in the bill 
by handwriting those changes in the bill text. No one thought that was 
an outrage. Everyone understood this is sometimes what happens when you 
are making last-minute changes to legislation. Yet our Democratic 
colleagues acted like this was the first time this had ever been done, 
and 46 Senate Democrats voted for Senator Durbin's amendment, which 
included these handwritten changes in the text.
  Don't forget the tax bill was passed last week through regular order. 
``Regular order'' is part of the jargon we use around here, but it 
means the normal legislative process. Unlike the Affordable Care Act 
that was written in Majority Leader Harry Reid's office and brought to 
the Senate floor without going through the Senate Finance Committee. 
Unlike that process, this tax bill originated in the Senate Finance 
Committee, was the product of multiyear studies, working groups, white 
papers, a lot of proposals like the Camp draft, for example, that 
helped inform our debate.
  From the bill that had been introduced by the ranking member, Senator 
Wyden, along with Senator Coats, we were able to glean some of the best 
elements of all of those prior efforts. Using regular order, giving 
Democrats and Republicans a chance to contribute to the legislation in 
the Finance Committee and on the Senate floor, we gave Democrats and 
Republicans a chance to offer amendments and to get votes on those 
amendments. That is what we mean by regular order, and that is what our 
friend from Arizona, the senior Senator from Arizona, Mr. McCain, 
rightly called for earlier this fall.
  There were hearings after hearings. Democrats went to them. Democrats 
had their opportunities to offer amendments during the committee markup 
and to offer amendments on the floor. So one simply cannot say, 
honestly or truthfully, as many Democrats have, that the bill was 
negotiated in darkness, behind their backs, without their 
participation. It simply is a false claim, it is not true, and the 
facts show that.
  It is not just our Democratic colleagues who have fueled 
misperceptions about the tax bill we passed late last Friday night, 
early Saturday morning. There was a big stir raised with the scoring 
done by the Joint Committee on Taxation. Some of the critics of the tax 
bill have latched onto the Joint Taxation report, finding that the bill 
would increase the economy by 0.8 percent over 10 years, not enough for 
the cuts to pay for themselves, thus adding to the national deficit. 
That was the claim.
  I take concerns about fiscal responsibility very seriously, but we 
have to acknowledge that economic modeling is notoriously difficult and 
can be done in a number of different ways. Each of these models has its 
strengths and weaknesses, each provides a range of estimates, and none 
is perfect. We have not yet been given the gift of perfect knowledge of 
the future. In the case of the Joint Committee on Taxation, the 
estimate was that the tax bill would generate enough growth to offset 
its pricetag from $1.4 trillion to about $1 trillion--a net $400 
billion feedback effect. This is pretty interesting listening to our 
colleagues across the aisle. They make the audacious claim that tax 
cuts generate no economic growth--none. So when the original Budget 
Committee budget came out, giving the tax writers $1.5 trillion of 
deficit spending on a static basis, they claimed that would result in a 
$1.5 trillion deficit. Well, the Joint Committee on Taxation concluded 
that was not true. In fact, tax cuts can have a stimulative effect on 
the economy. Incentives can change human behavior, but it is 
notoriously difficult to estimate with any precision.
  In any giant complex system like the American economy, the effect of 
changes is not easy to predict, but even small changes can produce 
large, far-reaching benefits. In our case, that means changes in our 
Tax Code can fuel major economic growth, which ought to be our 
collective goal.
  Why should we have to settle for anemic economic growth? Why should 
we have to settle for flat wages? Why should we have to settle for jobs 
being created overseas because our Tax Code incentivizes that rather 
than incentivizing investment and job creation in the United States?
  Well, the fact is, we don't have to settle for that, and we haven't. 
This tax bill represents our best effort to try to make sure our 
economy does grow, that wages do go up, and that jobs do come home to 
the United States because businesses are incentivized to bring that 
money back home and invest it in jobs and wages back here.
  I am optimistic that with the reforms we have enacted, the economy 
could grow by as much as 3 percent, as the Heritage Foundation and the 
Tax Foundation have said. The President's Council of Economic Advisers 
and influential economists agree. I am aware of the old saying that if 
we were to stretch all the economists in the world end to end, we would 
never reach a conclusion. They call it the dismal science for a reason. 
It is not rocket science; it is modeling that tries to predict the 
future, which is notoriously difficult to do. In fact, you can't do it, 
but we try to come up with the best guesstimate we can.
  I think it is wrong to just look at the Tax Code when you are looking 
at our economic future. Coupled with the regulatory relief we have seen 
under the new administration, along with the Congressional Review Act 
where we repealed back some of the onerous regulations on the economy, 
and with consumer confidence at a 16-year high, I think we all have the 
sense that America is coming back as a leading economic engine in the 
world, and we need to do that because we need to lead the way for the 
world economy. We need to make sure that the standard of living

[[Page S7831]]

in America continues to be something that we can achieve--a better 
standard of living for our children and grandchildren than the one we 
ourselves have enjoyed. That is the legacy we have inherited from our 
parents and grandparents.

  Yes, we are in a dangerous world. The former Director of National 
Intelligence, James Clapper, said that in his 50 years in the 
intelligence community, he had never seen a more diverse array of 
threats than he did today. We can't ignore that, which means that we 
have to use some of that prosperity for our common defense. That is 
another important thing we are going to have to do before the end of 
this year; that is, to agree on a top-line spending number for national 
defense spending, because we have been trying to cash the peace 
dividend, again, when there is no peace or at least peace is threatened 
in places around the world, whether it is in the South China Sea, 
Syria, North Korea, or in Europe, with Russia on the march threatening 
NATO and our European allies. We need a strong economy so the standard 
of living can go up, wages can increase, and so we can do the things 
that we know we need to do as a country.
  Now, I realize that these positive analyses by groups like the 
Heritage Foundation, the Tax Foundation, and the President's Council of 
Economic Advisers don't entirely pacify some of the deficit hawks. I 
count myself among them. We worry about whether tax reform will add to 
our debt through cuts in decreased revenue. But even based on 
conservative estimates, this tax reform could result in $130 billion in 
new revenue--revenue we would not otherwise have.
  Here is the problem. Here is the elephant in the room that people 
simply choose to ignore or have given up on: Revenue isn't our biggest 
problem. It is our spending addiction. It is the 70 percent of Federal 
spending that is on autopilot, going up on average about 5.5 percent 
per year. Now, we have tried to do what we could through the Budget 
Control Act in 2011 and put a cap on discretionary spending, including 
defense spending. That has been relatively flat since 2011, but all the 
while, entitlement spending has gone up because we don't have the 
political courage to deal with it. The deficit can't be eliminated with 
tax increases. We can't tax America's producers enough to fill the 
hole. We have to address mandatory spending, which keeps growing year 
after year after year. It nearly doubled during the Obama 
administration, during which time our friends across the aisle never 
really said much about deficits and debt. But it is real. We ought to 
go to the root cause of it and not claim that it is making tax cuts to 
help make our economy more vibrant and improve the quality of life for 
more Americans.
  Putting aside the macroeconomic concerns over the tax bill for a 
moment, it is easy to see how, on a more personal level, families and 
workers will benefit. Sometimes in accounts about tax reform, this more 
human focus is simply left out and that is a mistake.
  For example, in our bill, rates are reduced for everybody. Every tax 
bracket sees a reduction in their tax rate. The standard deduction for 
families is doubled. So if you are a married couple filing a joint 
return, for the first $24,000 you earn, there is zero tax--zero. Then 
we double the child tax credit. I think that is something we should do 
because we need to help those families that have children to make sure 
that their families prosper, and the child tax credit is one way we can 
do that.
  The ObamaCare mandate to buy government-approved insurance, which is 
just a tax on low- and middle-income Americans, is repealed, and I 
think that is another form of tax relief. There are 6.7 million 
Americans who had to pay a penalty to their own government because they 
couldn't afford to buy the government-mandated insurance because of the 
way that program was structured. Well, we eliminate that entirely. So, 
hopefully, those families can then use their own resources to buy 
insurance policies that meet their needs rather than what the 
government mandates.
  We also soften the blow of the death tax, something I will continue 
to work to completely eliminate because I think it is simply a moral 
issue. Why should we tax income when earned and, then, when families 
want to pass it on to their children--whether it is the family farm, 
ranch, or a small business--we tax them again and make that sometimes 
impossible to do? Usually, if you want to reduce something, you tax it 
and that doesn't apply to the death tax because death will come no 
matter what. But it is immoral, I believe--double taxation. That is no 
reason for Washington to prevent families from passing on the fruit of 
their labor to their loved ones.
  The likely result of all of these changes will be that wages will 
increase by as much as $4,000 for the average family. That is the 
estimate of the Council of Economic Advisers. Think about that--if we 
can get the economy growing faster than the 1.9 percent anemic growth 
of the Obama years. Just think about that. The economy has grown on 
average at 3.2 percent since World War II. Yet we are being asked to 
settle for the new normal of the Obama years when the economy grew at 2 
percent or less. So if we can get the economy growing faster, we will 
see wages improve and we will see family income improve. If we can cut 
their tax burden and relieve them of onerous things like the poverty 
tax, known as the Obama individual mandate tax, families will be better 
off.

  A median family of four will see their tax burden cut by $2,200. Now, 
I know that in Washington, DC, when we talk about millions and billions 
and trillions of dollars, $2,200 doesn't seem like a lot of money, but 
for many families struggling to meet their obligations paycheck after 
paycheck, $2,200 can make a big difference. It can help them pay off 
their mortgage or pay college tuition for their children or replace a 
water heater or get their car fixed or finally take a long-delayed 
family vacation.
  Now, the last heedless claim I have heard about our tax bill is that 
it mainly benefits corporations at the expense of normal, hard-working 
men and women. Once again, this is a false claim. Some portion of our 
high corporate tax rates are always borne by labor--by American 
workers, in other words. Our friends across the aisle and the critics 
sometimes claim that if you do something for a business, whether it is 
a passthrough business or a corporation, it has no effect on the people 
who work for it. Well, that is just demonstrably wrong, because the 
better off those businesses are, the more people they can hire, the 
better the wages are that they can pay, and those help hard-working 
American families.
  So higher business taxes mean fewer jobs and smaller paychecks, and 
it means that we are less competitive in a global economy. That is why 
businesses are moving their headquarters overseas to low-tax countries 
like Ireland or the United Kingdom. This situation will change under 
our new bill.
  In a recent survey of corporate chief executive officers, 82 percent 
said they would increase capital spending if our bill passed and 76 
percent said they would increase hiring. So, yes, it is true that 
business will benefit, but we want them to because the end result will 
be less tax dodging and more jobs coming back home and, as I mentioned 
earlier, apart from businesses, families and individuals benefit too.
  What is so bizarre about the debate is that this is a concept that 
former President Obama championed; that the Democratic leader, Senator 
Schumer, has championed; and that the ranking member of the Senate 
Finance Committee, Senator Wyden, has championed--lower corporate 
taxes--because they realize this is a self-inflicted wound because it 
forces businesses overseas and prevents them from bringing their income 
back and investing it in the United States in jobs and wages. My 
question to them is this: Have you forgotten? Well, I don't think they 
have forgotten.
  Throughout the tax reform process, Members of this Republican 
Conference on this side of the aisle worked together, and I am grateful 
for the contribution that each and every one of them made. With the 
strong headwinds from our opponents on the other side of the aisle who 
wanted failure, presumably because they liked the status quo rather 
than success, we knew this was going to be difficult, and it was. We 
got it done, but we are not finished yet.
  As we head into a conference with the House of Representatives, the 
focus has to be on how we can maintain support here in the Senate. I 
hope our

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friends across the Capitol understand that the Senate bill was a very 
fragile compromise and that one or two--well, two or more--Senators who 
would not support that bill could jeopardize the House-Senate 
conference. So we have to be very careful. We have to continue to 
communicate and work together with each other, and we can't undermine 
our own victory. It is not just our victory. It is a victory for 
American families and for our country and for our standing in the 
world. So when we begin our conversations with the House, let's take 
care to work closely together and continue to communicate. Let's prove 
that passing tax reform wasn't just a dream or an aberration. It was 
real. Now with the ball on the 5-yard line, we just have to punch this 
into the end zone.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. FLAKE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.