[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 200 (Thursday, December 7, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7911-S7914]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            TAX REFORM BILL

  Mrs. FISCHER. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about my support 
for the Senate tax reform bill and to encourage Congress to help 
American families.

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  Our economy and our workforce have changed over the last few decades, 
and our Tax Code must catch up. If we want to build a better future for 
our children, we must tackle problems for families juggling 
responsibilities between their homes and their workplaces.
  We have a chance to make history. The Senate-passed bill included my 
Strong Families Act, which would be the first nationwide paid family 
leave policy passed by this body. This proposal has the potential to 
make life easier for working families across our country by providing a 
tax credit as large as 25 percent for employers who offer up to 12 
weeks of paid family leave. Employees would be able to take this time 
without needing to choose between potentially falling behind on their 
bills or spending time caring for their loved ones. Caring for families 
today does not just mean taking care of children. My proposal helps to 
ease burdens on family caregivers taking care of aging parents as well.

  The Senate Special Committee on Aging recently released a report 
focused on America's aging workforce and the opportunities and 
challenges associated with it. One of its findings is that a growing 
group of aging workers are also caregivers. In fact, one out of every 
four employees over the age of 50 serves as a family caregiver.
  Some employers are implementing strategies to support them, but I 
believe that this credit will go a long way in encouraging additional 
employers to take proactive steps to help these workers. This proposal 
also gives businesses the flexibility to set up these plans in ways 
that make sense for their companies and does so without mandates that 
some simply cannot afford.
  I also want to take this opportunity to briefly address some of the 
criticisms of my proposal. It has been said that a provision in this 
bill was designed to punish States and localities that have laws 
mandating paid leave already in place. If employers in States and 
localities that already require some paid leave go beyond what is 
mandated at the local level, they will be able to take advantage of 
this credit.
  We designed this credit to be targeted toward lower and middle-income 
workers who do not currently have access to paid family leave. We want 
to expand that access.
  Moreover, I was happy to see an addition that was included in the 
Senate tax bill regarding State and local taxes. Most Nebraskans will 
tell you that our property taxes are too high. I agree. I supported the 
proposal to allow for a State and local property tax deduction of up to 
$10,000 on Federal taxes.
  As this bill moves toward a conference committee, I urge our 
conferees to keep this proposal and my Strong Families Act in the final 
bill. These provisions would help our families and they would help 
America's middle class.
  Thank you.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, we are in the middle of a very 
protracted conversation about tax reform. This conversation started in 
January. I have heard people say that it has been rushed through at the 
end. We started in January, and we are starting month 12 of this 
process: hearings in the House; hearings in the Senate; different 
drafts coming out, shot down, starting over again, and coming back and 
forth. Now we are starting our 12th month of going through this 
process.
  As we get close to the end, I want to outline a few things we are 
actually working on to be able to send back to this body and the 
American people--what is actually happening here. The focus of this 
from the beginning--from the very start--was two simple things: How can 
we reduce the rates for individuals so they can keep more of their own 
money and spend their own money, which stimulates the economy? The 
second aspect was this: How can we simplify the system? There is a lot 
of back and forth on the final details of it, but those two things are 
very clear.
  This dramatically simplifies the tax structure that we have, and it 
reduces rates for people, so that people have more of their own money 
to be able to spend, and businesses have more of their own money to be 
able to invest in their businesses, to be able to pay their workers 
more, to be able to buy more equipment, and to be able to expand their 
businesses. That helps everybody in the economy. Whether you save your 
money or whether you spend your money, you are able to keep your own 
money.
  So here is what this means for hard-working Americans and, in 
particular, in my State, for hardworking Oklahomans. Every bracket gets 
a tax deduction. In fact, as the Tax Foundation studied the Senate 
plan, going State by State, it looked at the middle-income family in 
Oklahoma, and the Tax Foundation stated that the middle-income family 
will have an increase in its take-home pay of $2,200 over the next 
year. People will see it in their own paycheck from what is not being 
withheld anymore, because they are able to keep more of their own 
money.
  The Senate plan doubles the standard deduction. For a single working 
adult, the first $12,000 of their money is not taxed at all. For a 
married couple, $24,000 of their income is not taxed at all. We also 
double the Child Tax Credit to $2,000, directly, to be able to protect 
the people who need the help the most.
  What does that look like for us?
  Take an Oklahoma family of four. That typical family of four in my 
State, with all incomes put together and with two working parents, 
makes about $73,000, combining all of their incomes together. That 
family of four, with $73,000 of total income for the family, will see a 
cut in their tax bill of $2,200 next year. Typically, they pay about 
$3,600 in Federal taxes. Next year, they pay $1,500 in Federal taxes. 
It is a pretty dramatic shift for them.
  Let's take a teacher in Oklahoma who has been teaching for a couple 
of years--a single mom, a couple of kids, with $41,000 in total income 
and trying to make ends meet. That single mom with a couple of kids 
will see a tax reduction of $1,400. That is incredibly significant in 
just her day-to-day life. I can assure you that every Oklahoman would 
be glad to see an extra $100 or $150 in their paycheck every single 
month. That buys a lot of groceries, and it sure does help.
  This is a process that really does affect real people, and it has 
been lost in the conversations. It has been interesting to hear the 
debate and all the noise on it.
  I am hearing things I am calling tax myths of this bill. The most 
common one is that it is actually going to increase taxes on those in 
poverty. So for people who are saying that this is going to increase 
taxes for those individuals, it does not. It actually does exactly the 
opposite--not only by reducing rates but by increasing the standard 
deduction, by increasing the child tax credit. It helps people that 
need help the most.
  I have also heard individuals in the media saying: This is going to 
hurt people because the individual mandate--something unrelated to tax 
policy entirely--has been snuck into the tax bill. The individual 
mandate of the Affordable Care Act is a tax policy that was actually 
added to a healthcare bill.
  So this is a tax bill dealing with the tax aspects that were snuck 
into the original Obama healthcare bill. How does that work? The 
individual mandate says: If you don't buy the insurance approved by the 
folks in Washington, DC, then, you get an extra tax on you.
  Where does that tax go? In Oklahoma, 81 percent of the people who pay 
that extra tax make $50,000 or less. That extra ObamaCare tax--that 
penalty that was put on there--was targeted directly at the middle 
class, and the middle class in Oklahoma pays that fine. Eighty-one 
percent of the fine that is paid is paid by people making $50,000 or 
less, in my State. We want to see that tax rate go down for those 
individuals, and we want to allow people to have a choice. That is a 
significant change for those individuals, who not only are trying to 
make ends meet, but they don't want to see one more tax laid on top of 
them.
  Here is another myth I have heard. The tax cuts for the individuals 
aren't

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permanent. May I remind everyone that the tax changes for the 
individuals made by the Bush administration had the exact same effect. 
They had a 10-year life span. As we went out to the end of that 10-year 
life span, they were then renewed. This is the same type of experience, 
where this individual tax is put in place, and a future Congress will 
go back and evaluate: Are all of these tax rates correct? Is this the 
right formula that should be in place? And they will be able to 
evaluate them at that time--just like we did in 2011, when those tax 
rates were made permanent--look at them again, give them that future 
window, and evaluate: Is this the right direction?
  There has been an interesting one I have heard several times by 
people saying this will hurt teachers and it will hurt schools. I even 
heard someone this past weekend specifically say: The Senate bill takes 
away classroom expenses from teachers. The ironic part about that is 
that the Senate bill actually doubles the deductibility for teachers 
and classroom expenses. The lie out there is that the Senate bill takes 
it away. The truth, if you read the bill, is that it actually doubles 
it so that teachers have twice as much that they can deduct.
  Teachers make a limited salary already. The last thing we need to do 
is to hurt teachers as they are trying to take care of the kids in 
their own classes. So this doubles the deductibility for teachers for 
classroom expenses.
  It also puts in place an extension of the 529. Many parents set aside 
a little bit of money every month to go toward their child's college 
education. This would allow that to also be used for education, if they 
choose to have those expenses, in kindergarten through 12th grade, as 
well as college. It increases that opportunity.
  The House bill did have a portion in their bill about student loan 
interest and tuition waiver for graduate students. The Senate actually 
does not have those two areas, protecting graduate students in their 
tuition waiver expenses. I think that is important.
  There has also been a great myth out there that Republicans are 
cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid with this bill. Can I 
tell you, there is nothing in this bill about Social Security, 
Medicare, and Medicaid. We are not trying to damage or change any of 
those programs. In fact, it was in one of the hearings just last month 
where JCT, or the Joint Committee on Taxation, was asked that question 
directly, and they affirmed that there is nothing in this bill that is 
trying to change those policies. That is just a myth that is sitting 
out there.
  What we need is a healthy, growing economy. Our economy has been flat 
for the last 8 years, growing at around 2 percent. Historically, the 
U.S. economy since World War II has grown at about 3 percent. That 
little 1 percentage point change may not seem like a big deal, but that 
is a lot of jobs across the country. It is increased wages across the 
country, and it is increased opportunity.
  I feel sorry for college graduates who graduated in the past several 
years because they are trying to land a job in this economy and finding 
out how difficult it is to get a job. They wonder: Has it always been 
like that? It has not. Go back just a decade or two decades ago, and 
people were graduating out of college and landing into great jobs 
because the economy was growing faster.
  If we don't do something to get this economy growing faster again, we 
will continue to have limited opportunities for all Americans, and 
people's paychecks will continue to be flat yet another decade. This is 
a way to nudge the economy, to say: Let's get it going again.
  Quite frankly, my Democratic colleagues 8 years ago passed a $1 
trillion stimulus package and said that is what would nudge the 
economy, but the economy didn't budge at all. This is an opportunity to 
come back and say: Let's actually do this right, not having the 
government spend your money but allowing you to keep more of your money 
and allowing the free market--just from people spending, buying, and 
saving--to lift the economy. That lift makes a tremendous difference.
  One last interesting conversation. There have been a lot of folks who 
talked about deficit or debt effects in this bill, that this bill could 
be up to $1 trillion in addition to the deficit. This is typical 
Washington speak and the challenge of serving here in Washington.
  There are 130 economists that looked at this. All turned in reports. 
Everybody has a different outlook. Economists study hard, they look at 
the numbers, and they run their models, but everyone is guessing, and I 
get that. They are educated guesses, but they are all guesses. It is 
the responsibility of us here, in this Chamber, to look at the models, 
to look at the study, and to determine: Does this work?
  For instance, JCT in their study said there will be about a half 
trillion in deficit because of this bill. But what they didn't take 
into account, when you look at their actual numbers, is any real 
increase in international funding--any increase in our American 
businesses that do business here in America and across the ocean. That 
is not really taken into account in theirs.
  They also don't look at tremendous swaths of our economy because they 
don't have that in their model. But the JCT estimates that we will have 
half a trillion dollars in deficit spending. As I mentioned before, 
over the last 10 years, our economy is stuck at less than 2 percent GDP 
growth. In the context of the Senate bill, current policy assumes that 
tax extenders expire, meaning we start with a $500 billion headwind. 
Our tax bill should not have to cover the effects of current policy 
extensions. The $1 trillion gap that is left equates to around 0.4 
percent increase in GDP over the 10-year budget window. CBO's current 
GDP baseline is 1.9 over 10, and given the pro-growth policies in our 
bill, we should fully expect to a .4 percent boost, getting us to 2.3 
percent, which closes the deficit gap, and brings future growth much 
more in line with where we should be historically.
  Moreover, by JCT's own admission, eight one-hundredths of a percent 
could yield $500 billion in dynamic economic growth. So using those 
numbers, sixteen one-hundredths in boosted GDP should provide the 
sufficient revenue to cover any shortfall.
  The focus of this is that, when you look at the studies and you ask 
the questions, they all have very conservative estimates--as they 
should, as economists. But if our economy even goes up to maybe 2.5 
percent--so a half percentage point, which is typical for us--we are 
far in the black.
  I understand that it is always a risk. My Democratic colleagues took 
a risk 8 years ago when they spent almost $1 trillion in the stimulus 
package, saying: I hope this works. And it did not.
  I understand it is a risk, but I think it is an appropriate risk, to 
be able to say: Let's allow Americans to keep more of their own money 
to invest in this economy on the risk that we grow the economy by 0.2 
percent more to be able to break even. I think the American economy can 
grow much faster than that. She has for decades, up until the last 
decade. Let's get us back to our old normal and allow that to be our 
new normal.
  There are a lot of questions on the tax policy, rightfully so. It is 
important to all of us. Let's get it right, but let's keep moving. Over 
the next couple of weeks, this body, along with Members of the House, 
will do a conference committee. It is a back-and-forth about how we 
resolve the differences between the House bill and the Senate bill. 
When that is done, it will have to pass the House, pass the Senate, and 
go to the President's desk.
  In the days ahead, Americans will see the changes in their own 
paycheck as they see the rates go down and are able to keep more of 
their own money. The rates of the median family are set to go down by 
60 percent in this bill. It will be a tremendous benefit to them. I 
think that opportunity is one we shouldn't miss.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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