[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 201 (Monday, December 11, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Page S7941]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Republican Tax Bill

  Finally, Madam President, a word on the President's tax plan--the 
Republican tax plan. For months, Republicans have promised that the 
$1.5 trillion tax plan would reduce the deficit through economic 
growth--never mind the multiple analyses that concluded the exact 
opposite.
  Just today, three new analyses of the Senate Republican tax bill came 
to the conclusion that the bill would not reduce the deficit but, 
rather, explode it, including a report by the Trump administration's 
own Treasury Department.
  The Tax Policy Center estimated that the tax plan would result in 
only $179 billion of growth, leaving a $1.4 trillion trail of red ink 
on the deficit and increasing our debt-to-GDP ratio by over 5 percent.
  Another analysis of the Senate Republican plan using the Penn Wharton 
model found that even with assumptions favorable to economic growth, 
the Senate tax bill will increase debt by over $1.5 trillion over the 
next decade.
  Amazingly, the Trump administration's Treasury Department released a 
one-page report estimating that the bill would pay for itself but only 
if you factor in rosy assumptions of growth that were included in the 
President's budget and are widely discredited by economists of all 
stripes. The President's budget request assumed the passage of 
entitlement reform and an infrastructure bill, both of which have not 
been proposed or written, let alone enacted. So even with this 
audacious use of fake math, the Treasury Department's analysis has to 
assume that the yet-to-be-proposed bills are passed in order to say 
that it doesn't add to the deficit.
  No amount of fake math can change the fact that the Republican tax 
bill will be a boon to the wealthiest Americans and largest 
corporations while increasing taxes for millions of middle-class 
families and leaving 13 million people without healthcare. As all three 
reports prove today, it will add over $1 trillion to the debt and 
deficit, starving our ability to invest in infrastructure, education, 
and scientific research, and endangering Social Security, Medicare, and 
Medicaid.
  Republicans still have time to turn back from this ugly, awful bill, 
which is widely disliked by the American people, and work with 
Democrats on real, bipartisan tax reform that actually lowers taxes for 
middle-class families and stimulates economic growth without adding a 
penny to the deficit.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. NELSON. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.