[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 207 (Tuesday, December 19, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8077-S8078]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         TAX CUTS AND JOBS BILL

  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, as I come to the floor today, the Senate 
is approaching one of our most important votes, really, in years. The 
tax relief legislation that we will be voting on will be, I believe, 
great for America, great for the American people, and it will do a lot 
for the future of our great country. It has been a long process. There 
has been a lot of discussion, and there has been years of preparation 
waiting for today's vote.
  The Finance Committee has held over 70 hearings on the subject over 
the last 6 years. When we were debating it on the floor, we had about 
285 amendments offered to this legislation. There have been a lot of 
changes over the past few weeks to include as many good ideas as 
possible. After all that, it is understandable that there may be some 
confusion about what the legislation does. I want to speak today about 
the various ways that this legislation is good for hard-working 
Americans, like the people in my home State of Wyoming.
  First, most people are going to pay lower tax rates. For a couple who 
makes between $19,000 and $77,000 a year, the rates are going to drop 
from 15 percent to 12 percent. So a family might see their tax bill 
drop by more than $1,000 just from this one part of the Republican tax 
relief plan alone.
  The second thing I want to point out is that this legislation roughly 
doubles the standard deduction. It goes up to $12,000 for a single 
person who files and then to $24,000 for a married couple. Well, that 
is double. People will not have to pay Federal income tax on all of 
that money--none of it at all. It is a standard deduction of $24,000 
for a family. So if we combine that with the lower rates--the lower 
rates and the higher deduction--it is even more money that people are 
going to be able to keep of their own money. Instead of having 
Washington spend it, they can spend it. They are not going to be 
sending it to Washington for someone else to spend it.
  Mr. President, you know as well as I do that people are much better 
deciders about how their money ought to be spent, and they get a better 
value for their money than when they send it to Washington for 
Washington to spend it, supposedly on their behalf. It is not only 
that. Their taxes might be a lot simpler to figure out come April 15. 
We have lower rates, a higher standard deduction, and now it is simpler 
to figure out on April 15.
  A lot of people are looking around trying to find deductions they can 
take and save a little money on their taxes. We have seen that for 
years--ways to find additional deductions. People save the receipts. 
Then they look at the receipts. They go through the box and find out 
what they spent, and how much they spent. They gather up their receipts 
and fill out extra forms.
  Under this tax relief plan, they can choose just to take this much 
higher standard deduction and not have to spend all that additional 
time looking through the shoe box of receipts trying to find something 
they may have spent. This is going to make tax filing a whole lot 
simpler for lots of Americans.
  How many people are going to benefit from this? Today about 70 
percent of people who fill out their tax form choose the standard 
deduction. Under this plan, which doubles the standard deduction, we 
expect that maybe even more than 9 out of 10 Americans are going to be 
able to use this simplified way of filling out the tax forms. They

[[Page S8078]]

are going to see that it is really a good deal for them personally, 
individually, for them and their families.
  Millions of people are going to save money and have an easier time 
filling out their tax form--their tax return--and they will save money. 
In the past, they had to pay somebody to prepare their taxes for them. 
They will not have to save the receipts and fill out the extra forms, 
and they will not have to worry that they are going to be audited by 
the IRS for trying to keep more of their hard-earned money. They will 
be able to keep more of their money and use their time doing something 
else that they actually enjoy doing instead of filling out forms and 
sending money to the Federal Government.
  That is another way Democrats are trying to confuse people. They want 
people to think tax relief is somehow taking away options. It is 
actually giving them more options. That is what we are seeing here. It 
is expanding the standard deduction that a lot of people already use, 
and many more people will be able to use it under the Republican plan.
  That brings me to another important point that I want to make about 
this tax reduction plan. We did work hard to keep a lot of the 
deductions that are important to some Americans. In some cases, we even 
made them better. For people who still come out ahead by itemizing 
their deductions--and there certainly will be some--there is another 
way that they can keep more of their money. People can still take a 
deduction if they donate to charity. People can still save money on 
their retirement savings through an IRA or a retirement plan at work.
  If someone has children, we actually double the tax credit they get 
to $2,000 per child. They don't even have to itemize their taxes to get 
that $2,000 per child tax credit. It is just a straight tax cut on top 
of the other cuts they get under this Republican plan. They still get 
to set up an account to save for their children's education, if they 
like.
  For people who have high medical expenses, this tax relief plan 
actually saves them more money on their taxes than the old way. 
Republicans understand that medical costs remain out of control in this 
country. There were a lot of policies that the Democrats and President 
Obama put in place that raised the cost of medical care for people all 
across the country. Republicans are working hard at getting rid of 
those policies and bringing down the cost of care across the country. 
Until we get that completely done, this tax relief plan makes it easier 
for people to deduct their higher medical costs.
  So today someone can get tax relief if their medical expenses are 
more than 10 percent of their income, under the old law. We drop that 
threshold to 7.5 percent so that more people will qualify. That gives 
people additional relief while we keep working on ways to reduce the 
cost of care.
  That brings me to another way that this tax relief legislation is 
going to save a lot of people money. The Republican plan effectively 
repeals--eliminates--the ObamaCare individual mandate tax. This was the 
outrageous tax penalty that made ObamaCare a mandatory program by 
sending the IRS after someone if they didn't have Washington-approved 
health insurance. You had to pay a tax. You had to pay a fine. People 
knew it was unpopular. It didn't matter to President Obama and the 
Democrats. They took it all the way to the Supreme Court to force 
people to pay a fine, a tax--to force them to buy ObamaCare health 
insurance, even though it wasn't right for them or their family and 
they couldn't afford it.
  It didn't matter to the Democrats or President Obama. Oh no, you have 
to buy it. The insurance is too expensive. If you can't buy it, if you 
can't afford it, tough, pay the tax.
  We are eliminating that tax completely. In my home State of Wyoming, 
over 16,000 people ended up hit with that fine, hit with that tax. Over 
$6 million was collected from the fine people in my State who couldn't 
afford ObamaCare insurance. On average, this ObamaCare mandate tax is 
about $700. The legislation says that tax will, in the future, be zero. 
It takes ObamaCare from being a mandatory program to turning it into a 
voluntary program. More than 6 million people paid that tax in the 
United States this past year. These people will now get a tax break. 
Under the Republicans, they will see this, and it will affect their 
lives and give them more money to spend.
  It doesn't take away anyone's insurance, as Democrats have claimed. 
It just says that nobody should have to pay an extra tax just because 
they decide that overpriced ObamaCare insurance isn't right for them.
  So those are just some of the ways this Republican tax plan 
legislation is good for Americans. It saves people money. It saves them 
time. It gives them more freedom. Together, it is about $1.5 trillion 
in tax savings over the next 10 years. It is money that families, small 
businesses, and large employers will not have to send to Washington. 
They can use the money any way they want.
  It is interesting. Last week Nancy Pelosi was talking about this 
Republican tax relief plan. She said:

       This is who they are. This is what they came here to do.

  She probably meant it as an insult, but she stumbled upon the real 
difference between Republicans and Democrats like herself. Republicans 
believe in cutting people's taxes and letting people keep more of their 
hard-earned money, because we believe hard-working Americans should be 
able to make the decisions about what money they save or they spend or 
they invest. It is their money. It is not the government's money, which 
is the way Nancy Pelosi looks at all of this in terms of ways she can 
then grow the government.
  Republicans look at this and say: How can we give people more 
freedom?
  That is what this legislation does. It is very simple.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.

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