[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 209 (Thursday, December 21, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8239-S8240]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TAX REFORM BILL
Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am standing here tonight to talk about
a couple of things, and first is the tax legislation that was passed
this week in Congress. This is going to help everybody I represent
because it is going to help our entire country. It is going to lift up
our country in ways we are already beginning to see.
There have been a lot of people to thank, and today I was at the
signing ceremony where Speaker Ryan and President pro tempore Orrin
Hatch signed the official legislation that is now on its way to the
President for his signature. I start by thanking them--Speaker Ryan,
Chairman Hatch, and also Chairman Brady of the Ways and Means
Committee, with whom I worked closely on this. He was a gentleman. He
was, as always, someone who was looking for ways to solve problems and
to get to yes, and I commend him for that.
I also want to thank some of the colleagues on the Finance Committee
whom I worked closely with. This Core 4 group includes Senator John
Thune, Senator Pat Toomey, Senator Tim Scott.
Maybe, most importantly, is the staff. We had an enormous undertaking
here, and it was ambitious to try to meet the goals that were set out
early on of real, middle-class tax cuts, also energizing the economy
through helping small businesses, and then changing the whole
international system so we could level the playing field. It was a lot
to do, and it took a lot of expertise and a lot of time and effort. So
to Mark Prater, Jay Khosla, and Brendan Dunn, who led that effort, we
all owe you our thanks. Then, of course, there are a slew of other
staff, including Zach Rudisill of my staff, who just spent hours and
hours and put his heart and soul into this. Thank you--all of you--for
helping us get to this point.
For years, Democrats and Republicans alike have called for middle-
class tax cuts. We talk about it in campaigns. I am proud to say that
this week we delivered on it.
I know some of my Democratic colleagues have been critical of the
legislation, and some have said: Well, these are not real, middle-class
tax cuts because they expire. Yes, they expire after 8 years. We wished
they didn't. Those are the budget rules here, but that is the same
thing that happened with the 2001 tax cuts, the 2003 tax cuts, and
Congress worked to extend those using the same budget rules for about
95 percent of those taxpayers. I am strongly hoping we will do the same
thing, and I believe we will.
This is real tax relief. For families in Ohio of median income, the
average will be just over $2,000 every year. That helps the family
budget. That is a little money you can put aside for retirement. Maybe
that is money to use for a vacation you didn't have. If you are living
paycheck to paycheck, which is true with a lot of people I represent,
that is a big help. It is a big help. That is from doubling the child
credit, that is from doubling the standard deduction, essentially
creating $14,000 of a zero income bracket.
By the way, doing those sorts of things in this bill means that about
3 million Americans or more are going to be leaving the tax rolls all
together. These are people who have tax liability now and, under the
new bill, starting in a couple of weeks, they will not have an income
tax liability. They will be out from under the IRS. They will be able,
as they move many of them from welfare to work or from a Federal
program into gainful employment, to not worry about the taxman. That is
really important too. I am proud of the legislation because I think it
is going to really help the people I represent in an immediate way.
People will see it in their paychecks. The proof is in the paychecks
because they will see it, and probably starting in February, the
withholding will change. The IRS has to go through a process on that. I
wrote a letter to them yesterday encouraging them to move on that
quickly because people want to see that in their paychecks. So the tax
relief starts in a couple of weeks, January 1. It will be in the
paychecks when the withholding changes--hopefully sometime in late
January, February--and people will see less money being withheld from
their paycheck because of the tax cuts that enable them to have a
healthier family budget.
I have to tell you I believe this is going to go well beyond that for
the people I represent. As important as those middle-class tax cuts
are, equally as important is what we are doing to stimulate more
investment in this economy, and that is through the changes for small
businesses that will now be able to put more money into the business
rather than paying more taxes. Many of these businesses--so-called
passthrough companies, which are most of the businesses in America--pay
taxes as individuals. They don't pay the business tax rate; they pay
the individual tax rate. Many of them do take a dividend. They take
money out of the company every year for one purpose, and that is to pay
their taxes. To the extent they are not taking the money out as much to
pay those taxes because of the changes we made here for small
businesses, they are going to be able to invest more in their people,
more in their equipment, more in their plants--and I am hearing this
from small business people around the State of Ohio.
Last weekend, I was with a number of them, and they are excited about
this because they want to be able to invest more in their business,
they want to be able to invest more in their people, and they want to
be able to give people who work for them the opportunity to have a
higher wage.
Right now, wages are flat, and they really have been for the past
couple of decades when you take inflation into account. This has the
incredible opportunity for us not just to provide middle-class tax
cuts, which are important not just to help businesses invest, but
actually to help get wages up so people will see that if they work hard
and play by the rules, they are going to see higher wages, the ability
to get ahead, and have more hope for themselves and for their kids and
their grandkids. Everyone, regardless of economic status, region, or
party is going to see the benefits of this tax reform bill.
By the way, some workers are already seeing the benefit, as we talked
today, because there are a bunch of companies that announced today that
because of the tax reform and tax cuts legislation, they are already
taking steps to increase the pay of their employees, increase benefits,
or invest more money in building plants, equipment, or adding more jobs
to investment or both. These companies include some big companies you
have heard of like Comcast. It includes other companies like Wells
Fargo and Boeing and AT&T. They have made these announcements today.
One company that announced it today is in my hometown. It is the
Fifth Third Bank. It is kind of an unusual name, Fifth Third, but that
makes them distinctive, right? They said today, you know what, we are
going to start paying our people a higher entry level pay--instead of
13-something an hour, it is going to be $15 an hour--and we are going
to provide bonuses to other employees who are not affected by that.
They are going to
[[Page S8240]]
do it right now, and they are doing it because of the tax relief
legislation.
So to those who say: Gosh. What about me? I would just say: Look at
your paycheck. If you work for one of these businesses that has already
made an announcement, of course, you are feeling good about it, but
even if you work for another company that maybe is a little quieter
about what they are doing--maybe they are not going to make a big
announcement--trust me, it is going to be in their interest now, in a
competitive market out there, to invest in those companies, to invest
in their people, to invest in training, to invest in better equipment,
better technology. Those are the sorts of things that, over time, are
going to make the biggest difference, I think, in this tax bill.
If you look at what is happening in our economy today, the reason
wages are flat--by the way, expenses are not flat. Expenses are up and
wages are flat. That is called the middle-class squeeze, and that is
very real. What is the biggest expense? For most people, it is
healthcare.
The way to deal with that is to get this economy moving and,
specifically, to increase the productivity. That is what the economists
say; that our productivity is low right now. When you have low
productivity, you have low economic growth, and that is what we have
had, under 2 percent economic growth. That is not the America I grew up
in, and that is not the America I want my kids to grow up in.
By making these investments in better technology, in better
equipment, in better training, what happens? You get better
productivity, you get higher efficiency, you get the opportunity to
increase your business, and therefore hire more people. That is
something, I think, over time, will play out and will create the
opportunity to lift up everybody.
John F. Kennedy was a Democrat, but he had a lot of things to say
that sounded more like what Republicans are talking about today. One
thing he said was that ``a rising tide lifts all boats.'' In the 1960s,
he did cut capital gains, by the way, and that tax cut actually
generated more economic activity.
Ronald Reagan, in 1986, actually put in place tax reform, with a
bipartisan group here in the Congress, that ended up with strong
economic growth in the 1980s and the 1990s, but that was 31 years ago.
That is the last time we made these kinds of substantive comprehensive
changes in the Tax Code. It is past time to do it again.
The final thing I will say about the tax reform proposal is that when
you talk to businesses that are competing globally, which is more and
more companies, including a lot of smaller companies now, the global
economy is upon us. Some people said: Gosh, I wonder when the economy
is going to affect me globally? Well, it does. It affects all of us. In
your town, wherever it is, and in your business, wherever you work, you
are probably competing directly or indirectly on a global basis.
I will give you an example. There is a little company in my hometown
called Standard Textiles. It is a great company. They make linens. It
is a company that competes every day globally. In fact, a lot of the
companies they compete with, as you can imagine, are companies that
make these linens somewhere else--say, in Asia, where traditionally
people have been able to find lower costs. Guess what they are looking
at now with this tax reform bill: the ability to invest more here in
America--American workers, American-made linens. They tell me, as do
other companies, that this is going to give them a better competitive
situation because no longer are you going to have a tax code that has
the highest business rate in the entire industrialized world and an
international system that says: If you keep your money overseas rather
than bringing it back, when you earn money, you can save on your taxes.
That is what resulted in $2.5 to $3 trillion being locked out of
America and kept overseas.
This tax reform proposal unlocks that. It allows us to bring that
money back. People call it repatriation. I guess that is accurate--
repatriation. I wish it had never been ``unpatriated'' in the first
place. If you are a patriot, you should want that money to be spent
here in America. That is what is going to happen with this tax reform
proposal.
It is about the tax cuts for working families--hard-working families
who deserve it, who are now stuck in a situation where it is tough to
get ahead. This will help immediately.
It is about helping small businesses and other companies here in
America to be able to invest more, to be able to write off equipment
right away when they buy it, and, as an example, having a lower rate.
It is also about leveling that playing field and saying that America,
once again, is going to reposition itself as the leader in the world.
Once again, it will be that beacon of opportunity that other countries
look to and say: We would like to be like that--a free market economy
where people who work hard and play by the rules can get ahead.
You can't say that now with our current Tax Code because workers
literally are competing on an unlevel playing field with one hand tied
behind their back because of our Tax Code. Three times as many American
companies were purchased by foreign companies last year as the other
way around. Because of our Tax Code, 4,700 U.S. companies became
foreign companies over the last decade or so. That is based on an Ernst
& Young study that came out recently that said, if this tax reform
proposal we have now passed had been in place, those 4,700 companies
would still be American companies.
All of us are patriots here in this body. All of us should want to
bring back those jobs to America, repatriate those profits here to
America, and give American workers the ability to compete on a level
playing field.
I know there were some differences in this legislation. We heard a
lot of it from the other side of the aisle, but on this issue, it has
been bipartisan in the past. I hope it will be bipartisan going forward
to hold these reforms in place so we can show that we have confidence
and faith in American workers and that we have confidence that if we
give them the right tools--in this case, the right Tax Code to work
with--they can compete and they can win. I think we are going to see
that.
I think, again, with the hopeful signs we are seeing, even today, of
companies providing better pay or benefits or making additional
commitments on investments. Even well beyond that, we are going to see,
maybe quietly, that it will spread out all over the country in ways
that will not be as obvious--in decisions that are going to be made,
business budgets that are going to change as a result of this tax
reform bill. I am hearing it from small businesses. I am hearing it
from the bigger companies that compete directly globally, and I am
certainly hearing it from families who are happy to see a little tax
break to be able to help them as we go into the holidays.
That is all good news, and I think passing that legislation is really
going to help the people I represent.
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