[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.

                          ____________________