[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 6 (Wednesday, January 10, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H85-H86]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         TAX BILL RAMIFICATIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, one of the phrases one often hears is, 
``I hate to say I told you so.'' And it is delivered with a feigned 
sincerity, but usually people actually like to say, ``I told you so.''
  I must confess that I have some of those feelings myself, as 
repeatedly during the few hours the Ways and Means Committee met, 
rushing through the massive tax cut, the largest transfer of wealth in 
our Nation's history, which will be paid for on the backs of our 
children and grandchildren with increased debt and benefiting people 
who in the main don't need it--I said at the time that each week after 
this bill passed, if it did, we would have a series of embarrassing 
stories about mistakes and oversight and special interest provisions 
that were stuck into it.
  Well, actually, the fact is that that was somewhat understated 
because we are seeing, literally, every day people understand what was 
tucked in the bill: mistakes, oversight, and special interest 
provisions.
  For example, there is a provision in the bill that was, we were told, 
designed to help small craft brewers. That is important to me and the 
people I represent, and there is broad support for minor provisions 
that would be able to help them by reducing their tax liability. But 
the provision that ended up in the final bill has massive opportunities 
to benefit large producers--a little bit for small craft brewers, but 
for large, international distillers, an opportunity to reconfigure how 
they do business to take advantage of multiple opportunities for that 
tax break.
  There was an article yesterday talking about how the tax rate for 
American companies that manufacture overseas, the tax on that activity 
will be half as much as if they were manufacturing in the United 
States, providing an incentive to offshore jobs at a time when most of 
us would like to make sure that it is, here at home, at least, a level 
playing field, not to disadvantage people manufacturing here at home.
  And, of course, there is another story in today's Wall Street 
Journal, ``Tax Law's Effect Fuels Farm Outcry,'' because there was a 
provision inserted in the bill that would give farmers a more lucrative 
deduction when they sell agricultural products directly to farm 
cooperatives. There is a story about one gentleman in there who felt 
that this could put him out of business. It is going to sting large 
agribusinesses like Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland. The new 
provision could reshape parts of the agriculture economy and sharply 
reduce many farmers' taxes as well as scrambling these individual 
businesses.
  John Power, a North Dakota accountant who was the accountant for the 
small grain operator who is going to be hammered, said: ``It is kind of 
hard to imagine they intended to make farming tax free. Fixing it 
becomes difficult because they don't think it's something that can be 
fixed with regulation.''
  There are a variety of these provisions that are a result of not 
following what we call ``regular order,'' without having hearings on 
the provision, of allowing lobbyists and staff to be able to draft the 
bill on the fly without having members of the committee--not just 
Democrats, but Republicans--fully know what was in it. That is 
legislative malpractice. It is one of the reasons why, despite giving 
over $3 trillion of tax cuts, the bill remains unpopular.
  Americans are nervous about increasing our national debt over $2 
trillion, and they know that the benefits for average citizens are 
going to go away in a few years and some are actually going to see tax 
increases, but the benefits for the top 1 percent and the largest 
corporations are permanent.
  People know that it is not fair, that it is unnecessary, and that it 
is going to have more and more problems here, not just in States like 
mine where citizens are no longer going to be able to fully deduct 
their State and local taxes, property taxes, resulting in significant 
inequity, in scrambling property values, not just in Oregon, but it is 
across the country where people are going to be facing these problems.

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