[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 62 (Tuesday, April 17, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Page S2193]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          REPUBLICAN TAX BILL

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, finally, today is tax day. That is 
probably America's least favorite holiday. It is appropriate today to 
look back at what has happened since the Republicans passed their tax 
bill last year. Since the beginning of the tax debate, Republicans have 
insisted their bill is about cutting taxes for working Americans. Even 
though the crux of their bill was a massive corporate tax cut, they 
said that workers would benefit the most. Even though it would direct 
83 percent of the benefits to the top 1 percent, they said that the 
bill would be a ``middle-class miracle.''
  How many middle-class people today think that tax bill is a miracle? 
Not many. The only way that could have been true was if corporations 
had decided to invest a substantial amount of their newfound profits in 
workers. That is what Republicans, after all, argued would happen.
  We Democrats warned that if you gave the big corporations the lion's 
share of the tax cuts, corporations would do what they always do when 
they have higher profits and extra cash--distribute it amongst 
themselves, have a nice little party. Unfortunately, the evidence is 
mounting that our predictions, as much as we wish they hadn't come 
true, were prescient.
  Since the passage of the tax bill--listen to this--corporations have 
spent over $250 billion on share buybacks. That is putting corporations 
on track to spend between $800 billion and $1 trillion on share 
buybacks this year alone, outstripping the previous pace.
  People may ask: What is a share buyback? Here is what it is. A 
corporation has a lot of money. Some things they can do are pay workers 
more, give family leave, treat their employees better. Another thing 
they could do is invest in new plants and equipment, new training to 
make that corporation more efficient and to sell more of its goods. 
Those are good things.
  What is a bad thing? Buying back the stock. What is buying back the 
stock? The corporation says: We have a million shares outstanding. If 
we buy back 100,000 of them, the price of the remaining ones will go 
up.
  Who benefits? Above all, those who have a lot of the stock shares--
the CEOs of the corporations and the wealthiest heads of those 
companies. Who else benefits? Shareholders. Eighty percent of all 
shares in America, despite pensions and despite 401(k)s, are held by 
the 10 percent--the richest people in America. And one-third of all 
shares, totally, go to people overseas. That is who benefits from stock 
buybacks: corporate CEOs, wealthy shareholders, people overseas--more 
than the average American worker. That is what has happened.
  Listen to this. According to a recent analysis by JUST Capital, only 
6 percent of the capital allocated by companies from the tax bill's 
savings has gone to employees, while nearly 60 percent has gone to 
shareholders. That statistic gets to the very core of the debate. Who 
benefited from the tax bill? It was mainly wealthy CEOs, a lot of 
foreigners, and the wealthiest people in America--not the average 
working person.
  As USA Today put it last week:

       The number of companies letting workers know they are 
     getting a bonus, raise or other form of financial 
     compensation has slowed to a trickle. Most of the extra cash 
     from tax savings is going into the pockets of stock 
     shareholders through dividend increases and companies buying 
     back their own stock in hopes of boosting its price.

  The whole theory of the Republican tax bill can be summed up in two 
words: ``trickle down.'' The whole theory was to lavish corporations 
and the already wealthy with tax cuts and maybe the benefits might 
trickle down to everyone else. We are already seeing the balloon burst 
on that idea as corporations dedicate an enormous percentage of the tax 
savings to stock buybacks and only a sliver to worker compensation. 
That is why the Republican bill is not popular. A poll out from NBC 
News/Wall Street Journal--Wall Street Journal, hardly a working man's 
newspaper--showed that only 27 percent of Americans think the tax cuts 
were a good idea. That is fitting news on tax day, one of the least 
popular days of the year.
  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.
  Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kennedy). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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