[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 36 (Wednesday, February 27, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1505-S1506]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Tax Reform

  Mr. President, we are in the fifth week of the tax filing season. 
Based on all reports from the IRS, the filing season is running 
smoothly. All systems are operating as expected. Returns are being 
processed and refunds are being sent out without any major 
complications.
  According to IRS Commissioner Rettig, his Agency has even set a 
couple of internal records for the speed at which returns are being 
processed. At one point, the IRS processed 1.9 million returns in an 
hour. That is 536 every single second.
  Of course, you don't hear much about how the filing season is running 
smoothly from our mainstream press. There is a lot of positive news, 
but positive news doesn't seem to make good headlines. Instead, an 
obsession has developed around the size of the tax returns, not the 
exact tax that might actually be paid.
  Let's set aside that the available Treasury data is merely in the 
first few weeks of a very unusual tax season due to the partial 
government shutdown. Never mind that the size of the average tax refund 
can vary greatly from week to week, making year-over-year comparisons 
early in the filing season essentially meaningless. Let's ignore the 
important fact that less than half as many child tax credits and 
earned-income tax credits have been issued as compared to the last year 
based almost entirely on calendar factors, and, most importantly, we 
ought to somehow forget about the fact that the size of one's tax 
refund tells you absolutely nothing about a taxpayers' overall tax 
return.
  I have been amazed by how many of my colleagues on the other side of 
the aisle, who should know better, have sought to equate incomplete 
information about lower average refunds--telling us all that means 
people have not received a decrease in their taxes.
  I want to quote Howard Gleckman, who should be well respected by 
people on the other side of the aisle because he is a senior fellow at 
the liberal Tax Policy Center. He characterized the current obsession 
with tax refunds as ``wrong-headed,'' noting that it is ``not how big a 
refund check filers get this year but how much total tax they paid for 
2018.'' That is common sense. I thank Howard Gleckman for his common 
sense.
  Yet my colleagues--again, on the other side--continue to try and push 
the false narrative that a smaller refund is synonymous with tax 
increase. That doesn't meet the commonsense test.
  Just such a claim by a Senate Democrat running for President was 
observed by the Washington Post's Fact Checker as being ``nonsensical 
and misleading.'' The claim was awarded four Pinocchios. Four 
Pinocchios is a rating the Post reserves for the biggest whoppers.
  Here are the straight facts. Anyone telling the American public that 
a smaller refund is the same as a tax increase is being intentionally 
misleading and doing a disservice to the public. I classify that as a 
big lie. The size of one's tax refund merely reflects what that 
taxpayer overpaid the IRS in your paychecks last year. For the vast 
majority of Americans, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of December 2017 
delivered larger paychecks starting last February. The liberal Tax 
Policy Center confirms that 90 percent of middle-income taxpayers will 
receive a tax cut. That is right. Taxes went down, not up, for the vast 
majority of American families.
  This tax relief stems from the combination of pro-middle-class and 
pro-family provisions, including a nearly doubled standard deduction, 
an increase in the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000, and overall 
lower tax rates. That is how you give the middle class a tax cut.
  Some may believe that we would have been better off depriving 
taxpayers of their tax cuts until the IRS sent them a refund after the 
end of the year, but this thinking gets things exactly backward. The 
excess tax withheld from paychecks throughout the course of a year 
doesn't belong to the government; it belongs to the taxpayers who 
earned that money. It is the taxpayers who should be able to decide 
whether they want to put their weekly or monthly tax savings in a 
retirement account, pay down a credit card bill, enroll their children 
in some club, sport, music, or dance lessons, or maybe even make an 
extra car payment.
  I encourage all taxpayers interested in how tax reform affects their 
bottom line to compare this year's tax return with last year's tax 
return. That is the commonsense way of figuring out whether your taxes 
went up or down as a result of the tax bill of 2017. When they do that, 
the vast majority will see less of their hard-earned money being sent 
to Washington, DC. Really, that is what ought to matter.
  I encourage those in the media who are actually interested in how tax 
reform has affected taxpayers to take

[[Page S1506]]

into account the positive signs we see all around. It is a positive 
sign when we write about how blue-collar employment has surged; 
positive signs about how low-income workers experienced the highest 
wage growth in a decade; positive signs when we report how new business 
startups are climbing and how U.S. manufacturers had their best year 
since 1997; and positive signs as you discuss how the economy grew 
almost 50 percent faster in 2018 than as President Obama's economists 
predicted when they predicted slow growth would be the new normal.
  All of these subjects are far more important than what has thus far, 
in most all respects, been an uneventful filing season. Compare this 
year's tax bottom line with last year's tax bottom line to decide 
whether you got a tax decrease or a tax increase, not the size of your 
refund.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.