[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 167 (Tuesday, October 22, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6048-S6050]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            TAX LEGISLATION

  Mr. BENNET. Madam President, Republican tax legislation in 2017 was 
completely misguided. Despite our best efforts, the bill passed in the 
middle of the night. It was completely partisan, not a single hearing. 
There wasn't a single Democratic amendment, and this is what that bill 
looked like.
  As I repeatedly pointed out, the Republican taxpayers gave 572,000 
taxpayers, with incomes over $1 million, more in tax cuts than the 90 
million Americans who had incomes below $50,000 a year, making income 
inequality worse in this country.

[[Page S6049]]

  In all, 43 percent of the benefits of the GOP bill went to the top 5 
percent, households with incomes over $319,000 per year. It is why I 
came down to this floor repeatedly to oppose that tax bill.
  Since 2001, the United States of America has borrowed $5 trillion 
from the Chinese for the privilege of giving tax cuts mostly to the 
wealthiest people in our country. We never paid for any of it. We said 
the tax cuts would pay for themselves. They never have paid for 
themselves.
  Instead, we issued bonds, and we issued debt. The Chinese bought most 
of that debt to finance tax cuts for the wealthiest people in America. 
Over that period of time, we actually made income inequality worse 
during a time when income inequality is the highest it has been since 
1928. We have had no economic mobility for 50 years for the bottom 90 
percent of Americans--for 9 out of 10 Americans.

  If I had to summarize my townhall meetings in Colorado, a place with 
one of the strongest economies in this country, it would be that people 
come to the townhalls and they say: Michael, we are working incredibly 
hard, and no matter what we do, we can't afford housing, we can't 
afford healthcare, we can't afford higher education, and we can't 
afford early childhood education. ``We can't afford a middle-class 
life'' is what they are saying to me, the vast majority of people.
  I have said that in an editorial board recently, and somebody said: 
Do you mean the vast majority? And I said: Yes, the vast majority. That 
is what it looks like when you have an economy that is not driving 
growth from the bottom up, when only the people at the very top are the 
ones that are benefiting from it.
  There are people who don't come to my townhalls because they are too 
busy working two and three jobs, like the people I used to work for 
when I was superintendent of the Denver Public Schools, a school 
district where most of the kids live in poverty and most of the kids 
are kids of color. I know what their parents would say if they weren't 
too busy to come to my townhalls. This is what they would say: We are 
killing ourselves. We are killing ourselves, and no matter what we do, 
we can't get our kids out of poverty.
  That is straining our democracy. It is straining the whole idea that 
we are a land of opportunity, when there is no economic mobility for 90 
percent of Americans and when people who are in poverty, no matter how 
hard they work, can't get out of poverty, can't get their kids early 
childhood education, and can't get their kids decent health care. And 
most places don't have access to early childhood education, even if 
they could afford it.
  Notwithstanding this challenge over the decade, what we have done in 
Congress is to borrow money from the Chinese to give tax cuts to the 
wealthiest people in the country. That is not all we have done. We 
borrowed another $5.6 trillion to pay for 20 years' worth of wars in 
the Middle East. That is $11 trillion, $12 trillion, $13 trillion that 
from the vantage point of the people struggling in this economy, we 
might as well have lit on fire.
  For that amount of money, we could have fixed every road and bridge 
in America. We could have increased teacher salaries by 50 percent. We 
could have paid for preschool for every kid in America who needs it--
and that is every kid in America. We could have made it easier for 
people to afford college instead of having to spend 25 years of their 
life paying back their college loans, like some of the pages who are 
here tonight are going to have to do when they graduate from college. 
We could have made Social Security solvent for my kids' generation. We 
could have paid down some of our deficits and our debt, which is now 
over $1 trillion, thanks to irresponsible policies of the President 
with the able assistance of the majority leader.
  Tomorrow--I take no pleasure in saying this--we are being asked to 
vote on something that will make the Republican tax bill much worse, 
effectively repealing the cap on the State and local tax deduction, 
what is known as the SALT cap. It is a bad idea.
  Before I get into that, I want to acknowledge my colleagues' very 
legitimate concerns who are going to be supporting this legislation. 
First, the Trump administration designed the SALT cap to take revenge 
against people who didn't vote for Donald Trump, to take revenge 
against some deep-blue States and districts. That policy shouldn't be 
designed with political retribution in mind. Every single passing day, 
this guy who is our President looks more and more like a tyrant or a 
dictator who believes that the only people he serves are the people who 
voted for him, and he doesn't have a responsibility for the rest of the 
country. That is not right, and I can see why people would want to 
correct that injustice. It is an injustice, and I am not here to defend 
that injustice. It is wrong.
  Second, the Treasury rules to implement the SALT cap are overly broad 
in ways that harm existing programs with legitimate purposes. Nobody 
should be surprised at all that the Trump administration issued another 
sloppy policy that makes unnecessary opponents out of potential allies; 
that is, after all, their general approach to government.
  But while I agree with the concerns of the proponents of the 
resolution, I believe we can address all of them in a much more 
effective and targeted manner than undermining the SALT cap. Some 
proponents have said that this isn't actually valid--the State and 
local tax deduction--and if we wanted to write a bipartisan bill that 
isn't about SALT, we could deal with the other tax policy issues 
affected by the Treasury rule. But this is about the State and local 
tax deduction.
  So let me be very clear, the vast majority of the benefits of 
repealing the SALT cap would go to high-income Americans. Repeal would 
be extremely costly, and for that same cost, we could advance much more 
worthy efforts to help working and middle-class families all over the 
country.
  Let's take a look at what lifting the SALT cap would do. On this 
chart, these are the incomes of Americans, starting over here with 
people earning less than $25,000 and over here with people earning more 
than $153,000, and everybody else in between. The benefit of this 
resolution goes to people at the very top--the top 0.1 percent, who are 
people who have $3.3 million of income on average; the top 1 percent, 
who have an average income of $755,000; and the next 4 percent, who 
make $319,000. Together, that comprises the top 5 percent in America. 
Under this resolution, the top 5 percent will get 83 percent of the 
total, and 83 percent of the benefit will go to people making more than 
$319,000; and 56 percent of the benefit will go to the top 1 percent. 
So 56 percent of the benefit goes to the top 1 percent, or people 
making $755,000 a year.

  If we want to help the middle-class families who are harmed by the 
SALT cap, there are much less expensive and better targeted ways to do 
it. To put this in some perspective, SALT cap repeal is even worse for 
inequality than the Republican tax legislation--far worse. To 
summarize, 83 percent of the benefits of the SALT cap repeal go to the 
top 5 percent--83 percent--versus 43 percent in the GOP tax bill.
  We can say we are for a progressive tax bill and for fighting 
inequality or we can support the SALT deduction, but it is really hard 
to do both of those things.
  I feel strongly about it because of how irresponsible the other side 
has been. I know that is not the objective of people on my side, but 
the way we approach these issues really matters to the American people 
so they know whom we are fighting for.
  Instead of repealing the SALT cap, which gives 83 percent of the 
benefits to the richest people and makes income inequality even worse 
in America, for almost exactly the same amount of money, we could cut 
childhood poverty by 40 percent. That sounds like a useful thing to do 
for America at a time when you have the worst income inequality that we 
have had since 1928. In 1 year, we could cut childhood poverty in 
America by 40 percent with a simple change to the Tax Code that Sherrod 
Brown and I have written, called the American Family Act. It will cost 
$1 trillion over 10 years, which is about what the SALT cap costs. That 
would be a much more valuable use of our resources than giving the 
money to the people who are making more than $319,000, especially after 
the Republican Party passed the irresponsible bill they passed and we 
passed $5 trillion of tax cuts since 2001, almost all of which went to 
the wealthiest people in America, making income inequality worse

[[Page S6050]]

instead of investing in our country, vainly waiting for it to trickle 
down to everybody else.
  As you can see on this chart, these are almost the same income levels 
that are seen on the previous page of who benefits from the American 
Family Act. Thirty-one percent of the benefits go to the people who are 
making less than $24,000--not 54 percent going to the top 1 percent, 
but 31 percent going to the bottom, the lowest income earners in 
America. Then, 24 percent goes to the folks who are a little less poor 
than that and, then, 19 percent and 19 percent. And if you are making 
above $119,000, you get 2 percent of the benefit of it.
  That to me seems like a much more reasonable approach, at a moment in 
the country's history when income inequality has been on the rise, 
economic mobility has been stagnant, and when we have an education 
system--and I say this as a former school superintendent, with no joy 
at all--that is actually reinforcing the income inequality we have 
rather than liberating people from it, because the best predictor of 
the quality of education is your parents' income to the point of 
savagery. That is the best predictor because your parents' income is an 
excellent predictor of where you will live, and that is an excellent 
predictor of the education you will have.
  The American people are desperate for relief in this economy. 
Republicans have made matters much worse by passing the Trump tax bill. 
I think Democrats should be on this floor fighting for progressive 
legislation that supports working people, that gives people a chance 
who are living in poverty to lift themselves out of poverty, and to 
give kids in this country a fighting chance no matter what the 
circumstances are of their birth.
  The good news is that all of those things are available to us if we 
would come together in a bipartisan way and actually invest in our 
country again and create a Tax Code that actually drives economic 
growth for everybody, not just the people at the very top; rewards work 
again, ends childhood poverty, and delivers an education system that 
liberates people from their economic circumstances instead of shackling 
them to it; and pursuing a climate change policy that actually drives 
economic opportunity throughout the United States in rural and urban 
areas. We have an incredible opportunity in front of us as a democracy 
to change the way our economy works so that everybody benefits from it 
when it grows. That is how you build a strong democracy.
  Donald Trump doesn't understand any of that, which is why he has 
pursued the policies he has pursued. It is important for us to fight 
those policies as well as offer ideas like the American Family Act, 
like increasing the earned income tax credit, like passing paid family 
leave, and raising the minimum wage. These are things we could do that 
will make an enormous difference to working people all over this 
country, and I believe that is the agenda we should be pursuing.
  With that, I yield the floor.

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