[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 27 (Monday, February 10, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S966-S967]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            BUDGET PROPOSAL

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, thank you, and I thank the Republican 
leader.
  Last month, while this body was trying, as we know--and failing--to 
hold the President accountable for betraying the American people, 
President Trump went to Davos, and he doubled down on another betrayal 
of the American people.
  While he was hobnobbing with the global elite in Switzerland, he let 
slip his plan, after his tax handouts to billionaires and corporations 
blew up the deficit--we know deficits now. Thanks to Republican 
governing, thanks to

[[Page S967]]

this President's tax cut and my Republican colleagues going along with 
this tax cut that went overwhelmingly to the wealthiest people in this 
country, the budget deficit has just skyrocketed. We know all that. 
President Trump now wants to pay for it by cutting Social Security and 
Medicare. He wants to pay for it by cutting Social Security and 
Medicare.
  Today we got President Trump's budget. This document makes it clear 
how he wants to pay for his tax scam--on the backs of working families 
and seniors.
  I want to start with one that is of special interest in Ohio. We all 
know that just in the last 2 or 3 years--well, starting soon after 
President Trump was elected and then over about a year-and-a-half 
period, the Lordstown auto plant--about 4,500 jobs--shut down. 
President Trump had promised those workers--he said to Mahoning Valley: 
Don't sell your homes. These jobs are coming back. This is going to 
work for us. And then the President Trump did absolutely nothing. The 
third shift was laid off. The second shift laid was off. The first 
shift was laid off. The plant closed, and there were 4,500 lost jobs.
  I have been working with Senator Portman--my Republican colleague--
and others on getting somebody to come into that plant. It will not 
just be the 4,500 good UAW jobs, but it could be, potentially, a good 
many jobs. There was a loan program that we and this company were going 
to use to make sure they could, if you will, reindustrialize part of 
the Lordstown complex. Well, the President's budget axed that plan, 
that loan program. We were counting on that as a way to replace some of 
those jobs that the President of the United States promised would come 
back, and now we can't even count on that. There is that.
  Then, in addition to the cuts to Medicare and Social Security, he is 
taking a sledgehammer to Medicaid, to food stamps, to investments in 
infrastructure, and support for rural communities and small towns. He 
wants to make it harder to clean up our drinking water and stop 
polluters.
  At a time when one in four renters spends more than half of their 
income in housing, he wants to make it harder to help families find and 
afford loans for a home. Pretty much the only ones who escaped 
unscathed, the only ones the President's budget acts didn't hit: 
corporations and their wealthy, unaccountable CEOs. To fund their tax 
cuts--again, the tax cuts 2 years ago--70 percent of the tax cuts went 
to the wealthiest 1 percent of people in this country. To pay for those 
tax cuts that have exploded the Federal budget deficit--you don't have 
to be an accountant like my friend from Wyoming to understand what has 
happened to this deficit--President Trump wants to ask more from 
families struggling to make ends meet, the families he promised to 
fight for, the families he has betrayed. He wants to ask more of 
seniors and people with disabilities and students and kids who need 
healthcare, all to pay for this tax scam.

  President Trump sold us a tax cut for working people, but the jig is 
up. We know people aren't seeing more money in their paychecks. People 
see Trump's tax scam for what it really was: a giveaway to corporations 
and the wealthiest, tiny sliver of the population.
  Remember the promises the President made that his tax law would mean 
raises for workers? He said it over and over. I was in the President's 
Cabinet room with the President and a handful of Senators from both 
parties. He promised, before it passed, With this tax bill, everybody 
will get a $4,000 raise, he said--well, not exactly true.
  He told workers last year, the month after he signed the law, You are 
going to start seeing a lot more money in your paycheck.
  One lie after another lie after another lie. Instead of investing in 
workers, corporations bought back trillions--literally, trillions--of 
dollars of their own stock to line investors' pockets. Meanwhile, the 
deficit exploded.
  We know what the corporate crowd's plan always is to deal with the 
deficit, every single time: cut taxes, blow a hole in the deficit, and 
then go back and pay for it by cuts to Social Security and Medicare. 
How do we know that is what they are going to do? Because they told us 
that is what they are going to do. In spring 2017, right after 
President Trump was elected, the Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed by 
economist Martin Feldstein, who has built his career pushing tax cuts 
for his rich friends.
  Guess how he wanted President Trump to pay for his corporate 
giveaway? In those days, the President said, We will have so much 
economic growth that it will pay for itself. Well, the economic growth 
has been less in these 3 years of Trump than in the last 3 years of 
Obama, but that is not the point. The point is he said it would pay for 
itself.
  Well, Martin Feldstein didn't believe that. He knew. He said in this 
article that it will not pay for itself; it will pay a little bit. But 
he said the best way to do it is raise the Social Security retirement 
age. It looks like President Trump was listening to Martin Feldstein.
  It always comes back to whose side are you on. You stand with 
workers, or you stand with corporations. You stand with insurance 
companies, or you stand with patients. You stand with Wall Street, or 
you stand with consumers.
  Do you fight for Wall Street wealth? Or do you fight for the dignity 
of work? If you love this country, you fight for the people who make it 
work. The President promised to fight for American workers and their 
families. This budget he released today is the latest in a long line of 
broken promises and betrayals.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Wyoming.

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