[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 102 (Monday, June 12, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2039-S2040]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Republican Tax Plan

  Now, on the Republican tax plan, with the predictability of a 
metronome, Republicans are back doing what they do best: pushing tax 
giveaways that benefit the wealthy, large, huge corporations, while 
telling working families to take a hike. Last Friday, the House 
Republicans released a sweeping array of new tax giveaways that double 
down on some of the worst parts of the 2017 Trump tax law.
  This latest GOP tax scam feels like a bad rerun. Once again, the 
biggest winners are billion-dollar companies, Big Oil polluters, and 
very high-income households. Once again, the biggest losers in this 
Republican tax scheme are vulnerable families and anyone who worries 
about protecting our planet for future generations.
  The bulk of these new business tax giveaways will flow directly to 
the largest corporations in the country. Half of the 10 billion in 
interest deduction benefits, for example, will flow to companies with 
revenues of over a billion dollars annually.
  Republicans' latest proposal will also gut billions in clean energy 
investments, essential for lowering our carbon emissions and creating 
millions of good-paying green jobs. In just 10 months, the Inflation 
Reduction Act has created over 142,000 new good-paying jobs, and more 
are coming in the next few months and years.
  But Republicans want to gut those investments. Big Oil polluters, 
meanwhile, under the Republican plan, would get a $10 billion tax 
break. It is almost too perfect that Republicans unrolled this Big Oil 
tax giveaway right as millions of Americans endured the hazards of 
toxic air pollution exacerbated by climate change.
  And, of course, this tax giveaway by the Republicans will mean next 
to

[[Page S2040]]

nothing for too many Americans who aren't among the top percentage of 
earners.
  And for all the consternation we have heard from Republicans about 
lowering the deficit, this latest tax package will do what Republican 
tax packages have regularly done in the past: blow another hole in our 
deficit.
  Independent forecasters say Republicans' proposals would increase the 
deficit by a trillion dollars. These are the same Republicans who 
nearly defaulted us because they were worried about the deficit and 
about debt, and now they are making a proposal that increases debt by a 
trillion dollars. What hypocrisy.
  Republicans love to sing from the hymnal of fiscal responsibility and 
deficit reduction when it suits them. But whenever they push tax breaks 
for the ultrarich and the big corporations that increase the deficit, 
suddenly they switch their tune. Republicans claim that these tax cuts 
pay for themselves, as if by magic, but the GOP has been claiming for 
decades that their tax cuts pay for themselves only to have the actual 
economic facts repudiate them over and over and over again. Americans 
know by now that cutting taxes for the rich while ignoring working 
families is a failed approach--the trickle-down approach that 
Republicans seem to love. But Republicans seem remarkably impervious to 
learning from experience. After all, the last time the Republican tax 
scam was passed under President Trump, we know what happened: The 
winners turned out to be wealthy shareholders and corporations, not 
families. And then big corporations used their windfall from the GOP 
tax scam to spend trillions of dollars on corporate stock buybacks.

  The latest Republican tax scam is more of the same: giveaways to 
large corporations, giveaways to Big Oil, and another massive hole in 
the deficit. The good news is, the American people saw through the GOP 
tax plan when Republicans passed it in 2017. When they were running in 
2018, they hardly mentioned it because Americans were aware it was not 
for them but for the wealthiest people. The American people, once 
again, see through this tax scam just as clearly today.

                          ____________________