[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 103 (Tuesday, June 13, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Page S2056]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Republican Tax Plan

  Now, Mr. President, on the Republican tax plan that is over there in 
the House, while Democrats have spent the last 2 years lowering energy 
costs, lowering the price of prescription drugs, and bringing 
manufacturing jobs to our shores, Republicans are doubling down on what 
they do best: pushing tax giveaways to large corporations and the 
ultrawealthy.
  A few years ago, the Trump GOP tax cuts proved to be a dud for our 
economy and a political loser for the Republican Party. We all 
remember, in 2017, they said: This is going to help us win the 
election. And, by 2018, they couldn't even bring it up because we 
Democrats had made clear to the American people that this wasn't aimed 
at the middle class or working class; it was aimed at the very rich--
corporate and individual.
  But Republicans don't learn from their mistakes, apparently. This 
morning, the GOP-led House Ways and Means Committee is going to advance 
a sweeping array of new tax giveaways that reward the wealthy and the 
well-connected while leaving ordinary families in the lurch. This 
latest GOP tax scam feels like a bad rerun, where the biggest winners 
are giant companies, big oil polluters, and the highest--the very 
highest--income households.
  After the Trump tax law blew a nearly $2 trillion hole in our 
national deficit, forecasters say this new Republican proposal would 
increase the deficit by another trillion dollars. Again, their proposal 
over in the House increases the deficit by another trillion dollars, by 
objective forecasters.
  These are the same Republicans who just pushed our country to the 
brink of catastrophic default in the name of fiscal responsibility and 
deficit reduction, and now, before the ink is even dry on avoiding 
default, the same Republicans want to blow another trillion-dollar hole 
into the deficit--what hypocrisy, what hypocrisy, what hypocrisy.
  First, they would say: We have got to default if we don't deal with 
the deficit. Then they come back and blow a hole--or propose to blow a 
hole--in the deficit by another trillion dollars so they can help the 
very, very, most elite in the country.
  Of course, Republicans only care about the deficit when it suits 
them. When the deficit gets in the way, Republicans preach the fantasy 
that their tax cuts will somehow pay for themselves and that the 
benefits will magically trickle down to the rest of the country.
  But facts are stubborn. The economic reality of the past few decades 
shows that these Republican trickle-down claims are bunkum. It has been 
refuted over and over again.
  You know, this has come up. I remember Jude Wanniski and all of these 
rightwingers and Wall Street Journal editorials in the eighties: Cut 
taxes, and the deficit will go down.
  It didn't happen, especially when you cut taxes on the rarified few 
at the top of the income scale. So it doesn't work.
  We all saw what happened the last time Republicans pushed tax cuts 
for the very, very elite--for the top, top economic end of America--in 
2017. There was no historic wave of economic activity. There was no 
trickle-down stemming from the huge benefits Republicans gave to the 
wealthy. Instead, the Trump tax cuts translated into huge profits for 
shareholders and trillions--record trillions--of dollars in corporate 
stock buybacks.
  We saw the vast majority of Americans reject these Republican 
policies when they went to the ballot box. We even saw Republicans 
afraid to talk about it as we got closer to the elections in 2018.
  So, if Republicans really want to help working- and middle-class 
families, if they really want to lower the deficit as they have claimed 
for years, they will stop pushing this irredeemably flawed tax package.
  I yield the floor.