[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 44 (Monday, March 10, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1620-S1622]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, last week, I came to the floor to debunk
some of our Democratic colleagues' myths, disinformation, mistaken
information about the work of Elon Musk and the Department of
Government Efficiency.
Ronald Reagan liked to say that facts are stubborn things. It is
important to talk about the facts because, hopefully, even in
Washington, DC, we can agree on the basic facts. We may have some
different interpretations, different policy preferences; but facts are
facts are facts.
Today, I want to do the same thing about the Republican efforts to
extend the upcoming expiration of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, or what is
sometimes called the Trump tax cuts, through the budget reconciliation
process.
Now, I don't blame the American people or anybody else, when
listening to all the process we talk about, and just their eyes glazing
over and just tuning us out. But the truth is, if we don't extend the
expiring provisions of this tax bill that we passed back in 2017,
during President Trump's first term, a vast majority of the American
people will experience a tax increase. And that, of course, is on top
of a 40-year high inflation during the Biden administration.
[[Page S1621]]
I guess nobody likes to talk about taxes because, on one hand, people
say: Well, you know, people need to keep more of their hard-earned
money. On the left, what they like to say is, you are giving
billionaires a tax cut and leaving average wage earners and working
families high and dry.
The truth is, on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act bill that we passed in
2017, the individual rates that will expire at the end of this year, if
we don't continue the current policy using the budget reconciliation
process, 62 percent of American taxpayers will experience a tax
increase. That is not just millionaires and billionaires. That is
everybody across the income spectrum.
On the left, our Democratic colleagues, some of them have been
claiming that extending these tax cut provisions, as I said, will
benefit the very rich at the expense of the rest of us. Our colleague
from Massachusetts, Senator Markey, said:
Instead of fighting for working people, Trump is selling
them out to give billionaires tax breaks.
There they go again.
And to no one's surprise, our colleague from Vermont, Senator
Sanders, accused President Trump and Elon Musk of being ``oligarchs''--
``oligarchs.'' He went on to say: ``The oligarchs''--that is the very
rich people who have accumulated massive wealth, primarily in Russia
and in Europe.
He said:
The oligarchs, with their tremendous resources, are waging
a war on the working class of this country . . . the needs,
the concerns, the ideas, the dreams of ordinary people are
simply an impediment to what they, the oligarchs, are
entitled to.
This accusation, if true, would be serious. But it is not true.
Representative Neal from Massachusetts, on the other side of the
Capitol, went so far as to describe the Trump tax cuts as a ``reverse
Robin Hood scam.''
And the list goes on and on and on. It is almost as if there is a
concerted or orchestrated effort to use disinformation and propaganda
to try to prejudice the American people against what it is we need to
do in order to avoid this huge tax increase on the vast majority of
Americans.
But let's set aside for a moment the fact that President Trump won
this last election--promising to do what? Well, to extend the tax cuts
that passed in 2017.
We know, before COVID hit, our economy was hitting on all cylinders.
All cohorts of the population--African Americans, Hispanics, everyday
working Americans--were experiencing record-high levels of employment,
and the economy was the best it has been in my lifetime.
We know what happened these last 4 years. We know that Biden
economics, or Bidenomics, as they like to call it--I don't know why in
the world President Biden embraced the name ``Bidenomics,'' because it
was associated with just so much misery and pain and a reduced standard
of living by average working-class families across the country.
But we know that inflation--again, the 40-year high inflation that we
have experienced in the last few years--has a disproportionate effect
on low-income families. Now, that is no surprise because for your
purchasing power, if you are on a fixed income or if you are just
getting by paycheck to paycheck, the more inflation goes up, the more
everything you buy costs.
And households across the spectrum are affected. We have seen that
with our own eyes. And, in fact, I believe that was one of the reasons
President Trump was elected in 2024.
When you spend a higher percentage of your paycheck on necessities,
you have less of a cushion as prices increase. It is just common sense.
To add insult to injury, what did our Democratic colleagues do, when
they were in the majority, in response to this massive inflation, which
was the direct result of their policies? Well, they poured gasoline on
the fire of inflation by using reconciliation to pass something called
the Inflation Reduction Act.
Hold that thought for a minute because the Inflation Reduction Act,
even at the time it passed, was evaluated and calculated not to reduce
inflation.
Again, this is deception, really, at the outset, claiming that this
Inflation Reduction Act maybe would have a negative impact on
inflation. But President Biden himself later admitted it ``has less to
do with reducing inflation''--that is what President Biden said--and
was full of even more spending.
Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, would say the
main cause of inflation is too much spending. You flood the economy
with more dollars, and then, naturally, the price of everything tends
to go up.
You don't need a Ph.D. economist like Dr. Larry Summers, who was
probably the most prominent Democratic economist in our country, to
tell anyone, especially not the President of the United States, that
the answer to runaway inflation is not more government spending. But
that is exactly what the Inflation Reduction Act did.
But that is not all. Not only did the Inflation Reduction Act do
nothing for inflation, it actually did what Democrats have wrongly
accused Republicans of doing. It benefited high earners at the expense
of ordinary Americans.
You don't have to take my word for it. Just look at the data. Look at
the facts.
By some estimates, the Inflation Reduction Act's electric vehicle and
charging infrastructure provisions are projected to cost $180 billion
over the next decade. The average cost of an electric vehicle was
nearly $7,000 more than an internal combustion engine in 2023. So most
working-class families, rather than pay $7,000 more for an electric
vehicle--assuming they wanted an electric vehicle--have opted for the
lower price internal combustion engine. So the ones who were taking
advantage of the subsidy of $7,500, if you bought an EV, were wealthy
people, by definition. So our Democratic colleagues, contrary to their
propaganda and misinformation, have been the ones who have been
providing your hard-earned dollars to subsidize wealthy people to buy
luxury items like an electric vehicle.
Households that earn more than $200,000 reportedly represent 42.6
percent of electric vehicle sales. So people who make more than
$200,000 a year represent 42.6 percent of electric vehicle sales, while
those earning between $100,000 and $200,000 represented 32.9 percent.
So if anything deserves to be called ``reverse Robin Hood,'' it would
be the Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act.
Given the inflationary and regressive policies that the Democrats
promoted during the last 4 years, it is ironic--and maybe you would say
even laughable--to hear them accuse Republicans of being disconnected
from everyday Americans. The reason why Republicans won the majority in
both Houses and President Trump was reelected is because he connected
with the concerns of everyday Americans, and particularly their
concerns about overspending and inflation, not to mention the border.
So our Democratic colleagues really don't have a leg to stand on when
it comes to the facts.
Failing to extend the Trump tax cuts would mean--this is according to
the Wall Street Journal--that 62 percent of Americans would see a tax
increase in 2026. On the other hand, extending the tax cuts would
result in a 3.4 percent increase in after-tax incomes in 2026, by some
estimates.
In the 2 years after President Trump signed his tax cuts into law,
the median household income grew by $5,000. That is more money to spend
on the necessities of life. And in the same period, real wages grew by
nearly 5 percent.
Again, those are the facts. You would think that the facts would be
something we could agree on, and then we can talk about policies. But,
unfortunately, our Democratic colleagues seem to gloss right over those
facts, while making wild accusations, which, frankly, are way off the
mark.
Contrast this with President Biden's policies, slapping working
families with an effective pay cut. With higher prices for food,
gasoline, and other necessities, inflation-adjusted disposable income
per capita during the Biden Presidency went down 7.7 percent. No wonder
people felt squeezed, particularly if you earn a relatively modest
income or you were a senior on a fixed income. Your purchasing power
went down 7.7 percent.
[[Page S1622]]
The stark reality and the fact is, if Congress fails to extend the
Trump tax cuts that expire at the end of this year, the average family
of four making $75,000 a year will face a $1,500 tax increase next
year. Working families will see the child tax credit cut in half.
So the facts are pretty obvious, as plain as the nose on your face:
Extending the Trump tax cuts will actually benefit working families,
and doing nothing, which is what our Democratic colleagues seem to
want, will make them worse off.
At the end of the day, we work for the people we represent in our
respective States. And, certainly, the voters in Alabama and Texas and
in the majority of the country have made their preference clear.
President Trump campaigned on extending these tax cuts. Republicans in
the House and the Senate did the same. And we were rewarded with
majorities in both Houses and with President Trump being reelected to
the White House.
Working families in Texas and across the country voted for the
President and the political party they thought would benefit them the
most, especially their pocketbooks and their standard of living, and
they voted resoundingly for President Trump and congressional
Republicans. So it is simply not true to say that Republicans are
somehow out of touch with the voters that gave us the majority in both
Houses and President Trump reelected to the White House.
I know our Democratic colleagues are angry. They don't like being in
the minority. It is not a lot of fun. But there is a reason. And they
still haven't learned that the policies they promoted and that they
sold to the American people were rejected on November 5. So sometimes,
as Ronald Reagan liked to say--again--facts are stubborn things. So I
would invite our colleagues across the aisle to look at the facts and
maybe look in the mirror and say: What we were doing didn't work out so
well, so maybe we ought to work with Republicans to change our
policies.
The American people simply cannot afford a tax increase on top of 40-
year-high inflation. I look forward to working with my Republican
colleagues in the House and the Senate to deliver by extending the
Trump tax cuts and to make life better for working families in Texas
and across the country. And I would invite our Democratic colleagues to
join us, if they will. I am not sure they are there yet. They are still
pretty angry. They are still pretty upset. They are still--what do they
call it? They call it the resistance. They are the party of the
resistance. Well, right now, they are resisting what is best for the
American people, and that is a bad place to be.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Ms. HIRONO. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.