[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 122 (Wednesday, July 16, 2025)]
[House]
[Page H3320]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DEMOCRATS' BIG MISTAKE
(Mr. McClintock of California was recognized to address the House for
5 minutes.)
Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, the big, beautiful bill is now the law,
so it is no longer a theoretical discussion about what the bill might
do. We are about to find out what it will do.
The Democrats have succeeded in frightening Americans into lopsided
opposition. On the day it passed the House, one poll registered just 29
percent public support for it compared to 55 percent opposition.
This has encouraged Democrats to double down on their hysterical
warnings of societal collapse, warnings they hope will continue to
resonate with the public.
What they don't seem to grasp is that you can't spin the economy.
Everybody knows in their own lives exactly how the economy is doing and
any politician who tries to tell them otherwise just looks foolish.
Remember when the Democrats were telling us for years that Bidenomics
was working. The only economic indicator that matters is the answer
Americans give to this question: Are you better off today than you were
2 years ago?
Now, Americans may never realize that this bill protected them from a
22 percent income tax increase that was set to take effect on January
1. A family making $75,000 a year won't feel its taxes rise $1,500, so
it won't feel relief from this provision. We don't feel what doesn't
happen.
Democrats are counting on this fact while stoking class resentments
over tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, but millionaires and
billionaires don't work for tips. They don't get paid overtime. They
don't rely on Social Security. Working families do, and for the first
time, the big, beautiful bill shields these earnings from being taxed.
In addition, residents of high tax States will feel a big reduction in
their Federal income tax bill.
Further, businesses get relief, too, those awful millionaires and
billionaires, mainly in their ability to deduct 100 percent of their
expenses for manufacturing purchases. That means that manufacturers of
every variety will add equipment to their plants, increasing the
productivity and the pay of existing workers, and adding new jobs to
make that equipment.
{time} 1010
By opening America's vast energy resources, domestic production is
about to rev up, a declaration of American energy independence that
will echo throughout the entire economy, then add the completion of the
border wall and the removal of millions of illegal aliens that the
Democrats allowed into our country.
Under Biden, most of the new jobs were snapped up by foreigners, and
real wages fell. Under Trump, most jobs are going to Americans, and
real wages for Americans are rising again, as employers are forced to
pay a market rate for labor.
The Democrats' mantra that millions of destitute Americans will lose
their Medicaid coverage is about to be challenged by reality. The fact
is that the only groups losing coverage are able-bodied grownups who
refuse to get off the couch and look for work, illegal aliens who
refuse to go home, and fraudsters.
What happens when millions of legitimate Medicaid recipients who have
been terrified by the Democrats realize that their benefits are
untouched? Well, we are going to find out.
Will the national debt balloon? Only if you accept the assumption
that the economy will grow at an anemic 1.8 percent next year. The
average 20th century growth rate, including the Depression, was 3.3
percent. A mere 3 percent growth rate will generate $4 trillion of new
revenues, and that doesn't include hundreds of billions of dollars
collected from imports or saved by eliminating waste identified by
DOGE.
How will average Americans fare? They will be paying significantly
lower taxes than they are today, especially if they work for tips or
overtime, are over 65, have children, or live in high-tax States.
Wages, long undercut by cheap illegal labor, are already rising.
Factories that make or buy equipment will be making and buying a lot
more of it.
No one unable to work will lose their Medicaid benefits. Their
neighborhoods will be safer as criminal illegals are deported and not
allowed to return. Their energy bills will be lower.
If all this relief creates just average economic growth, the deficit
will begin to shrink, which brings us back to the simple question that
we will put to people next year: Are you better off today than you were
2 years ago? Obnoxious protests, hysterical rhetoric, and doomsday
trolling won't change that simple and self-evident answer.
One party will have been proven undeniably right and the other
mendaciously wrong, and I think that is what the Democrats fear the
most.
____________________