[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 4720-4721]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




IMPOSING A MINIMUM EFFECTIVE RATE FOR HIGH-INCOME TAXPAYERS--MOTION TO 
                                PROCEED

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent there be 2 minutes 
equally divided prior to the cloture vote on the motion to proceed.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, many Americans sat down last week to 
prepare their taxes, knowing from Warren Buffett and others that the 
highest income Americans very often are paying a lower tax rate than 
they have to. The 400 highest income Americans, the most recent data 
shows, paid an all-in tax rate of 18.2 percent, on average. Some paid a 
lot less. One year Warren Buffett paid an 11-percent tax rate.
  Reuters reported today that about 65 percent of taxpayers who earn 
more than $1 million face a lower tax rate than the median tax rate for 
moderate-income earners making $100,000 or less a year. This bill will 
raise between $47 and $162 billion that could go for deficit reduction 
or hundreds of thousands of infrastructure jobs or to keep student 
interest rates at 3.4 percent and end the absurd inequity in our Tax 
Code that lets a hedge fund billionaire pay a lower tax rate than a 
Rhode Island truckdriver. I hope my colleagues will vote yes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. KYL. Madam President, everyone knows this is not going to pass. 
This is a political exercise. I urge my colleagues to vote no. The fact 
is on average the people in the upper two brackets pay more than twice 
as much in their income tax rates as the people we call the middle-
class taxpayers.
  So the basis, the factual basis upon which this is allegedly founded 
is incorrect. The truth is this legislation will do nothing with regard 
to job creation, with regard to gas prices, with regard to economic 
recovery, or any of the other matters the American people care about. 
As a result, to focus attention on something like this is to try to 
draw attention away from the issues about which the American people are 
most concerned.
  I urge my colleagues to vote no.


                             Cloture Motion

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under 
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to 
     proceed to Calendar No. 339, S. 2230, a bill to reduce the 
     deficit by imposing a minimum effective tax rate for high-
     income taxpayers.
         Harry Reid, Sheldon Whitehouse, John D. Rockefeller IV, 
           Barbara Boxer, Patrick J. Leahy, Jeff Bingaman, Richard 
           J. Durbin, Daniel K. Akaka, Al Franken, Jack Reed, Mark 
           Begich, Sherrod Brown, Carl Levin, Richard Blumenthal, 
           Bernard Sanders, Debbie Stabenow, Charles E. Schumer, 
           Patty Murray.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent the mandatory quorum call 
has been waived. The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that 
debate on the motion to proceed to S. 2230, a bill to reduce the 
deficit by imposing a minimum effective tax rate for high-income 
taxpayers, shall be brought to a close?
  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Hawaii (Mr. Akaka) and 
the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Lieberman) are necessarily absent.
  Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator 
from Utah (Mr. Hatch) and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).
  Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) 
would have voted ``nay.''
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Merkley). Are there any other Senators in 
the Chamber desiring to vote?
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 51, nays 45, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 65 Leg.]

                                YEAS--51

     Baucus
     Begich
     Bennet
     Bingaman
     Blumenthal
     Boxer
     Brown (OH)
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Collins
     Conrad
     Coons
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Hagan
     Harkin
     Inouye
     Johnson (SD)
     Kerry
     Klobuchar
     Kohl
     Landrieu
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Manchin
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murray
     Nelson (NE)
     Nelson (FL)
     Reed
     Reid
     Rockefeller
     Sanders
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall (CO)
     Udall (NM)
     Warner
     Webb
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                                NAYS--45

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Brown (MA)
     Burr
     Chambliss
     Coats
     Coburn
     Cochran
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Crapo
     DeMint
     Enzi
     Graham
     Grassley
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johanns

[[Page 4721]]


     Johnson (WI)
     Kyl
     Lee
     Lugar
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Portman
     Pryor
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rubio
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Snowe
     Thune
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Wicker

                             NOT VOTING--4

     Akaka
     Hatch
     Kirk
     Lieberman
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 51, the nays are 
45. Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn not having voted 
in the affirmative, the motion is rejected.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I know there are many who dismiss the 
President's proposal of the so-called Buffett rule as an election year 
tactic which has no chance of being enacted. But, for me, it must be 
taken as a serious proposal because it touches important economic 
principles at a very difficult economic time for our country. Although 
I was unable to be present for this afternoon's vote, I would have 
voted against the motion to proceed to the Paying a Fair Share Act of 
2012, S. 2230, and I want to explain why.
  I am not opposed to the Buffett rule because I am opposed to raising 
income taxes on the wealthiest Americans. I am opposed to the Buffett 
rule because it would double to 30 percent the capital gains tax on one 
group of investors and therefore reduce exactly the kind of capital 
investments we need to get our economy growing again and create jobs. 
To protect America from being drowned in public debt we will eventually 
have to raise revenues, hopefully through broad tax reform, and, of 
course, we will also have to cut expenditures, particularly the rate of 
increased spending on so-called entitlement programs. But that is 
different from the question of how to tax gains on capital investments. 
I have long believed in the value of having a lower tax on capital 
gains than on regular income because capital investments are one of the 
engines that has driven this great economy of ours, made us the land of 
opportunity, and created the American middle class. Someone once said 
that if you take the ``capital'' out of capitalism, all you have left 
is an ``ism.'' There is a lot of truth in that play on words.
  My support for a lower capital gains rate was probably born when one 
of the great political inspirations of my life, President John F. 
Kennedy, advocated lower capital gains taxes as part of his ``a rising 
tide raises all boats'' fiscal policy. During my first term in the 
Senate in 1989, I supported President George H.W. Bush's proposal to 
lower the capital gains tax. I was one of a small group of Democrats to 
do so. During the 1990s, I worked alongside the late, great Jack Kemp 
in support of lower capital gains rates, especially for gains made on 
capital investments in low-income urban and rural areas which we called 
enterprise zones. Throughout the years, I cosponsored broad proposals 
to lower the capital gains tax with Senator Hatch and other Members of 
the Senate from both political parties. To me, economic history proves 
that lower capital gains taxes grow our economy and higher capital 
gains taxes don't increase revenues. This particular tax increase is 
especially ill-timed, since it is clear that literally billions of 
dollars are now being held back from new investments in America by 
individuals and businesses because they are uncertain about the future 
of our economy and the future of government policies that will affect 
their businesses and their investments. The best thing we could do to 
regenerate economic growth is to adopt broad-based tax and entitlement 
reform that would bring our government books into balance and give 
American businesses and investors a sense of certainty about the 
economic environment in which they will be living for years to come. 
The Buffett rule, on the other hand, targets a particular kind of 
economic activity--capital investments--which are what America's 
economy and people urgently need now. And that is why I would have 
voted against the Buffett rule.

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