[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 16185-16190]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    BANKRUPTCY JUDGESHIP ACT OF 2017

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask that the Chair lay before the 
Senate the message to accompany H.R. 2266.
  The Presiding Officer laid before the Senate the following message 
from the House of Representatives:
       Resolved, That the House agree to the amendment of the 
     Senate to the bill (H.R. 2266) entitled ``An Act to amend 
     title 28 of the United States Code to authorize the 
     appointment of additional bankruptcy judges; and for other 
     purposes.'', with an amendment.


                            Motion to Concur

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I move to concur in the House amendment 
to the Senate amendment to H.R. 2266.


                             Cloture Motion

  I send a cloture motion to the desk on the motion to concur.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under 
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
  The legislative 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, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to 
     concur in the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 
     2266.
         Mitch McConnell, Pat Roberts, Roy Blunt, Shelley Moore 
           Capito, Mike Rounds, John Thune, Orrin G. Hatch, Deb 
           Fischer, Cory Gardner, John Barrasso, Johnny Isakson, 
           John Boozman, Thom Tillis, Richard Burr, James M. 
           Inhofe, Roger F. Wicker, Lindsey Graham.

                Motion to Concur With Amendment No. 1568

  Mr. McCONNELL. I move to concur in the House amendment to the Senate 
amendment to H.R. 2266, with a further amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the motion.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Kentucky [Mr. McConnell] moves to concur 
     in the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 2266, 
     with an amendment numbered 1568.

  Mr. McCONNELL. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the 
amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       At the end add the following:
       ``This Act shall take effect 1 day after the date of 
     enactment.''

  Mr. McCONNELL. I ask for the yeas and nays on the motion to concur 
with amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.


                Amendment No. 1569 to Amendment No. 1568

  Mr. McCONNELL. I have a second-degree amendment at the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Kentucky [Mr. McConnell] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 1569 to amendment No. 1568.

  Mr. McCONNELL. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the 
amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       Strike ``1 day'' and insert ``2 days''

                Motion to Refer With Amendment No. 1570

  Mr. McCONNELL. I move to refer the House message on H.R. 2266 to the 
Committee on Appropriations with instructions to report back forthwith 
with an amendment numbered 1570.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the motion.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Kentucky [Mr. McConnell] moves to refer 
     the message to accompany H.R. 2266 to the Committee on 
     Appropriations with instructions to report back forthwith 
     with an amendment numbered 1570.

  The amendment is as follows:

       At the end add the following.
       ``This Act shall take effect 3 days after the date of 
     enactment.

  Mr. McCONNELL. I ask for the yeas and nays on my motion.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.


                           Amendment No. 1571

  Mr. McCONNELL. I have an amendment to the instructions.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Kentucky [Mr. McConnell] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 1571 to the instructions of the motion to 
     refer.

  Mr. McCONNELL. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the 
amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       Strike ``3 days'' and insert ``4 days''

  Mr. McCONNELL. I ask for the yeas and nays on my amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.


                Amendment No. 1572 to Amendment No. 1571

  Mr. McCONNELL. I have a second-degree amendment at the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Kentucky [Mr. McConnell] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 1572 to amendment No. 1571.

  The amendment is as follows:

       Strike ``4'' and insert ``5''

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority whip.


    Thanking Senator Enzi and the Budget Committee Members and Staff

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I want to take a few minutes following the 
remarks of the majority leader to thank Chairman Enzi, the bill 
manager, and the whole Budget Committee for the tremendous work that 
has been done on this budget resolution.
  I also want to express my gratitude and our collective gratitude to 
the Budget Committee staff, who has done such heroic work to get us 
this far. This might well be the best and most well-run budget 
consideration process during my time in the Senate. Certainly, for the 
fact that Senator Enzi has gotten us to this point at this time of 
night, when typically this ends in the wee hours of the morning, I 
think he is to be commended.
  The resolution has gone through regular order from the start, working 
its way through the Budget Committee

[[Page 16186]]

where amendments were considered and adopted from both sides. Chairman 
Enzi has been a very effective floor manager as we have been 
considering the budget resolution, obtaining consensus from both sides 
of the aisle to ensure that the Senate has considered a number of 
amendments in a timely fashion. That is something that is not always so 
common around here.
  I want to take a moment to note the great job the chairman has done 
in getting us to this point. As we all know, without a budget 
resolution, there will be no tax reform. This is the first step to 
getting us to pro-growth tax reform, which will unshackle the sleeping 
giant of the American economy, something from which all Americans will 
benefit.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.


                               The Budget

  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, having been away for a while from the 
Senate, I am pretty amazed to come back today and see a budget that is 
passed that throws away years of rhetoric about fiscal conservatism. 
The Senate just passed a budget that adds $1.5 trillion to our national 
debt, a budget that slashes seniors' healthcare by $473 billion. It 
decimates the Medicaid Program for parents and grandparents in nursing 
homes, those who are disabled, and those who are among the poorest, 
with cuts of over $1 trillion over the next decade.
  In total, the Republican budget would cut more than $5 trillion over 
the next decade from education, healthcare, affordable housing, 
childcare, nutrition assistance, transportation, and other programs 
that all Americans rely on.
  The question many New Jerseyans will be asking me is, Why? Why do 
Republicans in Congress add $1.5 trillion to our national debt while 
slashing the Medicare Program? The answer is simple. We are on a 
pathway to provide massive tax breaks to corporate interests, special 
interests, and the wealthiest 1 percent. This has been a Republican 
agenda for as long as I can remember.
  What I find most galling is that this budget plan is meant to set up 
a special process that we know here as reconciliation to pass the Trump 
tax plan--a plan, which, by which their own admission, will raise taxes 
on middle-class families. Think about that. The Republican Party is 
adding $1.5 billion to the debt to pay for massive tax breaks for the 
wealthiest among us--I should say trillion, $1.5 trillion to the debt 
to pay for massive tax breaks for the wealthiest among us. They aren't 
even guaranteeing that middle-class taxes will not go up.
  What the Republican budget fails to realize is that budgets are not 
just about numbers. Budgets are about people, their hopes, their 
dreams, their expectations for a better life for themselves and their 
children.
  My view is that this budget sells America short. It is not what the 
American people believe our collective values would be. Hard-working 
families want us to work together and pass a budget that addresses 
their concerns. They want safe communities, not a budget that threatens 
to cut the firefighter grants and stretches local budgets even thinner. 
They want peace of mind when they reach their golden years, not a 
budget that raises their healthcare costs. They want a tax proposal 
that cuts taxes for the middle class and working people, not more tax 
breaks for the folks that have been rigging the system against us.
  People are willing to do their part if everyone is sharing in the 
sacrifice. But this budget fails that test. It fails to recognize that 
we are all in this together and should benefit together and sacrifice 
together--each of us working for the betterment of all of us.
  Mr. President, another area where it is critical that we come 
together, not as 50 separate States but as the United States of 
America, is to help the 3.5 million American citizens living in Puerto 
Rico. I have serious concerns that the current disaster relief package 
currently being considered by Congress falls far short of that.
  Tomorrow will mark 1 month since Hurricane Maria devastated the 
island of Puerto Rico, leaving in its wake a trail of destruction, 
despair, and suffering. It is 1 month later, and still 88 percent of 
our fellow Americans in Puerto Rico don't have power. It is 1 month 
later, and still one-third of the island lacks access to clean, safe 
drinking water.
  Outside of the city of San Juan, the situation is even worse, as 
nearly two-thirds of people still remain without water. Let me just 
pause for a moment to think about that. Think about it: an entire month 
without clean water, without water to bathe, to cook with, or simply to 
drink. How many of us can even imagine such an existence? More than 
half of the island's cell towers are down, which is not just an 
inconvenience. It is a threat to safety. Imagine the sense of isolation 
and desperation when your power is out, when you have run out of 
potable water, with none on the way, and you can't even call for help.
  As bad as it looks on TV, the situation on the ground, as I saw it, 
is tragically worse. I am concerned that the package we are considering 
now is both inadequate in scope and unfair in treatment--inadequate 
because it is just a fraction of what Puerto Rico needs to recover, 
unfair because it treats the people of Puerto Rico different than 
Florida and Texas, even though they are U.S. citizens.
  While all three areas have been devastated by natural disasters, only 
Puerto Rico is being required to pay back natural disaster assistance. 
That is right. Unlike Florida and Texas, the majority of Puerto Rico's 
assistance is coming in the form of a loan. While there are a lot of 
things that the people of Puerto Rico need from their Federal 
Government, one thing they absolutely do not need and simply cannot 
afford is billions of dollars of more debt.
  This is not a normal disaster loan. No. Just like everything else 
with Puerto Rico, this loan comes with a major stipulation. While 
disaster loans are normally forgiven according to a standard formula 
under the Stafford Act, this package overrules longstanding law and 
leaves the decision entirely in the hands of the Secretaries of the 
Treasury and Homeland Security.
  While disaster loans are normally used to help people be safe and 
start the recovery process, this legislation gives the Secretaries of 
the Treasury and Homeland Security the authority to control how Puerto 
Rico spends the money. If Secretary Mnuchin decides that some, most, or 
even all of the loan should be used to pay off his friends on Wall 
Street, there is nothing Puerto Rico can do to stop him. If he decides 
that debt bondholders are more important than those who are suffering 
in darkness, there is nothing they can do to stop him. Instead of being 
treated like the rest of the country, Puerto Rico is left at the mercy 
of Treasury Secretary Mnuchin. They are at the mercy of someone who 
made his fortune off the backs of seniors and hard-working families who 
lost their homes in the foreclosure crisis.
  Do we really think that someone who callously rejected the pleas of 
struggling families to save their homes and instead put them on the 
fast track to foreclosure is going to suddenly change now for the 3.5 
million American citizens in Puerto Rico? Does anyone really believe he 
is going to put the people of Puerto Rico first? What a tragedy it 
would be if, instead of helping our most vulnerable citizens, this loan 
was used to pay off, in whole or in part, vulture funds. We need people 
saved, not bondholders.
  We need a response that answers Puerto Rico's call. Instead of 
continuing to treat Puerto Rico like a foreign country and make them 
start a tab at the U.S. Treasury while they are vulnerable and pleading 
for help, we need to treat them just like their fellow American 
citizens in Florida and Texas. We need to provide unconditional 
assistance--real dollars to rebuild roads, the electrical grid, and to 
put people back in their homes and businesses. We need to address the 
massive Medicaid cliff that is forcing even more doctors and nurses off 
the island and threatening the health of the people of Puerto Rico. We 
need strong protections to make sure that

[[Page 16187]]

the disaster relief stays with the people of Puerto Rico, where it is 
needed the most.
  Let me close by saying that I grew up believing the United States was 
the greatest country the world had ever seen. I still believe that 
today as strongly as ever. Ultimately, our response as it relates to 
the people of Puerto Rico is not just about the people of Puerto Rico 
but about all of us. It is about our values--who we are as a people, 
who we are as a nation. How we respond to this crisis will test the 
collective conscience of our Nation, and it will define us.
  As I have said many times, I have never shied away from voting for 
assistance for flooding in Mississippi, for wildfires in the West, for 
hurricanes like Katrina, and any other natural disaster that has faced 
our country with our fellow Americans. I was amazed when I had to 
struggle and fight here on the Senate floor for the first time--I don't 
know--in my lifetime to get assistance in the New York-New Jersey area 
after Superstorm Sandy. It took a major fight, with people voting no, 
even though I had always voted yes.
  The people of Puerto Rico do not have a U.S. Senator to cast their 
vote for them or to raise their voices for them. Yet, as long as I am a 
Member of this Chamber, I am going to continue to prick the conscience 
of the Senate to understand that when we walk to the Vietnam wall and 
see those names, a disproportionate number of them are Americans of 
Puerto Rican descent, who wore the uniform, gave their lives, and made 
the ultimate sacrifice. They did not leave the conflict early; they 
gave it their all. We cannot leave them early, nor should we leave them 
short.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.


                               The Budget

  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I am going to contain my remarks to the 
budget and its process.
  For several days--in fact, for several weeks--I have been listening 
to the same rhetoric of what this budget will do. This budget is a 
special process. It does outline a plan for what we can do over 10 
years. That is a long time. I don't know that we ever make it past the 
first year. In fact, some budgets do not last more than 40 days before 
we waive the budget, but we need to have a blueprint. This is a 
blueprint that covers 10 years in spite of some of the rhetoric that 
this bill will not do any of the things that have been claimed. The 
reason that it will not do any of the things that have been claimed is 
that everything in the budget requires action by another committee 
before it can be done. Maybe they will take what we have in the budget 
and do that. Usually, they do not. If they were to, we could balance 
it, in this case, over a 10-year period. That is too long. Interest is 
going to eat us alive before that time. We are going to have to do 
something else.
  I remember, when President Obama came into office, he had an idea. He 
said that the economy was too sluggish, so he was going to do a 
stimulus bill. Here, they are complaining about this $1.5 trillion 
that, perhaps, might be part of the flexibility for doing tax reform. 
We did more than that in the stimulus, and it did not work and went 
into the hands of a few people. Some of it never did get used. Some of 
it went to very few people. It was supposed to go to shovel-ready 
projects. Some of those projects have not been done yet, so that did 
not work.
  We have had a slow economy. In fact, it seemed to have been slowing 
down, not speeding up, until last November. Last November, people 
showed a sign of hope, and the economy started going the other way. It 
is reflected in the stock market and some of the commodity prices 
because they felt that those could be produced again.
  We decided that we had to try a different approach, and the different 
approach was to try to put the money in the hands of hard-working 
Americans. That is the middle class that some of the people talk about, 
and it is the poor that some of the people talk about. It is everybody. 
When we do tax reform, it will affect everybody. In fact, there are 
even some studies that show that when you do the corporate tax, it 
increases money for individuals who are working because there will be 
more competition for people, and that will drive up wages. Some 
economists have pointed that out. Yet, rather than argue with the 
Congressional Budget Office about how much the change is going to be, 
we said: No. Go ahead. Do your static one just as though no change had 
been made at all. We are willing to bet that there will be a very 
slight increase that will cover what we are talking about as a possible 
deficit and that that deficit will not develop if we increase just a 
very small amount in productivity.
  Just about every economist asked: How come you are picking such a low 
number? Well, we try to be conservative and hope that the number goes 4 
or 5 or 6 points higher than that. If it does, we will have money to 
start paying back some of the debt. If it just stays at my estimated, 
conservative amount, at the end of 10 years, we will have a surplus of 
$197 billion.
  We have a chance to put America on a different route, one that will 
increase jobs, one that will get the money into the hands of the 
people, realizing that they probably know better what to do for 
themselves and their families than we do.
  I do hear a lot when I go home about different government programs 
that are not working. In my studies, I have found that we not only have 
programs that are not working but that we have programs that nobody 
ever takes a look at. We have programs that have a lot of duplication. 
We have 160 housing programs. There are really only 5 things that those 
160 programs do, so shouldn't we have just 5 of them and maybe have 
them specifically and all under one agency and set some goals and see 
if they meet those goals?
  I was visiting with a lady from Africa who happens to be in charge of 
finance in her country. She said: You know, we have performance 
contracts in our country, and a performance contract means that 
everybody, including the towns, does a list of what they are going to 
get done during the year.
  Because they are smaller than the United States, once a year they get 
everybody together who has a performance contract, and everybody 
reviews his performance contract. If you do not meet your performance 
contract, there is a little bit of public embarrassment; whereas we do 
not even check to see if they did anything. We do not even check to see 
if they have plans. We have to change that, and some of the things in 
this budget will allow that to happen.
  I appreciate the way that we finished up in committee. I allowed the 
other side to see the budget early. Normally, they get to see it after 
opening statements are done. Imagine that--do the opening statement 
about what you think is going to be in the budget. Although some of the 
speakers I have heard around here act like they are still thinking that 
something might be in the budget that is not, they got to see it 5 days 
early in exchange for submitting their amendments, which is what every 
other committee does. Submit the amendments early, and then we can look 
through them and see how much duplication there is and some that can be 
accepted from both sides. As a result, we started with over 150 
amendments, and we voted on 25. We took five from the other side, 
making it a bipartisan budget.
  Nevertheless, after the committee process, we brought it to the 
floor, and we had an open amendment process today. In fact, as for the 
way the rules are on this, after we voted on the last amendment--of 
course, before we voted on final passage--somebody could have said: 
Wait a minute, I have one more, and he could have gone on all night. 
Again, we had to think of a civil process today that would result in 
our being able to finish at what would be considered an extremely early 
hour.
  There was a little different tone to the amendments than what I had 
seen before--I think people will agree with that--which was that they 
were focused on the actual items in the budget, not on ``gotcha'' 
amendments. Usually, they say: Well, that person is up, and he has this 
little soft spot, so if I

[[Page 16188]]

throw in this amendment, he will be on record, probably, having to vote 
against it, or he will vote for it, and that can be used against him. 
Either way, they would be able to use it. I didn't see those amendments 
this time, and I appreciate that.
  I appreciate my colleagues for their consideration, their 
cooperation, and a lot of patience that has gotten us to this point.
  I thank Leader Mitch McConnell for allowing the Senators to do their 
jobs, to do them in committee, and to do them here on the Senate floor. 
This commitment to an open, honest, and transparent legislative process 
is crucial to helping Congress restore the trust of the American 
people.
  I also owe thanks to the outstanding members of the Senate Budget 
Committee, who fought so hard and so tenaciously to outline a plan that 
could balance the budget over the next 10 years while providing the 
tools needed to reform our Tax Code and boost the economy. The 
Presiding Officer was a part of that committee, and the Senator who 
just finished presiding was a part of that committee. I appreciate the 
careful and calculated way they looked at it, provided suggestions, 
then asked good questions at hearings and helped to come up with that 
budget.
  Thanks are due, as well, to the many Members on this side who came 
and spoke on the budget's behalf, who offered amendments to make it 
better--well, almost always to make it better--and who worked with each 
of us and each other to move through the resolution's debate and the 
vote process together.
  I would also like to focus for a moment on some of the staff who 
helped to lead us here. I want to thank the Republican staff of the 
Senate Budget Committee. That is Betsy McDonnell, my staff director, 
who is relatively new to the position, but you would never know that in 
the way she took ahold with her knowledge and friendship among people, 
again, on both sides of the aisle. She has been able to work some 
wonders to where we had the least votes in a vote-arama that, I think, 
we have ever had. That came from her being able to combine some of them 
but also in helping them redraft so that they were covering a different 
area than somebody else might be covering, which eliminated some of the 
repetition.
  I want to thank my deputy staff director, Matt Giroux, and Paul 
Vinovich, Becky Cole, Thomas Fuller, Elizabeth Keys, Joe Brenckle, Jim 
Neill, Steve Robinson, Greg D'Angelo, Tom Borck, Richard Berger, Jeremy 
Dalrymple, David Ditch, Susan Eckerly, Alison McGuire, Will Morris, 
Steve Townsend, Kelsie Wendelberger, and our interns Catherine 
Konieczny, Jake Whitaker, and Matt Pfeiffer. They are quite a team that 
has been doing a lot of work, both daytime and night and while the 
Senate has been out of session.
  So I would also like to offer a special thank-you to Eric Ueland, who 
previously served as my staff director. He has been nominated for a 
post within the administration, and he is still waiting for his vote 
here, which is being delayed a lot--not just on his but apparently on 
all of them.
  Eric has played an important role on this committee and throughout 
his time in the Senate. Two years ago, Eric was instrumental in helping 
Congress approve its first balanced 10-year budget since 2001, which 
represented an important step toward putting our country on not just 
another course but a better course. He is careful, precise, and dogged 
in his work. He has a tremendous knowledge of the history of the Senate 
and particularly the budget process. I especially appreciate his 
understanding of the complex Senate rules and precedents, along with 
the Budget Act. I wish him Godspeed in his next position in service to 
our great Nation.
  As well, thanks are due to my personal office staff who have to carry 
a load because I am not there when I am working on the budget stuff, 
but they keep me well informed so we are progressing on some of the 
State stuff at the same time. I particularly have to thank my chief of 
staff, Tara Shaw, who, because a new administration came in and liked 
the employees I had working for me, hired many of them away and we had 
to find replacements and she did an outstanding job with that. She has 
helped to kind of hold me together during this whole process and gives 
me outstanding advice so that I know not only what I am doing but why I 
am doing it, and, again, she has a tremendous history of what I have 
done before, which helps me as a good reminder. She is an outstanding 
chief of staff.
  I also want to include my legislative director, Landon Stropko. When 
you are the budget chairman and you are worried about some of the 
numbers, you can give the legislative director a heart attack because 
as budget director you have to vote against some things that have some 
unusual numbers to it, but it might be something people in Wyoming are 
interested in. We were able to resolve some of those conflicts. I 
always support Wyoming, as I mentioned. For anything that happens in 
the budget process, there is another process that will actually require 
some votes to finish up anything that is in there, and we will see that 
everything in there comes out in Wyoming's favor as well as for the 
rest of the Nation. I am not trying to do anything partial just to our 
part of the country, although a lot of things I work on have to do with 
very rural places. We are the least populated State in the Nation, but 
we are also the biggest State in the Nation so we have a lot of open 
space to invite people to.
  I also want to thank Bart Massey, Liz Schwartz, Natalia Riggin, 
Aniela Butler, Charlie Carroll, Shawna Newsome, Garnett Decosimo, Chris 
Lydon, Aron Wehr, and Dylan Mitchell. I want to thank my Communications 
Director, Coy Knobel, our press team, Max D'Onofrio and Rachel Vliem, 
and the rest of the Wyoming team.
  I have a bunch of people in Wyoming who primarily work on casework 
and do an outstanding job doing that.
  I also want to thank the Budget Committee's bipartisan staff: Kim 
Proctor, Katie Smith, George Woodall, Grace Bruno, and Kevin Walsh, as 
well as Celina Inman, who has been on loan to us from the Government 
Publishing Office. You can tell around here it takes a lot of 
government printing.
  We have also been supported by the great work of our leadership, the 
floor and cloak room staff. I thank them for their continued good work 
and dedication to this institution and the country as a whole.
  In particular, I want to thank Sharon Soderstrom, Hazen Marshall, 
Jane Lee, and Brendan Dunn in the leader's office; Monica Popp, John 
Chapuis, and Emily Kirlin in the whip's office; and very especially 
Laura Dove, who really runs this place. She has a history from when her 
dad was the Parliamentarian, and I am sure there was dinner table talk 
that has led her to know a lot of the precedents. I have seen when 
somebody disagreed with her, she was able to just go over and pull out 
a manual and turn almost instantly to the page and say: Here it is. She 
does an outstanding job of helping us stay on the right track. I also 
thank Robert Duncan, Chris Tuck, Megan Mercer, Tony Hanagan, Mike 
Smith, Katherine Kilroy, and Chloe Barz in the cloakroom.
  I would really be remiss if I didn't thank the Senate 
Parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, and her team, along with our 
bill and amendment clerks who kept us on the straight and narrow, but I 
particularly want to point out our Senate Parliamentarian who has to go 
through the technical details of every sentence of everything we do. 
When you talk about a filing cabinet of ideas all contained in one 
place, she does it. She knows precedent. She has been working at it for 
a long time. To be Parliamentarian, you have to be somebody who really 
likes detail work and pressure because when somebody comes in, they 
don't say: Take a look at this, and maybe I will see what you think 
next week. No, they want to know right now what you think, and 
fortunately she is able to, with a very great personality, say: Not 
yet, and then she does her research and comes up with some great 
explanations--not ones we always agree with--but great explanations for 
any

[[Page 16189]]

decision she makes, and we really appreciate that.
  So you can see that it takes a whole lot of people, and I haven't had 
a chance to get the list of the people from the other side of the aisle 
who have been working on, in some cases countering what we are doing 
and keeping their people informed, but that is the Senate; that is, 
there are all these people behind the scenes who are helping to make it 
work and to do it right. That is important. We want to do it right.
  Now, I think we could work together a lot better if we were able to 
work in smaller bites. I get a little upset when we do comprehensive 
stuff around here. I have watched so many times when we take a 
comprehensive bill and soundly defeat it or maybe narrowly defeat it, 
but we defeat it. I figured out, when we do something that ought to be 
in separate bites, that this piece loses 5 votes and this piece loses 
10 votes and this piece loses 12 votes, and pretty quickly you don't 
have a majority anymore, but if you do it in smaller bites, you may 
lose 5 votes, lose 12 votes, and it isn't a big deal. Getting it done 
would be the big deal. So if people would settle for working one issue 
and sticking to that issue and not say: No, I have this amendment that 
I know nobody will like, but this is such an important bill, if I could 
get it in there, it will make it through and hardly anybody will know--
that is not legislating, and we shouldn't be operating that way. We 
should be doing an item at a time, in bite sizes, so the American 
people can understand it, and we get it done.
  I think a lot of people have done a great job here, including the 
pages. It is late, so rather than go on--I made it to after 10 p.m. so 
you don't have to have class tomorrow morning. With that, I will close.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Perdue). The Senator from Ohio.


                               Tax Reform

  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, as we have just seen, there is no more 
decent or honest Senator in the U.S. Senate than the Senator from 
Wyoming who just spoke, and that is why we were able to expedite the 
process tonight. It may seem like we are here late, but, frankly, we 
all expected to be here until 2 or 3 or 4 in the morning, and instead 
we worked things out. He is an example of why we did, both in committee 
and on the floor. Senator Enzi was able to work with people, be fair, 
honest, and that pays off. It gave everybody a fair shot.
  I will also say he has produced a budget that does balance, which I 
think most Americans agree with. As he said so well, the budget is a 
framework. So the budget itself does not have the specific policies in 
it. In fact, those have to go to other committees to be passed and then 
will be passed by the full Senate and the House and signed into law by 
the President.
  What it does do is it prepares this body to do something really 
important and really exciting, and that is the opportunity to reform 
our broken Tax Code. It is so important because it will give us a shot 
in the arm, in terms of our economy. It will get this economy moving 
again, and it is going to help people who have been left behind in this 
economy. Really, when we look over the past 15 years, so many people 
whom I represent and who are represented by the other Members in this 
Chamber have not seen their wages go up. In fact, they have been flat, 
and what has gone up are expenses--healthcare expenses more than any, 
frankly. It is the biggest single increase people see in their family 
budget but also food, medicine, and tuition. We have seen flat wages, 
not more take-home pay, and higher expenses.
  What we have an opportunity to do in this tax reform bill--that is a 
framework, not a mandate--that was made possible by the budget that was 
passed tonight is we have set the stage for commonsense tax reform that 
is essential to this effort to grow our economy and create more and 
better jobs and increased wages for middle-class Americans.
  We heard a lot of discussion about it adding to the deficit. I will 
just add to what has been said already. If we do this tax reform right, 
it will not add to the deficit. In fact, I strongly believe it will 
reduce the deficit over the next 10 years. Why do I say that?
  I am going to talk for a second about some of the things that are in 
good pro-growth tax reform that we are planning to implement that will 
actually grow the economy that will result in more economic activity 
and more revenue coming into the Treasury.
  If you assume, as the Congressional Budget Office does, that we are 
only going to grow this economy 1.9 percent, which is a pretty paltry 
amount over the next 10 years--way below what the average has been for 
the past 30 years--then let's say all this tax reform we are doing only 
grows the economy by a little bit more. Let's say .4 percent. So 
instead of 1.9 percent, let's grow the economy at 2.3 percent. That is 
a conservative estimate, I believe, based on the kinds of things we are 
talking about. That will mean we actually not only have a revenue-
neutral tax proposal, but we begin paying back some of the national 
debt by having the deficit, once again, as it was in the years 2000 and 
2001, be on a unified basis at a zero deficit.
  This is an exciting opportunity to help people be able to seek their 
goals in life but also to actually help with regard to the budget 
deficit. I agree with the chairman on that. I think we have an 
opportunity, if we do the right tax relief, to really help to get the 
budget deficit down.
  How does this comprehensive tax reform help the middle class? We 
talked a little bit about this today. Some offered amendments. I 
offered one with regard to the business tax side of things, but I think 
it does it in three ways. First, it immediately helps the family budget 
by cutting middle-class taxes. So everything that has been laid out in 
terms of the proposals tonight on the tax side, we can talk about the 
fact that for families who are working families in this country who are 
making $30, $40, $50, $60,000 a year, those folks will see a reduction 
in their taxes which will help the family budget.
  The Tax Code, of course, is very complicated, too burdensome. One 
thing we are proposing is to double the standard deduction. That means 
for people who take the deduction now--and about two-thirds of the 
people I represent do--they will be able to have a doubling of that, 
from $12,000 for a family to up to $24,000 for a family. That is a 0 
tax bracket for the first $24,000 in income. That is significant 
middle-class tax relief.
  Second, we are going to expand the child tax credit. That is really 
important, not just to provide relief but to help families with kids be 
able to afford childcare.
  Finally, we will adjust the bracket so people who are beyond the 
standard deduction, double or nothing, and who don't take advantage of 
the child tax credit also get tax relief.
  So these are ways in which folks are going to see immediate help for 
the family budget, but it is more than that. It is more than that.
  I think, frankly, the most significant part of this reform is going 
to be giving the economy that shot in the arm and helping to increase 
jobs and improve wages. That is going to happen, I think, through the 
business tax relief that we have talked about. First, with regard to 
smaller companies, the so-called passthrough companies, about three-
quarters of the companies in America pay their taxes as individuals. 
This is the corner drugstore; this is the small manufacturing business 
in your town. Those folks are going to see a reduction in their taxes 
on their business income so they can invest more in that business and 
create more jobs, and a lot of the growth is going to come from these 
smaller businesses. That is the 25-percent rate people are talking 
about as compared to, say, a 35-percent or higher rate for individuals. 
That is something that is fair, in part because we are also going to 
lower the rates for people who are in the larger businesses. These are 
the C corporations that are being talked about. That rate has to come 
down. If it does not, America will continue to lose jobs and investment 
overseas, and that is what is happening right now.
  Just in the last 24 hours, another major American company announced

[[Page 16190]]

that they are inverting; in other words, they are going overseas. Why? 
Because of the Tax Code. It is amazing that the Tax Code that this 
Congress is responsible for improving is so bad that people are 
actually voting with their feet and leaving the country and taking jobs 
and investment with them. We have done research on this, we have had 
investigations on this, and we know what is happening. We know, as an 
example, that because of our Tax Code, there are almost 5,000--4,700 
companies just in the last 13 years that have become foreign companies 
that otherwise would be American companies. Think about that. That is 
the Ernst & Young study we recently saw. This is amazing. We know for a 
fact that it is not just about these companies leaving America and 
going to other countries and doing these so-called inversions--becoming 
a foreign company--but it is also foreign companies coming here and 
taking over U.S. companies, and, again, what is happening here is that 
jobs and investment are going overseas.
  Why is this? Well, it is for a couple of reasons. One is that 
American companies now have the highest tax rate in all of the 
industrialized world. So the 35-percent tax rate you hear about, that 
is a high rate compared to every other country in the world that we do 
business with. That is a negative, but it is also how we tax. We tax in 
a way that discourages us from bringing profits back to America to the 
point that, unbelievably, there is between $2.5 trillion and $3 
trillion--and some say more--of earnings stuck overseas, locked out of 
America, which could come back here to expand plants, equipment, and 
jobs, to actually get this economy moving. This is a huge opportunity 
for us. We don't want to see these companies go offshore. We want to 
see them come back.
  Trade policy is important. Regulations are important. Worker 
retraining programs are important. Healthcare cost containment is 
important. But nothing is more important than fixing this broken Tax 
Code if we are going to see the kind of economic growth and improvement 
in wages that we all hope for.
  There have been a lot of studies done on this, and they say that we 
haven't changed our code since the mid-1980s, but every other one of 
our competitors have. They have all lowered their rates, and they have 
all gone to a system of taxation that is more efficient to get this 
money back to their countries.
  In 1986, Ronald Reagan was President. He made some great changes. 
That was 31 years ago. Things have changed a lot since then. By the 
way, back then Pete Rose was still playing for my Cincinnati Reds. That 
is how long ago it was.
  It is time for us to update this Tax Code, to modernize it, and to 
bring back those jobs and that investment. We can do it. We can do it 
because of what happened tonight. This creates the framework for us to 
able to do this.
  In a recent business roundtable survey of 150 American companies--
these are the CEOs--82 percent said that tax reform that we are talking 
about will prompt them to increase capital spending. Three-quarters of 
them--76 percent--said that it is going to increase hiring. And with 
this reduced tax burden, businesses are going to have the money to 
invest in their workers.
  I will tell you, with the tighter job market that is out there now as 
the economy has begun to improve, this will increase competition for 
workers, and this will increase wages. We know that is going to happen.
  Every economist agrees that this kind of tax reform is going to 
change behavior. Some might think it doesn't improve the economy as 
much as others do, but everyone believes this will incentivize us to 
create more jobs and improve wages here in the United States of 
America.
  There is a group called the Congressional Budget Office, a 
nonpartisan group up here that we work with. They have a study that 
says that as much as 70 percent of the benefit from that lower 
corporate rate is going to go to the workers in terms of higher wages, 
better benefits. That is the way we are going to help the middle class 
also--not just with regard to the tax relief directly but with regard 
to helping to improve job creation and increase wages. So I am excited 
about this. I think it can happen. I think it is something that is long 
overdue.
  I think it is something, frankly, that should be bipartisan. This was 
what the Simpson-Bowles proposal, which was a totally bipartisan 
proposal, said we ought to do. In fact, they took the top rate down to 
28 percent--lower than anybody is talking about here. But they said 
that we should go to this kind of taxation we are talking about in 
terms of international businesses, in terms of corporations, in terms 
of creating jobs.
  Two years ago, I worked with Chuck Schumer, who is now the Democratic 
leader here in the U.S. Senate, and we were asked to cochair a working 
group on taxation--particularly folks on the international side--and we 
came up with a consensus, which said that we have to fix this broken 
Tax Code. It is not working, and we need to bring this money back. We 
need to bring these jobs back by going through this kind of system we 
are talking about, a so-called territorial system. In the past, this 
has been bipartisan, and my hope is it can be again.
  Yes, the budget provides the framework for us to get this done, not 
on a 60-vote basis but a 50-vote basis. But we should do it with more 
than 60 votes. We welcome input from our Democratic colleagues. I 
believe, in the end, this will be bipartisan because I do believe that 
the vast majority of Americans out there, as they understand this tax 
reform proposal will say: Yes, I think middle-class tax relief makes 
sense, and, yes, I think we should be bringing back the jobs and the 
investment to this country. I think that is going to be something that 
Members will hear across this country and across this aisle. When they 
do, I believe we will have the opportunity to have the kind of 
commonsense, bipartisan tax reform we need in this country. We need to 
do it to be able to have a thriving American middle class, and we need 
to do it to have a stronger America.
  I am excited about this opportunity. I look forward to working with 
my colleagues on both sides of the aisle.
  Mr. President, I yield back my time on that, but I have another 
matter that I need to do, the closing business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.

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