[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 19476-19480]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    PROGRESSIVE CAUCUS: GOP TAX SCAM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Mitchell). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to be here on behalf of the 
Congressional Progressive Caucus.
  We are going to have some discussion about recent developments in 
Congress over this week, and we are going to focus on the proposed tax 
legislation.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. 
Jayapal), vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. She is 
going to talk about what that plan means for working people in America.
  Ms. JAYAPAL. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Raskin for his continued 
leadership in our caucus. It is such a pleasure to serve next to him on 
the Judiciary Committee. We have a lot of work to do. It is really 
terrific to be able to do it with him, to talk about the tax plan.
  I don't think this is a tax plan. I think it is tax scam. I think it 
is a heist. I think that the middle class in this country is not going 
to benefit from this. Middle class Americans who are hoping for a tax 
break for the holidays are going to be sorely disappointed. Maybe they 
get a few lumps of coal.
  In fact, polling shows, across the country, that this is the 
singularly most unpopular bill that Congress has considered in a very 
long time. Seventy-five percent of Americans across this country don't 
think it is a good idea. They are not fooled by the promises that are 
being made about what this bill does.
  Let's really talk about what this bill does.
  We know that the wealthiest will benefit. The wealthiest 1 percent 
will receive 50 percent of the tax cuts. In 2019, 18 percent of the tax 
cuts in this bill will go to the wealthiest 1 percent. But by 2027, 
that number climbs to 62 percent, with an average tax cut of $33,000.
  What else do we know about this bill?
  We know that the largest corporations will benefit. To pay for this 
massive tax cut for corporations, the Senate tax bill will repeal the 
individual mandate part of the Affordable Care Act, something that 
Republicans have tried to do over and over again this year.
  The American people have spoken up and said: No, we know that 
healthcare is a right, not a privilege. We want our healthcare. We know 
the Affordable Care Act is not perfect, but it has done much to protect 
the healthcare of people across this country.
  Yet, in spite of that, the repeal of the individual mandate has been 
put into the Senate tax bill, and it would result in 13 million more 
people being uninsured. It would also result in a 10 percent increase 
in premiums for Americans across the country, according to the 
Congressional Budget Office.
  We know, also, that this bill is wholly fiscally irresponsible. It is 
funny. For years, Republicans have yelled and screamed about the huge 
deficits we have, yet this bill would add between $1 trillion and $1.5 
trillion in deficits to what we already have. That would lead to a 
mandatory cut in critical programs.
  Let's just talk for a minute about what exactly this tax scam will 
mean for ordinary Americans across the country.
  In order to pay for the tax cuts that we have talked about for the 
wealthiest and the largest corporations, it means that millions of 
working families and poor folks across this country are going to end up 
paying more. Not only that, there are incentives in this bill that 
would actually create an incentive for American companies to take jobs 
off of Main Street, close factories here in the United States, and move 
those jobs overseas. It will make it harder for families to make ends 
meet.
  The Senate bill would raise taxes on 78 million middle class 
families, and millions of families across the country would lose their 
healthcare. In my district alone, nearly 31,000 constituents would lose 
their healthcare.
  This bill would also put real roadblocks in the way of young people 
looking to get ahead.
  Two of the eliminations of tax exemptions in this tax bill that 
offend me the most and should offend all Americans across the country 
are, number one, there is, essentially, a tax on being sick. There is a 
tax on long-term care for Americans across this country.
  Right now, if you have a family member who is in long-term care or 
has a serious illness, the expenses that you pay for that individual, 
that family member, you can deduct those medical expenses. With this 
tax scam, the tax heist that is being proposed, you would no longer be 
able to deduct those medical expenses. So you are being taxed for being 
ill or for needing care as you get older.
  In addition, we are taxing education. We already know that there is 
$1.4 trillion in student loan debt across this country, more than even 
credit card debt in this country. Young people have to make these 
terrible choices about whether they are going to go $80,000 into debt 
or whether they are not going to get higher education. That is wrong.
  This tax bill would actually take away some of the tax benefits that 
we give to graduate students, for example, when they get help to be 
able to complete their graduate education. It would take away the 
exemptions that currently exist.
  If you are a teacher and you buy pencils or paper or supplies for 
your classroom, that is currently a deductible expense. It would take 
that away for teachers, but not for corporations. If corporations buy 
supplies, that is tax deductible, but not if you are a teacher. That is 
just crazy.
  It prioritizes the wealthy by allowing wealthy families to avoid the 
estate tax. Let's talk about the estate tax for just a minute.
  There are 5,400 families across the country that pay the estate tax. 
It is a very small number of the wealthiest families. But, in fact, 
what this does is say that is even too much. We are going to double the 
exemption. Now, $11 million, even fewer families are going to pay that, 
but it is going to cost middle class families a couple of hundred 
billion dollars in revenue.
  The experts across the spectrum are arriving at the same conclusion: 
this bill is bad for regular working families.
  The National Association of Realtors has said this: The Senate tax 
bill ``puts

[[Page 19477]]

home values at risk and dramatically undercuts the incentive to own a 
home . . . our estimates show that home values stand to fall by an 
average of more than 10 percent, and even greater in high-cost areas.''
  How about the Fraternal Order of Police? ``The FOP is very concerned 
that the partial or total elimination of SALT deductions,'' something 
very important to my home State of Washington, ``will endanger the 
ability of our State and local government to fund these agencies and 
recruit the men and women we need to keep us safe.''
  That is a quote from the Fraternal Order of Police.
  The American Council on Education has said this: ``As a result, we 
are deeply concerned that at a time when post-secondary degrees and 
credentials have never been more important to individuals, the economy, 
and our society, the tax reform proposal approved by the Senate could 
make college more expensive and undermine the financial stability of 
higher education institutions.''
  Let's be clear about what is happening here. The Republicans have a 
plan, and it is like a little three-step dance:
  First, transfer trillions of dollars of wealth from middle class 
families and the poorest amongst us to the wealthiest corporations who 
are already not paying their fair share.
  Second, when you do that transfer, explode the deficit. The estimates 
are that $1.4 trillion, $1.5 trillion would be added to the deficit.
  Finally, use the fact that you are exploding the deficit to actually 
cut programs that are critical to Americans across the country, like 
Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. We know that, as written, this 
bill would trigger mandatory spending cuts to Medicare and Medicaid of 
significant amounts.
  So the reality is that we are in a situation where this is incredibly 
unpopular. The polling shows right now that Americans are not buying 
this tax scam: 68 percent say that the tax bill helps the wealthiest; 
54 percent say the tax bill favors big Republican donors; 61 percent 
say that Medicare and Social Security cuts would ultimately end up 
being the vehicle that is used to pay for these tax cuts to the 
wealthiest; and 68 percent say that changes to the Affordable Care Act 
should not be in this tax bill.

                              {time}  1745

  Here is where we are. The House passed its bill on November 16. In 
the early hours of December 2, just last Friday, the Senate passed its 
version.
  We are going into conference committee now, which means that a group 
of legislators from the House and a group of legislators from the 
Senate get together and they try to work out the differences between 
the two bills. Then, ultimately, whatever that compromise is, if it is 
worked out, would come back for a vote in the House and the Senate.
  So, now, more than ever, we need the voices of people across the 
country to call and to talk about the concerns that working people 
across this country have. We do need a real reform of the tax system to 
simplify it, to make sure that people are paying their fair share. But 
that is not what this is. This is a tax scam. It is a heist. It is 
transfer of trillions of dollars in wealth from middle class families 
and the most vulnerable to the wealthiest who do not need that money.
  The reality is that we need to be investing in the American people. 
We need to be investing in jobs and in education. We need to be making 
sure that middle class families are getting a break, that they can 
actually think about a future for their kids, for the next generation, 
that is better than the one they have.
  We have very little time, but, Mr. Speaker, I am very sure that we in 
the Progressive Caucus and we in the Democratic Caucus are going to do 
everything we can to fight for working people, for the most vulnerable 
among us, and to protect things like CHIP, the Children's Health 
Insurance Program, to protect temporary protected status for immigrants 
across the country, and to make sure we are passing a clean Dream Act. 
These are the kinds of priorities we should be focusing on, not lining 
the pockets of the wealthiest corporations and transferring jobs from 
the United States to tax havens elsewhere.
  We have a lot of work to do to make sure that, in this very short 
period of time, people speak up and speak out and make sure that we do 
not pass this bill, make sure that we, instead, work together in a 
bipartisan way for tax reform that actually benefits working families.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Raskin for his leadership on the 
Progressive Caucus.
  Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Jayapal for her 
wonderful remarks and her terrific leadership here on behalf of the 
people of Washington and on behalf of middle class and working class 
Americans all across the country.
  Mr. Speaker, may I trouble you to ask how much time I have remaining.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Francis Rooney of Florida). The 
gentleman from Maryland has 47 minutes remaining.
  Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, the Progressive Caucus greatly appreciates 
this time to talk with the American people. For me, it is always one of 
my favorite moments in the tremendously busy weeks that we have got 
here on Capitol Hill and in Congress.
  I represent 800,000 people in Maryland's Eighth Congressional 
District, which includes Montgomery County, Frederick County, and 
Carroll County. I have the honor of going to work for them, 
essentially, 7 days a week. I live just about 25 minutes from Capitol 
Hill, and I take the Metro or drive to work, come back home, and I get 
to spend pretty much every day both with my district and with my 
colleagues here in Congress.
  This is a special time of the week for me because so many of my 
colleagues are on airplanes or on trains going back to where they come 
from, and they spend a lot of their time on Mondays and Fridays 
traveling. I get to be here, and I get to work. I have a little more 
time to think, Mr. Speaker.
  Because we are so buffeted by events, tweets, conflicts, and 
controversies, we don't always have time to think. I get to use the 
time on Mondays, Thursday nights, and Fridays to be a little bit more 
reflective and deliberative about what it is we are doing here in 
Washington.
  I want to start by just bringing everybody up to date about an 
alarming new legislative development before I get back to the tax bill, 
which will be next week's problem.
  Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed something that they 
call the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017. The entire bill is 
fraudulent, beginning with its name, because it asserts that it has 
something to do with reciprocity, but it doesn't.
  Right now, any State that has a law governing the issuance of 
concealed carry permits to its citizens can decide to work with its 
neighbor to allow a reciprocal arrangement. About half of the States 
have done that; they have deals with their neighbors.
  But this act would wipe all of the reciprocity agreements out. It 
would impose one national standard on everybody in America, reducing 
everybody to the lowest, most permissive States in the Union in terms 
of concealed carry.
  Now, in my State, in Maryland, we have a number of very serious 
hurdles to get over before you get the right to carry a loaded 
concealed weapon. You can't be mentally unstable or dangerous. You 
can't be a domestic offender. You can't be a violent criminal convict, 
a felon, or a misdemeanant. You have got to show that you know how to 
use weaponry, and so on. We take it very seriously.
  Several dozen States have similar laws; others have much laxer and 
much looser laws. That is federalism. Everybody decides for themselves.
  But this legislation that they passed yesterday would wipe out the 
State laws of every State in the country and drag us down to the 
bottom. It is not a race to the bottom; it is a plunge to the bottom.

[[Page 19478]]

  They say that if you can get a concealed carry permit in any State--
and in some States like Florida, there are 1.7 million people with 
concealed carry permits--you can go anywhere in the country. It is a 
passport to override the laws of every other State in the Union.
  There are more than 14 million concealed carry permits in the United 
States, and now, suddenly, that is 14 million more people with guns who 
can come to your State, over your State laws, when you don't want it.
  Oh, and guess what else they have snuck in here. The people who claim 
not to like litigation have created a whole new cause of action. They 
can sue the police officers if they feel the police officers have 
detained them too long. But, of course, the police officers are going 
to detain them too long because they have to figure out whether or not 
they have a right to the gun.
  In the nationalization of concealed carry, have they created a 
bureaucracy, a computer where we are able to figure out whether someone 
is carrying a real concealed carry permit or a fake ID concealed carry 
permit? No, not at all. That is put upon you, your State, to try to 
figure it out. If you hold the person too long, they can sue you, and 
guess what: attorneys' fees for the police officers, attorneys' fees 
awarded against the sheriffs, attorneys' fees against our law 
enforcement officers for trying to keep us safe by trying to enforce 
our State laws.
  Now, we have two opportunities to stop this. One is in the U.S. 
Senate.
  I already spoke to one Senator who was absolutely dumbfounded and 
amazed that such legislation would even be introduced, after more than 
two centuries of the history of the United States, somebody would put 
in a bill to try to extinguish the State concealed carry laws all 
across the country and give other people who wouldn't have the right to 
get a gun in your State the right to come there; and this after some of 
the worst firearms massacres and disasters in our history: the Las 
Vegas attack, which led to the deaths of 59 of our countrymen and 
countrywomen, and the attack in Sutherland Springs, Texas, which killed 
dozens of people.
  The gun violence has even come here to Washington and to the Capitol 
and to the Members of Congress, ourselves, and still we haven't done 
anything.
  We don't take up a universal criminal background check to close the 
internet loophole, to close the private sale loophole of people selling 
guns in the parking lot at 7-Eleven, so we close the loopholes that 
make us an absolute outlier in terms of the civilized world. We don't 
take that up.
  We don't take up legislation to ban military-style assault weapons, 
like the ones that were used in Newtown, Connecticut, to assassinate 20 
schoolchildren at pointblank range. We don't take up that legislation.
  We don't even take up the legislation that they promised, which we 
thought that they wanted to do, which was to get rid of the bump 
stocks. No, that faded away, too.
  Instead, they bring us this proposal to drive us deeper into the 
cycles of gun violence and misery that the NRA and the GOP have taken 
us to in America.
  So, there are two opportunities to stop this madness. One is in the 
United States Senate, but the other is this: the pretended champions of 
the U.S. Constitution are violating the Constitution; they are 
trampling the Constitution.
  Why?
  Well, the Congress of the United States is an institution with 
limited enumerated powers. We don't have the right to do whatever we 
want as Congress. We have to exercise a real power.
  Well, what power is being exercised here?
  Well, there are only a couple of possible candidates. One, they say 
we are regulating commerce, but that is patently absurd. There is no 
commerce that is being regulated in any way at all. It doesn't say 
anything about business and it doesn't say anything about money. There 
is no commerce.
  The Supreme Court authority is very clear about that. That is why the 
Supreme Court struck down the Gun-Free School Zones Act, which my 
friends across the aisle were totally opposed to. They said: Well, that 
has nothing to do with commerce. The possession of a gun within a 
school zone has nothing to do with commerce. You have to strike it 
down.
  Well, equally, the possession of your concealed carry weapon has 
nothing to do with commerce either. So that doesn't help them.
  Then they would say: Well, really what we are doing is we are 
vindicating the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment gives you the 
right to do it.
  There are a couple of odd things about that. One is that, if the 
Second Amendment gave you the right to take a concealed carry gun 
anywhere you want in the country, why has no court ever said that, and 
why aren't they just bringing a lawsuit?
  The Federal courts across the land have been overwhelmingly clear 
that the Second Amendment does not give you a right to carry a loaded 
concealed gun. You don't get that right under the Second Amendment. If 
you have that right, you get it from your State government.
  I thought that was something that my friends across the aisle 
believed in: federalism and State powers and State rights. But, no, 
they would say: Well, this is an enforcement of the Second Amendment.
  I suppose the Supreme Court also struck down that bit of trickery in 
a case called City of Boerne v. Flores, which dealt with the Religious 
Freedom Restoration Act. There, Congress said, overwhelmingly--I think 
it was unanimous--we are going to overrule, essentially, the laws of 
the States and say that any burden on people's religious free exercise 
is presumptively unconstitutional, unless you can show that there is a 
compelling interest in your State against it.
  The Supreme Court said: Wait, where does Congress get the power to do 
that?
  Congress said: Well, we are just enforcing people's free exercise 
rights.
  The Supreme Court said: You don't enforce people's rights by changing 
the meaning of the right.
  Similarly, you don't enforce the Second Amendment right, which, 
undoubtedly, exists under the 2008 Heller decision, which said you have 
a right to a handgun for self-defense, you have a rifle for purposes of 
hunting and recreation, but you don't extend those rights, change the 
meaning of those rights in the name of the Second Amendment and then 
say that is where Congress gets its power. On that theory, the Supreme 
Court said in the RFRA case--striking down the Religious Freedom 
Restoration Act as it applies to States--there would be no limit at all 
to Federal power, and that can't be right.
  My friends celebrated yesterday having passed an unconstitutional 
bill--unconstitutional. We have no power to trample the handiwork of 
the States all over the country. The State legislatures have the power 
under the 10th Amendment, and Congress lacks the power in Article I to 
define what concealed carry policy is going to be in the States. That 
is up to the States.
  So, if they want to become the absolute enemies of the State 
legislatures and State power and State rights, be my guest. But what 
they have is an unconstitutional piece of legislation as well as a 
deeply dangerous and ill-thought-out piece of legislation.
  The last thing I want to say about it is, like almost everything else 
they bring to us now, there were no hearings on it.
  Now, think about that. Here we are, one of the greatest legislative 
bodies on the planet Earth--Abraham Lincoln sat in this body; John F. 
Kennedy sat in this body; some of the greatest legislators who ever 
existed were here--and they are passing bills without so much as a 
single hearing. They just bring it up for a vote.
  So we whip out our phones, and we are trying to google to find out 
about the issue. That is how I found out, for example, that more than 
1,100 people carrying concealed carry weapons had committed homicides 
or mass shootings or killing of police or suicides--with their guns. 
And now they want open season.
  If you want to allow anybody in your State to get a concealed carry 
weapon,

[[Page 19479]]

be our guest. Don't impose that rule on the people of Maryland. We 
don't want it, thank you very much. We have already decided what we 
have got, and that is true of State legislatures all across the land.

                              {time}  1800

  Their so-called reciprocity legislation is actually a demolition of 
reciprocity, because lots of States have entered into reciprocal 
agreements that will be extinguished by their law.
  So without so much as a hearing, without any real debate or 
discussion, without them even realizing that they are violating the 
Constitution, they go ahead and pass this law.
  All right. But that, of course, is just a distraction from the main 
order of business this month, which is demolition of America's middle 
class. I am sorry to put it in such cogent and compressed terms, but 
there is no other way to describe what The New York Times calls the 
worst piece of tax legislation ever introduced in the history of our 
country.
  Now, America has gotten the point about the GOP tax plan. People know 
it is highway robbery. People know it is a mugging of the working class 
and the middle class by the largest corporations and the richest people 
in the country. They know it is an outrageous decision to drive the 
country into $1.5 trillion more deficit, more debt, all to enrich the 
robber barons and the cyber barons of our time.
  They want to cut corporate taxes from 35 percent to 20 percent at a 
time of record corporate profits.
  Why? Why would you do that?
  They say that if we bestow this extraordinary windfall, bonus present 
on corporate America, that somehow we are going to get more jobs out of 
it. But wait a second. We are at a time of record corporate profits 
right now. If all they needed was more profits, more dividends to 
create jobs, then we would be seeing them right now.
  We are in a time of economic growth, and any economist you ask, who 
is not in the pay of the proponents, will tell you it is a deranged 
thing to cut corporate taxes at a time of record corporate profits.
  Why would we do that?
  They say it will lead to economic development. Nonsense. Show me one 
example where trickle-down economics has ever worked. It doesn't work, 
for a very simple reason. You give more money to the people at the top 
of society, they pocket it, they send it overseas to their Swiss bank 
accounts or to the Cayman Islands or more yachts. That is what they do 
with it.
  If you want economic growth, you do what Franklin D. Roosevelt did. 
You invest in the middle class, you invest in working people.
  Business growth comes from demand, and demand comes from a strong 
middle class that is able to buy stuff. If you starve the middle class, 
there is no demand. The rich take their money and they park it 
overseas. That is what our oligarchs do. That is what the Russian 
oligarchs do.
  That is how Donald Trump has stayed in business. The Russian 
oligarchs have been renting out his condos and offices in the Trump 
Tower in New York and coming to the Trump Hotel. They have got their 
surplus profits they are exporting from Russia going right into the 
Trump enterprises. Our oligarchs do the exact same thing.
  You want real growth, you want strong growth, you want fairness, you 
want a democratic society, you invest in the middle class, not the 
largest corporations, not the wealthiest people in the country.
  Now, there is a strong link here to our campaign finance regime. 
Again, every public opinion poll shows Americans know it. You think you 
can fool the American people. You cannot fool the American people.
  Americans know this tax bill is a great deal if you have your own 
lobbyist; it is a great deal if you have your own Political Action 
Committee; it is a great deal if you are in the Trump Cabinet, it is 
going to be perfect for you; and if your last name is Trump, this is 
absolute utopia. But if you don't have your own PAC, if you don't have 
your own lobbyist, watch out, watch out in this bill.
  The Boston Globe's Annie Linskey had a great article with the title: 
``The Koch brothers (and their friends) want President Trump's tax cut. 
Very badly.''
  Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, a Koch group, 
said: ``It's the most significant Federal effort we've ever taken on.''
  Congratulations to the Koch brothers. They are about to get their own 
signature tax bill. All the GOP politicians are saying the same thing 
in the newspapers. You can just check it out.
  They say the same thing: We are calling up the millionaires and 
billionaires for campaign contributions, and they say, ``You deliver us 
that tax bill first. You get nothing from us until you deliver us that 
tax plan. You guys haven't done anything in Washington. You haven't 
thrown 30 or 40 million off their healthcare yet. We haven't gotten 
what we wanted. You deliver us that tax bill. That is what we want.''
  Of course, Trump's Cabinet needs no outside push even from the 
campaign donors. It is the wealthiest Cabinet in U.S. history.
  Guess what it is worth. $20 million? $50 million? $100 million? $1 
billion?
  No. The Trump Cabinet is worth $4.3 billion. $4.3 billion is what 
their Cabinet is worth.
  They all love the tax plan, and they should.
  You know why?
  They wrote it.
  You know who they wrote it for?
  Them.
  Just like for the Trump family, they are going to abolish the estate 
tax, which applies to only 2 out of every 1,000 richest people in the 
country. It is only the wealthiest people who pay the estate tax now, 
and they want to wipe it out, costing the rest of us $65 billion or $70 
billion.
  They want to collide, they want to contradict, they want to trample 
an essential principle of America that our Founders started off with, 
which is opposition to hereditary government, like kings, and 
opposition to hereditary wealth, hereditary aristocracy. The Founders, 
like Ben Franklin and Tom Paine and Alexander Hamilton, they knew that 
the intergenerational transmission of huge fortunes was a threat to 
democracy.
  At a certain point, people don't want to just buy a bigger house or 
another house or a third house or a fourth house or a yacht. At a 
certain point, they want to buy a governorship, they want to buy a U.S. 
Senate seat, they want to buy the Presidency of the United States.
  So what is at stake here is not just whether we are going to have 
some semblance of fairness in the economy. It is bad enough that we 
have got one of the most unequal economies on Earth today. That is bad 
enough. They want a government that is plutocratic, a government that 
responds only to the wealthiest class in society.
  So they want to abolish the estate tax. They want to abolish the 
alternative minimum tax. That is the only reason that Donald Trump paid 
any taxes at all in the one year that we know he paid any taxes in the 
last 2 decades, the alternative minimum tax. So of course they want to 
get rid of that.
  For the middle class, well, no breaks there. They want to get rid of 
the college student loan interest deduction. If you are struggling to 
get into the middle class, to go to college, if you had a deduction on 
the college student loan interest: Gone. They don't want it.
  Healthcare expenses. You spend more than 10 percent of your income on 
healthcare expenses, long-term care for someone in your family who has 
Alzheimer's disease; you have a kid in your family who has autism going 
into a private school for kids with special needs, right now you can 
deduct that. They want to get rid of that.
  They want to get rid of the State and local tax deduction, which half 
of my communities use, targeted right at those States, like Maryland, 
Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, California, and Illinois, that 
invest heavily in education and infrastructure. So they just want to 
get rid of that.
  Here's something else, another snake writhing in the grass of this 
terrible

[[Page 19480]]

bill. They want to repeal the Johnson amendment. This is named after 
Lyndon Johnson when he was a Senator. So we are taking you back to the 
1950s and 1960s. It was a very simple amendment that is essentially a 
logical corollary to the First Amendment, to the Establishment Clause 
and the Free Exercise Clause. It says that 501(c)(3) organizations, 
churches, universities, not-for-profit entities cannot engage in 
political campaigning, in electioneering.
  Guess what the Koch brothers and the Mercers have tucked into this 
one. They are going to get rid of the Johnson amendment. So the Koch 
brothers, if they want to spend $1 billion trying to define American 
politics in the name of plutocracy, now it will be tax deductible. 
Right now, they can spend it under Citizens United, they can spend 
whatever they want, but they have got to pay for it.
  Now they put it into a church or to churches, the ``Church of the 
Golden Plutocracy,'' and then they can deduct it on their taxes and the 
church can now be involved in politics, it can spend money in politics, 
it can electioneer, it can endorse candidates for office, and it 
remains a tax-exempt entity.
  Now, the smart churches, which is most churches, have opposed it. 
They said: Don't give us that power, because the next step is people 
are going to turn around and say, ``Wait a second. Why are we getting 
tax deductible contributions in churches? Why are we tax exempt if we 
are getting involved in politics like everybody else?''
  That will be the logical question. Indeed, it threatens the very 
existence of the 501(c)(3) organization by tearing down that wall over 
tax-exempt contributions, which Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers 
and the Mercers want so badly. Very clever, their divine dark money 
loophole, very clever.
  They are going to find a way that they can control our politics, 
deduct it from their taxes, and corrupt the entire not-for-profit 
sector, the churches and the synagogues and the mosques and so on.
  I wish I could leave you with cheerier news tonight, but the U.S. 
Congress is on the verge of passing the worst tax proposal in American 
history that offends every value that we cherish in this country.
  Why are the people who are pushing it, who are doing quadruple 
backflips in the middle of the night, hiding it from us?
  It took us 2 years and 10 months to pass the 1986 bipartisan tax 
legislation. Here, this is behind the scenes in the dark, speed of 
light, dark of night, the whole thing.
  Why are they willing to do it even though it is rejected now by 2-1 
or 3-1 in every public opinion poll?
  People understand it is highway robbery.
  Why are they willing to do it?
  Well, what is the worst that could happen to them?
  Think about it. The worst that could happen to somebody who votes for 
this is they lose and they go to work for the Koch brothers, they go to 
work for the Mercers, they go to work for Sheldon Adelson, and the 
highway robbery is complete.
  Now, popular protests stopped the plan to throw tens of millions of 
people off their healthcare. Despite the fact that the GOP controls the 
House, the Senate, the White House, and even the Supreme Court--they 
control all of it--yet popular protests around the country stopped it.
  Mr. Speaker, that is the only thing that can stop us now, because so 
many of my colleagues across the aisle have decided to walk the plank 
for the Koch brothers and for the billionaire cabinet. They have 
decided to throw in with the oligarchs, the American oligarchs, and the 
plutocrats.
  So popular protests, people speaking out and contacting their 
Members, will be our only hope of showing that this is an absolute 
insult and affront to American democracy; not just middle class 
economics, economics for everybody, but democratic politics; politics 
for everybody, not just the elite.
  I thank the Speaker for granting us this opportunity to allow us to 
express our intense anxiety about what might happen next week. I wish 
the Speaker a good weekend. I hope that everyone will have the 
opportunity to consider the implications of what is taking place.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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