On the hard right who might doubt Mitch Mcconnells fidelity. It is the beacon of the hard right, the wall street journal editorial page, and they say again alexandermurray falls into the category, quote, so obvious it should pass immediately. So my fellow republicans, what are you waiting for . Everyone on your side wants the bill. Jump on it. Support it. Lets get this done. Lets help stabilize our markets, whatever our views are on health care. And above all, these reports should be all the evidence that President Trump needs to come off the sidelines and endorse the bill. It doesnt bail out the insurance companies. Thats what he said he was worried about. It doesnt cost government money. And, in fact, it reduces the deficit by 4 billion. So there is no good reason for President Trump to continue to obscure his position. Leader mcconnell has said he will put it on the floor if the president says hell sign it. By delaying, the president is harming health care markets, causing significant uncertainty and doing nothing but hurt americans who are trying to afford health care. So, mr. President , it and i mean President Trump, President Trump not you, my dear friend, the senator from alabama. So President Trump, if you dont pursue this bill, the consequences will fall on your back, make no mistake about it. On taxes, later today, the house will likely vote on whether or not to pass the budget resolution that recently passed the senate. My colleagues in the house should be aware that this budget will explode the deficit by 1. 5 trillion. Thats under the best of circumstances. Thats under circumstances where they find 4 billion of 4 trillion of payfors. Probably unlikely. It will slash medicare and medicaid by 1. 5 trillion. And it will set up the same awful partisan process that caused the republican effort on repeal and replace to fail, because when you try to do it in one first party, its fraught wh peril. If you do it in a bipartisan way, few people on either side can try to pull the bill off course, but they wont succeed because they dont have the votes. I would remind my friends in the house who purport to be deficit hawks, you are voting for a budget that will increase the deficit by 1. 5 trillion. Many of these house members, particularly in the conservative wing of the caucus, particularly those in the freedom caucus, have spent their entire careers on the barricades railing against the evils of deficits. What a stunning hypocrisy it would be to abandon those principles today and vote for this budget simply because it gives tax cuts to the wealthiest of americans and the most powerful, largest of our corporations. Now, id also remind my republican friends in the house, particularly those in new york and new jersey, california, wens, virginia, illinois, washington, minnesota, that voting for the budget today is tantamount to voting for the elimination of the state and local tax deduction. And that would sock it, sock it to the middleclass taxpayers in their states and districts. Most of our republican friends from those states, they are blue states, but there are red districts, suburban, well off. They get clobbered if you take away the state and local deduction. Those are the constituents hurt the most. Not the rich and not the poor. The middle class and upper middle class. And not only will it raise their taxes dramatically, most people would lose deductions between 10,000 and 20,000. That aint chicken feed. But it would raise home prices. Sorry. It would lower home prices. A recent study by the National Association of realtors done by pricewaterhousecoopers, the esteemed accounting firm, showed that eliminating state and local would erode property values, the rock of the middle class, by 10 . To the middleclass folks in new york, i believe around the country, your home is a piece of the rock. You struggle each month, pay the mortgage, pay the taxes, pay the upkeep, but youre hoping by the time you reach later middle age, that youll own that home, and that gives your kids a place, or it gives your kids a nest egg when you pass on. But this bill, by eliminating state and local, reduces across america on average home values by 10 . So its a double whammy to the middle class. Raising your taxes and lowering your home values. Why would we do that . You dont have to take it from me. Ill tell my republican colleagues, peter king. Rockribbed republican who has a lot of courage. This morning, i saw him on tv talking about investigating hillary clinton. But heres what he said about repealing the state and local deduction. He said, quote, it will devastate my district forever. Thats a solid middleclass and upper middleclass republican district on long island. Here is what else peter king said. How anybody from new york or new jersey can vote for this budget without knowing what is in the tax bill is beyond me. He was referring to the state and local. Now, i salute peter king for telling it like it is, having the courage to stand up and say to his own partys leadership, i will not forsake my constituents for a tax bill where i dont even know what the details will be. The remaining members of the new york, new jersey, california, and other delegations have a decision to make. Will they protect the middle class, the tens of thousands of homeowners in their districts, or go along with the hardright agenda that will cost their constituents hardearned money for groceries, home repairs, and other needs, and do that all so the very wealthy can get a huge tax break, all so our biggest corporations which are flush with money can have even more money. Wrong. I hear on the other side were talking about a tax bill for the middle class, to eliminate state and local deductibility hurts the majority of middleclass people in this country. Thats what will happen if you keep that in there. Now, some will say in the house ive heard one of my colleagues from new york, republican, say that schumer, hes a democrat, hes beating up on republicans. But i went through this in 1986, the last time we had tax reform. It was democrats who were pushing the bill. Senator bradley, a legend in this chamber, leader gephardt, one of the Democratic Leaders in the house. Despite their entreaties, i told them not only would i not vote for any reform bill that had state and local deductibility in it, but i would lead the charge and round up others, and i did. I got a lot of flak from my fellow democrats, but it was the right thing to do for my middleclass constituency in southern brooklyn. So when i asr republican colleagues to buck their leadership, to help their middle class constituents, its something i did with Democratic Leadership the last time tax reform was on the floor. Now, some are already rationalizing their vote to approve the budget by putting their hopes in the vague possibility of some kind of compromise on state and local deduct ability. The hash fact is there is no compromise to be had on state and local. If you want to make taxpayers choose between the mortgage deduction and state and local, its like asking taxpayers to decide whether they want to cut off their right arm or their left arm. Some are talking about a cap. Well, where are you going to cap it . More than 50 of the total value of the deduction goes to taxpayers with incomes below 200,000. Cap it too low and almost all those middle class taxpayers get whacked. Cap it too high and it doesnt raise enough money to offset all the cuts my republican friends want to give the corporations and the top 1 . Republicans in the house shouldnt stake the votes on the prospect of a good compromise on state and local because theres not one to be had. The bottom line . Any republican plan that limits salt is the equivalent to robbing middleclass families of tax benefits and handing it over to the wealthiest americans and biggest corporations. There is no, no compelling reason to do it. People arent clamoring for it. We dont need to take a trillion dollars from working families and give it to millionaire c. E. O. s, period. And if that werent enough reason to vote no, mr. President , the Republican Leadership is still debating capping pretax contributions to 401 k plans. You here that retirees and potential retirees . In their craven thirst to give the wealthiest people in america a tax break, theyre going to say you cant save money for retirement tax free. What a gut punch to the middle class that would be. Despite the president s claims to the contrary, representative brady and senator portman have said that a 401 k cap is still on the table. So you know what this bill has become . Again in its desperation to help the wealthiest . Its like a quiz show. Which way do we hurt the middle class to pay for it . Door one, state and local deductibility. Door two, cap retirement. Who knows what theyll pick in door three. Could be the mortgage deduction. Asking middle class people to choose which poison to take so you can help the wealthiest makes no sense. So i would urge my colleagues in the house and here in the senate stop doing this partisan bill that was dictated by the hard right, very wealthy individuals, very rich corporations, huge corporations. Work with us. We want to create a bipartisan bill that helps the middle class. Were for tax reform. And we can get something done. Please stop this train in its tracks early on before its too late and youll regret it. There are a large numbers of democrat, including this minority leader, who want to sit down with republicans and come up with a deficit neutral, middle class Small Business oriented bipartisan tax relief bill, not a plan to benefit the richest 1 or the largest and most powerful corporations who are already flush with cash. We want to work with our republican colleagues on a real bipartisan deal. Defeat this budget and we will. I yield the floor. The presiding officer under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. Morning business is closed. Under the previous order, the senate will proceed to executive session and resume consideration of the palk nomination which the clerk will report. The clerk nomination, the judiciary, scott l. Palk of oklahoma to be United States district judge for the Western District of oklahoma. A senator mr. President . The presiding officer the senator from West Virginia. A senator thank you, mr. President. I rise again today to highlight the importance of enacting tax reform. Mrs. Capito i listened to the Democratic Leaders speech. Ive heard that speech a thousand times, a thousand times how only wealthy americans are going to benefit from anything that the republicans can come up with. You know what . Americans are smarter than that. Americans are smarter than that. I represent a state, West Virginians who have struggling economic situations. And if i were to go out on the street in West Virginia and as i talk to individuals there and ask would you like more of your hard earned money at the end of the day and have a tax cut and tax relief, i can guarantee you a hundred percent they would say heck, yeah. I can spend my money better at home with my priorities than what youre doing in washington, d. C. So lets not let that argument rule the day. As i said, were smarter than that. So lets talk about what this bill does. Ive talked this is now my fourth, actually, in a series of something i believe in, which is tax reform for everybody in this country. My first one described the benefits that we will have on Economic Growth, something that was not mentioned by the previous speaker. Weve been stagnated so long that the Economic Growth will rise almost every middle class worker will benefit from this and every Small Business will benefit from this. My second speech was about Small Businesses. 95 of my state is are Small Business. 95 of my state is Small Business. Last week i highlighted the importance of passing the budget resolution to allow congress to move forward and we did that. So today i want to talk about the importance of tax reform for middle class families and the impacts that this bill will have on them, the very real impacts. You know, raising a family is very expensive today. A recent study from the department of agriculture found that middleincome households will spend over 230,000 raising a child, a staggering staggering. Almost half of American Families are struggling right now to come up with 400 if they were to have an emergency expense. And in West Virginia where the Median Income is 41,000, hardly the wealthy, families are forced to take make hard tradeoffs as they balance their checkbooks each month. Expenses are going up. Yet most americans havent received a raise in years. So we need to help working families, especially those living paycheck to paycheck. And this is one of the primary goals of our tax reform. We want middle class, middleearned income folks, hardworking folks to get more in their pocket to decide what they want to do with their money. I raised three children. I know just putting shoes on your children is an expensive proposition. Maybe you want to plan for a trip or save for college. Well, to pay for child care and to save for college at the same time is almost impossible for our young families today. And the framework that we have set forward i think will help our families in many ways. First, it calls for a significant increase in the Child Tax Credit. Yesterday a number of my colleagues from the house and the senate, we joined with ivanka trump to highlight what an improved Child Tax Credit would mean for working families. The tax reform proposal would allow families to take a higher perchild credit saving money on their taxes, money that theyve earned, money that the families deserve to spend on their own, and many that can have Significant Impact to our families. We also would create a 500 tax credit for families who are caring for a nonchild dependent. Many americans find themselves in the sandwiched generation where theyre not only caring for their children, theyre caring for their parents at the same time. So this will help those families. Second, the proposal nearly doubles the standard deduction or the zero tax bracket from 24,000 for it raises it up to 24,000 for married taxpayers and 12,000 for single taxpayers. What kind of impact would this have on a state like mine . Well, 83 of the taxpayers in West Virginia take the standard deduction. Theyre going to get a doubling in their standard deduction. Thats more money for them to take home, to put the value of where they want to spend it with their own families. So four out of five West Virginia working families will benefit from that. That is an enormous savings, and even more taxpayers are likely to benefit as the larger standard deduction means that fewer people will itemize. So we expect that figure to go up from 83 up. It makes filing taxes simpler and it makes it so that our taxpayers can file on a single form without all of the extra forms, time, and money that it takes. And finally, most importantly, families will benefit from the Economic Growth that tax reform will bring to our country. This is probably the biggest impact that tax reform will have for working families. Well lower the corporate rate, yes, for companies, but weve got to make our Companies Competitive across the globe. Were not. Were not competing. What kind of effect does that have . Fewer jobs and lower wages. Companies know if they invest in their work force, if they invest in the wages of their work force, theyre going to have a more Productive Work force to produce products, to sell products, to enhance the quality of life of their communities. Many of these large corporations that are scattered around our country really do a lot of work in the Community Service parts of our country, whether its helping with schools or whether its helping with the baseball teams or sponsoring a robotics team. So why does that matter to working families . More than 2 trillion in profits earned by American Companies is kept offshore because of the flaws in our current tax system, 2 trillion. And i think some of those estimates might be low. Shifting to a more fair and competitive system will bring those dollars back to the United States. Those Companies Want to invest in our country because they know that we have the safest, most safest investments. We have the most technologically advanced and weve got the best worworkforce and in is great nes for American Families. Lowering that Corporate Tax rate from 35 to 20 could increase the pay for the average american by about 4,000. My Small Business round table, when i asked would would you do with tax relief, the first thing she said was raise the wages of my seven employees. So i think this would be good news for working families, certainly good news for 50 of the West Virginia workers who work in Small Business. We need to make sure that we work together, that we target our tax relief to middleclass families. Mr. President , you and i were at lunch the other day with the president. Priority one the president said, this tax cut must be targeted to the middle class, the working families in this country. And thats what this bill has put forward. Larger tax credit, larger standard deduction, unlocking the wages by lowering the competitive tax rate, and despite our hard work, too many middleclass families are falling behind and we want to make sure that trend stops. So all of us i think can join together. This is going to go through committee. Both parties will have lots of opportunity to weigh in. And i look forward to looking into the eyes of the working men and women in my state and saying not only is help on the way but help is here. Thank you so the presiding officer without objection. Mr. Rubio mr. President , over the next few weeks, the United States senate, the house, the congress, everybody here in washington is going to be engaged in what i think is one of the most important and potentially impactful impacts weve had here in a long time. For a place thats been so criticized for not doing anything, we have a chance to actually do something thats going to matter and help the people and help the country, and its called tax reform. It actually goss the heart and soul it actually goes to the heart and soul of our nation and who want to be and who weve been up to this point. We are a nation that has embraced Free Enterprise. There are people that dont believe in Free Enterprise. There are people that believe in different variations of Free Enterprise. But by and large america has believed in Free Enterprise, which means that the government doesnt try to control too much of the economy. People have private property and private businesses. You have rules to make sure that people dont cheat or steal from one another. But by and large we believe in a private economy. Why do we believe in a . I think you have the teens it. It is not just a pure economic one. You luke back you look back at our founding. We do not do a good enough job of teaching Young Americans that america was not created as a nation to bring together a common race or a common ethnicities or common religion. There are a lot of nations around the world. Most of the nations that have ever existed have been a homeland for the people that were born and have lived in that one place, not us. We were founded on the idea that you could bring different kinds of people from different backgrounds and unite them as one people, despite their differences in background and ethnicity and in religion. You could unite them behind a very powerful iraq, the idea that all of us are you could unite them behind a very powerful idea, the tied all of us were born with the right to pursue happiness. It has changed the world. It has been the identity of our counsel. It is among Everything Else what makes us unique and special and in every generation thats been challenged economically, socially, culturally, and we need to continue to fight for that. One of the Core Principles behind equal opportunity is the ability to fulfill your economic potential, to grow up and be what you want to be and do what you want to do, hope a company, work for a certain industry or career ar stay home and or stay home and raise children. We are a nation that believes that we all have a godgiven right to pursue that. And it is something that Free Enterprise makes possible. Now, the difference between Free Enterprise and people who want government to control everything is the best analogy i could think of is imagine a pie yeah, lets just use a pie as an example. I cant bring one on the floor, but just imagine one in your mind. Imagine if i said to you, this pie will never grow, it will always be the same size, and every single one of us gets a slice. If the pie cant grow and every gets a slice, then the bigger your slice, the smaller my slice. And thats what people that dont believe in Free Enterprise argue. They argue that the pie really cant grow, so you need government to make sure that that spy equally, or equal enough among everybody. The tax code is bun of the ways though it. The tax code is one of the ways though it. There is another a it is the argument that that pie doesnt have to stay that size. We can make it a ba pie thats a lot bigger. It doesnt matter how big the other persons slice is as long aces your slice is big, too. More for them doesnt mean less for you. Thats one of the unique attributes of Free Enterprise is that everyone can be better off without anyone being left worse off. And thats the theory. It doesnt always work in practice for a lot of different reasons. That doesnt mean an ar conflict of interest we do need government. Im not antiregulation. I am antioverregulation. I fly on airplanes. Im sure were all gre offers st airplane is inspected. I think all of us want to make sure when you open a bottle of medicine prescribed to you is actually the medicine. When we eat food, we want to make sure its not poisonous or will spread disease. These are all products of regulation. The same true is economic. Thats why we have antitrust laws. Thats why we have anti thats why we take on anticompetitiveness because it actually undermines Free Enterprise. Im not talking about corporatism, because there are a lot of countries around the world that claim to be Free Enterprise, but they really arent. Its four or five Big Companies control everything. Everybody else either works for them or is unemployed. Thats not what im talking about. Im talking about Free Enterprise, a nation and a system in which someone can quit their job, open a business, compete with their former employer, and put them out of business because youre better than they are, or at least take away some of their customers. Thats Free Enterprise. Thats what we believe in. What has challenged Free Enterprise in this country in the 21st century and you sense it in peoples frustrations . There is two things. The first is there is a lot of global competition. It wasnt true in the 1960s and 1970s. We forget germany, japan. These countries were wiped out completely during world war ii. It took them decades to rebuild. America was the only show in town for much of the 60s, all through the 70s. All the other countries watched us grow and started doing the things we did. They started deregulating. They most certainly started cutting taxes. The result has been over the last 20, 25 years, most countries in the industrialized world, the big economies, charge companies a lot less in taxes than we do. What that does over time, it makes us uncompetitive. Thats why not a day goes by that you dont read about some American Company that was bought by a company in another country and moved over there. They pay less in taxes over there than they do here. For anyone who doesnt realize that, youre missing a big part of this. We are not the only show in town anymore. We have to compete. Thats why our tax code is important, because if it becomes uncompetitive, you are basically forcing and or inviting companies to leave the United States for more favorable tax treatment. And thats happened. And do you know who has paid the price . Not the rich people. Youre a wealthy investor. You can invest your money anywhere in the world. Even if you make your money here, i promise you, you have the best lawyers and best accountants to find every loophole to save you money. If that doesnt exist, you will hire the best lobbyist to make one. In the end, the truly wealthy, the billionaires, and the owners of these extraordinary amounts of wealth, they are theyll figure it out. Do you know who gets hurt . The people who get paid every two weeks. Thats who gets hurt because when those companies leave the United States, they take their jobs with them. The list of those there are and the more people we have competing for less jobs, the less people get paid at a time when everything costs more. There is another thing thats hurting us, and its not part of the tax reform, but its the way growth is now distributed. We can no longer just assume if the economy grows, everyone will be better off automatically because the prostitute is in the 21st century, there are some careers, some industries, and some jobs that pay substantially more. If you want to talk about haves and havenots in the 21st century, the haves and the havenots are the people who have advanced education and the right skills and the people that do not. We have got to close that gap, the vocational training. Thats a separate topic that has to be dealt with and critically important and the way growth is distributed. You have no growth to distribute if you dont have growth. Thats why this is so important. When you hear all this talk about wealthy corporations getting huge tax brakes, breaks, its not necessarily true. It really, really is important for people to Pay Attention to the details and not just the talking points on this. Lets take, for example, lets say company x is a publicly traded company. They sell stock on wall street and the like. Next year because we lower taxes, that Company Makes a Million Dollars more than they did this year. What can they do with that Million Dollars for a publicly traded company . There are really only four things you can do with that money. All four of them help working americans. The first thing they can do is grow the business. They can say we like our business a lot. We now have a Million Dollars more than we thought we were going to have. But we believe so much in our future, were going to take that Million Dollars and invest it to grow a company. Were going to open a new factory, open more stores and hire more people as a result. Were going to invest in more equipment which means the people that make that equipment have more work. Thats the first thing you can do with the money you might save on taxes. Heres the second thing you might have to do. Maybe you dont grow your business, but with a that Million Dollars extra that you have from the tax cuts, youre going to have to pay your employees more because now theyre going to quit and go work for somebody else. So all of a sudden you are now in a position to be able to hire good people and retain them by paying them more and by offering Better Benefits to keep them. Thats the second thing you can do with the money. Heres the third thing you can do with a Million Dollars and the tax cut that you didnt plan on having. You can lower prices. You can say im in competition with these five other businesses to sell the same thing. Were going to use our Million Dollars to lower our prices just a little bit and just enough so that people buy it from us instead of them. Do you know what that other company is going to have to do . They are going to have to lower prices, too, could compete with you. Do you know who benefits from the lowering of the prices . The middle class. The people who are going to shop there will be paying less because of the competition. Thats the third thing that can happen. The fourth thing that can happen and the one that gets the most criticism is well, they will just pay it to the shareholders in dividends. Okay . Who are the shareholders . The shareholders are wealthy people that trade in wall street and spend all day in front of a computer and have these brokerage accounts that handle their accounts. They are part of it. Do you know who else is shareholders . Millions and millions of americans. If you are a firefighter or a Police Officer with a union pension, you are a shareholder. You might not be aware of the companies you have shares in, but its in your pension, and the future of your pension will depend on how those investments go. If you are a 401k holder, youre a shareholder. Just because youre not in front of the computer every day checking your t. D. Ameritrade account does not mean youre not a shareholder. Youre a shareholder. Virtually every sort of investment mechanism for retirement in america is invested in what they call equities, is invested in the market, is invested in stocks and bonds. In fact, those things are doing better. Its helping you retire. So thats why the business side of this is so important. It will help grow the economy, but it actually will also help people because there is nowhere else for that money to go. The other type of Small Business, which is actually the majority the other type of business, a passthrough. Most businesses are organized as that. That is you pay on your personal rate. Youre a Small Business owner with three employees, youre an s corporation. At the end of the year, you pay your taxes on your personal rate. Your rate is actually higher than the company companies, the corporations. Except you cant hire the lawyers and the accountants and all the other expertise. You are actually in many cases paying more than the Big Companies. They would be helped, too. They would be on tax reform that lowers their rate and makes them competitive. Beyond ensuring that people are either going to have better retirement funds, lower prices, more pay or more jobs, the otheg Small Businesses, the vast majority of which are owned by people that are not multimillionaires and billionaires, the other thing we can do to help working class people in this country is an expansion of the Child Tax Credit, and its an idea that senator lee and i have been pushing for for the better part of two years. It wasnt always universally popular, but i will explain three reasons why its important. In fact, not only is it important, it has to happen. If you dont do that, then this if we dont do that, then someone could argue this is not a middleclass tax cut. But if we do it, it will be perhaps the single largest middleclass tax cut in modern history. The Child Tax Credit is the credit you get per child. Obviously it phases out at some point the more money you make. Why do we have it . We have it for two reasons. Number one, because we truly believe that the family is the most Important Institution in society and parenting is the most important job you will ever have. I dont care what you are. Youre a president , a senator, a congressman. I dont care what you do. The most important job you will ever have, the most important job you will ever have, the most impactful thing you will ever do is raise a family. And so our tax code accounts for that, and it should. The second thing and its raising children is expensive. If youre raising children right now or have any time in the near past, you know how expensive it is. I dont know where they get these numbers, but it sounds right to me. The department of agriculture estimates that to raise a child from the time they are born to the time they are 18 is about 230,000 per child. Thats a Staggering Amount of money. That doesnt even count college, by the way. All you have to do is spend just ten minutes. Just go out one day this weekend and talk to the people you know who are working parents and ask them. Theyre going to tell you one of the most expensive things they face, especially between the time their children are born and the time they turn 4 or 5 is child care. Over twothirds of the states in this country, it costs more, costs more for child care than it does to go to college. Imagine you make 800 a week that you take home but you have to spend 400 a week on child care for your two kids. Thats half your paycheck. Im not saying a Child Tax Credit fixes all that. Im saying thats a cost that keeps going up. Its the reason why the tax credit has lost about 300 in value from the time it was last expanded in 2003. And then the other thing to add to it is if you look at some of the changes being proposed on the personal reduction, thats another 500 off. In essence, unless the tax at 800 per child, we are just breaking even. Thats why we have to have a Child Tax Credit thats at least 2,000 to really have an impact. And the other thing we have to do is make it refundable. What that means, it has to apply against payroll tax. Medicare, Social Security taxes that come from fica, immediately off your paycheck. Everybody pays that tax. Not everybody pays income tax because if you dont make more than a certain amount of money, you dont have an income tax liability. But you are paying taxes. Its called the payroll tax. If we dont deal with that, if we dont make the Child Tax Credit apply to that, then youre basically not cutting taxes or not helping the vast majority of people who need it. There has been some speculation that this would be too expensive and cost a lot of money. Its not true. Number two, its their money. You dont get it unless you owe it, and you dont owe it unless youre working. All were saying is let people keep more of their own money to pay for the cost of living. They will have to spend that money. We know a large number of families in this country are living beyond what they make. Thats why credit card and debt has risen over the last 20 years. So theyre going to take that money and going to spend it and spend a lot of it on raising the children. Theyre going to spend a lot of it on the things we talked about. Im not saying this alone will change it, but hopefully the Child Tax Credit combined with a growing economy in which there are more jobs that pay more and pliefs prices are lower are truly going to help people, and we have to help people in that regard. This has to be a critical component of tax reform. I wanted to set the stage for that because unfortunately it is a complicated thing. Unfortunately taxes are very complicated, more than they really should be, and there is going to be a lot of misinformation out there about who this actually helps and how the economy actually works, and so its really important for us to be clear and upfront about why it is we are doing the things were doing. When i hear all this talk about helping millionaires and billionaires, they are probably the people that care the least about some of this tax reform. They are going to be finding a way they just want to know what the rules are. They want to know what the rules are because they will figure it out one way or the other. If the taxes are too high, they will take their money to another country. If they are low enough, they might invest it here. Either way, they will be fine. The people we really want to help are working people and Small Businesses. And the tax code is a part of that. Its not the only part of that, but its a big part of it. And thats why this has to happen. It has to happen. Its been far too long. And i guess my last point is i want everybody to kind of take a step back and say 50 years from now when people read about this time in american history, theyre going to ask themselves what was wrong with those people . Did they not realize that all these other countries were taking their jobs . And one of the ways those jobs were leaving is because they were giving them away. You were literally inviting people to leave by acting so arrogant about yourself that you thought you could charge them anything you wanted in taxes and they would stay. And thats just not true anymore. Im not sure it ever was entirely true, but its less true today than ever before. And in the end, the people that are really being hurt by this are the people whose jobs dont pay enough, at a time when everything costs more. The people that are really being hurt by this are the people that wish they could start their own business, but they cant because they dont think they can make enough money to survive. People that are really being hurt by this are parents that are trying to raise their children at a time when everything costs more. But their paychecks arent keeping pace. The people that are being hurt by this are the people that sit down every month and kind of write out on a piece of paper, this is our budget for the month, and about 14 or 15 days into the month, something comes in the mail that you didnt expect was on its way, and all of a sudden that whole budget got blown up, and now you have to use a credit card to pay for it. The people being hurt by this are the people that kids are now 17 years old, and they are like i want them to go to college. I just have no idea how they will be able to go. Even with financial aid, they will have to borrow money to go to school. And now they are in debt before they even vote in their first election, they already owe ten grand. So weve got to help them if we are going to rebuild the countrys economy. Tax reform is a key part of it. Here is my last point. There has been a lot of talk about debt and that this is going to grow the debt. That actually doesnt have to be true, because if you lower the tax rate and businesses are hiring more people, creating more jobs, and growing, thats going to grow your economy. And when you grow your economy, you have more taxpayers. When you have more taxpayers, you have more revenue. Even though you didnt raise the rate, you will still collect more money, because even though you dont have more taxes, you have more taxpayers. And so thats a big chunk of this. Depending on what just a normal you know, not unrealistic growth rate would more than pay for the money that people are saying were not going to collect as a result of this. Thats part one of it. The other thing thats interesting to me is if we stood here today and said lets take 1. 7 trillion and spend it to build stuff that the government does, there would be no problem with that. That would be seen as stimulus. Thats positive. Thats good debt spending. But how we say lets take money and give it back to people so they can spend it themselves, thats bad debt, thats ridiculous. And the third thing that i would say is youre never going to tax your way out of this debt anyway. Even if we taxed everybody in america next year, if everybody in america that made a Million Dollars next year, we confiscated every penny of it and said your tax rate this year is 100 , it dont even make a dent on the debt. Thats how big the debt is and how fast its growing. You canr wait out of it or cut your way out of it either. The only solution to our debt longterm is you have to do two separate things and do them both. You have to grow your economy. You have to. That pie has to grow. Number two, the debt has to be held back so it doesnt grow as big as the economy. If you grow the economy by 4 and grow the debt by 4. 5 , then youre not going to get there. So you got to do both. This is part one. Part one is grow the economy. Part two is going to have to be to bring our spending on a sustainable path so that the growth and the benefits of the growth and the revenue from the growth isnt being taken and used to pay for even more government. To use a best analogy, if you owe a lot of money and you only make 2,000 a month and next month you get paid 3,000 a month but you add 1,500 a month of expenditures, then youre still owing more money. So you got to do both. Youve got to generate more revenue through growth, not through more tax, and youve got to hold the longterm line on spending. But this is step one of that twostep process. And we have a chance to do it here before the year is out. We have to do it. And i believe we will. It will be hard. It should be hard. I was i read these articles, tax reform, people are arguing about it. They should argue about it. They dont have a lot of arguments about Economic Policy in china, by the way. Because there is not much of an opposition. But in america were a republic. There are different ideas. There should be different ideas. Tax reform should be controversial because its important. There should be debate. And there will be. So we arrive at good public policy. Nothing wrong with that. Its a good thing. Not a bad thing. As long as that debate is geared towards reaching a result. And in the end i will tell you this. If we dont do it, i actually think well hurt our economy. Not keep it the keep it the way it is will hurt it because a lot of businesses, a lot of employers and americans assumed this would happen given who won the elections in 2016. They already made Investment Decisions on the assumption that some of this was going to happen. And im telling you, if it doesnt happen, the collapse and confidence will hurt the economy badly. Failing to act will actually reverse whatever gains weve already made this year on the expectation of growth and will actually shatter peoples confidence in americas future. If youre sit thrg today thinking where am i going to open this big plant and hire a thousand people and you see tax reform collapse in the United States and the people in the house and the senate and in the white house are all supportive of tax reform and they still couldnt get it done, youre going to say to yourself, guess what . Im not investing in that place. Because even when the people who are in favor of it are in charge, they still cant get it done. Not doing tax reform wont r wont lead to status quo. It will actually lead us worse off. Thats why the Child Tax Credit has to happen, by the way. Not only can we not pass it without it, we cant justify it without it. So im optimistic were going to get there. It will be a lot of work but it will be good work. It will be the reason why so many of us are here to begin with. We come here to make a difference. We come here because we want to contribute toward making things better. Not perfect, better. This will make things better. For all the people who complain about and spend years here and nothing ever happens, this is a chance to see something hab in our time here and happen in our time here and look back and say we made a difference while we were there. Thats what were endeavoring to do and im excited that i believe were going to do it. It will be long, hard, but it will be fun and good for our country and for our people. And it will be if we do it right, one of the most rewarding things any of us will ever do in our time here in public service. With
comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.