Transcripts For CSPAN3 Senate Republican Tax Reform Plan 20171115

Review of the republicans tax plan freom earlier today. Well leave it here. You see it at cspan. Org. Committee members returning from a break to continue their work. Live coverage here on cspan3. Were going to continue with another round of questions about the modification. We will then conclude this portion of the markup at the completion of that round. And i hope everybody zpt havedo have to ask questions. At that point the modified mark will be open for amendments. Before we continue for the next round, i think its open for amendments now, but well do it for sure then. Before we continue with the next round, i want to say a few words of about some of what has been said. My democratic colleagues always pro fes to be the champions of middle class families. We see that rhetoric in full bloom and full display today. Thats why it is absolutely astonishing to me that they are so opposed to the repeal of the individual mandate tax. They talk as though everything is fine with our Health Care System and that the repeal of this tax will send it all tumbling down. The fact is that obamacare is already failing. Largely because the mandate has failed to do what it was designed to do. It has not improved markets or brought down premiums. Markets are in decline. And premiums continually rise despite the presence of this tax. Frankly, the great irony of obamacare is that on the one hand, it makes Health Insurance too expensive for many to afford while on the other hand it imposes a tax on those who dont buy it. While the mandate has not improved the Health Care System, it has imposed significant burdens on middle class and low income families. This tax is one of the most regresssive taxes in the entire Internal Revenue code. According to the irs, nearly 80 of american households will pay the individual mandate penalty who really pay the individual mandate penalty make less than 50,000 per year. Now, this year the tax for not purchasing insurance is 2. 5 of Household Income or 695 per adult whichever is greater. Up to 2,085. Yet obamacare premiums are so high that millions of americans had to pay thousands of dollars more for coverage that does not fit their needs. Contrary to what many of my democratic colleagues have claimed, the most recent analysis from cbo on repeal of the individual mandate does not herald the collapse of our Health Care System. In fact, cbo says, and im quoting from the most recent analysis here, if the mandate tax were to be repealed, quote, nongroup Insurance Markets would continue to be stable in almost all areas of the country throughout the coming decade. End quote. So lets not distort figures. Lets tone down the drama and the rhetoric just a little bit. In addition, lets be clear. Repealing the tax doesnt take anyones Health Insurance away. No one would loez access to coverage or subsidies that help them pay for coverage unless they chose not to enroll in Health Coverage once the penalty for doing so is no longer in effect. No one would be kicked off of medicaid. No one would lose insurance theyre currently getting from insurance carriers. Nothing. Nothing in the modified mark impacts obamacare policies like coverage for a preexisting conditions or restrictions against lifetime limits on coverage. So i hope people will stop with the scare tactics that weve heard thus far. The mark simply repeals an extremely regresssive tax. Why did we do this . It seems logical to me that taking revenue acrewed in order to cut taxes for those family system really a good idea. Thats what weve done here. Were doubling the Child Tax Credit from the current 1,000 to 2,000 and allowing more middle class parents to claim the credit. Were lowering individual tax rates for middle income americans and letting them keep more of their hardearned money and making changes to the business tax system that have long been supported by democrats, including most members of this committee. What in the world are we doing . No member of this committee who has supported significant reductions in the Corporate Tax rate or the corporate rate and introduced or cosponsored bills to that effect should now sit here cas ti gaiting republicans for supporting a giveaway to Corporate America f. Lowering the corporate rate is a giveaway to corporations, then it is curious that the minority leader has written in support of lowering the rate in a committee on tax reform democrats on this committee seem to agree. All of us know that our corporate rates are too high, that our tax system doesnt really work for Small Business owners. Our plan is sensible. Its not radical. Its not supply side or trickle down. All of you heard just a little while ago from the chief of staff of jct that middle income earners get larger tax cut get a larger tax cut than those at the top of the scale. So lets stick to the facts. With that, i do have some quick questions id like to ask ms. Acuna. First, does the modified mark reduce rates for middle income households . Yes, it does. Can i make an Opening Statement before questions . Let me just finish these questions. Ill turn to you i thought we were making Opening Statements. You had an Opening Statements. You can make your questions, too, at that time. Im just going to do it this way and then ill turn to you. The second question and these are just a few questions weve got to get out of the way. Does the modified mark lower rates for Single Parents in the middle income brackets . Yes, it does. It lowers the rates in the single bracket. Does the modified mark increase the Child Tax Credit . Yes, it does. Ill be darned. Does the modified mark increase the refund ability of the Child Tax Credit . Yes, it does. First of all it if it does so, how does it do it . Index its to inflation and increases it from 1,000 under current law to 1,100. Does it make the modified tax credit available to more families . Yes it does in two ways. The first way is that it increases the age of the child that qualifies to receive the Child Tax Credit from under 17 to under 18. And next it increases the income limitation in crept law so that more middle class families can get the benefit of the Child Tax Credit. Does it make the tre fundable portion of the Child Tax Credit available to more families and if it does so how . It does. Current law requires a wage threshold. You have to make more than 3,000 in order to claim the refundable portion. The modified mark reduces that to 2,500. Thank you. I wanted to get those out of the way so we all know where were coming from. I apologize to my Ranking Member for having done so. I felt that was essential. I turn to the Ranking Member. Im going to ask one question. Mr. Barthold, the chairman, then ive got an Opening Statement and questions of my own. We dont have any distribution analysis that supports what the chairman just got into. Does such a distribution analysis exist from jct . Senator wyden, we prepared a distribution analysis on the underlying mark. As i noted this morning, were working on preparing an updated analysis to reflect the changes. So there is no distribution analysis for the bill that is the bill before us. I appreciate your clarifying it. That isnt what he said . Yes it is what he said, mr. Chairman. He said he had done a distribution analysis for what was considered earlier. But he is going to have to do another version, what he called an updated version for the modified mark. Im glad we got into that. Mr. Chairman, you are surprised that we oppose your back door effort to get rid of the Affordable Care act. I will have to tell you, im kind of surprised that you and your colleagues dont care about the 13 Million People who are going to lose coverage and the 10 million more who are going to see their premiums go up because you are not going to have as many Healthy People in the risk pool. And as we learned today, my colleague from ohio went through how some of the middle class people that he represents would get a few hundred bucks in terms of the tax and theyd lose it all and more in terms of the increase in their Health Insurance premiums. And what this all gets to, and im going to ask my questions about this, is that your bill has a double standard in terms of taxes in america. The folks from the Multi National corporations, their breaks are permanent. And a lot of them in effect are going to make it even more attractive to do business overseas in red, white, and blue jobs and the folks that are middle class, their breaks are temporary. This is being used as in effect the majority leader said here in the last day the temporary middle class tax cuts are what makes it possible for the Multi National corporations to get permanent tax cuts and that is not my analysis. Those were the comments made by the republican leader. So now im going to begin my questions and i want to talk about what happened yesterday. Yesterday secretary mnuchin made a visit to ohio and in effect he said that the administration was drawing a line in the sand with respect to making the tax proposal and the massive handouts to Multi National corporations permanent. Thats what the secretary said yesterday. So mr. West, youre here from the administration and ive heard you say that, you know, youre kind of here for this and kind of here for that, but i would assume since you were at the Treasury Department you would know the answer to this. Have the administration drawn any lines in the sand to say that tax cuts for families would be permanent as well . That is a yes or no answer . You know they cant do that. Mr. Chairman thats kind of a phony question. Mr. Chairman, i dont think its phony at all. The secretary of treasury who is mr. Wests boss. They cant ill ask my own question. Go ahead. Thank you. Senator wyden, i cant answer the question as to the position of the Treasury Department on these provisions. Okay. Why are you here . Im here to assist the committee with the administerability of certain provisions. If you have questions along those lines id be happy to assist. Its pretty hard to get into administrative fee we now know where theyre respected to heading with permanent breaks to Multi Nationals. We we dont know where theyre headed with respect to families other than the majority leader said were going to make the family tax breaks permanent in order to make permanent the breaks for the folks at the top. Mr. Barthold, could you give us some sense with respect to joins tax score of the new bill . We do have that. The expiration of the tax cuts for the middle class pays for the permanent rate reductions for corporations. It looks to me like the individual tax title raises money overall while the corporate title loses. Is that correct . Senator wyden, i assume youre referring to the revenue table. Right. And the total of the lets see, the total of the individual titles on page 3. Are you looking at the last year or the line total . Yeah. The total. The way we see it, the expiration of tax cuts for the middle class pays for the permanent rate reductions for the Multi National corporation and the individual tax title raises money while the corporate title loses. Youre looking at the last year, 2027. Yeah. Yes. 75 billion. All right. So weve established that, colleagues that not only do we know now what the majority leaders agenda is, but its confirmed by joint taxes analysis. I think this sounds worse than the bush tax cuts because i think families and Small Businesses could end up worse. In fact, because of the inflation adjustment, which is less, they could end up falling further behind. So i think the remaining question i have for this round, mr. Barthold, is that a big part of what weve wanted to do is real tax reform. And get away from tax extenders. That was a part of the 2015 tax focus as you know, the path bill which had permanent changes the democrats supported, permanent changes republicans supported. We combined them and came up with a good bill. To what extent would the enactment of the chairmans tax plan bring back the need for tax extender bills and going back to the old days and the fact that we didnt really have reform . We just kind of lurched from one change to another without providing the predict aiabilityr our middle class. The mark would unset all the individual title items as i noted in the walk through except for inflation indexing. The underlying mark provides for 100 bonus deappreciation for five years. The mark adds a two year temporary provision related to alcohol exise taxes and a temporary provision related to employer credits for paid family and medical leave. My time is about to expire, but it seems to me, colleagues, what we now have is the opposite of tax reform. We have a crazy quilt of provisions, some of them are permanent, some of them are tem. Mr. Bar toe, can you tell us, and i think this would be important before we start voting here at some point. Can you tell us how this affects individuals and passthrough Small Businesses and corporations . Are you able to do that at this point . Weve discussed a number of those issues over the last not quite clear the specifics of the question youre asking. The question is, people are going to say to senators who have to vote on this, weve got this crazy quilt. Stuff is permanent, stuff is temporary. How does this affect individuals, and particularly passthrough Small Businesses, and corporations . And we would like to see that on a piece of paper. How does it affect those key constituents that we represent . Can you get that to us in the next couple of hours . As i said, when we do our updated distribution analysis, we had been presenting a breakout between individual tax provisions, which counts the rates effect and Business Corporate and businessbased provisions so that youll be able to see that when will we be able to get that, before you start voting . When are you starting voting, sir . Were going to ask some more questions, i can assure you of that. But colleagues, get the significance of this. And im over my time. Here we are, looking at voting. Ive described how were basically going back to yesteryear, instead of having permanent tax reform, were going to have some stuff temporary and some stuff permanent. And weve already explained the inequity for families versus multinational corporations. Now we dont even have the specifics of how this would affect individuals and passthroughs and multinational corporations. And we are not angry at you, mr. Bartold, because you have an extraordinarily challenging job to ask to make in effect sense of trillions of tax changes made on the fly. But we would like it if you could furnish that before we vote. Were trying to complete that today, sir. Thank you. Ive allowed the democrat leader to go over. But from here on in, were going to stop at five minutes. So lets all observe these time constraints, because everybody wants to participate. And i would like to treat everybody as equally as we can. Senator grassley. Mr. Bartold, anyone on the other side concerned with the tax rate being made permanent. So would you tell us, if the Corporate Tax rate deduction were not permanent, how would that affect business behavior in the six or so years from now . The economic incentives to invest in the analysis that we provide to the members is driven by after tax returns from investment. Investment has its returns over a long period of time. So if you are you said five or six years from now. So if you were in 2022, you would be thinking if i made an investment a new factory, a new facility then, you would be earning your income out over the subsequent years. And you would be looking at higher potentially higher tax rates after the sunset date that you proposed, senator grassley. So that would diminish what you would see as the possible returns from your investment. So it should it should diminish investment incentives. Would it if it isnt made permanent, then, would it nullify the benefit that comes in the first part of the ten years . If when we get to undertaking our Macro Economic analysis of the legislation, having the loss of some of the investment incentives, because theyre temporary, would diminish potential investment, potential growth that you might get in this decade. Okay. Mr. Chairman, im going to reserve my three minutes. I might want to have some more questions, but that takes care of it for now. All right. Senator stabenow. Thank you, mr. Chairman. First i just want to indicate, again, that rather than this chaotic process with things changing all of the time, not being able to get the numbers before we vote, not understanding and getting the analysis on onesixth of the economy, on health care alone, let alone the tax code, we could be doing this in a bipartisan way. Thats what this committee is known for. And it is extremely concerning that thats not whats happening. But let me again, in my first round of questions, talked a lot about the 13 Million People that will lose Health Insurance coverage. And, in fact, it is 13 Million People. The idea that nobody will if nobody was going to lose insurance, then there wouldnt be about 400 billion available to spend on making the multinational Corporate Tax cuts permanent. I mean, the whole idea of the fact that now changes can be made that the republicans want to make is because somebody loses something. And thats called health care. 13 Million People. Spending about 400 billion less. Thats how they get the money. And then on the other hand, of course, not having enough money to extend anything from middle class families. Beyond 2025. But when we look at the health care piece, one of my constituents was born with type one diabetes as a child. Insurance companies refused to cover her. She would stretch out three days worth of medication to five days to save money. Ive heard this over and over again. In michigan. Under the Affordable Care act, she was able to get coverage and the medications that she needs. And now id like to ask mr. Core roso. Under this bill, he could see an increase of 10 next year. Is that right . I think thats our understanding, from what cbo has analyzed. And according to cbo, there would be people just like that all across michigan, all across the country, forced to pay more for their medicine, forced to pay more for their insurance. Yes. Again, according to what cbo and others have reported. And thats going to happen to people all over this country. So basically, when youre faced with that kind of a situation, youve got a couple of options. You pay more for your insurance or you lose your coverage all together. And id like to know if theres anything in this bill that brings down the cost of premiums. I may have my colleague sub in, who is our health care why dont do you that. Thank you. We would welcome it. Is there anything in this bill to bring down Health Care Premiums . Sorry about that. No. The repeal of the individual mandate, as weve talked about, cbo, says well actually raise the cost of premiums. Is there anything to reduce outofpocket costs in this bill . No. Is there anything to bring down Prescription Drug costs, which is the major driver of Health Care Spending . No. Is there anything that would help constituents with preexisting conditions . No. So i think its pretty clear. Republicans needed to include tax cuts to health care in order to pay for tax cuts for big multinational corporations. A couple of other questions on different parts now of this bill, turning away from health care. I want to talk about the Home Mortgage deduction and homes. Michigan is a state where we not only have a lot of people that have their primary residence, theyve got the cabin up north. Theyve got the cot damatage on lake. Today hunting season is opening and a lot of folks in michigan, including members of my family, are going up to the hunting cabin. And so i lets talk a little bit about would this bill allow families to deduct their mortgage interest on their second home if theres a hunting cabin . Yes, it would. It beau. It does. The only modification that the chairmans mark as modified makes to the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction is to eliminate home equity loans. But home equity loans. Home equity loans. But not okay. But not a mortgage related to a second residence. Okay. Does the house bill . The house bill would eliminate the mortgage Interest Deduction with respect to second homes, home equity loans and also would lower the present law 1 million acquisition mortgage limitation to a 500,000 limitation. So significantly limits that. So we have, as usual thats the house bill. Thats correct. And as we talked about yesterday, a house bill, a senate bill, well have to see where that ends up. But mr. West, any idea where the administration would be on the mortgage Interest Deduction, home equity loans . A lot of folks are using those to get loans for send the kids to college or somebody who is buying the hunting cabin up north. Im sorry, senator. Senator, your time is up. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Senator cardin. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, i really have tried to understand this bill. I got it thursday night. Original bill. I had concerns about middle income families not being treated fairly with the tax relief going to high income. And increasing the deficit by 1 1. 5 trillion and probably much more. And then i take a look at the modified mark that we got late last night. And these circumstances appear to me to be even worse. And ive commented somewhat on this. But by making the individual tax issues temporary, but making the business tax issues permanent, weve really made it worse for middle income families. And we made it worse for the deficit. Because we now have extenders. Big extenders. That are going to be in the trillions of dollars. And i dont think anybody in this committee expects that we are not going to extend these provisions. But in reality, we dont build that into the economic model. So its the worst of all possible worlds. But i want to drill down a little bit more on the individual mandate issue for Health Insurance. Because ive listened to some of my colleagues give a very sympathetic reason for this. Saying that were going to provide an additional 43 billion of tax relief to middle income families. I found that strange, because as i understand it, 13 million more americans are going to be uninsured. And the individual market rates are going to go up by 10 as a result of this provision alone. So middle income families are going to find themselves without insurance, and are going to find their Health Care Costs are actually increased. But i thought senator mccaskill made a very good point and i just really wanted to get mr. Bartholds view so i understand it. Theres 43 billion of tax relief because were not collecting the penalty on the mandate. Yet, as i understand it, you have over 300 billion more revenues available as a result of that one provision, net. If im correct on that. Thats correct. Because of behaviors in the marketplace. So the behaviors in the marketplace. Im going to concentrate on two that total about 360 billion of savings. One is the reduced the reduced subsidies under the Affordable Care act. Of two there are two different specific ones. One is the exchange subsidy credit thats available on the purchase of policies through the exchange. And the other is the costsharing subsidies that are payments to Insurance Companies. And so for those subsidies actuarial standards. There are income limits as to who can qualify for that type of relief. Thats correct. Were talking about losing 185 billion of subsidies that go to ill call it middle income families. Actually, maybe middle income, lower middle income families, depending on their income levels. Bottom half, sir. Bottom half. So they lose 185 billion of subsidies that would otherwise be available for their health care. Because they chose, under the mandate, their behavior. I understand that. Then theres 179 billion reduction in the medicaid subsidies. Now, these are people who would qualify for medicaid. And medicaid we have working families that qualify for medicaid. Veterans qualify for medicaid. We know that. We had that debate on the floor of the United States senate. Because these individuals right now dont come forward, because theres no mandate. And they lose those benefits. Thats correct. Theres reduction and outlays. So i just want middle income families are getting a lot of conversation here. But it seems like its disingenuous to say that youre providing 43 billion of relief when youre taking away 360 billion of benefits. Am i missing something . As far as the benefits to basically middle income families . The analysis that youve provided on the benefits that you provided seems accurate. Let me use my last 45 seconds, mr. Chairman, just make a plea here. I dont know what impact this is going to have on the state of maryland. But i do know that we have an allpayer rate structure, which is truly unique. And if we have a high increase in the uninsured, its difficult to maintain that program of all payers. And these are the consequences of changes that are being contemplated here without having the time for us to even go back to our states to figure out what impact it has. That affects the health care of all marylanders by this one provision. And i just think the process here leaves a lot to be desired. And im really disappointed. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Well, i wish it was more perfect myself. But well go to senator enzi now. Mr. Chairman, i would just reserve my time. Thank you. All right. Senator isaacson, well go to you. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I wanted to address senator stabenows comments a few minutes ago. She was on target on a couple things that got kind of cut off because the clock ran out. She has been a champion in working on the mortgage issue for a number of years since we had the crisis in 08. And the answers that you got were exactly correct, and that it is the percent provisions include both the first and second mortgage and the limitation combined is 1 million in debt. So you substantially maintain the mortgage Interest Deduction you have today in the future as far as this bill is concerned. You no longer will be able to deduct the interest on a home equity line of credit or a money market credit for a lot of reasons, because a lot of that has been abused for people who get mortgages beyond their ability to pay. So i think its a good, responsible proposal. I also want to compliment you on the concept of a credit versus a deduction that you came up with and articulated early on in this debate. And that has a future. So i want you to know your proposal not only was intriguing but its got legs. In fact, i just left a meeting with some people talking exactly about the credit versus the deduction. So on behalf of the people who have an interest in the mortgage Interest Deduction and have worked on that issue, which you have, thank you for what youve done. Secondly, i want to make a appointment. I yielded my time to of senator scott. Who did an articulate job and far better than me this morning. I did have something i wanted to say. And its this. This morning, u. P. S. Issued a press release about the tax bill. David ab knee, the president of u. P. S. , which is home based in my state of georgia. But does business all over the world, was that the bill, in their opinion, was going to increase employment, be increase jobs and increase prosperity in america. And they were very supportive of it. And i just wanted to say this. When you get right down to it at the government, there are only two ways we can increase our revenue. One is to increase the rate of taxation that we charge. By not materializing an actual increase or not. But it looks better. But the best way is to increase prosperity for our citizens. If we incentivize the economic development, growth by corporations, expansion by businesses, they interpret that in a job creation in their business, those jobs pay taxes and those taxpayers start Small Businesses which pay more taxes and then it has a cumulative effect. So i think the approach thats been taken, and i know there are people that have problems with a lot of substance. Some people have problems with the style. Some people have problems with the way its been done. But i do commend the committee and the chairmen on working hard to provide tax incentives that will grow our economy, grow the opportunity in jobs and grow the revenue of the United States of america the right way by increasing the prosperity of our citizens first, but we benefit second. Thats what i wanted to inject. I yield back. Thanks, senator. Senator brown. I prefer if senator bennett go next, if he could go after me. Is that all right . If you would like to yield to him, that would be fine. Ill yield to him. Then he can yield to me later. Is that appropriate . I think so, sure. Thanks, mr. Chairman. Are you sure yeah. Okay. Thank you. And thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you to my colleague from ohio. I think part of what speaking over lunch, why we seem to be missing each other in this conversation, part of it, i think, is the concern, at least that i have, about the backdrop of our economy that sort of is the context in which were having this conversation. Where we have seen over decades now a situation where the bottom the top 10 percent of income earners in america have now reached a threshold where theyre earning more than 50 of the income. And the bottom 90 , which is everybody else, is earning less than 50 of the income. Thats not the way it was for the entire history of the United States. But thats what we find ourselves today. With that huge disparity that exists. And in that regard, mr. Barthold, i wanted to ask you a few questions. One of my colleagues on the other side touted that every single income bracket got a tax cut in total under this bill. Is that is that correct . Again, he we have not completed the analysis, but as we discussed yesterday under the underlying mark, thats correct. And on your tax plan distribution, i realize that some of this will change. But is it true that 572,000 taxpayers so just over half a million taxpayers, making 1 million per year, and more, receive 33 billion in tax cuts in 2019 alone . Thats thats correct, as reported in the first column of jc and note for the chairman and my colleagues that these tables do not even count the impact of the estate tax, which we know goes overwhelmingly to higherincome households. Isnt that right, mr. Barthold . I provided some Supplemental Information to all of the members yesterday on the estate tax. Yes, its generally higher income households. And ive added how much everyone, all 90 million taxpayers who make less than 50,000 receive in 2019. Mr. Barthold, if you could take a look at that chart and eyeball it and see whether you think the total of these 9 million taxpayers receive is it more or less than the 572,000 taxpayers with incomes over 1 million . Okay. Were adding up 100,000 and less . Yeah. 50,000 and less. 50,000 and less . Okay. 50,000 and less. Ill give you the because i wasnt very nice yesterday. Im going supply you with the answer, which is 13. 3 billion. Okay. So you have 33 billion going to 528,000 taxpayers. You have who are getting 33 billion. You have 13. 3 billion going to people making 50,000 and above. I know you are precise, mr. Barthold. The reason im asking is these numbers are so far apart that its obvious what the result is, even at first glance. The 572,000 taxpayers with incomes over 1 million get twoandahalf times as much as the entire 90 Million People with incomes below 50,000. Twoandahalf times what people are getting below 50,000. And that does not even include the estate tax changes. And mr. Barthold, one more question. As a student of history, have incomes been growing faster or for people with incomes over 1 million . I dont know the milliondollar figure. But most of the data indicates that the top 10 incomes of households are individuals in the top 10 of the population have grown more rapidly than the median household. And im grateful for your candor. So colleagues, this is a massive amount of distribution to the people in our economy who have done the best without a distribution much a distribution at all to people that are really struggling in this economy. And i and i know before people say it, that the wealthier u the more income tax you pay. I have an appreciation for that. I used to be in the private sector myself. But when you add up federal taxes, state taxes, local taxes, people at the bottom 20 , theyre benefitting so meagerly from this legislation compared to the people at the top. Paid 26. 2 in taxes. They actually pay a larger share of their income in state and local taxes than people in higher income levels in part because of sales tax, because its so regressive. And we are just compounding that with this bill. In a world where people cant afford housing, cant afford health care, they cant afford higher education. Or Early Childhood education. Were making matters worse for them. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I yield. Thank you. Senator casey . Thank you, mr. Chairman. I have a couple of questions for miss warrenoff. I wanted to direct your attention to page 10 of the document entitled chairmans modification. And in particular, in light of what is in the modified market, as well as whats in the recent Congressional Budget Office report as it relates to the individual, whats referred to on page 10 is the aca individual shared responsibility payment. The provision that deals with the repeal, will this provision lead to individuals losing their Health Insurance . Thanks, senator. According to the cbo, it does 13 million fewer americans will have Health Insurance as a result of this provision. And thats as of 20 in the next ten years, by 2027. And whats the first year . Thats in 2019 . Yes, 4 million. So it starts at 4 million and increases up to 13 million over the decade. Exactly. Is it possible that some of the people who would lose their Health Insurance in that time period or even in the first year would be individuals with disabilities . Yes, its possible. Is it also possible that those who would lose their insurance would be children . Yes. And i guess also that means it could be parents of children who would lose insurance. Is it also possible people who would lose their Health Insurance are older adults over the age of 50 . Yes. And is it also possible that some of these individuals who would lose their Health Insurance would be individuals struggling with Substance Use disorders . Yes. The overall impact is i think fairly obvious to most folks, what happens here. But what may not be as evident to folks is the time within which you have had and others have had, who do this for a living, have had to review both the bill overall, but in particularly new provisions. I had some questions or one or two questions this morning of mr. Barthold with regard to the time it takes to review the impact, and he indicated that that analysis was not was not complete. But thats all of the questions i have, mr. Chairman. Ill yield back two minutes. I think we should go to senator brown now. Thank you, mr. Chairman, for your accommodation. I thought that senator bennetts numbers were just astounding about how much this tax cut goes to the wealthy and how little goes to the rest of the country. Secretary mnuchin and chairman brady and speaker ryan and senator toomey have all stated that tax cuts will pay for themselves through growth. Thats never really been the argument of the original supply siders, including bruce bartlett, who was an argument of the tax cut proposals. He stated just a month or so ago, in reality, theres no evidence that a tax cut would spur growth. The most perhaps from president reagans chief economic adviser and sort of the guru of trickledown. He freely admitted what the original supply siders have always said. Permanent tax cuts can, at best, recover about a quarter of the lost revenue through Economic Growth. So if i could ask you, is mr. Feld steins finding consistent with the evidence of past tax cuts . Okay. His findings that what the original supply siders have said, permanent tax cuts at best recover a quarter of the lost revenue through Economic Growth. Yeah. I think theres a the literature theres a range of responses. But its generally its generally quite low. Its in the i think probably generally i think under 25, 30 . And then the same question. And ill just tax reform. In the 6 oh to 81 tax cut, 86 tax cut, same answer, i assume. Yes. I mean, i think a lot depends on how the tax cuts are designed. I mean, it really depends on the provisions. But generally, the response is theyre nowhere near 100 replacement of the funds expended. And in 93 and well, in 2001 and 2003, how do the tax cuts work . These were sort of across the board reductions in rates and expansions of credits. You know, eitc, the Child Tax Credit, were expanded. But i think theres a lot of debate as to how much they actually well, what they did to stimulate the economy and really certainly didnt pay for themselves. I dont think i dont think theres been any study that has shown that. I think theres been a number of studies those studies show it, but many of the players secretary mnuchin, seems to think it. Although his specialty is really banking and foreclosures. Brady seems to think it. Speaker ryan seems to think it, or at least hes saying it. A number of people on this committee seem to think it. Even though the gurus of their economic school, if you will, say that at best, as you point out, mr. Crosso, that no more than 25, 30 of the tax cuts of the lost revenue is made up through Economic Growth. Let me take slightly different tact here. We know the socalled tax bill takes insurance, Health Insurance, away from 13 million americans. We know it causes premiums to hahp hc but the story doesnt start doesnt end there. It also forces direct cuts to medicare. Yesterday ken hall, the director, the ceo, provided congress with this letter to ste steny hoyer, stating the federal government would be required by law to order 25 billion in cuts to medicare, correct . I think this is our understanding of the statutory paygo law. Okay. So once again, youre telling us passage of this bill will result in billions of dollars in immediate cuts to medicare, correct . If statute is not subsequently waived, correct. But it doesnt stop with medicare, as we know. Social security is next. Again, dont take my word for it. Representative brady of texas, the chairman of the house ways and means committee, said that House Republicans would seen turn toward welfare reform, tackling entitlements. Mr. Feldstein wrote an article in the wall street journal saying that tax cuts, only about a quarter of the deficit will be of the increased deficit will be made up for by growth. The other three quarters should be paid for, he said, by raising the eligibility age for Social Security so that a barber in Garfield Heights or a waitress in toledo or a construction worker in dayton, or a manufacturing worker in jackson, ohio, would have to work until theyre 69, 70, 71 years old. Speaker ryan said at a town hall event that the next item on the republican agenda was cutting social insurance. So my question is actually for the chairman of the committee for chairman hatch. Because i want to be reassured that if we pass this bill and we blow a bigger hole in the deficit, that this congress isnt going to come back, or the next congress, and say, well, weve got to raise the eligibility age of Social Security. Weve got to cut medicare, head start, go after education, health care. I want some assurance. So, mr. Chairman, my question for you is, is entitlement reform the next item on your agenda . Im sorry, i didnt hear the question. Okay. I will set the question up again. Im not sure you were listening. Its a long day. I just didnt hear. Just that its clear theres going to be such a huge hole in the deficit, congress is going to have to flake it up somehow. So my question is, is entitlement reform the next item on your agenda . Well, if there is a deficit and that happens, and it very well could, congress will have to work its will. Thats what congress is for. And we will. Well, it seems to me, mr. Chairman, that we should go into this with eyes wide open well im sorry, mr. Chairman. Listening to people who are experts. Martin feldstein, and mr. Crosso, so many have said that its almost certain history shows the evidence is this will increase the deficit. You only grow 25 of this hole. So we know its going to be a bigger deficit. So my question fundamentally is, is entitlement reform a big part of the way raising the Social Security eligibility age, all the things youre going to do . Is that what youre thinking about . I dont think so. But, you know, nobody can predict the future. All i can say is that we know one thing. That the continual spending that our Democrat Friends and colleagues are calling for is going to put us into even deeper debt than we are now. Look, i would like to solve this problem. Id like to have our entitlement programs work. I heard senator bennett say, mr. Chairman, earlier this morning that when president clinton, when he did his deal, that frankly, no democrats voted for no republicans voted for in the early 90s, that was my first year in the house. That we built this huge trilliondollar projected trilliondollar surplus and then we did tax cuts and undo tax cuts and unpaid war and blew it up. So i dont think you can make the case its always democratic spending. Its fiscal policies like this, when you cut taxes on the wealthy. And as mr. Crosso said, the deficit goes up and the Economic Growth is not what senator toomey said. Secretary mnuchin said. Speaker ryan said. Chairman brady said. What a number of my colleagues said. The Economic Growth isnt such to pay for this. We also know that we cant keep spending, too. And thats what weve been doing for the last 40 years. This isnt a spending question. The time is up. Lets go to the next person on the list. And that is senator mccaskill. Thank you, mr. Chairman. As a point of parliamentary inquiry before i begin my questions, thank you for the list. Sure. Ive now started going through the list. And trying to look at all these amendments that were added. And i notice that, like, one example of an amendment that was added when i look and find the amendment, it just says provide credit to employers for family leave. With no other information. Is is there some place i can go to find out how much that is and who gets it . Do you know . Does anybody know . Yeah, thats in the jct summary, and i dont know anything more than that. Okay. Theres one that talks about credit for domestic manufacturers. And all of these amendments now, ive only gotten through theres like 35 of them. Ive only gotten through the first ten, trying to glance. And in most of these amendments, theres just a brief description, and then it says offsets to be determined. Have you all determined the offsets for all of these . Well, if i direct your question to the panel this is coming from your the staff. The republican staff. Were getting it from the panel. And others. Mr. Chairman, im trying to decide how to vote. Youve put all this in the bill. I just want to know what it is. Read it. Its not here, mr. Cornyn. Senator cornyn, its not here. I would read it. I got this a half hour ago and im busy going through this giant book trying to find it. This is all in the jtc summary. And id ask them if you want to okay. Are all of these amendments and the offsets included in your summary . Yes, senator. We have some the particular one about the employer credit for paid family leave is on page 41 and 42. It describes the credit rates do you have where the offsets are and how much eve one costs, or is it just the 100 pages . The offset theres not an offset per se thats part of that provision. The revenue the revenue table that we provided shows what provisions raise revenue and what provisions lose revenue relative to baseline. The family paid leave credit loses revenue. But there were provisions that we noted this morning that raise revenue. For example, there were the changes to the amortization of research expenditure. There was the change for the treatment of meals provided for the convenience of the employer and a number of other things. Let me ask you this, mr. Chairman. Is it going to be possible for us to have a period of time that i could actually read the 100 pages, since we got it at 10 30 last night and started at 10 00 this morning before we start offering amendments . Could we have an hour to read it . Would that be possible . To get an hour before we start amendments to read the summary . Im just asking for an hour for 100 pages. Im a fast reader. Since 10 30 last night. Youve had it since last night. I was asleep at 10 30 last night, mr. Chairman. I dont know about you. But i was asleep. At 10 30 last night. Well, while others are asking, maybe you better go read it. Okay. Let me ask about passthroughs. Sorry, senator. I dont mean to sound im just trying to learn this stuff. I understand and i appreciate that. And i want to help. I take this really seriously. I want to help you. But weve got to move ahead. Were moving ahead. Its taking a lot of time. Weve got the top experts in the country right here helping us. And i think we all have got to be weve all got to prepare ourselves the best we can. Im sorry. Go ahead. On the passthroughs, mr. Barthold by the way, i love your cardinal red tie. On the passthroughs, have you all reached an agreement as to whether or not the w2 age limitation are whether they can be aggregated . Because at one point in time there is a disagreement between the jct and the finance staff about the aggregation on the wage limit on the passthroughs. The test is businessbybusiness under the modification as in our understanding, of the original mark. So they will not be aggregated. Not for testing purposes. Thats correct. Okay. So every different llc for Real Estate Developer would be different. Would be tested by the wages paid in that llc. So if one had a larger payroll than the other, the limit would be different for the one enterprise than the other enterprise. Is there an impact to basis . Is there are threes passthrough changes on the w2 wage limitation er issues i didnt see clearly addressed in the original mark admittedly, i didnt have time to read the 100 pages. Was there an impact to basis . The changes in the modification went in to two or three different dimensions. In the underlying mark, there was no limitation based on wages in the case of a Sole Proprietorship. The modification extends the limitation based on wages to Sole Proprietorships. On the original mark, a Sole Proprietor could have employees. There was no limitation based on wages. Now theres a limitation based on wages. Under the original mark, the limitation based on wages applied in the case of S Corporations and partnerships, llcs, applied regardless of the of any other any other factor. In the modification, there is no limitation based on wages if the owner has a taxable income less than 500,000. Im using the a return of a joint of joint filers. And thats applied for S Corporations, partnerships, your llcs and Sole Proprietorships. The original mark also a point that we discussed yesterday about Service Professional Service Provider enterprises, the original mark had said that generally, those enterprises were excluded, unless the owner, the Service Provider, had a taxable income less than 150,000. The modification changes that so that Service Providers may claim the full benefit allotted if their income is less than 500,000. In the case of a joint return. So it expands the number of Service Providers who may take Service Provider enterprises that may take advantage of the modification. It tightens a rule for Sole Proprietors. And it by putting wage limitation the wage limitation on. It relaxes the rule on wage limitations for S Corporations, partnerships, llcs. So those are the three things. Ive got a lot more questions on passthrough. But i know my time is up. But i just want to say, because i tried to figure out if i could get more information. Ive got a lot more question on passthroughs. But if anybody thinks weve made this simpler for 95 of the businesses in america, they havent tried to wade through this. All right. Our next question will be senator portman. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I think for the passthrough, and i appreciate senator mccaskill looking closely at this bill, and she wants to know whether she should vote for it or not and i appreciate her attitude. And i do think its a whole lot simpler than what the house came up with, because 17. 4 deduction is simpler than coming up with a formula that every company would probably disagree with, and then you would have this proveout. So thats one reason the National Federation of independent businesses today endorsed this bill. And then if i could be as big in my state, it would be big in your state and all of our states. And they do think this is simpler. It would be a good tax cut, particularly for Small Businesses. With regard to what senator bennett said earlier about the distribution of the tax cuts in this bill, ive already asked mr. Barthold about this, as have others. And he says theres a tax cut at every income group. In other words, if you look at between 20,000 and 40,000, theres a tax cut. Between 40 and 60, theres a tax cut and so on. One of the distribution tables that ive got in front of me here, mr. Barthold, is your jcx5315, distribution mark. I know this isnt necessarily accurate now, because now we have taken some of the tax, which is what it is. Its an Internal Revenue code from the individual mandate, and provided more middle class tax relief. So these distribution tables are even more skewed toward the middle class now than this one is. But let me ask you the questions here, just looking at that table. The comment was made that the wealthy are going to pay less through the wealthier pay as a percentage of their tax more or less under this table . Im looking at federal taxes under the proposal and federal taxes under present law. And lets say for those of 1 million or up . Which columns are you looking at again, senator . Im looking at federal taxes under present law. Okay. Federal taxes under the proposal. Okay. And what the percent of taxation is percent. What these columns report are the share of total federal tax paid by tax filing units in that income group. And i think the point that youre highlighting is that generally speaking, the highest income group which we report is 1 million and over is paying approximately the same or more of total federal taxes under the proposal. Right. Your chart here, and, again, i would encourage everyone to go on jct. Gov and look at it yourself. Look at all these charts. Im giving another commercial advertisement here. Because so much of this debate is not about whats actually factual. And it says here, this group is paying 19. 3 now. Under this proposal, theyll pay 19. 4, so theyll pay a higher amount. How about 30,000 to 40,000. Are they going to pay more or less . Oh, im sorry. Were looking, again, in calendar year 2019 on this. And the 30 to 40,000 under present law pay 1. 5 of total federal taxes. Under the proposal we estimate they would pay 1. 4 of total federal taxes. Okay. How about the next group. 50 to 75,000. More or less . 50 to 75, 8. 2 to 8. 1. So theyre paying less. So this is before the additional tax cuts are put in here for the middle class. But already we see that, in fact, what was said earlier and whats been said, unfortunately, consistently here is just not accurate with your own charts. Right here. Mr. Chairman. No, let me finish. Because you guys have all taken two or twoandahalf minutes more i didnt. I did not. I did not, senator portman. Im taking my time now. I did not, senator portman. Youre taking my time now. I just want to be clear for the record that the witness responding to my question chairman, can we have order . Yeah, let me finish. Ill let you make your comment afterwards. To my friend from colorado, and he is my friend, im just pointing out the obvious. Which is under this tax proposal, those at the top end are going to pay a bigger burden of the taxation. The middle class will pay less. Thats obvious, and its in the charts, its been there for a while with the new proposal it will be even more so. With regard to who pays thats in current law. I mean yeah. Theyre actually going to pay less theyre going to pay less. Under the individual mandate, because weve talked a lot about that, let me just tell you, the stats are that 84 of ohioans who are currently subject to the individual mandate, which is a tax based on the fact that its in the code and based on what the Supreme Court has said, and they certainly feel like it is, its a penalty. 84 of those people make less than 50,000 bucks a year. So theyre going to be relieved of that, and then theyre going to be told, youre going to get more tax cuts under this bill, because this money goes into the tax relief primarily for primarily for middle class taxpayers. And, again, jct. Gov. Everybody should go on and look at it themselves. Miss acuna. First colleagues on this side of the all talked about using bermuda as a way to erode the tax base. Thats happening now. The problem is our tax code is Encouraging Companies to go overseas. We have studied this, had analysis of it. Its been bipartisan to say lets stop this. Lets lower the rate. Lets go to an International System thats fair. The territorial system thats never been a partisan issue. Until now. Can you explain to me how were going to put a stop to Foreign Companies using related Party Payments, interest royalty, stuff like that, to erode the u. S. Tax base. How have we improved on that in this bill compared to current law . In this bill, theres a proposal called the base Erosion Anti Abuse Tax that calculates a modified taxable base. And it adds back those foreignrelated Party Payments that are typically used to strip the u. S. Base. It multiplies it by a reduced tax rate of 10 . Then it compares your actual Corporate Tax liability to the tentative Tax Liability. And you pay the residual. Will this help to keep income from leaving the United States thats leaving now . In other words, will this help to stop whats going on now in terms of people sending money away from the United States to take advantage of low tax situations . I think with respect to payments that are made to related parties abroad, it would have a deterrent effect. Good. Thats what we want. People have talked about china. This is going to make jobs go to china. Let me ask you a question. Mr. Barthold, maybe, or ms. Acuna. What is the tax rate, the Corporate Tax rate, in china . I believe its currently 25 . But id have to check. I will ask one of my colleagues. I think youre correct. 25 . Our rate now is 35 . So, yeah, there is some intend active to do that. We have the highest rate in the industrialized world. What would the tax rate be under our proposal. The chairmans mark provides for a 20 corporate rate, sir. So, look, i i get it that weve got a broken tax code. And that we have to fix it. And thats what were trying to do here. Were trying to get these jobs and investment back here in this country. Both Foreign Investment and u. S. Companies not taking their jobs overseas and instead having jobs here. And thats what these proposals are intended to do. They have been bipartisan in the past, i hope they can going forward. All right, your time is up. Senator bennett. Thank you for the indulgence of the chair. And the senator from ohio is my friend, as well. He really is. But and i dont dispute what you just said. And i wish that you hadnt described what i had said as untruthful. Because the witnesses agreed with what i said. People should look it up. And they will find that there are 90 Million People in the country that are getting about 13 billion under this plan. And there is 500 and some,000 people getting 33 billion under this plan. And thats not to get rid of poverty in america. Its not to make us more competitive. It is to blow deficit. And i just want to make that point. And well talk later, im sure. Happy to allow you to do that. Senator scott. Thank you, mr. Chairman. And i certainly enjoy watching mr. Bennett and mr. Portman collaborate on the facts and the truth. And one of the important questions that we have yet to answer in this ongoing discussion debate is the burden, the tax burden of those folks 90 million folks that would only receive a 13 billion benefit. The reality of it is, we study the tax distribution and the tax burden. We find very quickly that the folks in some categories share about a 2. 7 burden out of the 100 of the burden of the tax consequences. And therefore, would receive fewer of the benefits. But one of the things that we should ask ourselves as we focus on those folks who are the 90 million who get a smaller proportionate share of the tax benefits is what are they paying now and what would they be paying later . Earlier i spoke to the fact that for our Single Parents, head of household, average income around 36,000, their taxes are very low. But theyre living paycheck to paycheck is quite severe. And so even though they may not benefit as much, because theyre not paying as much in, they still desperately need those dollars remaining in their paychecks. And so when we cut their tax burden by 55 , while it may not be the same number from an aggregate perspective, the value of that dollar is significantly higher when you are the sole bread winner in a household. I would say the same is true for our friends who are the middle income of the country. I do think that, as senator portman chatted about, the individual mandate and its impact in house holds. Im not sure why there is any debate, frankly, over punishing households under 50,000 with a penalty for not doing something wrong, but just a penalty. Or punishing households under 25,000 with a penalty. And the fact of the matter is that those households will not be losing their insurance. Theyre not no one is taking their Health Insurance away from them. Simply eliminating the individual mandate provides them an option and folks will make the best option. My question for mr. Barthold, is that my understanding is that ernst young study showed that about 4,700 businesses would still be u. S. Companies outside of the fact that our tax code has been so punishing to businesses, be many have inverted. Others have been purchased. Is that an accurate statement . Senator scott, i have seen the ernst young study. I dont recall exactly the 4,000 business figure. The study does note that there are tax reasons or Tax Advantages to both trying an inversion or in the case of a merger to have the New Enterprise headquartered outside the United States. But the study also indicated that there are in some cases that the final determination is more might be more businessrelated, but that the tax is an extra an extra benefit. So the fact is that there are thousands of companies whether its 4700 or 3700. But thousands of companies who have made a business decision to now locate out of these outside of the United States, because of the consequences whether its our burden and specifically our tax code that makes it to their disadvantage to be an american company. I say that to say this. That the fact of the matter is, those companies are probably creating more jobs outside of the country than they would if they were still u. S. Companies. So the importance of us getting our tax code competitive, it is really hard to overstate it. I will say that the benefits mr. Barthold, you can agree or disagree. The benefits of a lower Corporate Tax rate is a benefit that goes to employees, with the possibility of higher wages, consumers with the possibility of lower cost of goods, and shareholders who would include retirement funds, pension funds, who would get hopefully a better rate of return. We did discuss yesterday and i talked about the economics of the economic incidence of taxes on business income. And as part of our analysis, we think that both that theres solid economic, empirical evidence that suggests particularly over the longer term that either some of the benefit or the burden from changes in business taxes and the Corporate Tax redowns to labor income to workers in terms of higher productivity, higher wages or perhaps expanded work opportunities. And that part of our analysis reflects that. Our analysis also reflects that in a number of cases, ordinary workers, wage earners, through participation indefinited contribution Pension Plans or iras are also owners of businesses. And so they benefit directly as owners. Thank you, sir. Senator warner. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Barthold, the first question im going to ask you. You may not have the documents here, but weve talked about this in the past. And let me go none of my republican colleagues. I agree. We need a simpler and more competitive american tax code. The irony is, other countries have done it without blowing huge holes in their debt and deficit. Ive cited this statistic a number of times. 30 america, in terms of our comparison to all our competitors, including china and others, ranks in total taxation as a percent of gdp, we are 31st out of 35 nations. Weve made reference to this before. And mr. Barthold, was that correct . Yeah, thats generally correct. I dont recall the specific numbers. But weve you and i discussed among member countries the oecd that the large majority of them have higher overall taxes as a percentage of their and they bring out lower business taxes, but they dont then in effect push off, as senator so eloquently said, all of the responsibility on to the next generation to pay their bills. I would also point out, and i dont often quote allen greenspan, but i think he was dead on last week when he said, there is no historical precedent that says a major tax cut at periods of full employment, that is paid for entirely with borrowed money are going to produce any of the Growth Numbers that have been projected. And i would add, i would perhaps ask my colleagues to and weve got the video. Yesterday i had the opportunity to speak at a wall street journal ceo council. Major ceos from across the nation. Gary cohn was speaking before me. And he asked, all right, we get this tax cut through, how many of you all are going to increase your Capital Investment in the United States . I dont know, 65, 70, ceos in the room. Well show you the video. I think three raised their hands. So the underlying presumption here that this tax cut with borrowed money is going to mysteriously, you know, drive up corporate growth rates in ways that are unprecedented i think theres no historical precedence there. In this nation, or for that matter, anywhere in the world. Let me also ask you, mr. Barthold. Were at 20 trillion in debt right now. While the debt rolls over on a not a regular basis, the number ive heard used is 100 basis point increase in interest rates. Would add on annual debt service before we take on this Additional Debt that were going to take on, 160 billion a year in additional spending. Because weve got such a large aggregate debt. Arent we so vulnerable to increases in interest rates. And if you could be fairly brief on this, i want to get to a major last point. Of course, that would be a consequence, sir. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, earlier today, you dismissed statutory paygo, and you said medicare really wouldnt be challenged, even though weve got these rules that congress, whenever it has a chance on punting, it will punt. And we always take the easy way out. And that consequently, well just punt on that requirement of taking on the just punt on that requirement of taking on the 25 billion of medicare. If that is the presumption, we ought to be honest with the American People about what were doing. The committee of responsible federal budget, a group ive worked with closely, come out with the most recent document saying that this tax bill isnt really the roughly 1. 7 trillion if added debt, that it has more than 500 billion of additional gimmicks that will add to this debt. So if we go ahead and assume that were not going to sunset the individual tax provisions after 2025, that allwill add another 240 billion. That were not going to ametorize expenses after 2025, adding another 60 billion. And so on. So excepting the chairmans comments as truthful, so lets call this bill what it is. It doesnt add 1. 7, but 2. 2 trillion to the debt. Unfortunately, what that means, and i wish more of my colleagues who at least in their past expressed concerns about the debt, that will take us in 2027, based on the chairmans mark, to a debttogdp ratio of 99 . We will basically be one year away from having a debt larger than our whole economy. I dont know any nation, and when we went through this debate four or five years ago, the rule of thumb is, once you get above 90 debttogdp, youre in the era of greasing others. And that is not what you or anybody responsible would want our country to be. Senator cassidy is next. I reserve the right, if i may pass right now. What did he say . Pass. Then senator cantwell will be next. Mr. Chairman, thank you. Ive been tied upmost of the morning over at the Energy Committee for another lightning round overnight movement on legislation, part of reconciliation, that never had a hearing, never had a focus to this specific legislation, so we spent most of the morning talking about that. So i havent had a chance to be here this afternoon until now to talk and ask questions about what came out at 10 30 last night or whatever time it was. So the fact that were dealing with two pieces of legislation, moving at lightning speed, all because people are changing and moving around numbers just to meet some artificial deadline, that is not good for the american economy. It is very, very troubling. So the notion that i now have five minutes to fit in whatever important questions, i guarantee i cant fit them in five minutes. So im requesting a second five minutes, and im happy to go back and forth. Heres my question, because i received this letter from a veteran in my state. Im a 20year military veteran. I retired from the navy in 2013, after a clear that included 11 years at sea, multiple deployments supporting combat operations under four president s, now hes looking at this proposal. His bottom line is, he thinks he will pay 5,000 more in taxes. When he looks at what he itemizes now and the changes being proposed, he thinks hes going to pay 5,000 more. He wants to know whats going on. And i have to tell him, i have to find out what this latest draft that came out last night at 10 30 says so i can tell you for sure whether youre going to pay 5,000 more or not, which, as i have said yesterday, this change to local deductions is on the backs of middle class taxpayers, the wrong way to go. Heres my question. Weve had this debate. Weve had this debate about s corps and pass throughs. I dont know if im going to get an answer, but heres my calculation. In the president s last filing of personal disclosure, he reported 529 million over a 15. 5 month period. So lets boil that down to just 12 months, which might mean 156 million, at a tax rate of 39. 1 versus now this change to him, 31 would mean the president would get a 32 million tax break. Now, i cant verify all that math, because im just going off what his Financial Disclosure says. If i had his tax returns, we might know. But why is it that the president of the United States deserves a 32 million tax break and my constituent, a military veteran who is struggling with his wife to make ends meet, is being surprised in the middle of the night with a 5,000 tax increase . Why are we rush thing process . Why are we trying to rush this process and in the dark of night, do things that change our tax codes in ways that we cant understand. As i said, since ive been spending all my time over at the other committee, who is trying to do the same licketty split change to our tax code, heres my question that you probably can answer. Why all of a sudden in the middle of the night do we now have a change to the u. S. Virgin island tax code . That basically would change that companies located in the Virgin Islands would be able to sell product into the United States without paying tax. Why did that happen overnight . Mr. Abe ram, do you know why this was added or what it means . I have not im not familiar with that provision, senator. It did get added last night, correct . I assume its in the chairmans modification. If thats where it is. Mr. Chairman, could someone on your staff tell me what it means . Well, to answer you, its in the jct description. You would have to look there. Well, i like our counsel for our committee. Im assuming theyre paid pretty well because theyre tealented, and mr. Abraham cant tell me. It says to me somebody in the middle of the night added this provision. This is my point. He has served our country, im trying to tell him if he is going to have to pay more taxes and why the president of the United States gets a 32 million tax break. Im happy to hear maybe hes not going to get a 32 million tax break. I would love him to come clean about what his taxes are. But if the middle of the night, this provision changed. I dont know what else is going to add in and what is going to change. I need to explain this to my constituents. Well try and help you, senator. Your time is up. Senator lindsey . Thank you, mr. Chairman. Theres been a lot of talk about the tax brackets here. In the next to the lowest tax bracket, the zero tax bracket, there are people in that i assume, under the old bill where would that category start under current law . The people that pay no tax . Senator, the tax brackets of present law are in the original description we had of the chairmans mark, but in general terms, you would figure out a zero tax bracket amount by adding the personal exemption to it. Then the new zero tax bracket would be 24,000. For joint filers. But in that case, no personal exemptions, since theyre repealed. So if answer to some of the previous questions, its a little hard to give somebody an additional tax break that, under the code, wouldnt pay a tax, but they still get some federal benefits. But we are giving those people an extra amount here, because i noticed that according to 2019, when the when we eliminate the tax mandate on insurance, the democratic staff said that 4 million would be kicked off insurance going to 13 million by the end of ten years. Well, clear back in 2015, 6,665,000 people were kicked off of insurance using the same kind of a criteria. Thats almost 7 Million People. Because they couldnt afford the insurance. So what did they do . They paid a penalty. They paid millions. Were a low population state, and we still had a significant number of people in 2014. T that number went up. That happened in the nation as well. So in those categories, theres actually an additional tax break for those people that have been paying those amounts . I also wanted to add the quick comment about its under brown mentioning we couldnt raise money through this, that 25 of money thats to come in that hes using is a static score, and youve got to imagine that something good will happen out of this tax bill. So hopefully we can do something. And i think that this proposal provides for a lot of people, and also will stimulate the economy. So what im asking everybody to do is see if they think were going to exceed 1. 9 gdp or get up to the norm of 3. 2 , in which case we would have money to spend on all of the things were talking about. But i doubt thats going to happen. I yield the balance of my time. Senator nelson. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Would one of you all explain to me a provision that we have just found in this bill that, under current law, an American Oil Company such as exxon, any American Oil Company, in a foreign based affiliate under current law, once they have income from that foreign affiliate, they pay the tax on it. But what i understand is that that provision in the mark, it reverses that, and eliminates the foreign based affiliate oil related income as a category of income so that they would not pay income tax, the American Oil Company would not pay income tax on that. Is that correct . And this provision would reduce revenues by 4 billion . Senator nelson, thats not entirely accurate. Description. Under present law, under our worldwide system, Companies May operate abroad in two general forms. They can operate as a branch, or they could own a controlled foreign Subsidiary Incorporated in a foreign country. Youre correct that if they operate as a branch, the income is treated just as part of their domestic income and theres always current taxation on it. Foreign tax credits are provided if theres foreign tax paid on that income. In the situation where the oil Company Might own a controlled foreign corporation, the active income may be deferred abroad if they choose just like other businesses with no tax due until a dividend is repatriated back to the home country. The particular provision youre referring to, foreign based company oil related income, is a rule that limits the application of foreign tax credits that and is specific to the oil industry, as you note. It was a limitation that congress enacted to limit potential for cross crediting across different jurisdictions, which has and cross crediting essentially means that more foreign tax could be credited than congress thought was appropriate. So does it lets see if we can get this in english speak of the everyday american. My colleague reminds me i should provide more detail that its on related party sales between companies and related to subpar income which there is current taxation. So that really does make it clear. [ laughter ] im sorry. Let me ask you just a simple question. Simple question. Does it reduce the income taxes of the oil company an American Oil Company . It reduces the income taxes by allowing more foreign tax to be credited. And so it reduces residual u. S. Tax. Therefore, the oil company, an American Oil Company, pays less tax . Less u. S. Tax. Thats correct. Thats correct. Okay. Now, you know, weve given over the years Oil Companies lots of incentives. I think in the tax code, there are probably incentives from over a century ago of giving incentives of Oil Companies to drill. Are there any reasons that we need to give further incentives for Oil Companies . Have we checked how profitable Oil Companies are recently . Is this what we want to do to give tax breaks to Oil Companies while giving very few tax breaks to Little People . I dont think thats a good balancing of a fair tax code. Thank you, mr. Chairman. [ inaudible ] thank you, mr. Chairman. Ive reminded us in the last couple of years, the in this hearing room, back in september, the Health Education Labor Pension Committee brought in bipartisan panels of governors, insurance commissioners, health shushs companies, health economists, health care providers, and asked what do we need to do to stabilize the exchanges in all 50 states . They came back and they said basically three things. Number one, they said make sure that we are make sure that they are going to be continued. Number two, make sure that we establish some kind of they described it as a Reinsurance Program. Number three, they said dont get rid of the individual mandate, unless you relaplace i with something that will be just as effective, to make sure young, Healthy People will be in the exchanges, so you have a healthy mix of people that can be insured by the Insurance Companies. The i read a letter that came from it was dated yesterday. And it came from family doctors, the a. M. A. , american hospitals. Im going to forward the letter. It says repealing the individual mandate without a workable alternative will reduce enrollment, further destabilizing an already fragile Health Insurance market, on which more than 10 million americans rely. Thats a quote from their letter. They say in their letter yesterday, there will be serious consequence it is congress simply repeals the mandate, while leaving the insurance reforms in place. Millions more will be uninsured or face higher premiums, lets Work Together on solutions that deliver the access, the care of the coverage, the American People deserve. I said before, ill say it again today, i do not worship at the shrine of the individual mandate. Im a recovering governor. Im interested in what works and do more of that. I know we heard more from our friends on the other side of the aisle that the individual mandate does not make sure more young people are getting into the exchanges. Somebody saying that, thats not enough. Why dont we have folks before us in a hearing like this, who can answer that question. Mr. Chairman, i just say to you, i think the what we need is end id validation. What we need is independent validation, is the individual mandate the best way to make sure Healthy People are getting coverage . Weve never had a hearing on this. The closest hearing thats taken place was four of them two months ago, where most everybody agrees that the individual mandate was working. Doctors, Insurance Companies, health economist, governors. They said it was working. You get rid of it, make sure you replace it with something better. Why mr. Chairman, i think others have asked this before, why do we have cbo in here to answer these kinds of questions, why . This is important. Weve already seen so much damage done to the exchanges, bare counties, almost bare states. It doesnt have to happen. The administration thought to destabilize them, they call it obamacare. They think it was a creation of barack obama. He had nothing to do with the creation of the exchanges and socalled obamacare. Its been labeled after him for fun, for some other reason. But why dont we have cbo in here to answer these questions . Why . [ inaudible ] im sorry, i cant hear you, sir. [ inaudible ] sorry. Yeah, thats a good idea. We have joint tax helping us to understand this better. As far as cbo is concerned, im not sure they would help us understand it better any way, but they have a right to weigh in if they want to. Cbo is in a position, they have the expertise to come in and answer this kind of a question. They can tell us if the individual mandate, what effect its going to have. It will tell us if there are other ideas that are better. Thats not joint taxs job, but it is one of the jobs at the cbo. This is the way we proceeded. Senator cassidy is next. Mr. Chairman, i would just say, why isnt cbo here to answer these kinds of questions . We addressed this yesterday. And frankly, were going to move ahead with what we have,avwhichi think is plenty enough. An old friend of mine used to say, dont confuse me with the facts. I think in this case cbo can provide interesting facts. That can confuse us or enlighten us. And i think in this case they would enlighten us. They can weigh in if they want to. Senator cassidy . Yeah, lets talk about facts. As senator scott has said, the individual mandate disproportionately falls on lower income americans. Theres over 7 million americans that pay it. 5. 2 of those americans have an adjusted gross income of less than 50,000. My state in louisiana, 78 of those pay have an adjusted gross income of less than 50,000. About 37 have make less than 25,000. Thats who the burden falls upon. Secondly, we must speak about the facts regarding the impact of the individual mandate. Jonathan gruver, the architect of the aca, did research that was published in the new england journal of medicine. They found that the individual mandate had no significant effect upon increasing enrollment. Now, cbo may hold the position that the cbo holds. But the facts are, published by the researchers, the cbo doesnt do the research, the researchers do. And here is a socalled architect of obamacare who is saying it does not increase coverage. Now, i would love to work with my democratic colleagues on how we could increase coverage. I proposed with senator collins a bill that would give automatic enrollment, with senator graham we laid open that possibility. In both cases, i was not only not only did people not agree with me, but i was roundly demagogued. So i am so open to working on a solution to expand coverage. But these articles, which ill submit for the record, mr. Chairman, if no objection, establish the facts that the individual mandate does not improve coverage. As regards to the issues senator nelson raised regarding Oil Companies, there was a statement made earlier that these companies are in tax havens, and thats not the case. You dont produce oil in the kaman islands or in switzerland. You produce it in countries like nigeria. And they have very high tax rate. The purpose of this provision is to keep American Companies from being taxed twice, to allow them the full relief of a foreign tax credit on their u. S. Tax policies. Lastly, ill say just kind of a plea for, lets Work Together. I gather that the Ranking Member earlier had a chart in which he spoke of middle class tax relief. But the main complaint is we dont make them permanent. At least we can except that this bill has middle class tax relief and i would like to make them permanent. So i would suggest that if we can accept as apparently we do, that it provides tax relief for the middle class, that we would Work Together to make them permanent. With that, mr. Chair would you yield for a question, please . I will. I enjoy working with our colleague from louisiana, he knows that. I think his intentions are good. I would asked my staff to reach out to Jonathan Gruver and say is the characterization were hearing from our republican colleagues what youre saying about the individual mandate is not worth much, is that a fair characterization of what you said in your painer . In your paper . He said thats not a fair characterization of what i said. Im going to call him myself and take down his words. But my own staff talked to him last week and was told no, no, thats not what my paper said if i may respond to that. Im quoting from the new england journal medicine article that he was author on. He said when we assess the detailed provisions, which include penalties for lacking coverage and specific exemptions, we did not find that Overall Coverage rates responded to these aspects of the law. In fairness, he goes on to say does it mean it had no effect . Not necessarily. But it does on after that to say he couldnt prove it. He may be biased, but the analysis said, and i just quoted it, that it did not that coverage rates had not responded i will try to get some clarification from him and maybe share with us tomorrow. That would be good. Your time is up. Were going to turn to senator cornyn. Mr. Chairman, i just want to respond to some of the comments i heard being made, starting with thele complaint that the individual tax rates are not permanent. While the business tax rates are permanent. I would just point out if we werent forced to do this, and we could get 60 votes for a product, we could make the individual rates permanent. But its because our democratic colleagues have chosen to go awol on the process and forced us to use the budget reconciliation process, that were only able to do this for ten years. So theres a simple solution, and that is if our democratic colleagues would work with us to come up with a bill that would get 60 votes, and we could still get 60 votes on a reconciliation bill and make it permanent. So its in their hands, and i would hope they would consider that. Secondly, the Ranking Member was pointing out that the business and investment taxes paid by corporations was permanent, and theres been comments, i think the senator from michigan and others talking about corporate giveaways, but some of the best ideas in this bill were bipartisan and referring to the bill that would reduce corporate rates to 24 , we embraced some of those bipartisan ideas that the committee has heard from in the 70 plus hearings that weve had, and the other imput that weve gotten and tried to build the best product we could, unfortunately without their help when it comes to voting for any of it. And then the criticism weve heard on the decision to repeal the regressive individual mandate tax. This tax is paid by people of low and middle income, i think roughly 50 of the people who pay the individual mandate make less than 25,000 a year. And thats because they cant afford to buy the government approved insurance policies. So they pay the penalty instead. And what weve decided to do is to repeal that regressive tax, which burdens them at the rate of 43 billion over the next ten years. And to give them tax reductions, which hopefully will allow them to keep more of their hardearned money and spend it the way they see fit, if they choose to buy some other insurance policy, they can use it for that, if they want to use it for retirement or to take a vacation or take their family out to binner one night a week, theyre free to do that. But this idea that this is somehow a bad thing i think it is unequivocally a good thing. There are ideas out there, senator alexander, senator murray, have a bipartisan idea of how to stabilize the individual Insurance Market in a way that will cause premiums to go down and not up. So to me, if we can get come to a bipartisan agreement on how to get premiums to go down, while repealing the regressive individual mandate tax and saving low income taxpayers 43 billion over ten years, and then plow that savings back into lowering their tax obligation, strikes me as an important step in the right direction. And finally on the Corporate Tax side, of course, what were hoping is that we can become more competitive in a global economy. Right now, those jobs are going overseas, but theyre following the lower tax rates in countries like ireland and elsewhere. But if we can be more competitive and see those investments come back home in the United States, because we rationalize our Corporate Tax code, then we can do what president obama argued we should do in 2011, and what the democratic leader senator schumer has advocated we do, and that the Ranking Member on this committee, senator widen, advocated we do by making our Corporate Tax code more competitive. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, senator. Were going to go to a third round as far as this is concerned. All democrats, each of these will have five more minutes. But this will be the end. Senator widen, and then weve got to then were going to have to get into working on this bill. Senator widen will be first. Senator mccaskill, senator warren, senator carper, and senator cantwell. At the end of those six, five minutes each, were going to go down and do our job. And i dont see how anybody can possibly find any fault with how weve carried this on and allowed everybody their full ability to speak. So thats what we are announcing that were going to do. So senator widen. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman and colleagues, not long ago i wrote a universal Health Care Coverage bill, with a Broad Coalition of democrats and republicans, including the republican leader at the time trent lott. Our proposal included a coverage requirement. Even though all of us had hoped it wouldnt be necessary. And we wanted universal coverage and republicans thought that that coverage requirement was necessary in order to preserve a market sector Health Care System. And it was clear that it was the spinach to eat to get millions of americans Health Care Coverage without discrimination for preexisting conditions and coverage that didnt break a Household Budget or the federal budget. So everybody ought to be clear that a vote to eliminate the coverage requirement is a vote to go back to the days when good Health Care Coverage was reserved for the healthy and the wealthy, and the Health Coverage you paid for could be taken away just because some Insurance Company said you or your spouse or your child just got too sick. Now, members are going to keep muttering about how theyre voting just to do away with the coverage requirement. But come election time, no honest fact checker in the world is going to dispute that an affirmative vote count on this bill is a vote to takeaway health care from millions and raise the premiums for millions more. Nobody is going to be able to run and hide from the consequences of what is being chosen. So my question is a two parter. What happens from a revenue and a spending standpoint if the requirement to have coverage is not in the bill . What would be your response . The chairmans modification would set the penalty rate to zero. Because of that, some individuals would no longer have to pay the penalty because there would not be a penalty with any substantive financial bite. Some individuals would choose not to get kompbl. It may lead to other changes. But there would be a big hole in the bill, isnt thats correct . If you were to eliminate the provision oh, i misunderstood your question. There would be a big hole in the bill if you repeal it. So isnt the bottom line that in order to provide a permanent tax cut for multinational corporations, 13 million americans will no longer have Health Coverage, and millions more are going to face premium increases of 10 a year . Isnt that the bottom line. Thanks, senator. According to cbo, 13 million americans will no longer have Health Insurance and each year a 10 increase in additional premiums. There we are, colleagues. That kind of sums it up. Thats the history. When we put together that universal coverage bill, with the republican leader trent lott and a big group of democrats, both of my seatmates were here, and we said we wanted universal coverage and republicans said in order to have a private sector Delivery System, a market system, you had to have a coverage requirement. None of us wanted it to happen. And i think people ought to understand, and we just had it confirmed, we had it confirmed that from a revenue and spending standpoint, if the requirement to have coverage, and coverage repeal was not in the bill, they would have a huge hole. And result of that huge hole, they couldnt give the big tax break to the multinational corporation. So thats what this is all about. Thats the history, and the American People are going to see that if you vote to repeal the coverage requirement, which trent lott thought ought to be a part of a universal coverage bill, with a serious private sector component, youre going to take away coverage for millions. Youre going to raise their premiums even more. Thats what this vote is all about. And nobody is able is going to be able to run away from the implication. Thank you, senator. I guess the answer is socialized medicine, then. No, mr. Chairman. Trent lott is no socialist. We voted to have a private Sector Health care Delivery System and he said universal coverage was key to do it. And we live in todays situation. Senator, youre next. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I would ask consent to put a record in the letter from 16 Patient Consumer groups. The american heart association, march of dimes, American Lung association, American Diabetes association, and so on, two are very, very much against what is happening here. Theres so many Different Things that have been said that i would love to debate and dont have the time to do that. I do want to read a result, even though what has happened is happening so quickly and things keep getting changed. We do have distinguished economists who managed to look at what we were talking about yesterday and today and said publicly that 57 of taxpayers would end up worse off under what were talking about today, rather than what we were talking about yesterday, and 80 of the people within 50,000 to 75,000 in income, would end up worse off with what we are talking about right now. I want to take my limited time to talk about what we ought to be talking about, which is jobs in the economy and really growing the economy without creating massive debt or raising peoples taxes. And that relates to a very important provision, it relates to making and growing things in this country. I care deeply about both of those things. Thats what we do in michigan, we make and grow things. The farming end of it is vital to americans economy, as well as the manufacturing end of what we do. Let me talk about agriculture for a minute. We have over 50,000 farms that employ a Million People and well over 90 of them are family owned, and there is a proposal here that would raise taxes on many farmers, including coops, and thats the repeal of section 199 deduction for American Manufacturing production. In fact, it would be a 2 billion tax increase on coops alone. And it would raise taxes on farms if they are c corporations. The farmers that i have heard from are very clear, the rate cuts alone are not enough to make up for the loss in section 199 Domestic Production credit. It would also impact our manufacturers. I firmly believe, as i said before, we dont have an economy or a middle chas unlelass unles somebody makes something and somebody grows something. And this would penalize American Companies doing just that. Can you explain the purpose and the purpose of section 199 and the objective . When section 1ed 9 was enacted in 2004, the purpose was to give a reduction in the effective marginal tax rate for what were labeled Domestic Production activities. So the effect of it, a 9 deduction in the corporate context was to lower the statutory tax rate of 35 to approximately 31 or 32 . The deduction applies for enterprises that are organized in passthrough form. The chairmans mark repeals that at the same time that it lowers the statutory rate for corporations regardless of the type of business theyre engaged in, whether its manufacturing or retail. From 35 to 20. And the passthrough, the deduction for passthrough enterprises with a rate of 17. 4 deduction on their qualifying income is a larger deduction than the 9 under section 199. I understand that. According to many of our farmers and manufacturers, this does not make up for repealing this section, and this is all about making things in america and growing things in america. So im very concerned. Let me finally say, the big picture again is the assumption is trickle down economics will pay for itself. We saw during the bush years, the bush tax cuts, supposedly were going to pay for themselves. That did not happen. The Treasury Department, while they didnt repiece the results of their Economic Modeling at the time, because it was so bad, the Congressional Research Office Analysis of the treasury study found that the tax cuts would only pay for 7 of their initial additional 7 of their initial cost with Economic Growth with only 10 over the long run. So is it true that the bush tax cuts did not pay for themselves . The its hard to measure that because there was a recession after there was a recession, thats true. And the question would be a recession, not a growth. There was not Economic Growth. There was debt and a recession. I dont know that anyone claims that the tax cuts paid for themselves, but i think most people also attribute the recession to the attacks on 9 11. I appreciate that. But its clear and well known that tax cuts did not pay for themselves and added to the debt. Thank you. Senator mccaskill. Yes. Mr. Chairman, first, let me ask on the ctc, the current law versus the new law, currently a single mom making 25,000 a year, refundability is what matters to me, correct . Correct, senator. So if its not refundable, it Means Nothing to me, correct . Correct. So the current law, i get to repunld up to 1,000, correct . Correct. And its going to index up with inflation to get to maybe 1100 in the new law . Yes, starting in 2018. So meanwhile, the whole 2000, that would benefit families that make a whole lot more money, correct . A family would have to have sufficient Tax Liability to use the additional bumpup in the credit. So the bump up to 2,000 doesnt have much meaning to people who living paycheck to paycheck. Correct, if they owe little or no tax. Heres the kicker. Current law, you get this Child Tax Credit up to 110,000. I have no problem with it raising, but its going up to 500,000 a year. Now, i dont know what families are doing in other states, but the families in my state making 500,000 a year, they dont need it like that 24 howe a year mom that has one child. Let me move on, because i have a bunch to ask, then i have to start voting on stuff and i have all this stuff on private activity bonds that we havent touched. We havent touched what is going to happen to jobs. Hospitals, schools. We have not touched the historic credit thats going to have a devastating impact on job creation in urban areas and rural areas in my state. But i want to get to the passthroughs now. Ms. Shaffer, 362 billion in tax cut for passthroughs in this bill, correct . That sounds right, yes. And 80 of all passthrough income in america goes to people who make more than 1 million, correct . I believe thats accurate based on the tax policy study. So 80 of all the income goes to millionaires and above. Were doing 362 billion tax cut for them. It impacts all these businesses. Im going to show you a picture, mr. Chairman, this is a picture of a partnership. Im going to get to you, mr. West. Were going to get a question to you, believe it or not. This is a picture of a Partnership Without objection, well put that in the record. It has 50 partners. Is it correct that the irs i believe thats an accurate statement. Okay. So add ministering this, and i disagree that this is simpler. The passthrough is simple now, because it passes through to the income you have. So all this riggermerole, if youre a Small Business that makes less than 50,000 a year, youre paying in the 20 rate, somewhere in there . It would be based on the individual rates. Yeah. So if youre a Small Business, youre already paying much less than what this real tax rate would be to the top bracket. In other words, youre down in the 20s somewhere. So Small Businesses pay less, because they are small. Thats simple. Doesnt have to have a calculation about whether youre a Sole Proprietorship, theres no calculation whether youre providing a service or whether you have passive income. All of this is added layers and layers of complexity to this. So let me ask you this. This is modeled after the 199, correct, mr. West . I believe theres some technology from section 199 used in there. You could talk to maybe others at the table. Didnt the irs launch a Compliance Campaign after identifying this deduction as subject to risk and abuse, a special Compliance Campaign . I would have to check on that, senator. Its my understanding that there was a specific Compliance Campaign because of risk and abuse associated with this deduction. Let me finally ask about the passthroughs. Theres a limitation on wages, as it relates to people who are providing services, right . In other words, how much of a deduction you can get is limited how much wages are to a business, correct . If youre providing services . The deduction is limited based on the w2 wages paid by the business, starting at i believe 250,000 for a single individual and 500,000 for a couple. Does that same limitation provide if youre not providing services . Yes. So it doesnt matter whether you passively own a golf course or whether you own an accounting business, it would apply to the wages of the business . Thats accurate. The deduction is available, what youre not youre passive or active. Senator, your time is up. Senator cardin. Thank you, mr. Chairman. The last round i started to get into some of the problems we may have because we really havent thought out some of the consequences of these changes and we havent had a public hearing. So i want to yesterday you mentioned the number of those who use the standard deduction before and after the chairmans mark if it became law. Now we have a revised chairmans mark. Can you just share the percentage of taxpayers that you believe under the amended mark would now be using itemized deductions . I havent recalculated that, but i cant imagine based on the changes that were made were moved more than marginally we projected for yesterday that 95 of taxpayers would elect the standard deduction. And currently, what is that number . Currently, 71 of taxpayers elect the standard deduction. So its a substantial deduction using the itemized deduction . Thats correct. From approximately 30 to 5 . I want to get to the consequences this could have on two major entity that depend on this deduction. One is charitable organizations, which advertise frequently, that by giving a gift to charity, you can take a deduction on your tax returns. Now that 95 of the taxpayers will not be getting a financial advantage on their taxes by giving charitable contributions, can you determined what impact that will have on Charitable Giving . We have not made an estimate of the effect on charitable contributions from the change in the after tax price of giving to those taxpayers who now elect to chaim the standard deduction in lieu of the itemized deduction. This committee has broad jurisdiction, including dealing with partnerships and the private sector and charitable groups that work along with us, whether its Affordable Housing, health care, daycare, go through the whole list, educational, et cetera, that this could have a major impact on ntheir capacity for donors. We dont know. Is that what youre saying . Im saying we did not we have not made an estimate of the effect on Charitable Giving. I think that would be something nice to know before we take action that affects 75 of the people that dave could deduct it and tomorrow couldnt, is going to change the campaign strategy. The percentage is the other way. 30 itemized currently. It will be down to 5 . I should say reductions. Now the question that senator isaacson raised earlier, and that is real estate. As i understand it, now the value of the mortgage Interest Deduction for those who no longer can get a Tax Deduction on it, because theyre using the standard deduction, is not as valuable to that individual as far as owning property is concerned. Now, we already changed the state and local deductions, so were not going to be able to adopt that, have you done any analysis of the impact on real estate, which is one of the largest assets that americans own, are their real estate. Any analysis on the impact of the value of real estate . In the information we have presented thus far, we have not done a sector by sector analysis. The ago dpgregate investment inl estate housing is one of if outputs we look at. I would just point out that if this theres a 5 or 10 reduction in value as a result of the changes in the tax code, thats a dramatic impact on the Balance Sheets of americans. Will the gentleman yield . I have 38 seconds. If the chairman gives you the time youve got 38 seconds. I cant do that. The last one i would point out is it affects local governments because they oppose propertysse will affect on state and local abilities to raise revenues for their own purpose. This committee has a responsibility to know the consequences of these actions. I pointed out just a few. My guess is there are hundreds of similar examples that it would be nice to know the consequences before were asked to vote on it. Senator carper. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Im going to ask someone on our panel, im not sure who, but the tell us again what is the best estimate of revenue loss over the next ten years if this modified is deducted, and how i presume how would that be the impact, the fiscal impact on the deficit . Im looking for deficit impact. Senator carper, jcs57s, our current estimate of the chairmans mark as modified, and the 10year total we estimated is a negative 1 trillion, 414 billion, 808 million. Okay. If we were to adopt an amendment to this revised chairmans mark, to maintain the status quo, i understand the current law, we tax income for couples making more than 470,000 a year, at about just under 40 , 39. 6 . 39. 6 is the top tax rate, yes, sir. And the mark that would take us down to 38. 5 on income over 1 million . For joint filers, thats correct, senator. Do you have any idea, if we decided just to maintain current law with respect to those rates, any idea what impact that would have on the deficit . Off the top of my head at the table, i dont. But we could estimate that for you. Ill ask my colleagues to provide that with you, maintain the same break points or maintain the higher break point threshold of 500,000 for singles or 1 million for joint filers . Maintain current law. Ill ask my colleagues to prepare that estimate and ill try to get it to you as quickly as possible. Any idea what the federal deficit was reported for in the year that just ended on september 30th . 30th . I dont. Id have to look it up, sir. My understanding that it was close to 700 billion. Does that sound in the ballpark . Sounds close. Yeah, i think its close. We have seen deficit going into the great recession, handoff from president bush to the obama administration, the deficit as i recall was 1. 4 trillion. And a big part of that was the recovery act which tried to pump in a lot of money to stimulate the economy. Then after that we saw the deficit go from 1. 4 trillion steadily down down down for a number of years down to under i think under 400 billion which is still huge but lower than that. And last year between 650 and 750 billion. And id be interested to find out from your colleagues if we didnt spend the money that we would, you know, revenue not sacrifice by adopting this bill, if we do not spend it, what would the impact be on deficit over the next ten years . Well prepare the estimate that you requested, senator. I this i that would be helpful. I would say to my colleagues, as a congressman, before i was a congressman, i was state treasury, worst tied with puerto rico. And the pay we would pay bills is pay our bills anticipated revenue notes. And became the governor, fizz fistly responsible and he provided great leadership. When he stepped down from governor we moved up to a doublea. My last term as governor,3kx w ended up triplea across the board. Well still have it. One of the things we stopped doing over estimating revenues and under estimating spending. In this case we know if we adopt the approach thats outlined in this chairmans mark well drive the deficit higher. Im a big believer when we are in a war, depression, recession, it makes a lot of sense to deficit spend. Im a bit out of style, but i still think thats right. But we were in the long es running economic in the history of the country and the idea of driving the deficit higher makes no sense to me. Thank you. Senator cantwell, are you the last one and well take 15 minute recess and come back and mark this bill up. Mr. Chairman, i have Great Respect for you. Viceversa. I just dont get what the hurry is. Sorry. I dont get what the hurry is. I just dont get why we are moving so quickly. Because we keep going over and over and over all the things we all know. Mr. Chairman mr. Chairman, respectfully i think senator cart well a whole loss of colleagues have laid out there are unanswered questions. I dont want to go into her time. We have plenty of time to consider this. But well move ahead. Mr. Chairman, just to point that out, its International Provisions which you can spend a couple of days just trying to analyst in here and understand how these provisions impact businesses. Or the fact that today we learned that the be may lead to stop buysing the low income tax credit. My colleague mentioned historic tax credit. Im Hearing Place frs like seattle the museums or Utah Heritage Foundation that supported the tax credit for historic use, whats happening to that. I hear from the various organizations, like vanderbilt in tennessee, and other institutions about the changes in endowments, advanced refunding bonds impacting Public Utilities in places like seattle or the orlando airport. So there is any number of things that are changing and changing over night and we are trying to cappuccino pace to understa keep pace to understand them. So i dont understand what the hurry is compared to the 1986 act which was done in a fashion of collaboration over a long period of time. My question, you know how much i care about Affordable Housing and how much you care about Affordable Housing. We both care a lot about Affordable Housing. I am very concerned about provisions of this bill that change the Affordable Housing opportunities in the United States. Id like to submit for the record from the Tax Reform Resource Center findings about three of the provisions that are in the senate bill, to say nothing about the repeal of private activity bonds in the house provision, which also under mines Affordable Housing. But in this case my question is in this relationship to a lower rate l it may be unintended consequences, but nonetheless its a consequence. So my point is by changing these dynamics, we havent even had a breathe, not even just a moment to say what will that do to Affordable Housing. The changes in a changed cpi number on inflation factors. So im looking at this report, and it is basically saying that there will be hundreds of thousands, well, actually, theyll be a million jobs lost. Im looking through here. Florida 15,000 jobs. Georgia, 7,000 jobs. Ohio, 22,000 jobs. My state, 14,000 jobs. Texas, 20,000 jobs. Because Affordable Housing wont be built. Now, im not talking about your and mine idea of being more aggressive. Im talking about the impact that this change in code is going to have on Affordable Housing, just in the senate bill. The house bill is going to make it even worse by getting rid of activity bonds. So mr. Karrcar car os sew, am i . The lower rate makes it less credible to investors like banks so going to take some more, more expansion of the incentive to continue for the level of affordable of housing to built each year or number of units will go down by possibly hundreds of thousands. So well actually lose jobs, too, because they wont be built. So im looking at our problem in texas and florida which were already exacerbated and per vase in the amount of unford ability among residents of those states like my state, now they get hit by a hurricane and have more devastation. And you are proposing something that is going to cut a million jobs out of the u. S. Economy because you are not taking into consideration the impacts of this bill on Affordable Housing in the United States of america . Thats why i want to slow down, mr. Chairman. I want understand and be able to make the point that i dont want to go backwards and Affordable Housing. I want to go forward. Your state has gone forward. They have paid great strides. I want us to understands and not go backwards on Affordable Housing. Thank you. Well, thank you, senator. I dont want to go back either. And im certainly going to try to help you as we have in the past. And well continue to work closely with you. I really want to thank members for participating. I think these sessions have been informative. And i also wants to thank tom bartle and his staff and our Staff Members for their help during this session. Youve been very patient and been a terrific asset to the committee and to all of us personally h the next step will be to move to amendments. But i think we can use a break and sometimes to discuss the path forward. So the committee will be in recess for the next 15 minutes. And we will reconvene at 5 15 p. M. With that, well recess until then. So the Senate Finance hearing currently in recess for about 15 minutes, so oftentimes these breaks go a little longer than the chairman might like. When members return our live coverage will return at that point. Senate republicans releasing the tax reform. Right now you can find the bill and summary on cspan. Org original. Yesterday the individual mandate is that part of the Health Care Law that creates penalties for americans who dont currently have Health Insurance. Earlier today the house gandhi bait on their own tax reform on the house floor. Senate leaders say they would like to pass theirs by early december. And house and senate bills with the hope of sending legislation to President Trumps desk by christmas. So right now while this recess continues, well show you a portion from earlier today starting with comments from Committee Chair orrin hatch. Okay. Well come to order. As we resume this markup, i want to give people an idea as to how well be proceeding. We are going to continue with another round of questions about the modification. We will then conclude this portion of the markup at the completion of that round. And i hope everybody doesnt have to ask questions, but if they do, they do. At that point the modified mark will be open for amendments. Before we continue with the next round, in fact i think its open for amendments now, but well do it for sure then. Before we continue with the next round, i want to say a few words about some of what has been said thus far. My democrat i go colleagues always profess to be the champions of middle class families, we see that rhetoric in full display today. Thats why it is absolutely astonishing to me they are so opposed to the repeal of the individual mandate tax. They talk as though everything is fine with our Health Care System, and at the repeal of this tax will send it all tumbling down. The fact is obamacare is it already failing. Largely because the mandate has failed to do what it was designed to do. It hasnt improved markets or brought down premiums. Markets are in decline. And premiums continually rise despite the presence of this tax h frankly, the great irony of obamacare is that on the one hand it makes Health Insurance too expensive for many to afford, while on the other hand it imposes a tax on those who dont buy it. While the mandate has not improved the Health Care System, it has imposed significant burdens on middle class and low income families. This tax is one of the most regressive taxes in the entire Internal Revenue code. According to the irs nearly 80 of american households will pay the individual mandate penalty, who really pay the individual mandate penalty make less than 50,000 per year. Now, this year the tax for not purchasing insurance is 2. 5 of Household Income or 695 per adult, whichever is greater. Up to 2, 085. Yet obamacare premiums are so high that millions of americans had to pay thousands of dollars more for coverage that does not fit their needs. Con. Translator ry to what many of my democrat cratic colleagues have claimed, the most recent analysis from cbo on repeal of the individual mandate does not herald the clamgs of our Health Care System. In fact, cbo says, and im reporting from the most recent analysis, if the mandate tax were to be appealed, quote, nongroup Insurance Markets would continue to be stable in almost all areas of the country throughout the coming decade, unquote. So lets not distort figures. And lets tone down the drama and the rhetoric just a little bit. In addition, lets be clear, repealing the tax doesnt take anyones Health Insurance away. No one would lose access to coverage or subsidies that help them pay for coverage unless they chose not to enroll until Health Coverage once the penalty for doing so is no longer in effect. No one would be kicked off of medicaid. No one would lose insurance they are currently getting from insurance carriers. Nothing. Nothing in the modified mark impacts obamacare policies like coverage for preexisting conditions or restrictions against lifetime limits on coverage. So i hope people will stop with the scare tactics that weve heard thus far. The marks simply repeals an extremely regressive tax h why do we do this . Its illogical to me that taking revenue accrued through regressive tax on low and middle income families in order to cut taxes for those families is really a good idea. And thats what weve done here. We are doubling the Child Tax Credit from the current 1,000 to 2,000. And allowing more middle class parents to claim the credit. We are loeg individual tax rates for middle income americans and letting them keep even more of their hard earned money. And we are making changes to the business tax system that have long been supported by democrats including most members of this committee. What in the world are we doing . No member of this committee who has supported significant reductions in the Corporate Tax rate or the corporate rate and introduced or cosponsored bills to that effect should now sit here castigating republicans for supporting a giveaway to Corporate America. If lowering the corporate rate is it a giveaway to multinational corporations, then it is curious that the minority leader has written in support of lowering the rate and in a committee rate on tax reform democrats on this committee seem to agree. All of us know our corporate rate is too high and doesnt work for Small Business owners. Our plan is sensible. Its not radical. Its not supply side or trickle down. All of you heard just a little while ago from the chief of staff of jct that middle income earners get a larger tax cut than those at the top of the scale. So lets stick to the facts. With that, i do have some quick questions id like to ask miss a kuna. First, does the modified mark reduced rates for middle income households . Yes, it does. Parliamentary inquirey, can i make an Opening Statements . Well, just a minute. I thought we had Opening Statements. You can do it, ill do it this way then i can turn to you. Second questions, and these are just a few questions i think we have to get out of the way. Second question, does the modified mark lower rates for Single Parents in the middle income tax brackets . Yes, it does it lowers rates for Single Parents in the lower brackets. Third, does it increase the Child Tax Credit . Yes, it does it doubles from 1,000 to 2,000. Third does it do the refund of the Child Tax Credit . Yes it does, thirst. If it does so, how does it do it . Indexes to inflation and increases it from 1,000 under current law to 1100. Fifth, does the modified mark take the Child Tax Credit available to more families . And if it does, how so . Yes it does, in two ways. The first way is that it increases the age of the child that qualifies to receive the Child Tax Credit from under 17 to under 18. And next it increases the income limitation in current law so that more middle class families can get the benefit of that. Thank you. And does the modified mark make the tax credit available to more families, and if it does so, how . It does. Current law requires ar wage threshold you have to make more than 3,000 in order to claim the refundable portion of the credit. The modified mark reduces that to 2500. Thank you. I wanted to get those questions out of the way so we all know where we are coming from. And i apologize to my Ranking Member for having done so. But i felt that was essential. Now i turn to the Ranking Member. Im going to ask one kwep of m mr. Barth ald. That would be fine. Does such an analysis exist . We did on ts underlying mark, and as i noted this morning updated to reflect it. So no distribution analysis for the bill that is the bill before us, and i appreciate your clarifying it. That isnt what he said. Yes, it is what he said, mr. Chairman. I dont think so zble said he had done a distribution analysis for what was considered earlier but he is going to have to another version, what he called updated version for the modified mark and im glad we got into that. Now, mr. Chairman, you are surprised that we oppose your back door effort to get rid of the Affordable Care act. Ill have to tell you im kind of surprised that you and your colleagues dont care about the 13 Million People who are going to lose coverage and the 10 million more who are going to see their premiums go up because you are not going to have as many Healthy People in the risk pool. And as we learned today, my colleague from ohio went through how some of the middle class people he represents would get a few hundred bucks in terms of the tax side here, and they would lose it all, and more, in terms of the increase in their Health Insurance premiums. And what this all gets to, and im going to ask my questions about this, is that your bill has a double standard in terms of taxes in america. The folks from the multinational corporations, their breaks are permanent. And a lot of them in effect are going to make it even more attractive to do business overseas than red, white and blue jobs and the folks that are middle class their breaks are temporary. And this is being used as, in effect, the majority leader said here in the last day that temporary middle class tax cuts are what makes it possible for the multinational corporations to get permanent tax cuts. And that is not my analysis. Those were the comments made by the Republican Leaders. So now im going to begin my questions. And i want to talk about what happened yesterday. Yesterday secretary mnuchin made a visit to ohio. In effect he said that the administration was drawing a line in the sand with respect to making the tax proposal and the massive handouts to multinational corporations permanent. Thats what the secretary said yesterday. So, mr. West, you are here from the administration, and ive heard you say that, you know, you are kind of here for that and kind of here for that. But i would assumptions you are at the Treasury Department, you would know the answer to this. Has the administration drawn any lines in the sand to say that tax cuts for families would be permanent as well . That is a yesorno answer. Well, you no he thknow they that. So thats kind of a phoney question. Mr. Chairman, i dont think its phonie at all. The secretary of treasury who is mr. Wests boss. Ill ask my own question if i could. Go ahead. Senator widen, i cant answer the question as to the possession of the Treasury Department on these provision zbls why are you here . Im here to assist the committee with the administration of certain provisions. If you have questions along those lines id be happy to assist. Its pretty hard to get into administrative feasibility if you dont know where the administration is headed. In other words, we now know where they are headed with respect to permanent breaks for multinationals. We dont know where they are headed with respect to families, other than the majority leader has said that we are going to make the families tax breaks temporary in order to make permanent the breaks for the folks at the top. Now, mr. Barthold, could you give us some sense with respect to joint taxes score of the new bill . And we do have that. That the expiration of the tax cuts for the middle class pays for the permanent rate reductions for corporations . It looks to me like the individual tax title raises money over all while the corporate title loses. Is that correct . Senator widen, i assume you are referring to the revenue table j. C. X 17 . Right. And the total of the, lets see, total of the individual titles on page 3. So are you looking at the last year or the line total . Yeah, the total. And the way we see it, the expiration of tax cuts for the middle class pays for the permanent rate deductions for the multinational corporations and the individual tax title raises money over all while corporate title loses. Is that correct . Are you looking at the last year 2027. Yes, its 75 billion. So weve established that, colleagues, that not only now do we know what the ma jot agenda leaders are but its confirmed by joint tax analysis. I think this sounds worse than the bush tax cuts because i think families and Small Businesses could end up worse. In fact, because of the inflation adjustment, which is less, they could end up falling further behind. So i think the remaining question i have for this round, mr. Bar thold is a big part of what we wanted to do was real tax reform and get away from tax extenders. That was a part of the 2015 tax focus, as you know, the path bill which had permanent changes, the democrats supported permanent changes republicans supported. We combined them hand came up with a good bill. To what extent would the enactment of the chairman tax plan bring back the need for tax extender bills . And going back to the old days and the fact that we didnt really have reform, we just kind of lurched from one change to another without providing the certainty and predictability either for our middle class or our businesses . The chairmans mark as modified would sunset all of the individual title items, as i noted in the walkthru, except for the inflation indexing. Underlying mark has provide for 100 bonus depreciation for five years. The modification adds, as i note nd this mornings walk through, ar two year temporary provision related to alcohol exercise taxes and as a two year temporary provision related to employer credits for paid family and medical leave. My time is about to expire. But it seems to me, colleagues, that we now have is the opposite of tax reform. We have a crazy quilt lf provisions, some of them are permanent, some of them are temporary. Mr. Barth tald, could you tell us, and i think it would be important to furnish this before we start voting here at some point, can you tell us how this effects individuals and pass through Small Businesses and corporations . Are you able to do that at this point . We have discussed a number of those issues over the last half, not quite clear of the specifics of the question you are asking. The question is, people are going to say to senators who have to vote on this, we have this crazy quilt. Stuff is permanent. Stuff is temporary. How does this affect individuals . And particularly pass through Small Businesses and corporations . And we would like to see that on a piece of paper. How does it affect those key constituents that we represent . Can you get that . As i said, when we do our updated distribution analysis, we have been presentingal break out between individual tax provisions which counts the rates effect, and Business Corporate and Business Base provisions so youll be able to see that. When we would be tiebl get that . Before we start voting . Well, when are you starting voting, sir . Well, well ask some more questions, i can assure you of that. But colleagues get the significance of this, and im over my time. Here we are looking at voting. Ive described how we are basically going back to yesterday year instead of having permanent tax reform, we are going to have some stuff temporary and some stuff permanent. And already explained the inequity for families versus multinational corporations. Now we dont have the specifics how this would effect individuals and pass throughs and multinational corporations. And we are not angry at you, mr. Bar told, because you have an extraordinarily challenging job to be asked to make, in effect, sense out of 10 trillion worth of tax changes that are really being made on the fly. But we would like it if you could furnish that before we vote. We are trying to complete that today, sir. Thank you. Ive allowed the deem leader to go over. But from here on in we are going to stop at five minutes. So lets all observe these time constraints because everybody wants to participate. And i with like to treat everybody as equally as we can. Senator grassley. Many on the other side of the concerns Corporation Tax reform being made permanent. So could you tell us if the Corporate Tax rate were not permanent, how would that effect business behavior in the six or so years from now . The economic incentives to invest in the analysis that we provide to the members is driven by after tax returns from investment. Investment has its returns over a long period of time l. So you said five or six years from now. So if you were in 2022, you would be thinking if i made an investment a new factory, new facility then, you would be earning your income out over the subsequent years. And you would be looking at higher potentially higher tax rates after the sunset date that you proposed senator glassily. So that would diminish what youd see as the possible returns from your investments. So it should diminish investment incentives. Would it it isnt made permanent, then would it nullify the benefit that comes in the first part of the ten years . If when we get to undertaking our Macro Economic ale analysis of the legislation of having the loss of some of the investment incentives, because they are temporary, would diminish potentially. Okay. The committee will come to order. The mark as modified is now open for amendment. Ill begin recognizing colleagues who have amendments to offer. I believe we reached agreement on the initial slate of amendments, however, before we begin, i want to remind my colleagues once again that this is a tax markup. We have had quite a bit of discussion about the individual mandate and what that might mean for the impact of the mark. But even so, the individual pan date is part of the tax code. It is by any reasonable account well within the intended scope of the markup. And i intend to rule any amendments that go beyond changes to the Internal Revenue code nongermane. Similarly ill rule in nongermane any amendments that would put it out of compliance with the committee reconciliation instruction. With that, we will proceed to the consideration of the amendments. We are going to begin by debating two amendments proposed by senator widen for 20 minutes. After which we will vote on both amendments. Then once we voted on those amendments, we will call on two more amendments proposed by the Ranking Member for 20 minutes and vote on those as well. And well gl to that point and well see where we are. Okay. Senator widen. Okay. Thank you mr. Chairman. The two amendments that i have, 145 and 146, are transparency amendments. And what we have here are essentially some of the materials that layout the record that was compiled for the bipartisan 1986 tax reform bill. There were 27 hearings. They are actually numbered like their super bowls, they have them in order starting with james baker the treasury secretary, and contrast that with this from the Trump Administration. A little bit longer than your typical drugstore receipt, but not much more. So the two amendments that im offering, my sense is they are about as radical as senator mccaskill asking for a summary of what was actually in this legislation, first would require a hearing. The second would require a score from the Congressional Budget Office and joint committee on taxation on the impact of the individual mandate repeal, the number of those who are uninsured, the premiums, outofpocket costs, for 72 hours before the committee votes, and should anyone be curious about are the origins of this, this is, in effect, a copy of what the late senator bunning, a republican, and member of our committee, offered with respect to the Affordable Care act when this committee was considering it. Now, colleagues, the point of this is, before we report a bill, we ought to have all of the essential information, be able to hear from the public, to it be able to make informed choices. We learned last night, for example, that now we arent even talking about real tax reform anymore. We are talking about going back to yes tear year to the crazy quilt word of tax extenders with different provisions expiring at different times, all kinds of potential interactions. I believe the American People have the right to know where does this leave middle class taxpayers . In year five, in year ten. What does all this mean . They sure knew in 1986. We also have brand new proposals released on thursday that go into the staggeringly complicated subject of the treatment of socalled pass through entities and multinational corporations. My view is senator mccaskill raised some extremely important questions yesterday about the pass through provisions and how there is a distinction without, to me, much of a difference with respect to how people are treated. Yesterday and today senator brown has been raising questions about whether the International Tax provisions will not improve our international competitiveness, but instead, and ironically, lead to even more outsourcing, colleagues. Senator cardin asked about the impact of this bill on Charitable Giving, we know less giving, but i think the american weem would like to know how much. Over what time . Anybody got any ideas on how to correct this result . We certainly need to know the real impact of this policy on individual taxpayers. We have not gotten a distributional table on the modified mark. And i can just look down the diaz, and i see a number of colleagues on my side of the aisle who have asked for that kind of information l the fact is we have a lot more questions right now than answers. As i told the chairman, the questions we were asking werent about filibuster, they were about trying to get some information. Whats the impact on the historic tax credit . What happens to low income folks . All over the country we have a real crunch in terms of Affordable Housing. Senator cantwell worked in bipartisan way on it. We dont know what this means for low Income Housing and the impact on Affordable Housing. A lot of universities are coming through. They want to know what this means for them. We have not had a single hearing, not one, on these proposals. This is legislative malpractice. Contrasted to 1986, 27 hearings, starting with the treasury secretary. On top of all that, we have now a proposal to repeal a central provision of the Affordable Care act. Committee hadnt held a single hearing, this congress, on the aca or broad question of Health Insurance coverage for all americans. Think about that. We went through the repeal and replace bill, then graham cassidy, now the new midnight repeal provision. We havent had a single hearing on how any of this legislation will effect middle income americans and their ability to get Health Coverage. How will the late night Affordable Care act provision effect the over all Health Care System. Have we heard from people knowledgeable in the field, those who advocate for the patches ens, hospitals, Doctors Companies . The answer is no, we havent. The chair wont allow to here from the nonpartisan experts. And as good as tom bar told is, and he is a real pro, he acknowledged that the Congressional Budget Office has expertise, that the good people at joint tax office dont have. Now the chairman has repeatedly said we have 70 hearings on the provisions in the bill. With respect, and ive stated my admiration and affection for him, so many times its a lawsuit they just stipulate. The chairman is guilding add lilly. Sure, weve had a lot of hearings on taxes, we always have. But few have been related to anything relating to the specifics of this bill. One example, the Health Insurance provision, colleagues, no hearings, none, sill itch. Another example, roots in the fed alice papers and first deduction included in the tax code in 1916. Not a loophole, but a reflection of the appropriate relationship the comedy between the gft and state and local. This increases by a trillion dollars and will have a profound effect on state and wellbeing of governments, the ones that build the roads and meet the americans across the land. It may be the biggest change in the fiscal relationship between the federal and state governments in more than a century. Mr. Chairman, i have more to add, but i want to yield to my friend senator carper, who i dont think takes a back seat to anybody in terms of being a transparency and Good Government guy, and i really much appreciate his interest and yield to him. Id be happy to recognize senator carper under those circumstances. My thanks to both you. At least get the chair to recognize. Thank you, sir. Okay. 20 minutes. If its appropriate id like to ask to be added, i was cosponsor of the original amendment, i would asked to make sure that im a cosponsor of this amendment, mr. Chairman. Without objection. I want to did you say during the short recess we took a few minutes ago i went back to my office to meet with a couple of Business Leaders in my office. And they had been watching the proceedings of this hearing on a television, within our office. And hearing what was being discussed in here, one gentleman in the group said to me, weve been watching this and it seems like the rolls are being reversed here. I said what do you mean . He said i heard you talking about modifying reducing somewhat the tax break that would go to high income individuals and using that straight ut for deficit reduction. He said thats not the kind of argue mtd we normally expect to hear from a democrat. And he said the terms conservative and liberal are kind of being fliepd here. What used to be conservatives are now not. And what is liberal progress has changed. He said i dont know whats going upon here. Well, i dont know if its republican or democrat, liberal or conservative, to say that before we take up something, legislation that effects our whole economy, that weve never had a hearing on it. Its one thing to have hearings over the course of a year, but to say heres the bill, heres our legislation, these are all the many parts of it. Have cbo at the table answering questions, joint Tax Authority at the table answering questions with the final product and give us a reasonable amount of time to discuss it. And to kick the tires. And we are not talking about weeks or months to do that. But literally a couple of days. Colleagues, this is common sense. My dad was a big believer in common sense. Used to say to my sister and me a lot of things but one of the things he would say bone headed stuntd, just use common stens. My dad was a republican. But if he were here today he would say just use some common sense, and that dictates to me and i would hope to you, whether republican or democrat or whatever Party Preference is, wherever you are in the political spectrum, to say at least put yourself in position to make informed decisions. And thats by having the right folks at the table. And having had a couple days for us anthem to actually look to the full blown legislation. I dont think thats asking for too much. I think thats using some common sense. Which i think our constituents across the country would want us to do. And i applaud the senator from or gun and pleased to be a cosponsor of it. Thank you. Thank you, senator. Senator grassley is going to speak for us. These are ten minutes equally divided h. They are trying to make a case that everything is new. And there might be some things new, but let me tell you, since 2011, the finance committee has had about 70 tax hearings. Most of which included very indepth discussions on ways to simplify the tax code and to reform the tax code and particularly simplification. In 2013 the committee produced sen separate bipartisan option papers discussing concrete policies to fixing our tax code as part of a blank slate approach that the committee used. At the end of 2014, the committee released an extensive report, more than 300 pages long, discussing ideas and principals to be considered during the tax reform debate. And we did that in considerable detail. In 2015, we had a bipartisan working groups, all of which produced reports outlining the various needs and opportunities for tax reform. The ground work for this legislation has been very sufficiently laid. And we ought to be doing today what we are doing today. This effort has been under way, and in the works for years. And the democrats have all played a part in this effort. So its hard to imagine what they expect to learn in additional hearings that hasnt already been covered in the committees extensive work on tax reform. I think that we are seeing a lot of delay and not much else. They are trying to create the impression that the committee is doing something wholly new with this bill. That is not the case. With regard to tax legislation, the committee has relied on the expertise, the analysis, and the scoring of the joint committee on taxation. That information is being provided for this markup. So there is no reason that for this bill we need to depart from the committee norm thats been the tradition of this committee. We have followed all the necessary rules and procedures with this bill. This markup while longer than most has followed the traditional order of proceedings. We dont need to reinvent the committee process, just to let the minority delay the reporting of the bill. Ov yield to you. Thank you. I understand senator would like a few minutes. Well allow five minutes per side. Thank you. I just want to indicate that as my friend senator grassley said, we did have bipartisan working groups last year. I was pleased to chair one of those with senator ency. We thought we were working toward a bipartisan effort to write a tax reform bill. That all stopped. It just completely stopped. The working groups stopped. The efforts to put together a bipartisan bill stopped. Instead, we have a purely partisan effort that is now moving with no hearings, no complete analysis of what we are voting on. And, in fact, we dont know how the impact of the bill on charitable organizations or housing crisis or children and families, farmers, manufacturers, local governments, insurance coverage, and so mr. Chairman, i bloo eve that senator widen two amendments are incredible bly reasonable and if the roles were reversed you would be asking as well, and rightly so, for this. We are asking that a complete analysis of joint committee on taxation on the impact of this bill on the committee. The whole committee. Health care is one6th of the committee. The tax provisions effect everything. It would be on the website for at least 72 hours involvement just for us but for the people who represent every american ought to have the right to have a look at this and give some input before we move forward. And then as well, to make sure that we are Holding Hearings and giving input. So mr. Chairman, i strongly support this. I think this is the least that we should be doing in terms of transparency and openness for the public and the public has a right to deserve no less. Mr. Chairman. Senator. If i couldni wrap up on this. And there is nobody like senator grassley on transparency. And i would really call him mr. Transparency. He and i are the cochairs of the whistleblower caucus. And it is his onmy honor to be that. And the key distinction here is, yes, there have been 70 general hearings but there hasnt been hearings on actual legislative text. So the Senate Finance committee doesnt have books like this, like they had in 1986 when james baker came in and led off the hearings. There was 27 hearings on actual legislative text. So its hard to disagree with mr. Transparency, but i think that distinction is really critical and why we feel so strongly about both the hearings and getting the score. There may be colleagues who might also want to speak. Mr. Chairman, if you can recognize them, and then well wrap up and go to a vote. Well, lets let senator grassley take a stab at this first. Hell speak for zblus well, from the standpoint of what you said, you brought the tradition of this committee, you use the term legislative text. We dont operate in this committee off of our intent. Afterwards. Well, i would only say that these hearings were on the administrations detailed proposal. So not only do we not only have a detailed proposal, we have this paper which is not much longer than a drugstore receipt. We dont have anything in fact, compare this, colleagues, heres President Trump and heres president regiagan. I think that says it all. And the question is whether you really get to engage on specifics as they did in 8 six or do you stay on generalities . And that is the difference here between our view and that of the majority. Okay. Well have a vote up and down. Chairman, two colleagues. Mr. Chairman, i would just say i dont think senator grassley was here in the last hour or so when i brought up the question about changes that were made overnight to the Virgin Islands. And thats a key example of something that was just changed last night. I asked the staff, nobody could even give me an answer on how it got in there, what it was about, what was the effect. So i know that you think that this has been a timely process. But it keeps changing. The details keep changing. And i have to answer to my constituents about what is in this bill and why it was there. And when i cant even get an answer out of staff i think its time to have a hearing and understand the impacts of this bill. I thank the chairman. Okay. I ask for one minute. Senator car den, of course. Thank you. With what they are saying is absolutely accurate. In my time i question the joint tax as to impact it has on char atable giving or housing values or impact on local finance. We really do need to understand what these changes will mean for state and local government. I served 20 years in the state legislature. We have an obligation to know how these changes are going to affect state and local finance. And there is no question that it will. What impact does it have on Health Coverage beyond just the number of uninsured and the 10 increase in premiums . What effect does it have on housing values and prices . We know its going to have some effect when you do the deduct of property and interest. And what effect does it have on children . These are the basic questions we have to have an understanding when you are affecting so much of our economy. Thank you. To my colleague to Washington State what she brought up was already an amendment that was out there. And i think you have to remember over a long, long period of time there has always been chairmans modifications of a mark. Okay. Call the roll. Mr. Grassley. No. Mr. Grassley no. Mr. Kray poe. No. Mr. Roberts no. Mr. Ency. No. Mr. Ency no. Mr. Core min no. Mr. Thune. Mr. Thune no. Mr. Burr. Mr. Burr no. Mr. Isaac son no. Mr. Portman, mr. Portman no. Mr. Tuney. Tomby no by proxy. Okay. Mr. Haller no no. Mr. Scott no. Mr. Cassidy . No by proxy. Mr. Cassidy no buy pry yoo. Mr. Widen eye. Mr. Cantwell eye. Mr. Nelson aye by proxy. Mr. Men dense . Men a by proxy. Mr. Car ten die. Mr. Carbon eye. Mr. Brown . No instruction. Mr. Bennett . A. Mr. Bennett aye. Mr. Kaycy aye. Mr. Warner . A. Mrs. Mccastle a mr. Care man no. The chairman votes no. Clerical report. Hold up mr. Chairman. Br brown, aye. Mr. Chairman the final tally is 12 aye, 14 nays. Okay. Next amendment. Mr. Chairman, this amendment would require a certification by the nonpartisan score keepers at the joint committee on taxation and the Congressional Budget Office. They are the people that are doing independent work, calling balls and strikes, and no proposal in this legislation would kick americans off their health care, increase their Health Insurance premiums and hike taxes on middle class americans. And after several days of discussion now, its become clear that some members in this room want to deny the consequences of this bill that is focused overwhelmingly on tax breaks for multinational corporations. There has been an awful lot of rhetorical gymnastics, but the bottom line is a tax hike on 14 million middle class americans, i guess, is a tax cut on average across a variety of income levels. Somehow a proposal that kicks 14 million americans off their health care, klobucharers tens of millions of other with premium hikes a year after nothing has nothing to do with health care. Its just another tax cut. Ive even heard some of my colleagues deny these consequence sz out right. Its as if there is going to be a magical growth fair that denies every health care forecast and health care miracle ta prevents anybodys premiums from going up and keeps just about everybody in america from even getting sick. So thats what this amendment tackles. If members dont believe the harmful consequences of this bill a wheel, this amendment puts all this to the test. Lets put down some protections that this reckless, hasty process isnt going to hit tens of millions of americans particularly those that cant afford it. So the amendment requires a certification by the joint committee on taxation and ts Congressional Budget Office that no proposal in this legislation does three things. Kick people off their health care. Increase their things kick people off their health care, hike taxes on middle class americans. If the analysis is that the bill hurts americans, based on those three fundamental guardrails, this proposal that were making doesnt go into effect. Colleagues, the committee hadnt had enough time to consider whats on offer especially in health care. Hasnt been a hearing to walk the committee through the legislation. Went straight to markup, repealing the individual mandate, the coverage requirement, certainly was never the subject of a tax reform hearing in this committee. Let me repeat that. Repealing the individual mandate certainly was never the subject of a tax reform hearing in the committee. So what parachuted in the other day. Health care bill meant that we were going to see billions cut in health care in order to have tax breaks for multinational corporations, never discussed here in this committee. This is a do no harm proposal. You ought to hear from people who are knowledgeable like the Budget Office and the joint committee on taxation if the bill is going do hit middle class families hard in their pocketbo pocketbook. As we suggested on a bipartisan basis. Mr. Chairman. I just i cant sit here and listen to our friend misrepresent what the repeal of the tax for low income americans. Thats absolutely wrong. It repeals a regressive tax against low income americans who cant afford to purchase the Health Insurance that the government mandates and what were attempting to do is provide 43 billion over 10 years tax cut of this most regressive tax against low income americans for failing to purchase government mandated Health Coverage. As far as our colleagues are concerned, we have a good idea how to stabilize the Health Insurance market that makes a lot more sense than holding a gun to the head of our low income americans. And forcing them to buy something they dont want. It certainly doesnt do what it purports to do. If i could just respond, senator murray has pointed out that her bill and we support it cant fix the consequences of it helps insurers pick up some co payments and deductibles for folks of modest means. Senator murray has pointed out as she joins us vociferously in an effort to repeal the coverage requirement in the Affordable Care act that what shes talking about cant fix this. And the majority keeps wanting to quarrel with the facts, the facts weve gotten is 13 Million People arent going to have coverage. Thats in a year, and then were going to have millions more based substantially higher risk premiums, because what weve done is we have seen fewer Healthy People go into the risk pool, deny all the facts you want. The facts are still the facts as pat moynihan said, everybodys entitled to an opinion you arent entitled to your own set of facts. We still have 2 1 2 minutes to go. Anybody care to talk . Mr. Chairman . Senator enzy about. There have already been 7 Million People as of 2015 kicked off their Health Insurance, they could not afford the insurance that they were required to have. They not only have insurance they had to pay a tax penalty that the Supreme Court said was a tax. So were eliminating a tax on the lower income groups. And that ought to be a reason for doing the bill, not for undoing the bill. The speculation about whats going to happen in the future, i think theres going to be a lot more people laid off if we keep that provision in there. There are going to be more people losing their insurance having to pay this fine, because they cant buy insurance that theyre required to buy. Were hitting them twice, theyre not getting insurance, and theyre paying a penalty to the federal government because theyre required to buy more than they can ain order. We need to settle that part of the law separately. Axx i appreciate the short term thing that senator alexander and senator murray have done that needs to be done that will prevents some immediate chaos because of what have already happened. There are things that we can do together to make sure people dont lose their insurance. We talked about them, but we havent had, outside of this effort which i hope is the beginning of the effort between alexander and murray there are people that are going to have to pay a penalty that they shouldnt have to pay. It doesnt take much of an analysis to come up with that. If i can respond. Another call on senator widen. My colleague from wyoming 20 million have already signed up, and then as far as goingforward. This committee hadnt had one hearing on one of the biggest issues goingforward, how are we going to hold down runaway pharmaceutical choices. Rather than fighting a weird action to stop coverage from 10 million americans and raising premiums more. I think were prepared to vote. Well vote on that first and then widen 18. Clerk will call the call and then number two. No. Mr. Crepo . No. Mr. Roberts . No. Mr. Enzy . No. Mr. Cornen . No. Mr. Thune . No. Mr. Burr . No. Mr. Isaacsohn . No. Mr. Heller . No. Mr. Scott . No. Mr. Cassidy . No. Mr. Widen . Aye . Mtsz stabenow . Aye. Mr. Carper . Aye. Mr. K5rden aye. Mr. Bennett . Aye. Mr. Casey . Aye. Miss mccaskill . Aye. Mr. Chairman . No. The final total is 12 ayes, 14 nays. The bill is denied. We will vote on 18. Mr. Grassley . No. Mr. Crepo . No. Mr. Roberts . No. Mr. Enzy . No. Mr. Cornen . No. Mr. Burr . No. Mr. Isaacsohn . No. Mr. Portman . No. Mr. Toomey . No. Mr. Widen . Aye. Ms. Stabenow . Aye. Mr. Nelson . Aye. Mr. Menendez aye by proxy. Mr. Cardin aye. Mr. Brown aye. Mr. Bennett. Plp casey . Mr. Warner . Aye. Ms. Mccaskill aye. Mr. Chairman . No. The amendment is defeated. We will now recognize senator bennett for his number 6 amendment. Thank you, mr. Chairman, im grateful for your recognizing me. Im happy to do it if the majoritys tax plan does everything lets have order. Is. Thank you, mr. Chairman. If the majoritys tax plan does everything you claim, my amendment will have no effect. For 40 years, the majority has claimed that tax cuts pay for themselves through economic grow growth. In 1981, Ronald Reagan signed major tax cuts claiming they would pay for themselves. In the 1990s, president clinton raised taxes and cut spending to balance the budget. As the chairman said today with a republican congress. The economy boomed and by 1999 the United States senate actually held hearings about what to do with the 5. 6 trillion projected surplus. Then george w. Bush was elected president , he passed two tax cuts, prosecuted two wars without paying for them. And signed a 400 billion Prescription Drug benefit without paying for it, when president obama assumed office the day he was sworn in. He inherited a 1. 2 trillion annual deficit and an economy in free fall. Then during the worst downturn since the great depression, Republican Leaders remembered their fiscal conservatism. Now, after inheriting a booming stock market. The majority wants to borrow another 1. 5 trillion from our children to pay for more tax cuts for the wealthiest people in america. Still, the majority claims these cuts will pay for themselves despite everything we have seen. And if theyre so confident, i think they should support my amendment. Heres what it does. If the higher revenue that you are promising does not materialize for three straight years, my amendment says that we cannot cut Social Security, medicare and medicaid. We have to fill that hole some other way, not by slashing the program millions of americans rely on. Yesterday, the cbo came out with a report that said this would require a 25 billion cut to medicare, its unclear i think from some comments earlier. My amendment would say that if you fulfilled the promise youre making to the American People, youll be able to keep your tax cut. This amendment is not written out of a partisan perspective. Mike johanns, our old colleague and i circulated a letter in 2011 during the depths of the recession. And when we were all deeply concerned about where we were. That letter was signed by 64 members of the senate. And sent to barack obama, president of the United States, and it said that meaningfully addressing our deficit could not be done without tax reform, without entitlement reform. And without dealing with our domestic and military spending. And i think thats what we need to do. I think its impossible for us to solve this in a partisan way. Its not possible for us to put this place back on a path to fiscal responsibility and a fiscally responsible trajectory with one party doing it alone. And this bill demonstrates that, i urge a yes vote on this amendment. Thank you, mr. Chairman, i yield back. We cant touch Social Security in this particular markup. The clerk will call the role . Can you say that again . Under the budget act of 1974, any provision thats in a reconciliation bill that deals with Social Security, is going to be out of order in the United States senate. So were not going to put anything in this bill about Social Security. But thats why. Mr. Chairman and senator grassley. Thank you very much for that. I dont think were saying youre going to cut Social Security tonight. But we did read what Martin Feldstein said earlier in the year. The comments of speaker ryan and chairman brady and our own respect the chairman hatched today, well, maybe thats more or less, not to say were going to have to cut Social Security at some point. If we do these tax cuts, were certain youll come back a year or two or three or four and have to pay for them. We have this terrible budget deficit and go after Social Security. That is our fear, not process tonight, but you set this up tonight and what happens a year from now . Not as long as trump is president , that he said we shouldnt do anything with entitlements. As long as hes in office hes going to veto i think he also said he would go after Prescription Drugs. I dont think we want to start gauging were going to vote on this, although i dont think we should have a vote. The speaker of the house has said as soon as tax reform is done the next thing is entitlements, that will be an interesting discussion. But i do think very relevant. Weve seen this movie before, with the bush tax cuts, it didnt do in a in 2001, 2003, president bush came back immediately and tried to privatize Social Security and said, gosh, we hate to do this, but we have a big debt. That effort was tried, we fought back. It was not successful. This amendment is certainly within the realm of what we have seen before. And the budget resolution that was passed that allows 1. 5 trillion debt to be created by this tax bill also. Then instructs the finance committee to do 1. Almost 1. 5 trillion in cuts in medicare and medicaid. This is not made up. Its in the budget resolution. Its been done before at times, and i hope we would join together in voting for this amendment to make sure that doesnt happen. You can make fun of trickle down economics but we had trickle up economics under the previous eight years increasing the 25678s, and we had 1 4 10 growth. Youre never going to solve the Social Security problem with nothing more than 1 4 10. With all due respect. Im getting tired of this business of not paying to the chairman. Were going to turn to senator portman who had his hand up. Weve seen this movie before, and i wont disagree with that. The movie weve seen is tax reform done right results in Economic Growth. Weve had a chance to make fundamental reforms to our tax form. Everyone agrees the tax code is broken. If they dont, they havent been paying attention. Certainly our constituents feel that way, but importantly, American Workers are losing out every single day, we have a totally uncompetitive antiquated tax code that is assigning our workers. Any economist who looks at this says if you do the types of things were talking about here, to make our questions competitive, it is going to help. They disagree on how much, but the Economic Growth on these things is very much a movie weve seen before. In the 80s and 90s, that everyone likes to take credit for. My hope is that we would look at this differently, this is an opportunity for us to Work Together to stimulate this economy, and get it moving. The Congressional Budget Office tells us the growth over the next 10 years will be 1. 9 . Thats their projection. May i just respond . Before chairman i think i have the time. What is this . Every time i start talking, i get interrupted. Im not interrupting you guys. Senator portman . The Congressional Budget Office says 1. 9 growth. I dont know if any of my colleagues around the table think that is something that is satisfactory. 1. 9 growth, we can do better than that. If we go. 4 more than that, this will not only be something that doesnt affect the deficit, starts to pay the deficit down. I think were going to see that kind of growth. Theres been a bipartisan consensus in the past on these elements in the bill. This is what we came up with, with chuck schumer. This is going to create Economic Growth and we may have a difference of how much. Our concern is not that this proposal is going to cause big holes in the deficit. Its that were going to pass it so we can give our workers the ability to compete and get this economy moving aagain. We just had 3 the last quarter. Is 2. 4 too much to ask for . I dont think so. The time has run out. The clerk will call the role. Mr. Chairman, we have several colleagues who would like to talk and were not going to make this a continued complaint on every order . Mr. Chairman. Mr. Roberts . No. Mr. Enzy . No. Mr. Cornen . No. Mr. Thune . No. Mr. Burr . No. Before isaacsohn . No. Mr. Portman . No. Mr. Toomey . No. Mr. Scott . No. Mr. Cassidy . No. Mr. Widen aye . Ms. Stabenow . Aye. Mr. Nelson . Aye. Mr. Menendez aye by proxy. Mr. Brown . Aye. Mr. Bennett . Aye. Mr. Casey . Aye. Mr. Warner . Aye by proxy. Mr. Chairman . No. Count the result. 12 ayes, 14 nays. Senator casey youre next i believe. This amendment relates to individuals with disabilities across our country. I know that in our work on both sides of the aisle, we hear from people with disabilities on a regular basis. In a state like pennsylvania we have by one estimate, 9 1 2 of people under the age of 65 with a disability. Based upon that number, its well over a Million People in our state even under the age of 65 that have a disability. This amendment will make it possible for those with disabilities to have access to Health Care Coverage and reasonably priced Health Care Premiums. According to the cbo, repeal of a key provision of the aca, in this case, the shared responsibility section would cause 13 million americans to lose their Health Insurance coverage over the decade. 4 million of those in the first year meaning 2019 and premiums to go up by some 10 a year over a decade. This provision if to go into effect would rip coverage away from Many American families, including individuals with disabilities. Because in addition to the coverage provided by medicaid for people with disabilityies many of those with disabilities use the aca marketplaces for their Health Coverage. Theyre selfemployed or working at relatively low paying jobs. They use the marketplace because they have too much in income to qualify for medicaid, but not a job that provides Health Coverage. These are important members of our countrys workforce. People with disabilities in that workforce they are often entrepreneurs, Service Providers and service workers. They are working to be economically selfsufficient. Right now, marketplace coverage ensures that these same americans with disabilities can buy comprehensive and Affordable Health care and have equal access to much needed health care, including examinations, therapies, Mental Health services and affordable medications. The amendment is two parts. The joint committee on taxation, and the Congressional Budget Office will certify that the bill will not reduce the number of americans with disabilities covered by Health Insurance or two, increase premiums for Health Insurance for americans with disabilities. When i think of this issue, and i think of the individuals. Im reminded of a lot of families. One of those families wrote to me at the beginning of the year. A mom writing to me about her son rowan, she was very worried what would happen in the Health Care Debate. She talked about all the ways rowans life was better because of medicaid. How his life has changed because of the coverage of medicaid. Well, that could be said of someone whos receiving their Health Insurance not through medicaid, with a disability, but through the exchanges. Nothing in this bill, and we ought to be able to guarantee and certify if you are an american with a disability, and you have Health Insurance coverage through the Insurance Marketplaces, nothing in this tax bill will do anything to rip that coverage away from you. This should be a simple yes vote by everyone. Making sure that individuals with disabilities who have insurance today will have it tomorrow and have it next month and next year, or as long as they need it. Is a mission worthy of a great country. If we call ourselves a great country, we can guarantee that. Or we should try like hell to guarantee it. I hope we would have an affirmative yes vote on this amendment. Mr. Grassley . No. Mr. Crepo . No. Mr. Roberts . No. Mr. Enzi . No. Mr. Cornen . No. Mr. Thune . No. Mr. Burr . No. Mr. Isaacsohn . No. Mr. Toomey . No. Mr. Heller . No. Mr. Scott . No. Mr. Cassidy . No. Mr. Widen . Aye. Ms. Stabenow . Aye. Mr. Cant well . Aye by proxy. Mr. Menendez . Aye by proxy. Mr. Brown . Aye. Mr. Bennett . Aye. Mr. Casey . Aye. Mr. Warner . Aye by proxy. Mrs. Mccaskill . Aye. Mr. Chairman . No. Mr. Nelson . Aye. Mr. Chairman, the final tally is 12 ayes, 14 nays. Ms. Stabenow, youre next. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Given the assurance that people will not lose their coverage. I hope we could pass my amendment by a unanimous vote. It simply says that no provision of the chairmans mark as modified would take effect unless the joint committee on taxation and the Congressional Budget Office certified that the bill will not reduce the number of middle class americans with Health Insurance coverage or increase Health Insurance premiums or out of pocket costs. Were hearing a lot of discussion about whether or not this impacts real people. We know what the Congressional Budget Office has said, but again, if colleagues are confident that thats not the case, we should be willing to support this. We knee most of the time weve spent in the senate, is beating back efforts to completely role back our Health Care System. In fact, in talking about low income americans, a majority of them are on Medicaid Health care. Thats how theyre getting their health care. And over and over again thats been attacked and even in this budget resolution, a trillion dollars is proposed to come out. I also think its very important to indicate that while people are looking for insurance if theyre on the individual market. We have seen nothing but the Trump Administration trying to sabotage and raise costs. We are seeing them cut the signup time in half. People are not signing up on health care. Gov and yet the time has been cut from three months to six weeks. Were told that on sundays, that the computers will be down and thats the most likely time that people are at home. By not working and having an opportunity to spend time looking at possible Health Care Options for themselves. Weve seen the president say hes not going to do the keep the commitments around cost sharing that address the costs for low income people. And a couple years ago, the whole effort on reinsurance was completely pulled out which started the increases in premiums. So its very difficult to feel confident that somehow after all the sabotage of the administration, undermining things administratively. The fights weve gone on all year, to stop the unraveling of health care and the budget resolution, which takes a trillion dollars out of medicaid and more out of medicare, somehow this piece would be assumed not to hurt people take away Health Insurance, and raise costs. But if in fact that is it the case, then everybody should be willing to come together and agree on this amendment, mr. Chairman. Senator grassley. Obama karin creased taxes 21 different times. 21 times. We want to repeal one of those tax increases and all of a sudden it becomes a Health Care Debate. In my state of iowa, 52,000 iowa ans will benefit from this, because theyre paying that tax on the obama care tax penalty. 85 of those people are under 50,000 a year income. It ought to be quite obvious were reducing taxes to help the people at the lowest end of the income scale and we should not be detracted from it, by somebody making a Health Care Debate out of a tax bill. Mr. Chairman . Senator mccaskill. I want to make sure, the reason this is relevant, the discussion about health care is because the reason you all are doing this is so you can grab the 320 billion. Your leader said it out loud yesterday to the ceo group, so you could make the Corporate Tax cuts permanent, you needed the money. Lets just look at the document where the money comes from. If all youre doing is getting rid of a tax, then this wouldnt get you any money. Getting rid of a tax costs you money. So if we were just getting rid of the tax, you guys would be 43 billion in the hole. Because thats how much this generates, 43 billion. Rather than being 43 billion in the hole, have you 323 billion to spend, where does that come from. 185 billion in reduced subsidies to aca. The only people who are entitled to that subsidy are those who make less than 50 grand a year. And 179 billion in reduced medicaid sub sid dies. Thats 364 billion coming directly out of subsidies and medicaid. Thats where youre getting your 320 billion. Thats why this debate is relevant. And those numbers are cbo numbers. And thats why its important we have this debate. Whats going to happen is, those people are still going to get sick, theyre still going to show up at hospitals and all our constituents are going to pay the bills through higher premiums. Senator toomey. I would say, were trying to get this government under control. And its not under control. And the reason its not, is because of this continued plethora of spending. Senator toomey . Mr. Chairman, the operative part of this amendment asks for the joint committee on taxation and the Congressional Budget Office to certify the bill will not reduce the number of middle class americans with coverage. There is absolutely not a word in this bill that causes anyone to lose their coverage. We dont change any rules about medicare, about medicaid, nothing of the sort. What we are doing is repealing a tax on people who cant afford obama care policies. Thats right. And that in my state 83 of the people who pay that tax earn less than 50,000. Thats not the only way were saving people, working class, middle income americans are going to save significantly, and the fact that they save significantly on their tax bill is going to make Health Insurance more affordable for them. I urge my colleagues to vote no on the amendment. If i might just close. Youll close and then well vote. Thank you, mr. Chairman. First of all, the folks who can answer the questions on coverage werent allowed to be here, and thats the Congressional Budget Office. And so theyre the ones that have indicated that were talking about 13 Million People losing their Health Insurance. And theres a whole range of groups that know a little bit about health care from the American Academy of family physicians, aarp, American Academy of pediatrics, American College of physicians. Osteopathic associations, psychiatric associations, march of dimes, heart association, Cystic Fibrosis association. American cancer society. Multiple sclerosis society. It goes on and on and on. Who oppose this. Why . Because they know its going to affect people losing Health Insurance and other people seeing rate increases, and weve heard this. At least 10 a year. The bottom line with this is that people still get sick whether they have Health Insurance or not. They walk into the emergency room, weve cut in half the number of people walking in that cant pay. Which has stabilized the Small Group Market in my state. Its been stabilized the last five years, we have seen things stabilize or go down in the larger markets because theyre not paying for folks that are walking in that dont have insurance and cant pay. And so this completely reverses that and i would just have to say in michigan right now, 97 of our children can see a doctor, moms and dads can take their kids to the doctor. Thats actually a really good thing. And we are seeing a 50 reduction in people who walk into the emergency room that cant pay. Which is also a very good thing. If my colleagues believe what you are saying, that this will have no impact. This amendment shouldnt matter to you. But we would sure feel a whole lot better if we knew there was a guarantee that people werent going to lose insurance and that their premiums and co pays werent going to go up as a result of this. Thank you, senator. Its clearly identified how this bill is a benefit for low and middle income earners. And for Small Business as well. So at this point the clerk will call the role. Mr. Grassley . No. Mr. Crepo . No. Mr. Roberts . No. Mr. Enzi . No. Mr. Cornen . No. Mr. Thune . No. Mr. Burr . No. Mr. Isaacsohn . No. Mr. Portman . No. Mr. Toomey . No. Mr. Heller . No. Mr. Scott . No. Mr. Cassidy . No. Mr. Widen . No. Aye. Ms. Stabenow . Aye. Ms. Cantwell . Aye. Mr. Menendez . Aye by proxy. Mr. Brown . Aye. Mr. Bennett . Aye. Mr. Casey . Aye. Mr. Warner . Aye by proxy. Miss mccaskill. The final tally is 12 ayes, 14 nays. The amendment is defeated. And with that, well take a 10 minute break. Youre watching live coverage on cspan 3 youre watching the Senate Finance committee. Its in recess for about 10 minutes. Senate republicans released their tax reform plan last week. And yesterday gop leaders included a repeal of the individual mandate from the Affordable Care act in the tax plan. The individual mandate is part of the Health Care Law that creates penalties for americans who dont have Health Insurance. Earlier today, the house gandy bait on the floor. With Senate Leaders saying theyd like to pass their tax reform package by early december. After that, Republican Leaders will need to combine the house and senate bill with the hope of sending the legislation to President Trumps desk by christmas. Were looking at the Senate Finance committee, listening to and voting on amendments to the senate tax bill. Well look into the room as senators dont appear to be leaving, theyre just taking a break. Lets keep going. Next amendment. Senator carper . Thanks, mr. Chairman. Im pleased to say i would offer amendment 233, i would ask to make it clear right from the start that the nature of this amendment is to try to follow the advice of every witness testified in this room back in september about how to stabilize the exchanges. Everyone said among the three things we should do, make clear the cost sharing reductions would upset the cost of co pays and deductibles. Make it clear theyre not going away for at least two years. Number two, put in place a Reinsurance Program for highly expensive, very expensive patient care for particular patients. And number three, they said, we should retain the individual mandate and if we decide not to replace it with something thats just as effective in getting a good mix of young and Healthy People to be part of the insurance pool within the exchanges across the country. The legislation before us apparently repeals proposes to repeal the individual mandate. So that would if that happens, that would leave us with cost sharing reduction and no reassurance. Instead of a having a three legged stool which is what was called for by governors insurance commissioners, health economists, providers, they all call for that three stool approach to reduce the cost of coverage in the exchanges. So my amendment mr. Chairman focuses on a reassurance program. Those of us who are around a decade or so ago when we debated and voted on the Medicare Part d program, voted for a reassurance program. Because some of the folks are going to be in the pool under Medicare Part d are really really expensive. There needed to be an insurance program. As we know, the Medicare Part d Program Works very well. Comes in almost every year under budget. And has favorable approval ratings, it would exceed any of us in the room. Heres a way that this would work. My proposal, my amendment would create a pool, a Stability Fund of about 120 billion. And that the states could use that Stability Fund to draw down to have the resources they need to set up invisible high risk pools, that a lot of our republican colleagues said are a good idea. And for states that elect not to do that, there would be a back stop, heres the way the back stop would work. For 2018, 19 and 20, there would be a reassurance program. Heres the way it would work. Those three years, 2018, 19 and 20 help the costs for an individual in a year expensive Health Care Costs for an individual between 50 and 500,000. That cost would be born by the Stability Fund. Between 21, 22, 23, 81 of those costs would be 100 and 500,000 the rest by the Insurance Companies. All that below, all that below would be born by the Insurance Companies. We heard in this testimony here in the room two months ago, by setting up a reassurance program, giving the states the ability to fund their own invisible risk pool they chose to. Along with preserving the individual mandate or something at least as effective as the individual mandate, the cost of premiums and exchanges would be brought down by as much as 35 . The reasonkn is because Insurance Companies decided to get into the game. Further competition in their exchanges, whats happened theyre not looking at 30, 40 increases, theyre looking at single digit increases we need to make it clear to the Insurance Companies theyre not going to lose their shirt and offer them welfare. We want to make sure theyre not going to lose their shirts to participate. This is a good example of how that might be done we need to make sure we do three things. And make clear that if the individual mandate is going to go away, this is the thing to do. I rule this amendment out of order as its not germane to the scope of the bill. Would you want to go on and say you thought it was a pretty good idea . Im not going to go that far. I guess you always like everything that the distinguished gentleman from delaware all right, could i ask for it to be placed in the record, mr. Chairman . Earlier today theres some back and forth as to what Jonathan Gruber did or didnt say. I just have a quote from him earlier this year, on the individual mandate i went through that. His actual words what he had to say. That should be made part of the record. I understand this is the next amendment mr. Chairman, i dont know if its still in order. If i wanted to appeal the ruling of the chair. On the amendment i just offered, my amendment number 233 amendment 233, could i appeal the ruling of the chair . Is that still timely . The clerk will call the role. They all wanted to be co sponsors. Or most of them. This is on the appeal of the ruling. Mr. Grassley . No. Mr. Crapo . No. Mr. Enzi . No. Mr. Cornen . No. Mr. Thune . No. Mr. Burr . No. Mr. Isaacsohn . No. Mr. Portman . No. Mr. Toomey . No. Mr. Heller . No. Mr. Scott . No. Mr. Cassidy . No. Mr. Widen . Aye. Ms. Stabenow . Aye. Mrs. Cantwell . Aye. Mr. Carper . Aye. Mr. Cardin . Aye. Mr. Brown . Aye. Mr. Bennett . Aye . Mr. Casey . Aye. Mrs. Mccaskill . Aye . Mr. Chairman . No. The amendment is defeated about next amendment. Senator cardin. I would ask consent that senator stabenow be added thank you, mr. Chairman, this amendment if the secretary of the treasury could not certify that the coverage for Mental Health and Substance Abuse in Health Insurance coverage has not been diminished. We have the resources to handle the crisis affecting every community in our country. If you look at the underlining bill the cbo has scored it. And joint Tax Committee a 1. 5 trillion tradition to its intent. We know the casualties from the opiod crisis, we know we need to have the resources in order to deal with it. We know that theres been an abuse of opiods in every community thats led to heroin addiction, and unfortunately, the use of fentanyl, which caused significant overdoings in all of our communities. Ive had town Hall Meetings in all parts of maryland. Eastern shore. Southern maryland, baltimore city, in the baltimore washington suburbs. The story is the same in each of these communities. Were seeing a rise in the increase of the opiod addiction. We do know that having Mental Health and Substance Abuse coverage is critically important in dealing with this crisis. I think all of us want to make sure we do maintain the coverage in dealing with this opiod crisis. Thats the purpose of this amendment, to make sure we do have coverage. Mr. Chairman, im going to ask consent that the letter from the American Psychological association be made part of our record. Thank you. Because i think this really spells to one of the issues that were so concerned about the American Psychological association and the American Association of Practice Organization expressed their strong opposition to repealing the individuals Health Insurance mandate. Strong stable Health Insurance markets are vitally important to our members and the Substance Abuse disorders. Our members are clinicians, researchers, educators consultants and students. The reason here is in order to deal with the opiod crisis, we need to have coverage. I was listening to senator toomey carefully as he talked about nothing in this bill takes people off of medicaid or Health Insurance. But then i would point out to my colleagues that the joint Tax Committee has confirmed 180 billion is saved in eliminating the mandate. 180 billion is not only saved, its spent by tax expenditures in the chairmans mark, why . Because there is the assumption that 180 billion will not be spent in medicaid, and that people who were covered under medicaid will not be covered. Let me remind my colleagues that med quaid includes Mental Health and addiction coverage. That could very well be lost. But thats half the story. In addition, 180 billion approximately is saved for subsidies that will not be provided under the Affordable Care act. Now, thats again spent by tax expenditures in the chairmans mark. Now, that 180 billion of savings that is spent in the chairmans mark and added to the deficit means that there will be 13 Million People between medicaid and the Affordable Care act that will not be covered by Health Insurance that will lose their Mental Health and addiction coverage under their Health Insurance policies. As pointed out by the American Psychological Association Many people because of the 10 increase in insurance premiums under the individual marketplace will be those reasons, we need to make sure that we have the capacity to deal with the Opioid Crisis as a result of the underlining bill. And my amendment will make sure that at least we have some Resources Available if in fact the secretary of treasury cannot certify that weve maintained at least the current coverage for Mental Health and addiction. I would urge my colleagues to support the amendment. Okay, senator. We agreed to 10 minutes equally, divided by 5 minutes on each side. You used up 4 1 2 minutes. Was it you or senator mccaskill. Call on you, but please keep it short. I just want to point out on irony here. Wait a minute. Were going to yield back our time. I dont mind giving some additional time, but lets not take advantage of that, because we agreed to 10 minutes equally divided. And your 5 minutes have been gone. So lets go to you senator mccaskill. I just want to make sure that the irony of the situation is said out loud. At the same time my colleagues want to say that the individual mandate fails, that nobody comes to get insurance because of the individual mandate, that its not working, but youre going to spend the money that cbo says will be generated because of the people who are not coming to the marketplace. So in other words what you say doesnt work, and therefore its okay to get rid of it. Youre going to say wait a minute, it works pretty well because its going to be 180 were not going to have to spend in medicaid because people arent going to signup for medicaid because they dont have to anymore, and were going to save 185 billion in aca subsidies because they dont have to. I want to point out that irany. What you say doesnt work you dont have to wait to spend the money because cbo says it wont work. Let me just say this from our side. Which includes all of the mandates related to preexisting conditions and essential health benefits. Title i of obamacare is written in the Public Health service act, not the Internal Revenue code. So this amendment is nonjermaine. And i cannot allow ten minutes for a nongermane amendment that comes up. Im going to be reasonable, but my gosh, lets acknowledge this is asking an awful lot of the majority here. Senator. Mr. Chairman, i appreciate your comments. I will say that what were doing is going to impact millions and millions and millions of people, and so its very serious. The whole discussion, the whole debate will impact the entire economy of our country. The reality is that one out of four americans will be dealing with a Mental Illness at some time in their life. This is critical issue for veterans returning home who have served us, and to keep our country safe. The opioid addiction issue is Touching Every community i know in michigan and across the country. And i think its important that we take a stand and say were not going to allow people to use credible services. Senator, you have one minute left. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I appreciate senator cardins amendment. Whenever i think about opioids in my state, i think of a man sitting with his 30yearold daughter in cincinnati and he said if it werent for medicaid my daughter wouldnt be alive today, wouldnt be sitting here. And i i think about 200,000 people in my state are getting opioid treatment because they have insurance because of the Affordable Care act. And i just think that when we make these decisions we need to put a human face on them a little bit more than we do. I appreciate that. Its not germane. Mr. Chairman, let me just if i might be heard on that, because this amends the Internal Revenue code. Its not amending the health code. You drafted the amendment consistent with your instructions. And i would just urge the chair to be fair. This amends the irs code, not the health code. Ive been told its nongermane. Then i would think if this is not germane, how do you amend a code to tadeal with your Health Care Issue on mandatory coverage . Lets have some fairness here. Well, lets put it to a vote. Im asking what the chairs ruling is. Im ruling that even if its germane, lets vote. What are we voting on . On the merits of the amendment now. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Grassley, mr. Roberts, now mr. Enzi, and mr. Cornyn, mr. Burr, now mr. Toomey, now mr. Heller, mr. Scott, now mr. Cassidy, mr. Cassidy now mr. Widen, mr. Nelson, mr. Menendez. Mr. Carden, mr. Warner, proxy. Mr. Mccaskill, mr. Chairman. Chairman votes no. 14 ayes. Amendment is defeated. Its wyden 157. And as its being distributed, mr. Chairman, i just want to respond to my colleague from ohio, said this is really fundamental tax reform. The fact is this bill is actually taking us backward. Were going back to the word with the crazy quilt extenders, what we learned today is were going to have all kinds of provisions that expire at different times, of all kinds of potential interactions. And i will just say, colleagues, it really is retreat from what we did in 2015 on a bipartisan basis when we made important changes that both sides felt strongly about. On our side it was the earned income tax credit, the American Opportunity credit. On the republican side it was expensing, r d, depreciation. That was fundamental tax reform now begun. And now what were told today, were actually going backward in the crazy world of tax extenders. And its a full Employment Program for lobbyists, not tax reform. Now with respect to my amendment, my amendment is the tax of hr1 as reported. After the last few days of debates, im sure people are not surprised im no fan of this proposal. I think its the same basic approach taken here by the senate bill. And its my view and the reason that i am offering this amendment is its important to understand the level of support here in the senate on what the full house is about to vote on. So if colleagues want to speak, im very interested in hearing their views on it. But i will ask for the yeas and nays because i think it is important to understand the level here in the senate on what the house is about to vote on on this issue of taxes. Well, this amendment serves no real purpose. In fact i dont understand why it was introduced. If i understand, it would strike the mark, and a bill the house hasnt even passed yet. We have two legislative chambers for a reason. If both get passed well likely have to work out some differences, not many but a few. And i expect all republicans on the committee will vote against the amendment because we are taking our own course. And while we wish the house luck and are generally supportive of what theyre doing over there, i think were all content to continue to chart our own course. This sounds like a stunt unworthy of the committees time. I would hope the Ranking Member would withdraw his amendment, but if not were happy to vote no. Mr. Chairman, i want to explain to colleagues why im offering it because ive given it some thought. Okay. The public is not going to get any time to see what Congressional Republicans hash out in secret discussions between the house and the senate if they manage to pass these bills. And because the public really isnt going to get a chance to see where Congressional Republicans come down because, i think based on all the secrecy weve seened before, itll be more the same in a conference between the house and the senate. I think this is important to have the senate on record, and this is not something that i offer lightly. I just dont think the public is going to get anytime to see what Congressional Republicans are going to hash out. We understand that, and we respect you. The clerk is going to call the rolls. Mr. Chairman, my time isnt up, i dont think you. Mr. Chairman, one minute. There were six minutes left on the clock at least. I would urge my colleague to vote no for two simple reasons. I dont think you want to say tonight that we should cut 12 billion out of energy credits. If youre willing to say no you dont want wind in texas or iowa or Washington State, fine, then go ahead and support this proposal. I dont want to cut 12 billion out of renewable energy. And i also dont want to eliminate private activity bonds. It will cause 1 million fewer Affordable Housing units. We have an Affordable Housing crisis. We need to show our colleagues this is an unacceptable approach to the Affordable Housing crisis we face. I urge my colleagues to say no. Mr. Grassly now mr. Enzi, mr. Enzi now mr. Corner, mr. Berr, now mr. Isaacson, mr. Portman, now mr. Toomey, mr. Heller now mr. Scott, mr. Scott now mr. Wyden, now ms. Cantwell, now mr. Nelson. Mr. Nelson now mr. Menendez, mr. Carper now mr. Carden, mr. Brown now mr. Bennett, mr. Bennett now mr. Casey, mr. Casey now mr. Warner, ms. Msk caskal now mr. Chairman. The chairman votes now. 26 ayes. Id like to call amendment 15 and offer this, some of my colleagues here on the Health Committee as well as the finance committee. And what i know about our Health Care System it has not worked well in Rural America for a long time before the Affordable Care act was pass wrd, since the Affordable Care act was passed it is not working well for small towns across colorado and across this country. Competition is low, prices are high, deductibles are high. Often the plans available are of little practical use to individuals and their families. For years coloradoens have raised this incredible legitimate concern about our Health Care System. And over the last ten months we should have listened to them and k come together to address the issues in Rural America. Instead weve spent time to in effect slash health care for millions of americans, finance tax cuts for those making millions in income. All year we had tax cuts massacre aiding as a health care plan. Now we have Health Care Plans massacre aiding as a tax bill. According to the Congressional Budget Office the plan in front of us would force 13 million americans to lose coverage and raise premiums 10 on the individual market. And were told by cbo its going to lead to 25 billion in medicare cuts. This is the opposite of what i hear we need from rural colorado, where there isnt enough coverage, where premiums have gone up, theres not enough competition. My amendment provides a back stop for Rural Communities in my state and in the country. If rural areas lose Health Coverage or see premium hikes as a result of this plan, which is what is predicted by people that have looked at this plan, the amendment will undo this tax plan entirely. I think if the majority are so confident in the merits of their proposal than they are in the deficit reduction, they should provide peace of mind to small towns across colorado and the country. The effects of passing this bill are going to be felt hardest in areas where there is little competition already and where people have a hard time affording insurance and where many people rely on medicare and medicaid on their Health Insurance all throughout rural colorado and across the country. I urge a yes vote on this amendment. Senator, i have to rule it nongermane. Its outside the scope of this bill. Well, i would argue, mr. Chairman. I respect your ruling. Thank you. But i would argue its very much inside the scope of the bill since the individual mandate is going to drive up insurance prices. I understand your argument, but i have to rule it as nongermane. Mr. Chairman, ill relent. I appreciate that. Okay, senator carper next. Thanks, mr. Chairman, colleagues. This would be amendment 228. And itll be carper 12. Deals with veterans. Several of us on this committee are veterans. I spent about 23 years in active and reserve duty. And one of my favorite days of the year is veterans day. My favorite day of the year is veterans day. And my guess is almost all of us back home in our respective states probably on friday, which is battle day for veterans day and those who serve in regards to veterans, the real veterans day is the 11th month of the career, 11th day. And one of the things back in the states to talk about the kind of benefits we enjoy in delaware. And when i moved to delaware in 1973 and was eligible for the gi bill and va health care. At the time we had a gi bill they gave us 250 a month. That was it. Folks coming home today and serve at least three years receive a gi bill worth they want to go to State University in any of our states, free. Books paid for, tuition paid for, tutoring fees paid for. And they get housing loans. Looking around here to see if we have anybody on our committee from idaho. We do. The Housing Allowance for 36 months for veterans. Housing allowance in idaho, 1,100 a month. Im not sure what that buys in idaho, but thats a fair amount of money. In delaware the monthly Housing Allowance for 26 months is 2,100. The monthly Housing Allowance in new york state is 4,000. For three years. Its a great benefit. When we had a Veterans Hospital in northern delaware, it was a world war ii hospital, not good for quality care and bad morale. And we had no Community Outpatient clinics, no veterans clinics in delaware. Today we have a world war ii relic hospital in northern delaware regarded as the Gold Standard for health care delivery. We now have Community Based Outpatient Clinics and in every county in delaware we have a va facility. And i suspect were the only state in the country who can make that claim. But as it turns out not every veteran gets their Health Care Coverage through the va. And a lot of folks get their coverage through medicaid. And medicaid there covers about 2 million veterans. Thats about 1 in 10. And as it turns out since the Affordable Care act went into effect, the number of working age veterans who are insured has decreased. Ill say it again. The number of working age veterans who are uninsured in this country has decreased not by just a couple of Percentage Points but by 42 . And thats due in no small part to the Affordable Care act establishing the Health Insurance marketplaces and expanding medicaid. Mr. Chairman and colleagues, the amendment that is before us would ensure that no veterans or their families see a reduction in access to their health care as a result of this bill. Let me just say that again. This amendment would ensure that no veterans or their families see a reduction in access to their health care as a result of this bill. I must have heard 100 times last weekend on veterans day, friday or lastsied, i must have heard hundreds of times people thanking one another for their service, thanking one another for their service. And im been thanked for my service and i thank a whole lot of people for theirs. How do we make real those words . How do we know for sure we really mean them . And i think one of the ways we can do that is to indicate in this administration at least its moving forward with this stipulation that no veterans or their families receive reduction in access to their health care as a result of this bill. I think everybody in this committee, in this room believes we have an obligation to honor our nations veterans, to not increase costs nor reduce their benefits, to take aware the care and benefits they work for and deserve. Senator, your time is up. I think senator isaacs wants to speak to this. I was proud to be one of the 14 people honored last week leading up to veterans day. As chairman of Veterans Committee we have during the course of this year passed seven of the eight bills to perform and bring Veterans Health care and the choice bill to full fruition in the United States senate and the United States house. The remaining bill will be marked up on the 29th of november, which is when we fully fund choice and get the parameters of choice eligibility through. So the private sector multiplier is a part of the Delivery System to our veterans just like the va system now. So i appreciate the credit to the veterans, and i share the comments and the compliments that senator carper has made. But what the Veterans Committee is doing to insurance to see to it every veteran gets the benefits they were offered for health care, they were promised when they signed up. And everybody in this room has been part of that effort this year. So i want the Veterans Committee to continue to do what it has done. Thats to take care of our veterans and do the expansion of our programs, make sure they have access to affordable, Accessible Health care. But i object to the amendment on those grounds. No further republican comment. Clerk willcall the rule. Mr. Chairman, could i have a few minutes to respond to senator isaacson . Im not familiar with what you just described. What im simply asking for is a statement that makes it clear that we dont want to let anything that were doing up intentionally reduce the access to health care for our veterans. And now i ask for a yes vote, thank you. The clerk will call the rule. Mr. Enzi now mr. Corner, now there thoon, now mr. Berr and now mr. Isaacson, mr. Toomey now mr. Heller, mr. Heller now mr. Scott, mr. Scott now mr. Cassidy, mr. Cantwell, mr. Nelson mr. Menendez, mr. Carper, mr. Brown, mr. Brown, mr. Bennett, mr. Casey, mr. Warner. Mr. Warner aye by proxy. Mr. Mccaskill, mr. Chairman. No. The chairman votes no. The clerk will report. The amendment is defeated. Well turn now to casey number 26. Thank you, mr. Chairman. The Senate Finance committee has been working on the republican tax reform bill. Going to leave this hearing and move on with with our programming. It continues now on our companion network, cspan 2. Cspans washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up thursday morning, were getting your reaction to the republicans tax reform bill as the house prepares to take a vote on the measure. 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