Work Before the Senate

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the Senate, as I said yesterday, has a full schedule of work before it this fall. It is what the President, Vice President, and I discussed at our working lunch at the White House yesterday.
This week, the Senate is advancing one of the most important items on our agenda with consideration of the comprehensive budget for fiscal year 2018. It is a good budget that reflects the hard work of Chairman Enzi and the Budget Committee. It will help rein in Federal spending.

It will help our country achieve balance. It will also help our economy grow.

One of the ways this budget will do so is by providing legislative tools to advance tax reform. After a lost decade of missed economic opportunities, America's middle class deserves an economy that reaches for its full potential again, and tax reform is the single most important thing we can do today to get there.

It is not hard to see why. Our current Tax Code is archaic, arduous, and often just plain bizarre. It holds our economy back. It can hold workers' wages down. It actually incentivizes companies to shift jobs and profits overseas. It makes it easier for the wealthy and well- connected to game the system. Yet it is almost impossible for anyone else to understand it.

A constituent from Harrodsburg, KY, wrote to my office exasperated about the unfair Tax Code. This is what she said: ``I am writing today to express my complete and total disgust for the complex, completely unfair, and completely messed up tax system in this country.'' This constituent, who has worked for nearly three decades as a CPA and has helped countless Kentuckians navigate the system, described some of the hardships faced by her clients and then continued by saying that ``the honest, hardworking folks can't get ahead, the cheaters don't get caught and the rich just keep getting richer.''

That was my constituent from Harrodsburg, KY, summing up today's Tax Code. Her story underlines the systemic problems of our Tax Code, and it is often our Nation's workers--including those in Kentucky--who continue to bear the burden.

Recently, the Kentucky State treasurer wrote an op-ed calling on Congress to provide much needed relief from our Tax Code. ``We need tax reform,'' she wrote, ``to increase Kentucky's economic growth and for greater middle-class prosperity throughout the Commonwealth.'' I agree. So does President Trump, his team, and our colleagues here in Congress. We are all in agreement that delivering relief to working families should be at the heart of our plan, and that is what we continue to work toward in developing tax reform.

For families and individuals in Kentucky and across the Nation, we think taxes should be lower, simpler, and fairer. Our plan calls for doubling the

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standard deduction and significantly increasing the child tax credit.

We will eliminate loopholes that are primarily used by the wealthy while protecting incentives that benefit the middle class.

Our plan also reforms the Tax Code to provide relief to our Nation's small businesses and to make it easier to keep jobs here in America. In an increasingly competitive global economy, we are working to put American workers on a level playing field.

Above all, our goal is this. We want to take more money out of Washington's pockets and put more money into the pockets of the middle class in Kentucky and across our country.

This sounds like a place where we should all be able to agree-- Republicans and Democrats alike. In fact, our friends on the other side of the aisle have often supported the idea of tax reform and bringing jobs back to America. I hope they will again in the course of this important effort. I hope they will not fall into blind partisanship and reject any collaboration simply because they don't like the President.

Instead, they can work with us in a serious way on an overhaul of the Tax Code that can truly help the people of Kentucky, help the people of their States, and help Americans all across the land.

I look forward to continuing to work with colleagues in Congress and the administration to pass a responsible budget and to deliver tax reform for the American workers and families, who deserve an economy that reaches its true potential once again.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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