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Tax Reform

Floor Speech

Date: Oct. 24, 2017
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Taxes

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, on another matter, as we continue our work in the Senate, we look forward to hearing the President's perspectives on how to advance our shared agenda, particularly the upcoming debate on bringing tax relief, economic growth, and jobs to Americans through tax reform.

Last week, the Senate passed a comprehensive, responsible budget that will help put the government on a path to balance and help put our economy on a road to robust growth. This week, the House plans to bring the budget to the floor for passage by Thursday. Once they pass it, we will have important legislative tools to help our economy grow through tax reform.

As we all know, after years of an economy that failed to live up to its full potential, the time is now to pass tax reform so that we can get America going again and growing again. We want to make taxes lower, simpler, and fairer. We want to close loopholes that are exploited by the wealthy. We want to make it easier to create new jobs in America and keep them here. In short, we want to take more money out of Washington's pockets and put more in yours.

These are the ideas that drive tax reform. They are shared by the President. They are shared by Americans in both political parties. They should be shared by Senators of both political parties, as well, and for many years, they actually were. The former chairman of the Finance Committee, Senator Wyden, called our current Tax Code an ``anticompetitive mess.'' The senior Senator from Michigan, Ms. Stabenow, expressed her concern for a tax code that incentivizes jobs to be shipped overseas, and our friend, the Democratic leader, wrote about our Tax Code's failure to help American workers compete.

Many Democrats called for action to get tax reform done. I hope that our Democratic friends will work with us now in a serious way to actually do it. After all, it is not as if the need for tax reform has changed since our friends

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made these statements as recently as a few years ago. The only thing that has changed is the occupant of the White House. That is the only difference. So let's get this done. The American people are counting on us.

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