The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, tonight I join to talk and to thank the leadership of the Republican Party, who made a firm decision during the last elections that our party needed to stand for not only making America great again, but every single American who needed an opportunity to join in that endeavor.

Tonight, I stand in this beautiful time that we discuss the tax bill that Republicans passed last year and talk about the effects of it and how much it has helped in America.

I think a story needs to be told about what the goal of the tax bill was. Why did Republicans work so hard to move these ideas forward?

The bottom line to it is Americans watched as the Democratic Party and President Obama not only had their control of the country, but economically, as the policies of the Democratic Party became more apparent to people, Americans and the world watched as America dwindled in economic activity and economic growth.

This took place because of the policies that the President, President Obama at the time, brought forth and Congress passed: trillion-dollar spending plans, trillion-dollar increases in the budget, and talk of raising taxes another trillion dollars.

What happened is, for some 8 years, there was GDP growth of about 1.2 percent. Mr. Speaker, that means, very plainly, that it would take about 70 years to double the size of our economy, which means that communities and States and companies and individuals lag behind as they would watch other cities and other countries and other people around the globe not only have economic activity, but opportunities that came to their doorsteps. IPOs, or initial public offerings, and all the acronyms that go with economic growth and development went overseas; they went other places.

So Republicans began this discussion with the American people going into 2010 that said: We need to be careful about government spending, but, on the same side, what we need to do is to grow our economy. That is exactly the discussion that took place during the last Presidential election.

So as soon as the election was over, Republicans began the process of not only making America great again, but doing it by empowering every single State and every single American to be a part of this growth. Essentially, there was a look at some $12 trillion worth of economic tax components.

Kevin Brady, who is the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, from Houston, Texas--actually, Spring, Texas--was in charge, as the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, of looking at how we were going to move our economy forward. I call that pop.

How we were going to take economic activity and, instead of perhaps helping an individual or a company or necessarily one particular part of the economy, we wanted where it would go and add pop or generationally develop more economic activity than just for a singular entity.

And Kevin Brady, as the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, looked at some $5.6 trillion out of this $12 trillion and said: We need to take that and make that the engine of the economy.

So a decision was made to move that directly to the free enterprise system. Mr. Speaker, it is the free enterprise system that stands as the greatest activity for freedom in the world, an activity that not only brings opportunity and investment and entrepreneurship, but more than that, wealth. It has brought wealth to the United States of America, a free enterprise system that is there to produce for anyone that chooses to be participatory in that environment--an opportunity to begin by investing your own money, by hard work where you show up at work, and having customers or consumers that go and generate economic activity, and that is what America has been, and that is what we were slowing down.

The engine of that economy was slowed down because our predecessors, not only in the Presidency but also our friends who are Democrats, believed that they would engage the free enterprise system in such a way that did not allow it to grow, did not allow it to expand, and did not allow itself to build.

So what Kevin Brady did, as chairman of the Ways and Means, was propose a tax bill that would take $5.6 trillion worth of tax components and move it directly to the free enterprise system. By moving it to the free enterprise system, we reduced taxes. We reduced taxes from the 37 percent range for corporate down to 21 percent.

What does that do? Well, that takes America, an American business as seen by the world, from 24th in the world to number one. So instead of us being what might be on a list of 24th place of easy-to-do business, that was generating not only goods and services, but was the ease of doing business with, that people wanted to be a part of, that has taken us to first in the world.

That means that America will begin building back not only jobs and job creation, but it will build back with the intellectual capacity to build the newest, finest ideas and products that the world needs for tomorrow because America will be a place that is not only easy to do business but is less priced, and because we can be less priced, we can become the products of choice all around the world.

So, Mr. Speaker, I want to say: This is working. This is working to take America not only where they are in first place, but it means Americans and American companies can be in the same position.

As a Member of Congress from Dallas, Texas, I have an opportunity to see firsthand not only how this impacts people and companies but how it impacts the workers. And it wasn't but 2 weeks ago when I was at what was called the National Write Your Congressman, which is headquartered in Dallas, Texas. Randy Ford is their President; and Randy gave me good news. He said that of the small businesses that they had talked to, that they believed that 74 percent of small-business owners expected revenues to be higher in 2018, and even higher the next year, which meant that they felt positive about not only economic growth but, more importantly, their companies.

I also visited Texas Moving Company, which is a family owned business of some 40 years old that is in Richardson, Texas, and they told me, point-blank, that as a result of us making sure that we would reduce the cost of doing business by reducing taxes, that they had increased their driver's pay by over $2,400.

That means that it does come directly to the employees that are able to have not only more take-home pay, but they are able to know that they can fall into more easily knowing that they may take a part-time job to a full-time job, a full-time job to a career, and a career as an opportunity to make sure that they better the lives of not only their family but their children also in their community.

And this is why Texas Moving Company made a decision then, as they saw this money that they would have; they made a determination that they would increase their employees by $2,400, but they also increased their health insurance reimbursement to where they now pay $3,484 a year to help their employees to pay more of their healthcare costs because they can do that on a pretax basis.

Mr. Speaker, it is all these things that the Republican majority has done. When others said it would simply be crumbs or unimportant, we said we are going to focus on making America great again; and when you do that, you will find that you not only make America great, but you make Americans and their families greater also.

Mr. Speaker, this is why we, as Texans, stand up not only as proud Members of the Congress, but also as proud Americans who say: We want to make sure that everybody, no matter where they live in the United States, that they would be a part of making their city, their State, their company, and their family even stronger.

I appreciate Mr. Mitchell allowing me to be here tonight. It is my hope that the discussion that we have with the American people and the Chair, Mr. Speaker, that you will recognize that if we are going to do this, it will mean that we are going to have to understand it is not up to government to make this work; it is up to the American people. We are giving them the tools in this tax bill, and I think they will do the right thing for everybody.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman yielding to me this evening.

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