Protecting Family and Small Business Tax Cuts Act of 2018
Floor Speech
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Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank him for his extraordinary leadership in representing the House Democrats as the ranking member on the Ways and Means Committee. He brings to that position the values shared by the American people of fairness, transparency, and openness in what goes on here in Congress, and doing so in a way that is accountable to the American people. So I thank him for his leadership.
Sadly, I come to the floor again to talk against, yet again, another Republican tax scam. The gentleman who just spoke talked about how we should be filled with joy--filled with joy.
Well, if we are talking about emotion, let us talk about St. Augustine. St. Augustine, 17 centuries ago--17 centuries ago, 1,700 years ago--said: ``A State which is not governed according to justice is just a bunch of thieves.''
Pope Benedict, who quoted Augustine, said: ``The State must inevitably face the question of how justice can be achieved here and now.'' Benedict cautioned against the danger of certain ethical blindness caused by the dazzling effect of power and special interest. That is what they talked about.
This is about justice, justice for our country in terms of economic justice, justice in our society in terms of everyone participating in the prosperity of America and not, yet again, the warmed-over stew of trickle-down economics. If you give 83 percent of the benefits to the top 1 percent--glory, alleluia--it may trickle down on you. If it does not, so be it. That is what the former speaker said: So be it.
Let me quote some of the Republicans, enforcing what I said earlier. Who are these tax scams for?
Congressman Chris Collins said: ``My donors are basically saying, `Get it done or don't ever call me again.'''
Senator Lindsey Graham said the financial contributions will stop if this--and I say--if this tax scam fails.
Here we are again. Here we are again at a time, on this last day of the session, as this body prepares to pack its bags and return home for the next 6 weeks, the GOP's priorities have been laid bare, as we waste our final moments debating a new version of the Republicans' same old tax scam, with no accountability, no transparency, and no fairness for the American people.
The first GOP tax scam for the rich added $2 trillion to the national debt, when you talk about the tax cut plus the interest on the debt, sticking our children with a bill for massive tax breaks for Big Pharma, big banks, big corporations, making it more profitable for them to ship jobs overseas, and the wealthiest 1 percent.
People across America have raised their voices to condemn the Republicans' plan to spend trillions on tax cuts for the wealthy. What is so sad about it is, in their first tax scam, they decided that they would set up a thing where the individual mandate was repealed and, therefore, the benefit of preexisting condition no longer barring you from having access to health insurance. Their first tax scam was an assault on the preexisting condition benefit in the Affordable Care Act.
Not only that--that was not good enough for them--the President went further in his budget and said: We have increased the debt. Now we have to pay for it, because, contrary to the illusion that our Republicans like to present, these tax breaks do not ever pay for themselves.
Don't take it from me. Those who have worked even with Jack Kemp have said: Anybody who tells you that these tax breaks pay for themselves is telling you something that is not true, is nonsense, and is BS, except he said the whole word in our testimony.
So here they are. Now they have to pay for it. Where are they going to get the money? They have just given 83 percent of the benefits to the top 1 percent, a big tax break for corporations, enabling them to send jobs overseas. And who is going to pay for it?
Well, in the President's budget, to make up for the $2 billion plus, they cut $500 billion from Medicare; $1.4 trillion from Medicaid, legislation that is not just about poor children but middle-income seniors, a benefit for middle-income seniors; $214 billion from food stamps, a benefit needed by our seniors, by our veterans, by our poor children in America. All of this is to pay for tax cuts for the rich.
So here we are again. Imagine what the Republicans will try to do after adding trillions more to the deficit. Their intentions are clear. The President's adviser--whatever his title is now--Larry Kudlow, his top economic chief, said: If Republicans control Congress, they will immediately move to cut the larger entitlements, probably next year.
In budget after budget, Republicans have made their plan perfectly clear: Add trillions to the deficit with their GOP tax scams for the rich, and then use those deficits to justify slashing Medicare, Medicaid, and, actually, disability benefits for people on Social Security.
Added $2 trillion to the debt with their first tax scam, putting forward a budget that would, again, claw millions of dollars back from seniors and hardworking Americans, and now they want to do it again.
Well, don't take it from me. AARP wrote a letter to Congress yesterday to warn against the grievous damage that would be done by the second phase of Republicans' deficit-exploding tax scam.
They wrote: ``We have grave concerns about H.R. 6760. AARP is troubled by the further negative effect this bill will have on the Nation's ability to fund critical priorities.''
They then said: ``The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that H.R. 6760 will reduce Federal revenue by approximately $631 billion over the 10-year budget window. This is in addition to the $1.5 trillion reduction in revenue over the 10-year budget window resulting from last year's Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.''
Revenue, revenue that can be used for investment. Think of what we could have done with those resources to build the infrastructure of America, a small piece of it to address the pension crisis in America, the recognition that investments in education are the best investments we can make, because nothing brings more to the Treasury than investments in education. Instead, we have this.
The AARP goes on to say: ``Additional increases of this magnitude in the deficit will inevitably lead to calls for greater spending cuts, which are likely to include cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and other important programs serving older Americans.''
The letter concludes: ``AARP cannot support H.R. 6760.''
Again, here we are. They give this big tax break. They say people are going to get raises and bonuses.
Some got bonuses. That is good. If you worked there a long time and the rest, you got a bonus. But it didn't add to your base salary, which would have been the important increase for people to make.
One estimate by Goldman Sachs was that there would be, following the former tax bill, $1 trillion in buybacks; in other words, corporations buying back their stock--not investing in their workforce, not recognizing that their success depends on the productivity of the workforce and that any increase in productivity should also include an increase in the wages of the workers, but, instead, an increase in the compensation for the CEO.
It is shameful.
To conclude on that point, there is a better way to do this. There could have been, instead of as they did with the first tax scam and now this one--the first one in the dark of night and in the speed of light, putting forth a bill that they almost didn't even know what they were voting for. That did a grave injustice to our Nation for what it deprives us of by giving these tax breaks at the high end.
There is a way to do it. Mr. Neal has suggested it over and over again. Let's see what we have done before.
Ronald Reagan, Tip O'Neill, 1986, almost a year of hearings and transparency and openness where the public could see and people could understand what it meant to them in their lives.
Instead, they just go into those rooms, and say: How can we, how can we, how can we milk the public? How can we exploit the taxpayer by adding to the wealth of the wealthiest 1 percent in our country?
It is shameful.
As St. Augustine said, unless a government is formed to promote justice, it is just a bunch of thieves.
We are robbing from our children's future with this national debt. We are robbing from the participation in the full benefits of our prosperity, of our workers, in our country. We are robbing our Nation's ability to be itself, to make America good again. In doing so, again, to have people have financial stability in their lives, so that they can be entrepreneurial, so that they can take risk, so that they can invest in their children's future.
It is not only good for the individual taxpayer or person in our country; it is good for our country, because it makes us competitive in the world with our values and with our economy.
Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``no'' vote.
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