Executive Calendar

Floor Speech

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The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Young). The Senator from Maryland. Unanimous Consent Request--S. 4810

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I am on the floor today to discuss a question of fundamental fairness to members of our Armed Forces and to Federal employees.

I think we all may recall a few months ago when President Trump ordered the Department of the Treasury to establish a system to push businesses, companies, and employers around the country to defer the collection of employees' payroll taxes. Those are the taxes that go to Social Security and Medicare. The key word here is ``defer'' because this is really a shell game.

Any moneys that businesses do not pay into Social Security and Medicare now are going to have to be paid by those Federal employees right after the holidays, starting in January.

And many employees around the country were at first confused. They thought they were getting a payroll tax holiday, but that is not the case.

The reality is, whatever they didn't pay in the form of payroll taxes now and in the past couple months they would be required to pay back right after those holidays.

And when businesses looked at this and when workers and employees around the country looked at this, they overwhelmingly rejected it. They said they didn't want to participate.

Here is what UPS said about this proposal: ``We recognize that for some, it may have been helpful to have more money in their paychecks in 2020, yet not all employees have professional tax planning needed to prepare effectively for the added obligation they would face in 2021.''

So even though this payroll tax deferral proposal got a burst of attention, it turned out to be meaningless for most workers around the country. Most private sector employers didn't participate, and their employees and workers didn't want them to participate.

Unfortunately, the one big exception to this has been members of our Armed Forces, the folks who every day stand guard to protect our country, and Federal employees who do the Nation's business with respect to important services they provide.

And as the private sector has rejected this, we have heard from thousands of Federal employees who say: We don't want to participate either. We have heard from members of the Armed Forces that say: We don't want to be used as guinea pigs and be required to participate.

So I want to be really clear that if we don't correct this, the damage will continue to be done, and these members of our Armed Forces and Federal employees will be forced to pay even more back after the holidays.

Now, I wrote to Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and to OMB Director Vought about this back in September, September 8, just as the deferral was starting, and we were joined in that letter by 22 Senators--Senators from both sides of the aisle. We had a simple bipartisan request. It was: Make this payroll tax deferral optional, make it voluntary. If Federal employees and members of our Armed Forces want to participate in this proposal, fine. Let them do it, but don't force, don't require, don't coerce members of our military and Federal employees to participate.

And we didn't get a response to that letter to Secretary Mnuchin and CBO Director Vought. So I asked Secretary Mnuchin about this issue at a Senate Banking Committee hearing on September 24. I said: Mr. Secretary, why shouldn't we make this voluntary? Why should you require members of our Armed Forces and Federal employees to participate in the program if they don't want to? And his response was: Yeah, it would be ``reasonable'' for the payroll tax to be voluntary ``if people don't want to participate. Sounds like common sense.''

Well, we expected some followup from the Secretary of Treasury. Nothing. So we sent a followup letter--again, a bipartisan letter. Nothing.

So now it is December, and the Trump administration is still forcing members of our Armed Forces and Federal employees who don't want to participate in this now-forced deferral program--they want to continue to force them to do it. So we introduced a bipartisan piece of legislation called the Protecting Employees from Surprise Taxes Act. It is pretty straightforward. It says: If a Federal employee or member of the armed services wants to participate, let them participate. If they want to opt out, let them opt out of it.

I want to stress that the Federal workers we have heard from and the organizations and unions that represent Federal workers strongly support this measure. And why not? It is hard to argue that we shouldn't let the folks who are standing guard to protect us make a choice about whether they want to participate in this program.

Also, just to remind our colleagues--maybe they haven't kept track of this--the Senate chose not to participate. The Senate chose not to participate in this program, whether on a mandatory or a voluntary basis. The House of Representatives chose not to participate in this program.

So it is going to be interesting to hear the Senators say that they want to require members of our Armed Forces and Federal employees to enroll in a program that this Senate decided was not good for members of the Senate staff and the House of Representatives decided was not good for House staff.

Yet, if we don't support this proposal, this is simply passing the bipartisan legislation I mentioned to give our members of the Armed Forces and Federal employees that choice. If we don't pass this, we are going to require them to continue to participate in a program they don't like.

So, Mr. President, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Finance Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 4810 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask that the bill be read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

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