American Families Plan

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, we are now in the final week of tax- filing season. While filing season typically ends on April 15, this year, taxpayers have until May 17 to file or to request an extension.

This is also the third filing season under the tax cuts and reforms that the Republicans enacted in 2017. For the vast majority of Americans, this means they are paying significantly less in income taxes than they were under prior law. Moreover, thanks to a nearly doubling of the standard deduction, most Americans are paying less without having the headache of itemizing their taxes.

More importantly, prior to the pandemic, tax reform contributed to the best economy America had seen in decades. Unemployment reached a 50-year low and was at or below 4 percent for 24 consecutive months. Family incomes and workers' wages experienced robust gains. In fact, wage growth was the strongest for low-wage workers. As a result, we actually saw income inequality decline.

Unfortunately, the current administration's ambitions to use the pandemic as an excuse to pass a Big Government, anti-growth agenda threatens our return to a thriving economy.

First came its $2 trillion untargeted COVID relief bill that focused more on enacting a liberal wish list rather than on pandemic relief. A lot of my colleagues have referred to only 10 percent of that $1.9 trillion bill actually being related to problems caused by the pandemic.

The dangers of passing this untargeted and largely unnecessary spending are already beginning to weigh on our economic recovery. Throughout the economy, prices are soaring, and job growth is tepid. April's jobs growth data fell short of expectations by more than 700,000 jobs. This is deeply concerning, and it ought to be to every one of the Members of the Senate.

I have heard firsthand from business after business in my State of Iowa that they are desperate for workers but that job applicants are scarce. As my Republican colleagues and I have warned our Democratic colleagues for months, this is the natural result of the Democratic policies that pay people more not to work than to work. Yet, despite the obvious overreach of their liberal agenda, my Democratic colleagues are preparing to double down with an additional $4 trillion Big Government spending spree. Then, in turn, to finance their progressive dreams, they are proposing trillions of dollars of job-killing tax hikes.

You just heard from my colleague from Ohio, Senator Portman, who went into that very deeply, how those tax policies are going to hurt our economy and the workers in our economy.

Their proposals to roll back critical reforms to our corporate tax system would result in the United States once again having the highest corporate tax rate among our major trading partners and incentivizing companies to move headquarters abroad

Small businesses are also in their crosshairs. Family businesses and farms could be decimated by proposals to hike capital gains taxes and subject paper-only gains in family business assets to taxation immediately upon the transfer of that farm or that business at death.

My Democratic colleagues' tax proposal would make the United States a less attractive place to invest. It would erode American competitiveness and slow our Nation's postpandemic economic recovery. That means fewer jobs. It means lower wages for middle-class Americans.

Postpandemic prosperity won't be achieved through higher taxes and Big Government spending programs or the government itself, which consumes and doesn't produce wealth. The real wealth of America is created by the working men and women of this country. If we are going to have this growth, it is going to be achieved through pro-growth policies and in the unshackling of our economy from stringent pandemic- era restrictions as we move toward a vaccinated world.

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