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Floor Speech

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Mr. CRAPO. Before I do so, I want to respond to a couple of points that were made.

The accusation was once again made that Republicans are trying to cut taxes for billionaires. The reality is, Republicans are trying to stop a tax increase on all Americans. The TCJA, or 2017 tax bill, is going to expire at the end of this year, and if it is not stopped from expiring, every American will get a tax increase, and those in the lower income categories and middle-income categories will share $2.6 trillion of that tax increase. That is what the tax fight is about.

Then, continuing what I call the politics of fear in the face of the reforms that we are bringing, the attack was, well, we are going to cut Medicaid, we are going to stop financing for community health centers, and we are going to do all of these terrible things. I have not seen such a bill in this Congress, in the House or the Senate. We are debating how to get rid of fraud, waste, and abuse. We are not looking at how to cut benefits in Medicaid. I believe that is very clear. Today was the first time on the floor that I heard we were looking at community health centers. I wasn't aware of that either.

The bottom line here is we are trying to pay attention to our $37 trillion national debt by weeding out waste, fraud, and abuse. We will have disagreements about how to do that, but it is definitely not going to be all the things that are being brought up, that have been accused in order to stir people up and scare them and tell them that we should not pay attention to our national debt.

With regard to Social Security, we can all agree on the importance of Social Security, which provides monthly benefits to millions of seniors, individuals with disabilities, and their families.

I also agree with my colleagues on the other side that Congress must act to preserve and strengthen Social Security to ensure that it is there for current beneficiaries and future beneficiaries.

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, if no action is taken, the combined Social Security trust funds will be exhausted within the next 10 years, meaning the program will not be able to pay the full amount of benefits currently promised.

However, I disagree with my colleagues' approach here today, and they have disagreed with our approaches. We have competing ideas about how we should address this issue.

Addressing Social Security's solvency will require thoughtful discussion about a variety of policy options that culminates in a bipartisan solution, not a cramdown of a different solution that we haven't even had the opportunity to have a discussion in the Finance Committee about.

Instead, my Democrat colleagues are pursuing a live UC of a bill that has not received consideration before the full committee and has never had a Republican cosponsor in the House or the Senate.

This bill would also raise taxes on certain workers making less than $400,000--something my Democratic colleagues have previously promised not to do.

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