Republican Tax Cuts

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. THOMPSON of California. Mr. Speaker, I want to start today with some good news. I think it is fantastic that the Golden State Warriors played an incredible basketball game last night and brought them to victory over the Rockets out of Texas and are going to advance onto the next round of the basketball playoffs. So I congratulate the Dubs.

Sadly, that is where the good news ends. What we are going to talk about for the rest of this evening is some bad news, bad for the American people.

The Republican plan to extend the Trump tax cuts for billionaire donors like Elon Musk is a bad deal for the American people.

During this Special Order, we are going to lay out exactly how reckless this Republican plan is to extend the Republican Trump tax cuts. An extension of the Republican Trump tax cuts would disproportionately benefit those who need it the least, would recklessly increase our Nation's deficits, and it fails to prioritize hardworking Americans' contributions.

Republican tax cuts get our priorities exactly backwards. When Democrats passed tax cuts, we focused on who needed the help the most. The tax cuts that Democrats passed and that President Biden signed into law were some of the most significant middle-class tax cuts we have seen in a generation.

In 2021, our expanded child tax credit nearly cut child poverty in our country in half. We also made historic expansions to both the earned income tax credit and the dependent care credit which dramatically cut child poverty. In other words, when Democrats do tax cuts, we focus those tax cuts on those who need it the most.

The Republicans on the other hand are looking to extend tax cuts that are overwhelmingly tilted to benefit those who need it the least.

Under the Republican tax bill, a taxpayer who makes $1 million or more saw an average tax cut of $79,000, where a taxpayer making $50,000 only saw about $270 in tax cuts. Putting this another way, for every dollar they are giving to the average working person, they are handing $288 to a person making over $1 million every year.

Let me be clear about that statistic. I am not talking about a millionaire, not someone who is sitting on a house and a 401(k) that they have worked for and saved for for 30 years to hit $1 million. This is what they are giving to someone who makes $1 million every year.

Now, I don't know how you feel, Mr. Speaker, but I don't think people who are making $1 million a year are the ones who need a helping hand in this economy.

Now, suffice it to say, we have made this point once or twice before, and every time we do we get the same response from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle. They say: People who make over $1 million pay a lot in taxes, so, of course, they get a bigger tax cut.

However, that argument is full of prunes. Let's be clear. Congress is perfectly capable of cutting taxes for working people without also cutting taxes for those at the top.

That is right. Believe it or not, Mr. Speaker, you can lower the tax rates at the bottom without also lowering the tax rates at the top.

In fact, last year, the Treasury Department did a study. They looked at how much it would cost to extend the Republican Trump tax cuts so that everyone making under $400,000 a year was held harmless. There was no impact on the bottom 98 percent of the income distribution.

How much did it cost?

They said it would cost $1.8 trillion. Now, that is not pocket change. We all know that, but it is a heck of a lot less than the recent Joint Committee on Taxation estimate of $4.6 trillion that it will cost to extend the Republican Trump tax cuts that favor those who don't need any help.

The thing is, if Republicans would be willing to abandon their goal of cutting taxes for the most fortunate, if they would genuinely focus on the middle class and focus on offsetting those tax cuts in a responsible, deficit- neutral manner, I bet they could get a lot of colleagues on my side of the aisle to join them in that effort.

Instead, they have embarked on a go-it-alone strategy, and go it alone they will. As long as their goal is to reward their big donors with massive tax cuts while leaving working people behind, they can go it alone.

Someone who knows the impact that these tax cuts have had on taxpayers across our country, the negative impact they have had on working people across our country; someone who knows well how these Republican tax cuts stole from people who live in high-cost areas their ability to deduct their State and local taxes, costing constituents in those areas thousands and thousands of dollars a year; someone who knows well what that is and has been working tirelessly ever since they did that, ever since they foisted that tax increase on people in high- cost-of-living areas; and someone who has been working on it ever since they did it, trying to work with people on both sides of the aisle to figure out how to resolve the State and local tax deduction is my colleague, Tom Suozzi from New York. He is a great Member and a member of the Ways and Means Committee.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. THOMPSON of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the passion he brings to this issue. I know how much work he has put into it.

I want to add a couple of things on the SALT topic.

One, as I think the gentleman remembers, when this was happening, my subcommittee held hearings on SALT. We brought witnesses in from a number of different States, not all blue States. Blue States are the ones that are generally recognized as being most harmed by this terrible tax policy that the Republicans put on us.

What we saw in those hearings were red States are quickly catching up. This is catching red State taxpayers as well, and it is hurting them just like it is hurting taxpayers in blue States.

I want to mention that the gentleman talked about our Republican colleagues who are talking a good game about how they won't vote for this, that, and the other thing unless SALT is taken care of. Well, SALT goes back to what it used to be if we don't do anything, so that is where we could end up if this foolish tax bill that is being pushed on the American people right now were to go away. We get our SALT deduction back.

I certainly hope that the colleagues that the gentleman mentioned are going to hold to their word and work with us to see if we can fix that.

The gentleman is spot on regarding donor States like his State and my State. We give more money to the Federal Government than we get back.

Just to demonstrate how big that is, in my State of California, if you deduct the money that we get back from the Federal Government from all the money that California taxpayers send to the Federal Government, what is left, what stays in Washington to go out to all the red States, is more than the entire State budget of 47 other States.

To say that we represent donor States, that is almost a throw-away line. We are paying the freight for all the States that are voting in a way that is hurting the American taxpayer. It is inexcusable. It is inexcusable that my Republican colleagues are looking to enact these tax cuts at the expense of the American people, including cutting up to $880 billion from Medicaid over the next 10 years.

Nearly 1 in 4 Americans, or 80 million American people, are covered by Medicaid. These cuts that the Republicans are promoting mean that our neighbors will struggle to afford to see a doctor, struggle to pay for medication, or won't have access to nursing home services if they need it.

For over 60 years, Medicaid has been a lifeline for people with low incomes and for people with disabilities so they could have access to healthcare. Already, we are seeing rural hospitals struggling and not just in my district. Rural hospitals across the United States of America are struggling. Many of them are closing or are eliminating critical services.

These hospitals, every one of them, are heavily reliant on reimbursement from Medicare and Medicaid. Any cut in Medicaid funding would lead to catastrophic results for all--not just those on Medicaid, for everyone. Those lacking coverage will skip necessary care, only making people sicker and requiring costlier treatment. It will put a strain on local emergency rooms and community health providers when these folks show up in the emergency room with a very serious problem that, as I said, will cost more to treat. In fact, every uninsured person results in a $900 uncompensated healthcare cost per year.

This results in services being offered at higher prices for patients and reduced investments in local healthcare centers. Cutting Medicaid will devastate the most vulnerable.

Mr. Speaker, 12 million people in rural areas, not rural areas in blue States, rural areas across the United States of America, 12 million people in those rural areas have health coverage through Medicaid, including 47 percent of children living in rural communities. It is, in many instances, the only way that kids can get healthcare. Mr. Speaker, 38 percent of children in urban areas also rely on Medicaid coverage.

Yet, these Medicaid and ensuing service cuts will just show new physicians that they can't count on keeping a job in a rural hospital. The Medicaid cuts will widen the gap between what a rural hospital can offer and what an urban or suburban hospital can offer.

It is not just those on Medicaid who will suffer. Without Medicaid reimbursement, hospitals, clinics, doctors' offices, and urgent care centers will close, leaving even those with private insurance without access to healthcare.

In my State, one-third of the population is covered by Medicaid. Republicans can't cut one-third of the money that goes to healthcare and expect our healthcare system and infrastructure to stand. Hospitals and clinics will close their doors. If they don't close, they will cut services dramatically.

It doesn't matter if you are on Medicaid, on Medicare, if you have private insurance through your employer, or you are filthy rich with pockets full of gold. If you go to the hospital or to the clinic or to an urgent care center and they have had to make drastic cuts to compensate for these terrible Medicaid cuts that the Republicans are trying to push down their throats, there is not going to be anybody there to take care of you. It doesn't matter if you have the money or you have the insurance.

If the majority cuts services, your healthcare access will be truncated. There is no two ways about it. It has been a very interesting exercise to watch some of our Republican colleagues wrap themselves into pretzels claiming not to have voted for the Medicaid cuts, but it was just an overall structure giving direction of how we should cut these moneys.

Remember, cut these moneys so that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle can give a tax cut to their billionaire, Musk-like donors. That is just not true. Republicans can't vote for a structure that takes $880 billion out of the healthcare safety net and claim not to have done it. Republican Members voted to cut Medicaid, which will hurt everybody's healthcare delivery.

Now we see it again. The majority Members are trying to justify it by creating this balancing effort to suggest that Republicans are not cutting Medicaid but are just going to put in place some seven-bank shot procedure where the $880 billion is still at risk but Republicans can do it without voting to say that the majority actually cut Medicaid.

My colleagues can't just hide the ball. It doesn't matter what Republicans call it. The priority of tax cuts for the very rich, people who don't need the help, will cut healthcare for all of our constituents. That is going to hurt every one of us. It doesn't matter if Members are in an urban area, a rural area, a suburban area, a red State, a blue State, or whatever color State my colleagues think they live in.

These cuts are devastating. I have had hospital administrators in my district tell me that they are closing their hospitals if these go through. I have had clinics tell me that their clinics are done if this goes through. This is mean, cruel, and it doesn't have to happen. It is going to hurt everyone.

I think it is important for the American people to know what the Senate is planning on doing in regard to this discussion. Senate Republicans are using what they call a current policy baseline. Remember that: current policy baseline.

Mr. Speaker, I don't care what finance classes Members took. I don't care if you are the CFO in the biggest corporation in the world. This is not a policy definition that any of my colleagues have ever studied before. This is a new thing that the Senate majority Members made up in order to justify what Republicans are trying to do in regard to the tax cuts for people who don't need it.

Senate Republicans call it current policy baseline to measure the cost of the tax bill. According to Republicans, current policy baseline is just a fancy word for: We are not really doing what we say we are doing, but it is accounting fraud.

Any way my colleagues cut it, it is accounting fraud. Here is what is going to happen: Republicans are going to pass massive tax cuts, with much of it going to those at the very top of the income scale, those who don't need our help.

The nonpartisan professional economists at the Joint Committee on Taxation and the Congressional Budget Office are going to provide a score. In other words, they are going to tell us how much it is going to cost to do what Republicans want to do. They submit that information to all Members of Congress so that we know what the cost of this tax cut policy will be.

Yet, with what the Senate is doing, the way the Senate majority is setting up this score, the score that has been developed by experienced, nonpartisan officials with Ph.D.'s in economics who provide this good information to us, they are going to have to do some kind of maneuver to figure out how to deal with this new accounting fraud.

They are going to put all of the good work and all of the experience they have to the side because the Republicans don't want us to see what the real score is. The majority doesn't want my colleagues to see the kind of reckless deficits that this bill is going to create.

Mr. Suozzi said it well:

All of the tax policy that we are talking about is not paid for.

Mr. Speaker, all of the pearl-clutching that went on leading to the election and all of the crying and screaming about the national debt all of a sudden doesn't matter? We are going to put, at a minimum, $4.6 trillion onto the national debt because of this.

What Republicans will do instead is make up their own score with this new accounting fraud that the majority has developed. The Senate has made it clear what the score will say. It will say that extending the Republican Trump tax cuts costs zero. It is pretending that the tax cuts are free.

Tax cuts, the American people know good and well, are not free. There is a cost associated with those. The ranking member of the Committee on Ways and Means, Mr. Neal, former chairman, described this magical- thinking tax fraud accounting system that the Republican Senators came up with in a recent editorial in The Washington Post. I like his description. This is what he said:

It is like saving your money and paying for three family vacations and then saying: Now all of our future vacations are free. We don't have to save. We don't have to pay for them.

Mr. Speaker, let me assure the whole House and the American people that extending the Trump tax cuts is not free. In fact, we have a recent estimate from the Joint Committee on Taxation that says that extending the Trump tax cuts costs $4.6 trillion.

This is $4.6 trillion that will be added to the debt. Not only does extending the Republican Trump tax cuts cost an extra $4.6 trillion, but because they are pretending that it is free and doesn't cost anything and doesn't need to be offset, every last penny of those tax cuts will be borrowed money.

Borrowed money isn't free either. Who is going to pick up the tab on this? Your kids, your grandkids, and future generations are paying the freight for this irresponsible tax policy that is coming down the way.

On top of that, there is another $1.5 trillion in tax cuts that the Republicans want to add to that. That is $6.1 billion of unpaid-for tax cuts. That is $1.6 billion in debt on our children and our grandchildren just to give a tax cut to the wealthiest people in this country, people who do not need our help.

This is wrong, Mr. Speaker. We need to stand up. Our friends and our colleagues on the other side of the aisle need to stand up and need to show the courage that their voters placed in them to stand up and speak out against this.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source