No Tax on Tips Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CRUZ. Madam President, I remember, as a kid in Sunday school, thinking what it would have been like to live in Israel in the age of the apostles, in the time of miracles. And yet, perhaps we have been transformed to another time of miracles.

Yesterday, I was at the White House, where President Trump signed into law bipartisan legislation--my legislation--the TAKE IT DOWN Act, which I authored with Senator Amy Klobuchar to protect women, to protect teenage girls, to protect young people online from nonconsensual intimate images.

We saw both parties come together and pass landmark legislation, and just a moment ago, 24 hours later, we saw the same thing happen.

So I thank my colleague from Nevada for moving for this to pass by unanimous consent. And I want everyone to reflect on what you just saw happen because it is consequential.

Last year, in the midst of the Presidential campaign, President Trump, at a rally in Las Vegas, announced his policy proposal of no tax on tips. And the Presiding Officer will recall that, the week after he announced that, he came and had lunch with the Republican Senators, and he told us the backstory of where the idea came from.

He said he was sitting at a hotel in Las Vegas, getting ready to go to his rally, and he said he was having lunch there. And he said a waitress came by, and he said: She was beautiful; she was beautiful-- which I believe him. And he said she was complaining about the burden and the paperwork of paying taxes on tips and how challenging it was.

And he said he pulled out a pad of paper, and he just wrote on the pad of paper: No tax on tips.

He said: What do you think of this?

And she said: Great.

And he went to the rally, and he announced it. And as he told us, the entire crowd went nuts.

Now, I have to say, when he announced that policy, I thought that was policy genius. The next week, I drafted legislation to implement no taxes on tips, and I introduced it in the Senate the very next week. And within days, both Senators from Nevada joined my bill as cosponsors.

As the Senator from Nevada just described, she told me on the floor-- she said 25 percent of all workers in the State of Nevada are tipped workers. And this is commonsense, bipartisan tax reform.

Look, I think we ought to be fighting for waiters and waitresses. We ought to be fighting for bartenders, taxicab drivers, Uber drivers. We ought to be fighting for beauticians and nail salon workers. We ought to be fighting for all the men and women who are working and working hard. We ought to be fighting for casino workers. Sorry to leave them out. As a longtime poker player, I certainly don't want to leave them out. But we ought to be fighting for blue-collar workers across this country.

And I will say, I have been urging--I have urged the House of Representatives and I have urged the White House that we should take up No Tax on Tips in the House and pass it. And I said: Look, if the House passes it, I think there is a very real chance the Senate will pass it. It is bipartisan legislation.

And what we just saw is the Senate passing No Tax on Tips 100 to 0. Every Democrat voted yes. Every Republican voted yes. And, by the way, the backstory--just kind of pulling the curtain back on how this process operates--the way the process operates is, when you are seeking to pass something by unanimous consent, you circulate what is called a hotline, and every Senator gets the chance to say: Are you going to object?

And on the Republican side, every Senator said: Nope, good by me.

And on the Democrat side, every Senator said: Nope, good by me.

And so this is now passed, and we are sending it to the House of Representatives.

Here is the good news. With what we just saw now, the certainty that we will see No Tax on Tips become the law of the land, I think, is very close to 100 percent. As the Senator from Nevada mentioned, it is included in the House's One Big Beautiful Bill, and whether it passes freestanding or as part of the bigger bill, one way or another, No Tax on Tips is going to become law and give real relief to hard-working Americans.

So I am proud of what the Senate just did, and I commend Democrats and Republicans, even at a time of partisan division, coming together and agreeing on this commonsense policy. I think that is terrific for workers in all 50 States.

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