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Floor Speech
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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, it has been almost a year since Republicans passed the Working Families Tax Cut, 1 year since Republicans delivered permanent tax relief to the American people and put more money in their pockets.
I am proud to say that it is working. At the start of this year, hard-working Americans saw their take-home pay go up as the new tax law took effect. They saw its impact again in April when they filed their taxes. Many Americans saw a significant boost in their tax refunds.
The New York Times interviewed three dozen Americans, who reported that ``many of the taxpayers said they had received their largest refund in years,'' allowing them to pay down debt, save more, or cover the cost of a vacation or a new bed.
Last week, we got yet more news that shows that the Working Families Tax Cut is working. The Treasury Department released data showing that 97 percent of Americans who filed taxes this last year actually got a tax cut. Take a look at that. That is a pretty stunning number, if you think about it--97 percent. Thanks to the Working Families Tax Cut, 97 percent of taxpayers got a tax cut this year, collectively saving about $82 billion on their tax bills.
And who was it--who was it--that benefited from the Working Families Tax Cut? Well, I will give you a hint. It is in the name: working families. Almost every one of the 97 percent of American taxpayers who saw a tax cut this year earned less than $200,000. Nearly 70 percent earned less than $100,000.
So if you take a look at this chart, you will be able to see just exactly what I am talking about. If you look at the dark-blue line, those are the number of people who are making less than $100,000 a year who benefited from the new tax deductions in this bill. And if you look at the light one, that is the number of people under $200,000 who got a benefit. I will get into each of those specifics here in just a minute, but I think it is important to point out that the beneficiaries of the Working Families Tax Cut were working families. In other words, the Americans benefiting from this bill were people who got up every day to go to work to provide for their families. They are not rich. They are people who spend nights at the kitchen table putting together their budgets, trying to make ends meet and save a little bit for the future. And that is who Republicans were thinking about when we wrote the Working Families Tax Cut, and as the numbers show, that is who is benefiting.
I have said that the Working Families Tax Cut is about putting more money in hard-working Americans' pockets, and that is exactly what this bill did. It let working Americans keep more of their hard-earned money--money that they would have had to send to the IRS if not for the Working Families Tax Cut and that they can now spend, invest, and save as they see fit.
The Working Families Tax Cut delivered real taxing savings to the American people through a number of tax relief policies. Permanent lower tax rates reduced Americans' tax burdens across the board, and the now permanently doubled standard deduction helped 127 million Americans reduce and simplify their taxes this year.
Nearly 40 million families claimed the newly enhanced $2,200 child tax credit in 2025. And as you can see from the chart, almost all of those families had incomes below $200,000. And I said before, two- thirds earned less than $100,000. And again, that is from the enhanced child tax credit, which is the bottom number down there.
A New York Times story in April on this year's larger tax refunds highlighted Nicole Mendoza, a 68-year-old Georgian who ``works a couple of shifts a week at a Cracker Barrel in Canton, Ga., to supplement her Social Security income and savings. All told, Ms. Mendoza said, she earned about $38,000 last year and paid $551 in federal income taxes.''
And Ms. Mendoza told the Times:
I got back every penny.
This year, millions of hard-working Americans like Ms. Mendoza were eligible for additional tax relief thanks to the Working Families Tax Cut. Americans earning between $100,000 and $200,000 last year who took advantage of new tax relief in this bill saw an average tax cut of $1,250. Older Americans were able to take advantage of the enhanced senior deduction, which helped 35 million seniors this past year.
And 7.5 million tipped workers were able to take advantage of no tax on tips. Fully 90 percent of Americans who took advantage of no tax on tips earned less than $100,000; 99 percent--99 percent--earned less than $200,000.
So if you look at the tipped wages, the number there on top, the dark-blue bar represents the number of people who were making less than $100,000 who benefited from no tax on tips. The lighter-blue bar represents the number of people making less than $200,000 in their income this year who benefited from no tax on tips.
So look at that. I mean, 90 percent of people--90 percent of people-- who get tipped wages and get the benefit of no tax on tips made less than $100,000 a year, and 99 percent, less than $200,000 a year. That is pretty stunning, if you think about it, if you talk about actually working families out there, people who are trying to make ends meet. And those numbers, I think, represent just how important that particular provision was in the bill, and the savings they are seeing is significant.
A bartender in Beloit, WI, said that he more than doubled his Federal tax refund. Katie, who is a DoorDash driver in Oklahoma, said:
It increased my refund from $300 to $2,000.
Another DoorDash driver in Oregon said:
[No Tax on Tips] has changed life. I worry less about being able to cover all my expenses and I am able to work less which is better for my health and family.
That is the Working Families Tax Cut in action. And I haven't even talked about no tax on overtime, which, like everything else I have talked about this morning, is overwhelmingly benefiting middle- and lower-income Americans.
Last year, Republicans promised to deliver lower tax bills for hard- working Americans, and the data released last week proves that is exactly--exactly--what this bill does. The Working Families Tax Cut is delivering for working Americans.
As they have every time that Republicans have lowered taxes for working people, Democrats have resurrected their dusty, old talking points about tax cuts for the rich. I can't count the number of times that I have heard a Democrat Senator say this bill was just about tax cuts for billionaires.
Well, look at the data. Does this look like a billionaire tax cut to you? Seventy-five percent of Americans taking the overtime deduction made less than $100,000 a year; 90 percent of those taking no tax on tips made less than $100,000 a year; and 97 percent of Americans who filed their taxes this year got a tax cut. This is real tax relief for hard-working Americans, and the American people are seeing it with their own eyes.
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