American Jobs And Closing Tax Loopholes Act Of 2010 - Continued
Floor Speech
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Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I want to address my colleagues on a couple of different issues. One would be to speak in support of part of the Coburn amendment, and the second one would be to speak on the issue of taxes.
I want to speak in favor of Senator Coburn's amendment that would repeal a special deal for California. As I have said before, Medicare's payment system for physicians is flawed in many ways. One of those flaws has resulted in unfairly low payments to physicians in my own State of Iowa and many other rural States over the course of many years.
Medicare payments vary from one area to another based upon geographic adjustments made by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. These adjustments are supposed to reflect the differences in the cost of providing care in different areas and equalizing physician payment. But the geographic adjustors have been a dismal failure. They do not accurately represent the costs in rural States. Instead, they have created unfairly low Medicare rates and have, in fact, even discouraged physicians from practicing in rural areas such as Arkansas, New Mexico, Missouri, Iowa, North Dakota, and maybe, you could say, a lot of rural States.
Last fall, I offered an amendment to reform the unfair formula that has caused these unduly low rural payments during the Finance Committee markup of the health care reform bill. My amendment requires CMS to use accurate data rather than inaccurate proxies to calculate the geographic adjustors for physician practice costs. My amendment was accepted unanimously by the entire Senate Finance Committee, and it was included in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that was signed into law by the President in March. It is a national solution to this problem that has plagued so many rural States.
Unfortunately, the rural equity that my amendment would finally achieve has been endangered by the Democratic majority's sweetheart deals. One of these sweetheart deals was added to the Senate health care reform bill that is now law.
This special deal was added behind the closed doors of the Senate majority leader, and it addressed the unfairly low payments in rural States. It was included in the Senate health reform bill for two of my Democratic colleagues from so-called frontier States. It is what I call the frontier freeloader provision. And it can be called that because it just helped five States at the expense of 45 others.
The frontier freeloader deal gives higher Medicaid payments to just five States--North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and Utah--and it is at the expense of every other State. Even though Iowa, New Mexico, Arkansas, Missouri, and other rural States do not benefit from this deal, they have to pay for it. Here we are. Taxpayers in your State and mine--all the other 45 States--have to kick in to pay the $2 billion for higher Medicare payments for these 5 so-called frontier States. This is another example of how the secret deals made by the Democratic majority leader to get votes during health care reform led to bad policies such as the ``Cornhusker kickback,'' the ``Louisiana purchase,'' and the Florida ``Gator aid.'' I introduced legislation in April to repeal this sweetheart deal for frontier states. My bill, the Medicare Rural Health Care Equity Act, would eliminate this special deal for these five States. We should improve physician payments for all rural States, not just a select few.
The Coburn amendment would address a similar concern--yet another special deal for just one State has been included in the Democrat's tax extender bill. Section 522 of the Democratic substitute would provide $400 million over 10 years to create yet a new system for calculating payments for physicians in rural areas, but you know what, only in one State--California. This is just one more example of the sweetheart deals that have permeated the Democratic leadership's efforts during these times. Will these special deals ever stop? I strongly oppose these sweetheart deals, and I will continue to speak out against them, and I will continue to work to pass legislation to repeal these special deals, such as the Medicare Rural Health Care Equity Act, that I introduced this year.
That is why I strongly support the amendment by my colleague from Oklahoma to strike this $400 million sweetheart deal for California from the bill, and I urge my colleagues, especially those from other rural States, to do the same. You see, what happens here when you start doing something for 1 State here and 5 States over here--there are about 30 States, maybe 35 States that have similar problems. We ought to attack these similar problems with the same principle, as I see it.
As I said, I wish to continue to address my colleagues on the subject of time-sensitive tax legislative business. I have already spoken on other items. I have a chart here that says what the four items are that are time sensitive that we ought to be working on and how far we have gotten on some of them. Obviously, as you can see from the Xs there, we have not gotten very far on most of them.
Last week, I discussed the unfinished tax legislative business. This chart gives you an update of the legislation before the Senate. It deals with only one small, however important, part of unfinished tax legislative business.
These tax extenders are on their second Senate stop. This is the bill now before the Senate. As this chart shows, the tax extenders which are overdue by almost half a year are not alone. There are three other major areas of unfinished business.
One area is the one I discussed a couple of days ago--the alternative minimum tax, the AMT patch. That issue, if you do not deal with it, is going to raise the taxes of 24 million Americans, middle-class Americans who, frankly, were never intended to pay the alternative minimum tax. If we do not fix it, 24 million people are going to see their taxes go up.
Yesterday, I addressed the issue of the death tax. That is an area which is very important. I took a lot of time of my colleagues last night to explain the issue and particularly the impact on small, family-owned businesses that may be sold off because we do not have a good estate tax policy.
The third area and the one I am going to address now is the 2001 and 2003 tax rate cuts and family tax relief package. That is the one that, if Congress does nothing between now and December 31, starting January 1, 2011, the American people are going to have the biggest tax increase in the history of the country and without even a vote of Congress. Existing law, with the tax reductions of 2001 and 2003, sunsets. ``Sunset'' simply means that if Congress does nothing, the biggest tax increase in the history of the country happens without us even casting a vote here in the Senate.
As important as the AMT patch and the death tax are, these two I just mentioned are dwarfed by the impact of this third package of expiring tax provisions. I am referring to the marginal rate cuts and the family tax relief of the bipartisan tax relief that was enacted in 2001 and 2003. Efforts to make these tax relief packages permanent were rebuffed. The resistance was the result of a hard and determined minority back then, marshaled by the Senate Democratic leadership. It was reflected in the budget resolutions offered in filibusters.
Even more inexplicable than the Democratic leadership's failure to extend popular and bipartisan tax relief enacted in 2001 and 2003 were some of the reasons given. It was basically said that since Republicans wrote the law, it is our--meaning Republicans--problem. The left wing of the blogosphere echoed the Democratic leadership's position.
Some of those reflections in the blogosphere even alleged that the sunset was a Republican conspiracy. I came across a 2007 posting on Daily KOS blog. The posting referred to the provisions of the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005, which was enacted in May 2006. That legislation contained two basic pieces. One was an extension of lower rates for capital gains and dividends. Another was the extension of the alternative minimum tax patch. The poster's analysis concluded that the bill was a ``poison pill'' designed--can you believe it--to sabotage the economy, which supposedly would increase the prospects of Republican candidates in 2012. I know that sounds a little far-fetched, but that is what the KOS posting on their blog said. The argument seems to be that having popular and bipartisan tax relief from 2001 and 2003 all sunset at the end of 2010 would cause such an economic mess that the Democrats, assumed by the posters to be in power at the time, will take the blame and suffer at the polls.
In the posting titled ``The Monster Republican Tax Hike,'' the poster stated that:
Republican Congresses chose not to make their tax cuts ..... permanent.
The argument seems to be that Republicans put sunset clauses in the bill solely to improve long-term budget projections and that responsibility for the expiration of tax relief rests completely with Republicans. The implication is that by lowering taxes, Republicans are responsible for a tax increase that would occur when the Democratic majorities control both Houses of Congress. That is a little far-fetched because it is just some sort of conspiracy that you can control the electorate and these things are going to exactly work out this way. That is obviously stupid, but that doesn't keep bloggers from talking--whatever they want to believe.
The commentaries I just referred to are available to anyone in the April 12, 2007, edition of the Congressional Record.
I have heard some Members on the other side as well as key staff have made similar assertions. As one who was involved in the writing of these tax relief plans of 2001 and 2003, I want to tell my fellow Senators without reservation that these assertions are absolutely untrue, besides being ridiculous. To begin with, it is completely ridiculous to suggest that President Bush and Republicans in general did not intend or desire the permanence of tax relief. President Bush and Republicans in general have favored tax relief permanence. You need to look no further than the budgets to which I referred. The administration and Republican Congress budgeted for extension of the bipartisan tax relief provisions. That action affected the bottom lines of those budgets.
We heard over and over the criticism of those budgets. We heard it from the Democratic leadership, liberal think tanks, and some sympathetic east coast media. As a matter of fact, after 3 1/2 years of congressional control, we still hear the Democratic leadership's criticism every day. Just recently, the Speaker of the House was asked when the Democratic leadership would cease laying the blame for all fiscal problems on Republican budgets of the years 2001 to 2006. MSNBC's Chuck Todd recently interviewed the highest ranking Democrat in the House. Mr. Todd asked if there was a statute of limitations on placing responsibility on the Presidency of Mr. Bush.
At what point do you think the public says something [like this]? ``You know what, yes, we were unhappy with the Bush administration ..... [but] stop blaming the Bush administration.
Mr. Todd went on to say:
When does that run out?
But then the Speaker specifically replied:
Well, it runs out when the problems go away.
The blame game is no substitute for doing the job you have been hired to do. People elect folks to public office to do--what? To govern; govern at the will of the people. Governing is not just about enjoying the benefits of public office. This is a public trust we hold. We work for the American people; they don't work for us. Part of governing is also about making choices. Some of those choices are tough, as we know, and those of us in public life need to be accountable for those choices.
The Democratic leadership cannot have it both ways. They cannot continue the bipartisan tax relief and not be responsible for the deficit impact those policies carry. No family can make decisions about its budget and evade the consequences by blaming their next-door neighbors. No business can make decisions about its budget and evade the consequences by blaming a competing business. The fiscal consequences are an important part of that decision.
The statutory pay-go or pay-as-you-go regime was enacted as part of the last debt limit increase. It covers only part of the revenue loss of making permanent the bipartisan tax relief plans of 2001 and 2003. For instance, the alternative minimum tax patch is extended for only 2 years. Death tax policy is extended at 2009 levels only through 2011. How do you plan estates when you only have a tax law in place for 2 years?
Even with those limitations, the Joint Committee on Taxation states: Complying with the pay-go rule means a revenue loss of over $1.5 trillion over 10 years.
I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a copy of the Joint Committee on Taxation's estimate of the tax relief covered by statutory pay-go. And this is a summation of that.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record
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Mr. GRASSLEY. The expiring tax relief I am talking about today includes the marginal rate cuts and family tax relief. Under the statutory pay as you go, the amount permitted in this area is about $1.4 trillion as you can see at the top of the chart on the right. It covers about 80 percent of extending all of the marginal rate cuts and family tax relief from the 2001 and 2003 bipartisan plan.
That number makes sense because the bipartisan tax relief plans cut taxes for virtually every American family who pays income tax. How significant and how widespread is this tax relief? This chart here, drawn by the Congressional Budget Office--and I want to remind people throughout the Nation that CBO is a professional group of people who see numbers as what they are, void of politics, and make predictions. So I hope this may shed some light on the question of how significant and widespread is the tax relief.
The line measures the effective tax rate paid by the top 5 percent of the taxpayers. That is at the top, the top line. This group roughly represents those taxpaying families with incomes over $250,000. Under the Democratic leadership's budget, this line will go back up to where it was in the year 2000. That is also where the President's budget, meaning President Obama's budget, and the statutory pay-as-you-go regime would take the rates.
The Republicans believe this significant tax increase will be a mistake. We hope we will be able to debate this policy in the House and Senate, in committee and on the floor. That was, after all, the process that was followed when the bipartisan tax relief plans were passed in years 2001, 2003, and 2005.
We will point out that about half of the heavy tax increases will fall on small business owners. The top marginal rate on small business owners will rise by 17 percent. Democrats and Republicans agree, small businesses are a key job creator of the future and for a long period of time in our country. President Obama correctly points out that small business creates 70 percent of new jobs. I do not argue with his percentage.
The rest will also hit investment hard. The top capital gains rate will rise by 33 percent. The top dividend rate could rise by almost 275 percent. All of this is set to occur not at some far distant future point, it occurs a little over a half a year from right now.
We all hope the economy is on a path to recovery. But does this heavy tax increase on small business owners and investments ever make sense? Because even the most liberal Members on the other side might wonder whether it makes sense right now to increase taxes at this time. Is the recession ending? There is good news some days, bad news some days. But the uncertainty is a factor that people do not want to move forward with investment and creating jobs.
Do we think then that the private sector will grow if we hit small businesses and investors this hard 6 months from now? They are not going to wait 6 months from now to make some decisions. They are making those decisions right now. If we can give them some certainty, I think it would be a big boost for our economy.
You can see that the broad bipartisan tax relief brought the effective rate down with respect to the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers. This is the red line. Some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle may be thinking to themselves, sure, this is true for income taxes. But what about other Federal taxes such as Social Security, which make up a large percentage of the taxes paid by middle and low-income individuals?
Well, this chart is not just a depiction of Federal income taxes, it includes all Federal taxes. This includes Social Security, other payroll taxes, excise taxes, frequently referred to by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle as regressive taxes, everything, including all Federal taxes over the last 30 years.
The top 5 percent has paid a lot higher effective tax rate than the bottom 95 percent. It has been that way no matter which party has controlled the White House or controlled Congress or controlled both. It shows something you would never know if you listened to the rhetoric from the other side or even the punditry of the media and the left.
Here is what it shows: A progressive income tax system is very deeply embedded into our culture. The bipartisan tax relief plans of 2001 and 2003 made the system yet more progressive. Those plans brought the rates down for the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers. The 2001 and 2003 tax relief plans dropped the effective tax rate for taxpaying families under $250,000 to their lowest levels in a whole generation.
This is the current law level of taxation. In a little over half a year, these rates will pop back up for all of these taxpayers. I have a couple of charts that illustrate how significant the tax hit will be. Middle-income families will run right through these tax walls. I have used these charts several times in the last few months.
For a family of four with an income of $50,000, that is a tax wall of a $2,300 tax increase. For a single mom with two kids earning $30,000, that tax wall will be $1,100. The President, as powerful as he is, cannot unilaterally hike or cut taxes. He needs a bill from Congress to do that. On our side, we want all of the tax relief made permanent. We want the opportunity to debate and to amend a bill that deals with this basic level of taxation.
As has been made clear for the last 3 1/2 years, Republicans do not control this Congress. We cannot decide the fate of the marginal rate cuts and family tax relief. This is unfinished business. It is unfinished tax legislative business that affects every American taxpayer. It will have fiscal consequences. They are pretty significant fiscal consequences, as you can see by the figures on this chart. That is going to raise taxes an awful lot. If the Democratic leadership wants to keep these levels of taxation low, then they have to deal with the fiscal consequences. Alternately, the Democratic leadership can raise taxes and claim the revenue.
Not changing the law by failing to act is the same as raising rates on virtually every American taxpayer. But they will have to explain to the taxpayers why they raised taxes by almost 10 percent, on average. In the 2006 election, almost 4 years ago, the American people provided the Democratic leadership with control of the Congress. In the 2008 election, over 18 months ago, the American people provided the Democratic leadership with yet the largest majority in more than a generation. They also provided the Democratic leadership with a President of their party.
The Democratic leadership spent the periods of 2001 to 2006 thwarting our efforts to make bipartisan tax relief of 2001 and 2003 permanent. It would seem okay to keep Republican bills from 2001 through 2006 from being made permanent, but the 2001 tax bill was very bipartisan.
Upon assuming control, they have spent 3 1/2 years with no legislation to make permanent or even extend marginal tax rates and family tax relief packages. My friends in the Democratic leadership need to step to the plate. We have had budgets and statutory pay-as-you-go. We have debated this and voted on the breadth and composition of marginal rate cuts and family tax relief in those contexts, yet no legislative action; no House committee and floor action; no Senate committee and floor action. And that would be the bottom line there. The Xs show nothing happening on something to give permanence to tax law, to give predictability to the future of those people who have to put up money to create jobs that expand our economy.
Without it, the biggest tax increase in the history of the country could be a fact. So I say once again, step to the plate. Blaming former President George W. Bush and Republican Congresses of many sessions ago is no substitute for running this time-sensitive tax legislative business through the process. Put forward proposals. Let us debate those proposals. Let's allow for amendments. Allow votes on amendments. Do the people's business. It is time to check every one of these boxes.
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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, at around lunchtime, the Senate voted on Senator Thune's alternative to the Democratic leadership's extender bill. Senator Thune's amendment took the exact opposite approach to the Democratic leadership's substitute. It cuts taxes by $26 billion by extending current law. It cut spending by over $100 billion, and reduced the deficit by $68 billion. Those are Congressional Budget Office, CBO, and Joint Committee on Taxation estimates.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, CBO, the current version of the Democratic leadership's extenders substitute would increase direct spending by about $105 billion through 2020 and raise revenues by about $50 billion over that period, resulting in a net deficit increase of about $55 billion for the 2010-2020 period.
The contrast couldn't be clearer. The Republican Conference, along with one member of the Senate Democratic Caucus, voted to change the bottom-line fiscal effects of the Democratic leadership's extender substitute. The Thune amendment would reduce the deficit by $13 billion more than the amount the Democratic leadership's extender substitute would add to the deficit. Senator Thune's amendment reached this better fiscal result by restraining Federal spending.
All but one of the Democratic Caucus who were present, 57 Senators, voted against Senator Thune's amendment.
The junior Senator from Florida, one of the 41 Senators who voted for Senator Thune's amendment, came to the Senate floor to highlight the differences between the Democratic Caucus and the Republican Conference in the approach to this extender bill.
The junior Senator from Michigan also made some comments on the current fiscal problems. She made her arguments in response to comments from the junior Senator from Florida. Last year, at about this time, there was a lot of revision or perhaps editing of recent budget history. I expect more of it from some on the other side.
The President signaled as much in an interview with George Stephanopoulos a few months ago. I agree with the President that there's a lot of revisionism in the debate.
The revisionist history basically boils down to two conclusions:
1. That all of the ``good'' fiscal history of the 1990s was derived from a partisan tax increase bill of 1993; and
2. That all of the ``bad'' fiscal history of this decade to date is attributable to the bipartisan tax relief plans.
Not surprisingly, nearly all of the revisionists who spoke generally oppose tax relief and support tax increases. The same crew generally support spending increases and oppose spending cuts.
In the debate so far, many on this side have pointed out some key, undeniable facts. The stimulus bill passed by the Senate, with interest included, increases the deficit by over $1 trillion. The stimulus bill was a heavy stew of spending increases and refundable tax credits, seasoned with small pieces of tax relief. The bill passed by the Senate had new temporary spending, that, if made permanent, will burden future budget deficits by over $3 trillion. That is not Chuck Grassley speaking. It is the official Congressional scorekeeper, the Congressional Budget Office, CBO.
All of this occurred in an environment where the automatic economic stabilizers thankfully kicked in to help the most unfortunate in America with unemployment insurance, food stamps and other benefits.
That antirecessionary spending, together with lower tax receipts, and the TARP activities has set a fiscal table of a deficit of $1.4 trillion for the fiscal year that ended several months ago. That is the highest deficit, as a percentage of the economy, in post-World War II history.
Not a pretty fiscal picture. And it is going to get a lot uglier with the budget put forward by the President this year. It's the same result under the budget crafted last year by the Democratic leadership. So, for the folks who see this bill as an opportunity to ``recover'' America with government taking a larger share of the economy over the long-term, I say congratulations. You have recovered America with a vast expansion of government and the American people have a lot of red ink to look forward to.
Members who voted for the budget and the fiscal policy envisioned in it put us on the path to a bigger role for the government. But supporters of that fiscal policy need to own up to the fiscal course they are charting.
That's where the revisionist history comes from. From the perspective of those on our side, it's seems to be a strategy to divert, through a twisted blame game, from the facts before us. How is the history revisionist? Let's take each conclusion one-by-one.
The first conclusion is that all of the ``good'' fiscal history was derived from the 1993 tax increase. To test that assertion, all you have to do is take a look at data from the Clinton administration.
The much-ballyhooed partisan tax increase of 1993 accounts for 13 percent of the deficit reduction in the 1990s. Thirteen percent. That 13 percent figure was calculated by the Clinton administration's Office of Management and Budget, OMB.
The biggest source of deficit reduction, 35 percent, came from a reduction in defense spending. Of course, that fiscal benefit originated from President Reagan's stare-down of the communist regime in Russia. The same folks on that side who opposed President Reagan's defense build-up take credit for the fiscal benefit of the ``peace dividend.''
The next biggest source of deficit reduction, 32 percent, came from other revenue. Basically, this was the fiscal benefit from pro-growth policies, like the bipartisan capital gains tax cut in 1997, and the free-trade agreements President Clinton, with Republican votes, established.
The savings from the policies I have pointed out translated to interest savings. Interest savings accounts for 15 percent of the deficit reduction.
Now, for all the chest-thumping about the 1990s, the chest thumpers, who push for big social spending, didn't bring much to the deficit reduction table in the 1990s. Their contribution was 5 percent.
What's more the fiscal revisionist historians in this body tend to forget who the players were. They are correct that there was a Democratic President in the White House. But they conveniently forget that Republicans controlled the Congress for the period where the deficit came down and turned to surplus. They tend to forget they fought the principle of a balanced budget that was the centerpiece of Republican fiscal policy.
Do my friends on the Democratic side remember the government shutdown of late 1995? Remember what that was about? It was about a plan to balance the budget. Republicans paid a political price for forcing the issue, but, in 1997, President Clinton agreed. Recall as well all through the 1990s what the year-end battles were about.
On one side, congressional Democrats and the Clinton administration pushed for more spending. On the other side, congressional Republicans were pushing for tax relief. In the end, both sides compromised. That is the real fiscal history of the 1990s.
Let's turn to the other conclusion of the revisionist fiscal historians. That conclusion is that, in this decade, all fiscal problems are attributable to the widespread tax relief enacted in 2001, 2003, 2004, and 2006.
In 2001, President Bush came into office. He inherited an economy that was careening downhill. Investment started to go flat in 2000. The tech-fueled stock market bubble was bursting. Then came the economic shocks of the 9-11 terrorist attacks.
Add in the corporate scandals to that economic environment.
And it is true, as fiscal year 2001 came to a close, the projected surplus turned to a deficit.
In just the right time, the 2001 tax relief plan started to kick in. As the tax relief hit full force in 2003, the deficits grew smaller. This pattern continued up through 2007.
If my comments were meant to be partisan shots, I could say this favorable fiscal path from 2003 to 2007 was the only period, aside from 6 months in 2001, where Republicans controlled the White House and the Congress. But, unlike the fiscal history revisionists, I am not trying to make any partisan points, I am just trying to get to the fiscal facts.
There is also data that compares the tax receipts for 4 years after the much-ballyhooed 1993 tax increase and the 4-year period after the 2003 tax cuts.
In 1993, the Clinton tax increase brought in more revenue as compared to the 2003 tax cut. That trend reversed as both policies moved along. Over the first few years, the extra revenue went up over time relative to the flat line of the 1993 tax increase.
So, let's get the fiscal history right.
The progrowth tax and trade policies of the 1990's along with the ``peace dividend'' had a lot more to do with the deficit reduction in the 1990s than the 1993 tax increase. In this decade, deficits went down after the tax relief plans were put in full effect.
No economist I am aware of would link the bursting of the housing bubble with the bipartisan tax relief plans of 2001 and 2003. Likewise, I know of no economic research that concludes that the bipartisan tax relief of 2001 and 2003 caused the financial meltdown of September and October 2008.
As I said, from the period of 2003 through 2007, after the bipartisan tax relief program was in full effect, the general pattern was this: revenues went up and deficits went down.
That is the past. We need to make sure we understand it. But what is most important is the future. People in our States send us here to deal with future policy.
They don't send us here to flog one another, like partisan cartoon cut-out characters, over past policies. They don't send us here to endlessly point fingers of blame. The substitute before us takes us in the direction of more deficits and debt. The Thune amendment, which was rejected by most of the Democratic Caucus, would have put us on a path in the opposite fiscal direction. My friends on the other side fool no one if they pretend that the fiscal choices made by the Democratic Leadership and the President over the last year have nothing to do with this rapidly rising debt.
President Obama rightly focused us on the future with his eloquence during the campaign. I would like to paraphrase a quote from the President's nomination acceptance speech:
We need a President who can face the threats of the future, not grasping at the ideas of the past.
President Obama was right.
We need a President, and I would add Congressmen and Senators, who can face the threats of the future. Grasping at ideas of the past or playing the partisan blame game will not deal with the threats to our fiscal future.
It is not too late to correct the excesses of the stimulus bill or the bloated appropriations bills that will come. The Senate missed an opportunity, with a partisan rejection of Senator THUNE's alternative.
Senator MCCASKILL's and SESSIONS' amendment, which calls for a time out on the exponentially rising levels of appropriations spending, is a good start. The President called on the Democratic leadership to do something similar. That is what the American people want and need. There is a way to reach a real bipartisan compromise, not just picking off a few Senators that frequently vote with the Democrats.
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