Bipartisan Tax Cut Compromise

Floor Speech

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, over the past few years, the American people have been engaged in a great national debate about the proper role of government. This debate is as old as our Nation itself, but it has reemerged with new intensity amidst a prolonged economic downturn that continues to affect millions of Americans.

On the one side are those who argue the solution to our present troubles lies in giving more to Washington. They say if only Washington had more power, we could have averted these challenges altogether; and the only way to get us out of this and to put us on stronger economic footing is to hand over more of our freedoms--and more of our paychecks--to Washington.

On the other side of this debate are those who say in order for individuals to prosper and move up the economic ladder, they must be free to take risks. They must be free to fail. They argue for government limits and restraint and for making as many decisions as possible close to home.

Now, it is no secret most Americans fall into the second group. Whenever asked, most Americans say they will take a system of free enterprise and limited government over the alternative any day. But, occasionally, people find the first group's message appealing, too, especially in times of distress. That is why 2 years ago, Americans chose what they viewed as the safer route. Yet since then many have come to regret that decision.

We have all seen the deep discontent with Washington spread over the last year and a half as lawmakers here assumed more and more authority and spent more and more taxpayer money on wasteful projects and dubious long-term

programs which couldn't possibly deliver what Democratic leaders said they would. Early last month, we watched as Americans told Democratic leaders in Washington they had had enough of their 2-year experiment in big government. On election day, our debate about government took yet another turn, and the bipartisan compromise the White House agreed to last week on taxes is a clear sign that it has had an impact.

In some ways, it has shifted the debate entirely. Here is how: For 2 years, Democrats in Washington have argued that the solution to our Nation's economic problems is to give bureaucrats in Washington trillions of dollars and then have them spend it for us. But with this bipartisan compromise, we are taking a different approach. We are telling the American people to keep money that is rightfully theirs so they can spend it and invest it as they please. This is an important shift, and the White House should be applauded for agreeing to it.

There are parts of this agreement I don't like such as the Democrats' insistence that we borrow the money we need to pay for a further extension of unemployment insurance. In my view, if both parties agree the debt is a serious problem, we shouldn't be writing checks we don't have the money to cover.

Yet, in another way, this bipartisan compromise represents an essential first step in tackling the debt because in keeping taxes where they are, we are officially cutting off that spigot. Taxes are going to stay right where they are for the next 2 years, and until we did that, Democrats in Washington were never going to be serious about cutting spending or debt. As long as more revenue was coming in, they would always have an excuse to spend more. With this agreement, Members of Congress no longer have that excuse.

History is very clear on that point. From World War II through 2009, every dollar of new tax revenue that the government has collected has been associated with $1.17 in new spending. This means for decades, lawmakers in both parties have spent every dime of revenue that came in from taxpayers, then borrowed a little bit more on top of it to set a higher baseline for the next year.

But the American people have caught on to the game and they have had it. They know the root of our problem lies not in the fact that Washington taxes too little but that it spends too much. They want the wasteful spending to stop.

Mark my words, if Republicans had gone along with the Democratic plan on taxes, they would have done the same thing they have always done. They would have spent it all, and then some. They had no intention of using any new tax revenue to pay down the debt. The President has already said he has better ways to spend the taxpayers' money than they do.

Nobody expected the same Democrats who more than tripled the deficit to suddenly get serious about cutting it if they expected more tax revenue to come in next year as a result of higher taxes. So it never made sense to take money from job creators in order to hand it over to politicians who would only waste it. Nobody ever created a job by punishing a job creator, and we simply had to turn off the spigot--not from some but from everyone--to remove the temptation to spend it.

For the past 2 years, Democrats in Washington worked hand in hand with the White House spending trillions we didn't have on programs Americans didn't want. They wrote future budgets presuming Americans would agree to a tax hike to pay for it all. They cashed the checks before Americans had even written them like an employee who demands a raise on the grounds that he and his wife had already budgeted for a speed boat and a three-car garage. But the American people have rebelled against this way of doing business, and now we are going to move in another direction.

Some may continue to deny that Washington has a spending problem. Those are the people who are still out there arguing for a tax hike. But the only argument they appear to be making is that it is only fair for certain people to be punished with higher taxes.

I have heard a lot of Democrats in recent days say this group or that group doesn't ``deserve'' to have their current tax rates extended. But, of course, that has always been a losing argument in America. You can count me among those who want everybody in this country to succeed, and I suspect most Americans agree with that.

There may be some in Washington who are only satisfied if somebody or some group loses out, which either means they think there is a finite amount of success to be had out there, which is nonsense, or they are looking for an excuse to spend more money on turtle tunnels or researching the drug preferences of monkeys. But either way, Americans aren't interested in that point of view.

Americans aren't interested in scapegoats. They are interested in regaining our prosperity. They have lost faith in government's ability to get us through with more and more government spending. With this bipartisan compromise, we are finally giving these people a voice in this debate.

So today's vote is a step in the right direction. But it is only a first step. Unless we use it to pivot to the deficit and the debt, we will have only pushed the larger problem down the road, and no one sent us here to do that. It is time to come together to cut the debt in the same way we have come together to prevent a tax hike. It won't be easy, but we have laid the groundwork. I will vote in favor of this bipartisan compromise, and I urge my colleagues in the Senate and in the House to do the same.

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