Mike Crapo

Mr. CRAPO

Mr. CRAPO. The Senator from Nevada is correct. The fact is, the taxes start on day one of the bill. The spending, which is what these alleged tax cuts are that my colleague from the other side was talking about, does not start until the fourth year or 2014. And that is just one of the gimmicks in the bill in order to claim it does not drive up the budget--have 10 years of tax increases and only 6 years of spending to offset against it. I think that is how they started the spending days. They figured out how long they had to delay it so they could claim it would not drive up the deficit.

Mr. CRAPO

Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, I ask that the Chair notify me when I have 2 minutes remaining.

Mr. CRAPO

Mr. CRAPO. Yes.

Mr. CRAPO. Yes.

Mr. CRAPO. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, I agree with my colleagues. I think the comment of our leader is very insightful. As you start seeing the evidence mount, and the fact that the American public is understanding the weight of this mounting evidence about this legislation, we could be at the tipping point right now, where it has become so evident that the purpose behind health care reform has not only been missed by this legislation, but it has been made worse--the objectives. I point to this chart, the cost curve. When you talk to most Americans about what they believe the purpose behind health care reform is, the vast majority say it is to control the skyrocketing costs. Well, those who are promoting the bill say it does that, it bends that cost curve. Which cost curve? Is it the size of government? That goes up $2.5 trillion in the first full 10 years of implementation. The cost of health care--the CMS report came out, it is about the 10th report, but this is from the actuary of the Medicare and Medicaid system who analyzed this independently, and he says health care costs are going to go up, not down. The CBO said the cost of insurance is going to go up, not down. The Federal deficit--they say the bill doesn't make the Federal deficit go up. In fact, regarding that, the only way they can claim that is if they implement their budget gimmicks of delaying implementation of the bill for 4 years on the spending side, while raising taxes now, or if they raise hundreds of billions in taxes and cut Medicare by hundreds of billions of dollars. These things are starting to be understood by the American people. That is why I believe we are starting to see those kinds of answers in the polls. It is not just the CNN poll, as the leader knows. Many polls are showing the American people get it.

Mr. CRAPO. I thank the Chair.

Mr. CRAPO. I would say to my colleague from Wyoming that they are right, if this bill is not committed back to the Finance Committee to take those taxes out. The next phrase in the amendment is--this is referring to a procedural motion, we call it--``that provides tax cuts for American workers and families.'' In other words, they don't want to send it back to committee to have a procedural motion put into place that would stop them from providing tax cuts for American families. Again, it is rhetoric. Read the motion. The motion does not say to take out any benefits in the bill for anybody in America, unless you consider taxing people to be a benefit to them, but it simply says the taxes in the bill that are imposed on people that the President identified to be in the middle class and would be protected must be removed from the bill.

Mr. CRAPO. Exactly. It is very critical to point out, a sense of the Senate has no binding impact. It is just sort of what we think. Let's go to the next phrase in the amendment: ``that the Senate should reject any procedural maneuver that . . . '' in other words, the Senate should reject a procedural maneuver. First of all, if the Senate is going to reject a procedural maneuver, that refers to what is happening on the Senate floor, procedural efforts. It does not refer to any substantive measure in the bill. The amendment we had pending--which this is going to be a counterpart to-- specifically refers to the substance of the bill and says the substance of the bill should be changed to take out the taxes, the hundreds of billions of dollars of taxes. I wonder, before we go to the next phrase, does my colleague from Wyoming care to comment?

Mr. CRAPO. The Senator is, in fact, right. If you go back and try to get a little perspective on the entire debate, most Americans would agree that we need health care reform, but when they say that, they are talking about the need to control the skyrocketing costs of their health insurance and the costs of medical care, and they are talking about making sure we have real, meaningful access to quality health care in America. In his statements, the President has many times commented about different parts of that. We remember when he said, If you like what you have, you can keep it. Well, we have seen that is not true, and there will be and have been already amendments to try to address those questions. Remember when he said it is going to drive down the cost of health care and drive down your health care premiums? Well, we have learned now that it doesn't do that either; it actually drives up the cost of health care insurance and it is going to drive up the cost of medical care in this country. Remember when he said you will not see your taxes go up? In fact, he pledged that if you were a member of the middle class, whom he defined as those making less than $250,000 as a couple or $200,000 as an individual, you would not see your taxes go up. Well, this motion is focused on that part of the debate. What did we see happen? Instead of letting us fix the bill, send the bill back to the Finance Committee to make the bill comply with the President's pledge, we saw two procedural maneuvers, one to maneuver off the bill, to get off the bill and move to the omnibus appropriations bill; secondly, to put up a bait-and- switch amendment that makes it look as though there is some kind of protection being put in place when, in reality, it is nothing more than a sense of the Senate relating to procedural motions that don't exist. I agree with my colleague from Wyoming and with my colleague from Kansas. I see we have several of our other colleagues joining us here now. We need to keep the focus on health care and we need to keep the focus on those core parts of the bill that are critical to the American people. Before I ask my colleague from Kansas if he wishes to make any other comments, I will reiterate the point that my colleague from Wyoming made with regard to the American people's understanding of this issue. In that CNN poll that I believe showed over 60 percent--I think it was 61 percent--of the people in this country who do not want this bill to move forward because they are now understanding what it does, in that same poll, 85 percent of the people in this country believe that this pledge of the President is broken by this bill.

Mr. CRAPO. I think that is exactly the point we are trying to point out. The next phrase in the amendment says, ``such as a motion to commit the pending legislation to the Committee on Finance.'' Remember, that is referring to the previous phrase that refers to a motion to increase taxes. The only thing we need to say about this phrase is, there is a motion to commit the bill to the Finance Committee, but there is not a motion to commit the bill to the Finance Committee to raise taxes. It is to cut taxes. The next phrase in the amendment is to suggest that there is an effort to try to kill the legislation. Now, this is my motion. I suppose the implication there is, by trying to take the taxes out of the bill, we are trying to kill the legislation. What does that mean? Well, that means if you take the taxes out of this bill, that the bill does not stand. I assume that is what the amendment is trying to say. The reason that it does not stand is because they are saying the bill does not increase the deficit. Well, the only way you can say that the bill does not increase the deficit is if you do not bring into consideration the nearly $500 billion of cuts in Medicare, the nearly $500 billion of taxes which are being put on the people of this country, and the additional budget gimmicks that do not start counting the spending for 4 years, plus a number of other budget gimmicks. So what they are saying is, you cannot take out one of the key legs of this bill, which is the way we raise all the money for this massive new spending, or else it will kill the bill. I think it is a pretty interesting fact that they have actually admitted in their own amendment what kind of games are being played.

Mr. CRAPO. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to be able to enter into a colloquy with my Republican colleagues for up to 30 minutes, and that following those remarks, the Republican leader be recognized, and that following his remarks Senator Durbin be recognized to speak.

Mr. CRAPO. Thank you, Madam President. Madam President, I would like to speak on health care. The pending business before the Senate right now is actually the Omnibus appropriations bill, which the Senate moved to yesterday, after having started the debate on the health care legislation. My motion is the pending business on the health care legislation, and so it is that motion I would like to talk about. Before I do so, I would like to again raise objection and concern to the fact that we have moved off the health care legislation debate to the Omnibus appropriations bill, both because I believe we should stay on the health care issue and work it through, but also because we moved to an Omnibus appropriations bill that we have not had an opportunity to review carefully and that raises the spending--I believe for these seven appropriations bills that have been compiled together, the spending is raised by an average of about 12 percent. Once again, Congress is in a spending free fall, and whether it be the stimulus package or the appropriations for our ordinary operations of government or whether it be the bailouts or the tremendous other aspects of spending pressures and proposals, including the health care legislation we have, there seems to be no restraint in Washington with regard to spending the taxpayers' dollars. But let's talk for a minute about the motion that was before the Senate before we moved off the health care legislation. It was a motion I raised to object to the tax increases on the middle class in America that are contained in the bill. The motion I have is very simple. It focuses on the President's pledge. The President pledged that ``no family making less than $250,000 will see their taxes increase--not your income taxes, not your payroll taxes, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.'' The President pledged: You will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime. So the motion I brought was very simple. It was simply to commit the bill to the Finance Committee to have the Finance Committee go through the 2,074-page bill and remove from the bill the taxes that are in it that apply to the middle class in the United States, as defined by the President here: being those who, as a couple, are making less than $250,000 a year, or those, as an individual, who are making less than $200,000 a year. What we have seen is that not only has there been delay on reaching that goal but a counterproposal to the amendment has been brought up by the chairman of the Finance Committee, Senator Baucus. His counteramendment says: It is the sense of the Senate that the Senate should reject any procedural maneuver that would raise taxes on middle class families, such as a motion to commit the pending legislation to the Committee on Finance, which is designed to kill legislation that provides tax cuts for American workers and families, including the affordability tax credit and the small business tax credit. A number of us are here today to talk about the fact that this sense of the Senate is designed to provide cover for those who do not want to vote to protect American taxpayers. It is a meaningless sense of the Senate. We are going to go through the sense of the Senate phrase by phrase. I would like to ask my colleague from the State of Wyoming if he would like to step in on the first phrase and comment. The first phrase says what the amendment is: ``It is the sense of the Senate . . .'' Would my friend from Wyoming like to comment on what that means?

Mr. CRAPO. Absolutely. Again, I believe what is going on here with this new amendment is simply an effort to sort of divert attention from the real issue that is before the American people, the motion that was before the Senate, before we were forced by a procedural vote yesterday to move off the bill, and that is the question of the taxes in the bill. The final phrase refers to a couple of the provisions in the bill that do have some support for improving the tax circumstances for small businesses and the affordability tax credit, meaning the tax credit that will be utilized to implement the subsidies for insurance. Again, we can say it any number of times, but the fact is the motion they are trying to avoid does not deal with either of these provisions of the bill; it deals with those provisions in the bill that tax the American people.

Mr. CRAPO. The Senator from Tennessee is right, and he has put his finger on one of the key issues that is going on here in the Senate that sometimes isn't highlighted as closely as I think maybe it should be. That is, while we are talking about the need to make sure this bill does not raise taxes on the middle class, to make sure that the bill does not increase the cost of health insurance premiums, and to make sure that we maintain quality of health care and don't cut Medicaid and Medicare, the real battle here is an effort to create a legacy to essentially put the government in control of the health care economy. That is the debate. That is the legacy. That is the history that those who are pushing the bill are seeking to make, and they are seeking to make it at the expense of those on Medicare, of those of the taxpayers in America; and of the costs, the cost curve that they said they want to drive down, dealing with the cost of our health care. I see our leader is here.

Mr. CRAPO. Yes.

Mr. CRAPO. I thank my colleague from Wyoming. The next phrase in the amendment--referring to a procedural motion-- says that ``would raise taxes on middle class families.'' There is nobody bringing a motion to raise taxes. My amendment says it is referring the bill to the Finance Committee to take out the taxes on those who earn less than $200,000 or $250,000. I note that my colleague from Kansas has arrived. Would the Senator care to jump in at this point?

Mr. CRAPO. Yes.

Mr. CRAPO. I thank my colleague. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. CRAPO

Mr. CRAPO. Madam President, I wish to speak on the Omnibus appropriations bills, to which we just moved, as well as to return and make some comments on the health care legislation from which we just retreated. First, regarding the Omnibus appropriations bill, I am very concerned about the fact that, as my motion is pending on the health care bill, dealing with one of the more important issues; namely--the President's pledge to make sure no one in America who makes less than $250,000 as a couple or $200,000 as an individual will be required to pay for the unbelievably high cost of this bill. While we were facing that amendment, the majority has decided they will shift from the bill--I understand that is a tough vote to take because the bill contains so many hundreds of billions of dollars of new tax increases that the American people squarely in the middle class will be called upon to share. We should not have shifted from the health care debate to move to the Omnibus appropriations bill, not only because of the importance of the issues we are dealing with on the health care legislation but because of the Omnibus appropriations bill itself. This Congress cannot control its appetite for spending. The appropriations bill we see before us now is called omnibus because it packages together seven of the original appropriations bills this Congress has been working on--and we are studying them to find out the details. But from the information I have received, the average rate of growth in spending in this bill overall--over those seven bills--is somewhere between 12 percent and 14 percent growth in Federal spending. This Congress has generated a $1.4 trillion deficit in less than 12 months. For next year, we want to see Federal Government grow by another 12 to 14 percent. That doesn't count the new stimulus package spending that is being talked about, and it doesn't count the spending--that almost $2.5 trillion in new spending--contemplated in the health care legislation, and any number of other pieces of legislation waiting in the queue to come before the Congress. At some point, fiscal restraint has to return to Washington, DC. We have not seen it here for far too long. I know it is very tempting to just say we can pile the debt on our children and grandchildren and spend what we want to spend today. There are those who say the only way we can have a strong economy is to spend ourselves into prosperity. Yet it is not the government that creates jobs. It is the formation of capital, the investment by small businesses and entrepreneurs in new ideas and products, and the expansion of business in the United States that will allow us to sustain a strong, healthy growth in our economy. If we continue to rely on borrowing money from the future in order to spend ourselves into prosperity, we will continue to see our national debt mount to a point where it cannot be sustained. We are already at a $12 trillion national debt, a national debt that is projected to double over the next 10 years to $24 trillion. I object to moving off the health care bill, where we had such critical amendments and motions pending. I object to moving to a bill that will now increase the spending of the Federal Government by 12 to 14 percent. Let me shift for a moment and talk more about the health care bill. The motion I had brought--the pending motion before the Senate--or it was before we shifted off the health care bill--was a simple motion that would have required the bill to be committed to the Finance Committee, with instructions to the Finance Committee to take out those parts of the bill that impose a tax increase on people in the United States who earn less than $250,000 as a couple or $200,000 as individuals. Very straightforward, it is exactly what the President pledged he would do, on multiple occasions, to the American people. Yet we have shown there are almost $500 billion of taxes in the first 10 years of this bill. If you look at the real first 10 years after the spending has kicked in--the 2014 to 2023 time period--it is almost $1.2 trillion in new taxes, a huge portion of which falls on the middle class. The response has been that actually this bill is a net tax cut. How can that be? The only way it can be claimed to be a tax cut is if you take the subsidies in the bill--about $400 billion worth of them--which are used to provide people at lower income categories, who don't have adequate access to insurance, with a subsidy toward the purchase of insurance and if you call that a tax cut. In the bill, it is actually called a renewable tax credit--even though $300 billion of the $400 billion goes to individuals who do not pay taxes, do not have a tax liability, and it is scored by the CBO as spending, not tax relief. Even if you were willing to count that money as tax relief, then you would have a situation in which 7 percent of the Americans would be receiving these government subsidies, while the remainder would be paying the price--paying the taxes. To put some numbers on that, out of 282 million Americans who have insurance in America today--or will have in 2019--only 19 million would receive this tax credit being talked about. Remember, the vast majority of them get what is called a tax credit, but it is a government subsidy going to those who have not generated a tax liability, and 157 million of the 282 million would be people who get health insurance through their employer and will not be eligible for that health insurance. After you do all the numbers and take out the taxpayers who make less than $250,000 a year as a couple or $200,000 as an individual, the bottom line is, after all those who are subsidized are taken out, there are still 42 million Americans in the middle class, as defined by the President, who will pay hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes. My amendment would simply require that those taxes be taken out of the bill, the President's pledge be honored in the bill, and the bill then be put into a posture to return to the floor for further debate. There is one other item I would like to talk about. One of the things that is often said by the opponents of my amendment is that this bill actually drives down the spending curve. When they say that, I wonder what curve they are talking about. Are they talking about the size of government? No. The size of government under this bill grows up by $2.5 trillion. Are they talking about the cost of health care? No. The CBO study indicated very clearly that at best Americans will not see the cost of their health care go down. For those in the most needy categories, the 17 percent of Americans who are in the individual market, their health insurance will actually go up by 10 to 13 percent. Are they talking about the Federal deficit? Actually, CBO says the deficit will go down. That is not the size of the government, but that is the size of the debt or spending each year. But how does it go down? It goes down only if you use the budget gimmicks that I will outline in just a minute or if you include all the taxes, the hundreds of billions of dollars of taxes that are in the bill, and if you count the Medicare cuts that are in the bill. Take out any one of those--the nearly $500 billion of Medicare cuts, the nearly $500 billion of taxes, or the budget gimmicks--and this bill does not drive the deficit curve down. What are the budget gimmicks--and I will close with this--what are the budget gimmicks about which I am talking? There are a number of them. The biggest is that the proponents of the bill do not count the first 4 years of spending. If you look at the 10-year spending cycle of the first 10 years of the first part of this bill, the taxes go into effect on the first day the bill is law, on January 1 of next year. The spending does not start until the year 2014. So we have 10 years of taxes, 10 years of Medicare cuts, and 6 years of spending. That is how they are able to say it balances out. If they started the spending and the taxing on the same day and did not give themselves a 4-year run of tax collection until they start the actual implementation of the spending part of the bill, it would drive the deficit down also. All we need to do in this Senate is to slow down, refer the bill back to committee, have them fix the provisions on taxes, and then work on some of the common ground we know we have that will help bend the spending curve down and will help improve the situation for Americans across this country who are calling for us to control the skyrocketing costs of health care. It is my hope that as the Senate goes through the next few weeks of debate on this legislation, as well as the other legislation we bring before us, we will remember our children and our grandchildren and all Americans today who are calling for the kind of true health care reform that will truly address the kind of fiscal responsibility and the kind of cost containment that we should be seeking in this Chamber. I yield back my time.

Mr. CRAPO

Mr. CRAPO. No, it does not. I appreciate the comments of my colleague from Florida, all my colleagues on the Senate floor today. As the Senator from Texas indicated, one of the items of business before us today is my motion to commit this bill to the Finance Committee to take out the taxes that the President pledged would not be in there. The President pledged that no one who makes less than $250,000 as a family or $200,000 as an individual will pay any taxes under this bill. Yet in the very first 10 years, there is almost $500 billion of those taxes, a huge portion of which falls on people who are in that category. As has been indicated, the real implementation of the bill on the spending side does not happen until 2014. If you count the amount of taxes that start when the spending starts, it is about $1.2 trillion of new taxes. Really, the only thing that is transparent--because this was all crafted behind closed doors--the only thing that is transparent is the gimmick. The President said, as the Senator from Texas pointed out, that he would not let a bill come across his desk and get a signature if it spent more than $900 billion. First of all, you have to say: Wow, why do we need almost $1 trillion of new spending? But when they went behind closed doors and came up with this bill, it turns out it cost around $2 trillion or $2.5 trillion. How did they make it meet the $900 billion test? They just said: Look, let's delay its implementation for long enough that the number comes out to under $900 billion. That happened to be the year 2014. So if you don't count the first 4 years and only count 6 of the 10, then in this budget window we are working in you can get your number. It is just remarkable. Before I ask the Senator from South Dakota about his perspective, because I know he is working with the Senator from Texas on an amendment to try to correct this gimmick, I would like to respond to one quick point I know our opposition on the other side has continued to make, and that is they actually say there are no tax increases in the bill. How do they say that? Here is the way they say it. There are subsidies in the bill that are provided to people with low income who do not have adequate access to insurance. Those subsidies total about $400 billion in the bill in the first 10 years, which is really only 6. They count those subsidies as a tax cut. The technical term given to them is a ``refundable tax credit,'' although $300 billion of those subsidies do not go to taxpayers. The people who receive them do not have a tax liability. But then they offset those subsidies against the taxes the rest of America will pay and say, therefore, there are no taxes in the bill. I think that is another form of gimmickry. I ask my colleague from South Dakota what his perspective is on the types of gimmicks we are seeing and whether the American people should insist that these kinds of things be removed from the bill.

Mr. CRAPO

Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 20 minutes.

Mr. CRAPO. Thank you, Mr. President. Before I begin my remarks, I would like to yield a couple minutes to my friend and colleague from Oklahoma who would like to respond to the question that has been raised as to whether the Republicans are presenting reliable, meaningful, and comprehensive alternatives.

Mr. CRAPO. No, I will ask a question later, then.

Mr. CRAPO. I thank my friend from Oklahoma because it is frustrating sometimes to have it continuously said that there are no alternatives being put forward when we have for years promoted major and comprehensive alternatives to the kinds of issues Americans are asking us to address today. What is it that Americans are asking? I have said this many times on the floor. Americans are asking us to find a pathway to lower health care premiums and costs and to increase access to better quality health care. Yet what is it that we are being faced with in this legislation? This bill drives up the cost of health care, not down, contrary to claims that have been made on the floor repeatedly; raises taxes by hundreds of billions of dollars; cuts Medicare by hundreds of billions of dollars; grows the government by $2.5 trillion; forces the needy uninsured--it doesn't give them a pathway toward subsidized insurance or any access to insurance but instead forces them into a failing Medicaid Program; imposes damaging unfunded mandates on the struggling States; leaves millions of Americans still uninsured; and establishes massive government controls over our health care economy. And we wonder why we cannot get engaged in a meaningful bipartisan solution here with this kind of heavy-handed approach being insisted upon. When I talk about the fact that it raises the costs or the size of government, often the response is: No, this bill doesn't raise the size of government, it doesn't increase the size of government, it is balanced. Actually, CBO has issued a report that says it reduces the deficit. Well, the fact is it grows the size of government over a true 10-year period by $2.5 trillion. It does provide some increased taxes-- a lot--and it does cut Medicare. By doing so, it does reach an equilibrium, according to CBO, with regard to its impact on the deficit. But let's not mistake this deficit with the size of the government. This bill will grow the size of the government and the reach of the government by $2.5 trillion. With regard to the question as to whether it truly impacts the deficit, I think most Americans have already heard that there are some budget gimmicks here. You could not ever claim this bill doesn't increase the deficit unless you had all the taxes I am going to talk about in a minute and unless you had all of the Medicare cuts we have been talking about for the last week, and unless you had the budget gimmicks that are in the bill. The budget gimmicks are clearly depicted right here. Look at the first 4 years of this bill on the spending side: very little, if any, spending. The actual implementation of the spending part of the bill doesn't happen until 2014, but all the taxes start in the first year, and all the Medicare cuts come into place in the first year, and we start seeing the offset side of the bill run for a full 10 years. It is going to be easy to say you have balanced out spending and taxing if you don't count the spending for the first 4 years. But if you look at that first true 10-year period of time, it is a growth of the government by $2.5 trillion. What I am here today to talk about is my motion that is on the floor to do one very simple thing: to commit this bill back to the Finance Committee and have the Finance Committee make the bill comply with the President's pledge to the American people about taxes. And what was his pledge, repeated many times across this country? In the President's own words: I can make a firm pledge . . . no family making less than $250,000 will see their taxes increase . . . not your income taxes, not your payroll taxes, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes . . . you will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime. That was the rhetoric. That was the pledge. What is the reality of the bill? In its first 10 years, the bill raises taxes by $495 billion. If you take that 10-year window that starts in 2014 where you are comparing spending and taxing at the same time, the total of taxes in that 10-year window is $1.2 trillion of new taxes, a huge proportion of which falls squarely on the backs of the middle class whom President Obama has defined here to be those earning less than $250,000, and that is per family. He said under $200,000 per individual. What are some of these taxes we are talking about? First, there is the excise tax on high-cost premium plans. One might say, wait a minute, that is a tax on companies, employers who provide very high quality insurance to their employees. It is an ingenious way--it is technically written that way--but it is an ingenious way to actually increase the cost, the tax base, of the workers and not the employer. Let's see the first chart. The way this works is the government will now say to an employer: You cannot provide health insurance to your employees that is worth more than a certain amount. Most employees who get health insurance--and that is most employees in the country who get health insurance from their employer--get wages and health care as a part of their total employment package. I picked an example of a woman who receives $50,000 in wages and let's assume a $10,000 employer-provided health care benefit. The government is now going to say wait a minute, to her employer; we are going to tax you if you provide that health care benefit on such a robust level. CBO and Joint Tax have told us that the reaction of the vast majority of all employers is going to be to reduce the health care benefit down below the level that gets taxed. They are not going to reduce the employee's overall benefit, however, their overall employment package. So let's pick a number. Let's say they reduce this $10,000 down to $7,000. They will increase the wages by $3,000 and the employee's total compensation package stays the same: $60,000, with one difference. Now that extra $3,000 is wages instead of health care, and it gets taxed. And that way the individuals in this country see their health care values go down. Their total compensation package stays the same, but then gets also reduced as it is taxed, and our Joint Tax Committee and CBO have told us that 84 percent of this $149 billion new tax is going to be borne by those with incomes under $200,000. That is one way this bill ingeniously gets at the pocketbook of those making less money than the $200,000 or $250,000 as a family that the President talks about. What is the next way? Medical deductions. I think everybody in America who itemizes deductions knows about the first line that says you can itemize your medical expenses, and to the extent they exceed 7.5 percent, you can deduct those medical expenses. So people who have a large proportion of their income represented by medical costs get a break in the Tax Code for that deduction. Well, that break is now going to be smaller under this bill because the level of where you are able to get it is no longer going to be 7.5 percent, it will be 10 percent. And as I indicated, that 84 percent of the excise tax is going to fall on people making less than $200,000 a year. Ninety-nine percent of the medical deduction restriction will fall on people making less than $200,000 a year; as a matter of fact, making a lot less than $200,000 per year. Then what about the next one? The next major tax in the bill is the Medicare payroll tax. This one has been presented to the American public as a tax on rich people. It starts out primarily impacting people at the higher levels, but at the outset, it will already hit 345,000 Americans, and it is not adjusted--I think most people understand how the alternative minimum tax works today. It is not adjusted for inflation properly. So over time, the payroll tax itself is going to increasingly hit more and more people in that income category under $200,000. There has been some analysis on these three provisions in the bill. Joint Tax has indicated that by the year 2019, at least--and I say at least because we are only talking about three provisions in this bill right now, and there are more--73 million American households--not individuals, households--73 million American households earning below $200,000 that are going to face a tax increase. Some have responded to this by saying, Wait a minute. Our bill actually cuts taxes and you are not characterizing this fairly. The tax cuts they are talking about are primarily a $394 billion government subsidy for purchase of health insurance, a subsidy that will be administered through the Tax Code. What they don't tell you is that $288,000 of this so-called tax cut is nothing other than a direct government payment to those who don't pay any taxes today anyway. It is not reducing their tax liability; they have no tax liability. It is a direct government subsidy, and CBO says so. It is scored by CBO not as tax relief; it is scored by CBO as direct government spending. To characterize that as tax relief I believe is inaccurate. Moreover, even if it were true tax relief, is that what the President was saying, that I won't raise your taxes more than I will lower someone else's or was he saying to the American people that he would not raise taxes on people who are making less than $200,000 a year, or $250,000 as a family? I believe it is inherently obvious what the President was saying. And to say now that we are cutting somebody else's taxes so we can raise yours does not comply with the President's pledge. To give another couple of perspectives on this in terms of numbers, when all is said and done, 7 percent of Americans will get this so- called tax relief that is, in reality, direct Federal spending, and the rest of Americans--specifically, those who don't fall in that category--will get the tax increases. Out of 282 million Americans with some kind of health insurance today, only 19 million of them will be helped by this subsidy. The rest are going to fall into that category of those who get to share in the burden by seeing their taxes increase. But let's say we give credit for all of these arguments and say, All right, we will let you claim that all of this spending is tax relief. What is the true story then? Even if you give that argument, which is not valid, by 2019, there will still be at least 42 million American households earning below $200,000 that will face a tax increase. This is information from the Joint Committee on Taxation. In fact, the data there is rather interesting. Joint Tax data indicates that by 2019, individuals earning between $50,000 and $200,000 on average will see an increase in their taxes of $593. Families earning between $75,000 and $200,000 will see on average a net tax increase of $670. So what does my amendment do? My amendment says very simply that the bill will be committed back to the Finance Committee and that the provisions in the bill that violate the President's pledge should be removed. Simply make the bill comply with the President's pledge. The President, frankly, shouldn't sign this bill unless this amendment is passed and implemented, because that is the direction we need to go. Once again, the President's pledge is that no family making less than $250,000 is going to see their taxes increased. There is further information available about this, though. I recently sent a letter to the Joint Tax Committee. I recently sent a letter to the Joint Tax Committee asking them about whether there were other provisions in the bill other than these three--the reason I talked about these three taxes is because those three taxes have been analyzed by Joint Tax and it is Joint Tax that is telling us what they are going to do. In response to my letter saying are there more taxes in the bill than those you have analyzed, the answer has come back, yes, and below, they say, is a list of the provisions that they have not previously distributed and that have statutory incidence on individuals with those who fall below the income threshold which has been defined already. What are these taxes? There is a confirmed definition of medical expenses for health savings accounts. In other words, the reduction of benefits in health savings accounts will have an impact, and I believe that impact is about $1.5 billion. The increased penalty for nonqualified health savings account distributions and limitations on flexible spending arrangements will raise almost $15 billion. Most of this--although we don't have the data yet from Joint Tax--most of this comes from families below the income tax threshold, as well as the 5 percent excise tax on cosmetic surgery and similar procedures and the individual mandate in the bill that will force all Americans to purchase insurance or the IRS will come and collect a fee from them. I don't have the chart here that shows what will happen with the IRS, but think for a minute. The current size of the IRS is about $12 billion in terms of the appropriations we give them to perform their functions. CBO says that if this bill passes, there will be so much additional business for the IRS in monitoring health care and the new plans and programs in the bill, there will have to be at least another $5 billion and maybe a $10 billion increase in the size of the IRS just so it can implement its enforcement responsibilities under this bill. The bottom line is that the President of the United States, Barack Obama, has made a pledge. It was that pledge, among a number of others--such as ``if you like what you have, you can keep it''--that caused us to see a strong low-confidence level by the American people, and maybe it is time for Congress to truly dig in and build a strong health care reform package. That pledge is being squarely broken by this bill. Again, all we are asking in this amendment is to send the bill back to the Finance Committee and have the Finance Committee make the bill conform to the President's pledge. What that will mean to the American people is that in the first 10 years of the bill, just under $500 billion of new taxes will not be imposed, and over the true first 10- year period, when the spending starts kicking in, $1.2 trillion worth of taxes will not be imposed. There are many other issues with this bill that we have seen discussed. There is the question of whether it truly increases the cost of premiums in health care. Virtually 10 out of 11 studies say that it does. The CBO report says that, clearly, for 30 percent of Americans, it does it in major ways, and for the other 60 percent, the impact is marginal, or the status quo. As we move forward, some of these big problems with the bill need to be fixed. My motion focuses on taxes. We have debated Medicare for some time now. We need to talk about the unfunded mandates on the States. We need to talk about the impact on premiums in health care because we don't want to be passing legislation that drives up the cost of health care at a time when that is the primary purpose for people calling for health care reform. I urge my colleagues to let us step down for a moment from the intensity of the debate, commit this bill to the Finance Committee, and let's, on a bipartisan basis, work out some of the solutions to these problems and do so in a way that does not result in such a massive growth of our Federal Government, such a massive increase in taxes, such a massive unfunded deficit on the States, and all for no control of cost or health care premiums. With that, I yield back the remainder of the time I requested.