Mike Crapo

Mr. CRAPO

Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, it is an honor for me to recognize the Idaho Wheat Commission, which celebrated its 50th anniversary recently. The Idaho Wheat Commission was founded in 1959 and has been a leader in the wheat industry, working on behalf of Idaho's wheat growers and providing them with an invaluable service. Wheat is one of Idaho's top five commodities; it is grown in nearly every county; and Idaho is ranked 10th in national production of wheat. The Idaho Wheat Commission engages in research, market development, consumer education and much more on behalf of Idaho wheat growers. The Idaho Wheat Commission funds research and provides science-based information to Idaho wheat growers concerning topics such as improved wheat variety, pest management and best practices. Research and information on these and many other topics help Idaho Wheat growers remain competitive and profitable. The Idaho Wheat Commission also aids growers by playing an important role in the development of markets at home and overseas, which helps Idaho growers find new and emerging markets for their wheat. More than 50 percent of Idaho's wheat crop is exported to over 90 other countries around the world. The Idaho Wheat Commission, along with the University of Idaho Extension, the Idaho Grain Producer Association and the Idaho Barley commission, sponsors Cereal Schools in many different Idaho counties. These schools educate and update growers on various issues, such as results from new studies and trials or current legislative issues. They also conduct Wheat Quality Workshops twice a year where growers get a hands-on education on the importance of growing quality wheat. Because of their many excellent educational and informational programs, the Idaho Wheat Commission has had, and will continue to have, a positive influence on the Idaho wheat industry. The Idaho Wheat Commission has been working for Idaho's wheat growers for 50 years, helping to fund research and education and to develop new markets for growers. In their first 50 years, they have succeeded at this and much more. Congratulations to the Idaho Wheat Commission for 50 years of supporting the growers of one of Idaho's most important crops. I look forward to its next 50.

Mr. CRAPO

Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, today I wish to ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing the accomplishments of Mr. Orval Allen Kelso. Today, deeply engaged in a war on terror, thousands of American civilians are working and serving in harm's way. Like the brave men and women serving in uniform, these patriotic citizens risk their lives every day in an effort to rebuild a stronger future for the people of Iraq. However, they are not alone. American civilian contractors have been operating in combat theatres since as early as World War II, and I am here today to tell you about one of those. Hailing from Emmett, ID, Orval Allen Kelso arrived on Wake Island in the North Pacific in June 1941, working as a powerplant operator for Morrison Knudsen. Mr. Kelso worked as a powerplant operator until December 1941, when he was captured and taken as a POW to Camp 18, Sesabo, Japan. While a POW at Camp 18, Orval helped build the Soto Dam that provides water to Sesabo city today. He, among several hundred civilian POWs, built this dam with hardly the right tools to work with, malnutrition, improper clothing, and daily physical and emotional abuse by their captors. Orval later died in Camp 18 on April 8, 1943, just days after his birthday. In 1949, his only child, Walter Richard ``Dick'' Kelso, reclaimed his father's remains, and brought him back to rest on U.S. soil at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, HI. I also note that although Mr. Kelson was a civilian during the time I have discussed, after his death, the Department of the Navy awarded him an E4 military status. It is fitting that we honor Mr. Kelso for his sacrifice and also be reminded of the many others who were taken prisoner or who paid the ultimate sacrifice working in harm's way. We often forget about the nonmilitary Americans who gave their all for the freedoms we cherish in our great Nation. Let us help remedy that today by recognizing Mr. Kelso and the civilian POWs taken during World War II. They are an exemplary example of the selflessness displayed by Americans in an effort to bring peace and freedom to millions, and we thank them for their sacrifice.

Mr. CRAPO

Mr. CRAPO. I ask unanimous consent to use the remainder of my time as well as that of the Republican leader.

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

Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, I believe I have 20 minutes remaining; is that correct?

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

Mr. CRAPO. Later today, Mr. President, we are going to vote on my motion to refer the bill to the Finance Committee and have the Finance Committee simply make the bill comply with the President's promise with regard to taxes. As I have said a number of times on the floor, this bill does not correct so many of the problems we need to deal with in health care. It drives the cost of health care in premiums up, not down; it raises hundreds of billions in taxes; it cuts Medicare by hundreds of billions of dollars; it grows the Federal Government by over $2.5 trillion in the first 10 years of full implementation; it forces the needy uninsured into a failing Medicaid system and does not give them access to insurance; it imposes damaging unfunded mandates on our struggling States; it still leaves millions of Americans uninsured; and it establishes massive government control over our health care. Frankly, even if the so-called government option or government health care insurance company that is created by the bill were to be removed, there would still be massive government intrusion into the control and management of our health care system. Well, as we were facing the prospect of dealing with this bill, the President made a pledge to the American people, and in his terms the pledge was: 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 increased one single dime. Yet what we have in this legislation is a whole array of new taxes-- about $493 billion in new taxes to start with. And that is assuming you just start with the beginning of the bill and go for the first 10 years. If you actually compare the number of taxes that will be charged by this bill to the American people with that first full 10-year implementation period, that is $1.28 trillion in new taxes. This chart shows taxes and fees, not just the specific taxes but taxes and fees--fees which our Congressional Budget Office and our Joint Tax Committee have said repeatedly will be passed on to the American consumer. Yet the President said nobody's taxes will be increased. Let's see the next chart. Here we have further analysis of just four of the major tax provisions in the bill. There are many more, but if you look at the four major tax provisions in the bill, the Joint Committee on Taxation has said that by 2019 at least 73 million American households earning below $200,000 will face a tax increase, and when you break these numbers down further, it is not just the people making between $100,000 and $200,000, or the upper income earners, but massive tax increases falling upon people who are making well under $100,000 a year. The response has been: Wait a minute, this bill also has some tax cuts in it, and when you offset the tax cuts against the tax increases, there are more tax cuts than there are tax increases. I dispute that in a couple ways. First of all, even if you accept as fact that there are tax cuts in this bill, which is arguable and I will point that out in a minute, they do not offset all the taxes and fees, so it is still a net increase in taxes. But there is a subsidy in this bill to provide insurance to a group of Americans who do not have the financial capacity today to purchase their own insurance. As I mentioned earlier, the most needy of this group did not get access to insurance. They got put on Medicaid. But some in America will get some access to insurance and that subsidy will be provided by the Federal Government. The other side is saying that is a tax cut. I disagree with that for a couple reasons. First of all, it is called, in the bill, a refundable tax credit and it is administered by the Internal Revenue Service--which, by the way, is going to need to grow by 40 to 50 percent in order to accommodate these new roles in managing the health care system. But it is a refundable tax credit in only the way Congress could put it together. It is nothing other than a government payment to individuals, most of whom pay no taxes. In fact, between 2014 and 2019, 73 percent of the people receiving the subsidy, or $288 billion of the subsidy, goes to taxpayers who pay no taxes. You can call that a tax cut if you want, but CBO, our Congressional Budget Office, does not call it a tax cut. The Congressional Budget Office scores it as Federal spending, as exactly what it is, spending by the Federal Government. It is a subsidy being provided by the Federal Government. You can argue about whether it should be provided, but to call it a tax cut is a stretch. Even if you accept that is a tax cut, there are still 42 million American households earning below $200,000 per year who will pay more taxes. No matter how you cut it and no matter how you define tax cut, the reality is this bill imposes hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars of new taxes squarely on the middle class in violation of the President's promise that nobody in America who makes less than $250,000 as a family or $200,000 as an individual, in order to fund this bill, would be required to pay more taxes. Some of those who have responded to this have said this is our opportunity and, if we support this amendment, we will be killing a bill that provides tax relief to the American people. As I have pointed out, the amendment does not do anything to the subsidy that is called a tax cut. The amendment leaves the subsidy in place. So it is simply wrong to say the motion I have asked to have passed would do anything to remove this so-called tax relief--or properly called subsidy--from the bill. What my motion does is simply to say the bill should be referred to the Finance Committee so the Finance Committee can make sure it complies with the President's pledge that it does not raise taxes on those who are in what the President has described as the middle class. It is very simple and straightforward. If there are no such taxes, then the motion is irrelevant. But we all know there are-- Joint Tax, Congressional Budget Office, many private organizations have squarely pointed it out. In fact, we are still studying it. If we get past the first four big taxes in the bill, these numbers I have talked about, the 42 million net or the 73 million in reality, in America--and those are households, not individuals, who will be paying more taxes-- are squarely going to be hit by this bill. Let me give a different perspective on it. If you take all those who are supposedly getting tax relief but are really getting a direct subsidy, accept the fact that this is truly a tax cut, they represent 7 percent of the American public. The rest of the American public does not get a subsidy. The rest of the American public pays the taxes for the establishment of a huge $2.5 trillion new entitlement program that will bring that much more of the Federal Government into control of the health care economy. We are coming back now from a 2\1/2\-hour break because the Democrats were at the White House meeting with the President. We do not know what was said there. There was apparently a negotiation behind closed doors, yet once again, of some other new changes in the legislation, some other new portions of the bill. No C-SPAN cameras were there, to my knowledge. But we now have an opportunity to talk in the next few hours about what will happen with regard to this amendment. The President could have asked his friends in the Democratic caucus to support this amendment, which simply requires that the bill comply with his pledge. I hope he did. I hope it can be accepted. But the reality is, this legislation violates not only this pledge but a number of the President's other pledges--for example, the pledge that if you like what you have, you can keep it. Americans all over this country have heard that pledge repeated a number of times. If you are one of the employees who has employer-provided insurance and that insurance happens to fit in the so-called higher insurance packages that are taxed 45 percent by this plan, you are not going to get to keep it. Both CBO and Joint Tax have made it very clear that you are going to see your health care cut by your employer in order to avoid this tax. Then what is going to happen is your employer might--probably will--give you a little bit more wages to compensate for the cut in your employment benefits. Your net package of compensation will not change in value, but you will get at more of it in wages and a little less in health care. But the kicker is, the wage portion is taxed but the health portion is not so your taxes are going to go up and your net package is going to go down. You are going to have a less-robust health care plan and you will have a lower overall compensation package. Does that comply with the President's promise that if you like what you have, you can keep it? What about the 11 million Americans, I believe it is, who have Medicare Advantage policies today who clearly are going to lose about half of that extra Medicare Advantage benefit under the Medicare cuts in the bill? If they like what they have, can they keep it? No. What I am asking is simply that the Senate vote to require that the President's pledge in this one case be honored; namely, let's send the bill to the Finance Committee, it can be turned around in the Finance Committee overnight, take out the provisions that impose taxes on people in America earning less than $250,000 as a family or $200,000 as an individual and bring it back to the floor. You will hear it said this is a killer amendment, that it will kill the bill. It will not kill the bill unless it is necessary in the bill to tax Americans to the tune of the hundreds of billions of dollars that are included in this bill. What it will do is expose that this bill cannot be claimed to be deficit neutral or to even reduce the deficit unless three things happen: the Medicare cuts of hundreds of billions of dollars are imposed; the tax increases of hundreds of billions of dollars are imposed, and the budget gimmicks are implemented. Let me tell you about the most significant of those budget gimmicks. In order to make it so they could say this bill does not increase taxes or does not increase the deficit, the crafters of the bill have had the taxes go into effect on day one, the Medicare cuts go into effect by day one, but the subsidy program or the spending part of the bill is delayed for 4 years. So we have 10 years of revenue and 6 years of spending. I, personally, think the way they picked 2014 to be the year in which they implement the spending part of the bill is they said: How many years do we have to delay the spending impact until we can claim there is a deficit-neutral bill? It turned out they had to delay it for 4 years out of the 10. If it took 5, they would have delayed it 5 years. That is a budget gimmick. The reality is we all know if you have the spending go into place on day one and the taxes go into place on day one and the Medicare cuts go into place on day one and took the gimmicks out, this bill would generate a deficit, another promise the President pledged not to do. There are so many problems with this bill. But most important today, as we will have an opportunity around 6 o'clock, is to vote to at least have the bill comply with the President's pledge. I ask how much time remains.

Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, I would like to reserve the remainder of my time, and I will hold that until later in the day.

Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, I would like to respond to a couple of the points made about whether this bill truly does address what the American people are asking it to address. If you ask most people in America what they want out of health care reform--and they do want reform--they will tell you they want to see control of the skyrocketing cost of health care, particularly the cost of insurance premiums. They would like to see increased access to quality medical care. It has been said a number of times by the proponents of this legislation that this bill accomplishes those objectives, but let's look at exactly what the Congressional Budget Office has told us on the core issue; namely, what is going to happen to your insurance premiums if this bill is passed. What the Congressional Budget Office very clearly said, which is also backed by 7, 8, 9 or 10 other studies from the private sector as well as the Joint Committee on Taxation and backed by the Chief Actuary for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is that for at least 30 percent and the most vulnerable people in America, if you are looking at whether your insurance premiums are going to go up or down, they are going to go up, not down. If you are a member of the 17 percent of Americans who get your insurance in the individual market, your insurance is going to go way up. In fact, it is going to go up by as much as 10 to 13 percent in addition to what it would have gone up without the bill. If you are someone who gets your business from small groups, from a small group market, your insurance costs are going to go up from 1 to 3 percent. If you are one of the Americans who is able to get your insurance in the large group market, then you can basically expect that the bill will have no significant impact on you. There is a possibility of a slight reduction, but the potential is, it is going to have no impact at all. What does the bill do? For 17 percent of Americans in the individual market and for 13 percent of Americans in the small group market, it clearly makes your health care premiums go up. For those who are in the remainder of the market, it basically doesn't achieve the objective of health care reform--and at what price? We often hear we need to bend down the cost curve. As I have indicated, this legislation doesn't bend down the cost curve Americans are talking about; namely, the price of their health care or their health insurance. What does it do with regard to the Federal Government? It is going to increase the cost to the Federal Government on health care by $2.5 trillion in a massive new entitlement program. So that price curve is not bent down. Then what are we left with? Some say the deficit will go down under this bill. There is only one way the deficit can go down under this bill; that is, if you take away the budget gimmicks, massive tax increases, and massive Medicare cuts. But I will just talk about the budget gimmicks because of a lack of time. The spending side of this bill is delayed for 4 years. The taxing and cutting Medicare side of the bill is implemented on day one. So we have 10 years of tax increases to offset 6 years of spending. I think that is the way the number was reached. You have to figure out how many years to delay the spending start before you can say there was a deficit-neutral bill. The reality is, this bill doesn't deal with any of those spending curves. The matter we will be voting on in a few minutes is my motion that would address the tax side of the bill. All it says is: Let's change the bill to comply with the President's promise; namely, that people making less than $200,000 a year or $250,000 as a couple would not pay more taxes. What we found from the Joint Tax Committee is, 73 million Americans in that category will pay more taxes. In fact, it is not 73 million Americans, it is 73 million American households who will pay more taxes and see a tax increase under this bill and not just a small one. It is massive, hundreds of billions of dollars of new taxes that will be imposed by this bill. In response, the proponents of this bill say: But this bill is a tax cut. The only way they can say this bill is a tax cut is by looking at the subsidy that is going to be provided as a tax cut. It is called a refundable tax credit, although three-fourths of it, 73 percent to be accurate, goes to people who do not pay taxes. Yet it is called tax relief because it is administered through the Tax Code and is described as a refundable tax credit. The CBO gets this and Americans get it. The Congressional Budget Office says these aren't tax cuts. This is spending, and it is scored that way by the CBO as it analyzes the bill. The only way you can say this bill involves these kinds of tax cuts is if you say that a provision that will simply result in the payment of a check by the Federal Government to an individual who has no tax liability to assist them with their health care costs is a tax cut. Let's accept that. Even in that case, only 7 percent of Americans qualify for that subsidy, and the rest qualify for the tax increases. To say the President's promise was that I will not cut your taxes more or I will not increase your taxes more than I will cut someone else's taxes and, by the way, I will call a direct subsidy a tax cut, is not exactly what I think the President meant. It is not what the American people thought he meant when he said Americans making less than $200,000 or $250,000 as a family would not pay more taxes under this bill. My proposal simply says send this bill back to the Finance Committee. They can turn it around quickly, if they want to. Have them take out the provisions that violate the President's pledge on taxes. I retain the remainder of my time.

Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, I will just take 1 minute on this, and then I think we will probably be ready to vote. Again, I think there are two contrasting amendments here. The Senator from Montana has indicated that my motion, which would simply ask the Finance Committee to make this bill comply with the President's pledge, would somehow kill the bill--that is not at all true--and, secondly, that it would stop the tax relief in the bill that the Senator from Montana has identified, the refundable tax credits. The bottom line is, my amendment does not even address the refundable tax credits. They remain in the bill. All my amendment does is say: Let's have the President's pledge to the American people honored in this legislation. Let's take out the taxes that 73 million American households will pay under this legislation--hundreds of billions of dollars of new taxes.

Mr. CRAPO

Mr. CRAPO. I thank my colleagues for coming over and speaking today and discussing this issue with me. I would like to conclude by pointing out, once again, the President said he could 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. But there are hundreds of billions of dollars in tax increases in this bill that are going to fall squarely to the backs of the middle class. Our motion simply says: Let's fix that and take it out. The bottom line is, those who are saying that is not the case are trying in the first case to say there are subsidies in the bill that almost equal the amount of these taxes and, therefore, it is a net tax cut. First, subsidies are not tax cuts. Three-quarters of them go to individuals who have no tax liability. The other one-quarter does not reduce the tax liability of the individuals who are getting the insurance subsidy. Even if you accept all of that argument, the President was not saying you will not see net taxes go up in America. The President was not saying: We will not cut or not increase your taxes by more than we will cut someone else's taxes. I don't think anybody expected that was what he was saying. The President was saying he would not raise taxes in this bill. This bill violates that pledge. Therefore, Members should support the motion to send this bill back to the Finance Committee to fix that glaring problem. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. CRAPO. The Senator from South Dakota is correct. In fact, this subsidy is not paid to the individual. It is paid directly to the insurance company. Of the one-quarter of people receiving this subsidy who do actually pay income taxes, their income taxes will, in fact, stay the same. They are not actually getting a tax cut. What they are getting is a subsidy for the purchase of insurance that is managed through the Tax Code but is paid directly to the insurance company.

Mr. CRAPO. It is actually 7 percent.

Mr. CRAPO. I will respond first. The Senator from Tennessee is exactly right. Again, on this chart, these are the tax increases for the first 10 years of the bill, and this chart includes the fees and penalties that are charged as well. The total there is $704 billion. If you start when the bill becomes implemented or is started to be implemented, in 2014, to compare taxes to spending, the actual taxes and fees that will be collected are almost $1.3 trillion.

Mr. CRAPO. I thank my colleague. I will give some statistics on the point. The Joint Tax Committee analyzed just the four biggest tax provisions--not all of them--and they concluded that only 7 percent of Americans would be receiving these so-called tax cuts, which are really spending subsidies but have been characterized as a tax cut in order to argue that the bill doesn't increase taxes. Only 7 percent of Americans will receive those, which represents about 19 million people, but 157 million people--almost 8 times that amount--who get health insurance through their employer will not be eligible for these credits. They will pay, on average, somewhere between $593 to $670 a year, depending on their income categories, in new taxes that are put on their shoulders in this bill. I notice that my colleague from Tennessee wants to say something.

Mr. CRAPO. The Senator from Wyoming is exactly right. It is the wrong thing to do when our economy needs to be strengthened and restarted, if you will, to apply a huge amount of new taxes. Let's take the example we talked about earlier. This young lady, under the bill in the Senate right now, will not only see her health benefits go down, but the net value of her compensation package will go down. She will get a little extra wages in order to offset the reduction of her health care benefits, but those will be taxed and her net compensation package will go down. The point here is this--and it is a little bit ironic that today the Democratic caucus is going to be meeting with the President at the White House in yet one more closed-door meeting where they are going to be trying to redraft the bill in order to get around some of the problems, which I hope they will let the American people see to debate before they try to vote on it again. It is ironic, as Democrats come out of that caucus, if they do not support this motion, they will be violating two of the President's pledges. One, after meeting with him, they will be violating his pledge not to tax Americans who make less than $200,000--$250,000 for a family--as well as his pledge: If you like it, you can keep it. This young lady, if she likes her package, cannot keep it. She will not have that option. Her $10,000 health care package will be reduced at least $2,000 to the minimum new government-designed acceptable policy and probably a little more than that. She will see a 20- to 30- percent reduction in her health care package against her will. I would be willing to bet she would prefer to keep the one she has now. Most Americans like the insurance they are getting through their employers.

Mr. CRAPO. I agree with the Senator from Nevada. It is disturbing to see the responses. First, the response that this bill actually doesn't increase taxes; it cuts taxes. That flies right in the face of the reports and analysis by Joint Tax and CBO. I encourage everybody to read this bill. It is available on my Web site and on the Republican Web site and on the C-SPAN Web site. In addition, we will put up a reference to where you can find the bill to read it if you want to parse through it to determine who is telling the truth. The bottom line is, this bill increases taxes in the first 10 years by $493 billion. When you add fees to that, it is more like $700 billion. If you counted the first full 10 years of implementation, it is over $1 trillion of new taxes. The only response to that is to try to say that the subsidies for health insurance for those who are not able to purchase their own insurance are tax cuts, even though three-fourths of them go to those who are not, at this point, at a level where they are incurring a tax liability.

Mr. CRAPO. The Senator was there when the Joint Tax and CBO experts were asked this question. They squarely and directly said these taxes and fees will be passed on, virtually 100 percent, to consumers, which means two things. First, the ones that are taxes will just be taxes passed on to the consumer, as shown in the example of the young lady we looked at. The ones that are fees will simply be passed on in the form of higher costs for medical services or higher premiums, which is one of the reasons why, contrary to the assertions by the other side, this bill will drive up the cost of health care and will drive up the cost of premiums, not down.

Mr. CRAPO. Yes, that is right. A payment of a subsidy to an individual in the United States would be scored as a Federal outlay, or spending, as is a refundable tax credit paid to an individual who has no tax liability. Let's assume we even accept the argument that is a tax cut. Even if you offset all of that, remember the chart a minute ago that said 73 million people would pay taxes. Even if you give them credit for that argument, there are still going to be 42 million people making less than $200,000 a year who will face a net tax increase. That is a violation of the President's pledge. All this motion does is send the bill back to the Finance Committee, which writes tax policy, to correct that. The motion helps this bill comply with the President's pledge. The Senator from Montana also used another example, trying to say some of these people who are paying more taxes are getting higher wages. This is the game that is going on. The employer of these people the Senator was talking about today provides a salary and health care to that employee. In this example, it is $50,000 of wages and $10,000 of health care benefits. This bill will now impose a hefty 40- or 45- percent tax on this health care plan because it is too good of a health care plan. What CBO and Joint Tax tell us is that because of that immense tax-- 40- to 45-percent tax--the employer is just going to cut the health care plan down to where it is not taxed anymore and provide those dollars with an increased wage. So this young lady will get maybe $53,000 in wages instead of $50,000 and only $7,000 of health insurance, and her net employment compensation will still be the same, $60,000--except she will pay taxes on an extra $3,000. So her net employment package will go down not up, and 73 million Americans like her will end up with a smaller employment package, less health care benefits, and increased Federal tax liability. That is the way the bill works. For issue after issue, there are taxes after taxes in this bill that will be paid by the people in this country who earn less than those on the threshold the President identified. That is why we simply ask that the bill be sent to the Finance Committee to have this violation of the President's pledge, this bad policy of increasing taxes on the middle class in America to pay for a huge new government entitlement program, be removed from the bill.

Mr. CRAPO. Yes.

Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 40 minutes and to use that time in a colloquy with other colleagues.

Mr. CRAPO. I also ask to be notified when there are 5 minutes remaining.

Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, I am going to engage in a colloquy about the pending motion on which we will vote later this afternoon or early this evening. It is a motion to commit the bill to the Finance Committee and have the Finance Committee make the bill comply with the President's pledge. Here is the pledge: I can make a firm pledge . . . no family making less than $250,000 will see their taxes increase . . . not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains tax, not any of your taxes. . . . you will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime. I heard my colleague from Montana say the bill complies with this pledge. If that were true, then there would be no harm in having the Finance Committee scour through it and make sure it does and refer the bill back to make sure it doesn't tax the middle class. The reality is, it is very clear this legislation violates this pledge of the President. As a matter of fact, there are over $493 billion of new taxes in this bill meant to offset the $2.5 trillion during the first full 10 years of implementation of spending in the bill. If you will look at the next chart, at the graph on taxes, the first 10 years--this includes the fees also imposed that CBO and Joint Tax said will be passed right on through to the consumer. There are $704 billion of taxes and fees in the first 10 years of the bill. If you look at the 10 years of full implementation, meaning when the spending actually starts, the taxes and fees are actually $1.28 trillion. My colleague says this is a net tax cut bill, and it complies with the President's pledge because when you take all of the refundable tax credits in the bill and offset against the tax increases, there is a net reduction in tax. In the first place, that is not true when you take into account the fees. I don't think that is what the President was talking about. He didn't mean, did he, that you will not see your taxes go up more than someone else's taxes go down? No, he told people in America they would not see their taxes go up. Yet what this bill does, according to the Joint Tax analysis, is, by 2019, at least 73 million American households earning below $200,000 will face a tax increase. If that is not violating the President's pledge, I don't know what is--even if you take the numbers that the majority is trying to use and claim that those are tax cuts. Here is the next chart. What my colleague from Montana is talking about is about $400 billion of what are called refundable tax credits. He wants to offset these tax credits in the bill against the hundreds of billions of dollars of tax increases, and then say there is a net tax cut and, therefore, no problem. First of all, that is a problem. Secondly, what is a refundable tax credit? The $288 billion, or 73 percent of the so-called tax credit--or tax cuts that my colleague from Montana is talking about--are payments by the Federal Government to individuals or families who do not have tax liability. It is a direct government subsidy. The CBO scores these payments as a Federal outlay, as spending, not as tax relief, and that is exactly what it is. I think it is a little bit less than credible to say that we have a tax cut bill when three-fourths of the so-called tax cuts don't even go to reduce tax liability for taxpayers.

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. The Senator from Nevada is correct. Before I toss the floor to the Senator from Texas who wants to make some comments, I point out that the point the Senator from Nevada made is statistically made by Joint Tax: By 2019, at least 73 million American households-- That is not 73 million Americans, that is 73 million American households-- earning below $200,000 are going to face these tax increases.