John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), and the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Sullivan).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran).

Mr. CORNYN. Just to clarify, is the request for an additional 5 minutes of debate?

Mr. CORNYN. I object to any additional time.

Mr. CORNYN. Thank you, Mr. President. We will continue our conversation.

Mr. CORNYN. Will the Senator from Virginia yield for a question?

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I appreciate that. And the Senator from Virginia is my friend. We work together closely on the Intelligence Committee on a number of matters. I just want to ask a pretty basic question, which is whether the Senator from Virginia believes that it is possible to improve economic growth as a result of tax reform in such a way as it will close that $1.5 trillion gap that he is so concerned about. Some economists--ones who I believe are people we can depend on--have suggested that as much as a four-tenths of 1 percent increase in our GDP will essentially improve our economy to the point at which that gap will close to zero, and we will actually see true deficit reduction. Does the Senator agree with that or disagree?

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I want to take a few minutes following the remarks of the majority leader to thank Chairman Enzi, the bill manager, and the whole Budget Committee for the tremendous work that has been done on this budget resolution. I also want to express my gratitude and our collective gratitude to the Budget Committee staff, who has done such heroic work to get us this far. This might well be the best and most well-run budget consideration process during my time in the Senate. Certainly, for the fact that Senator Enzi has gotten us to this point at this time of night, when typically this ends in the wee hours of the morning, I think he is to be commended. The resolution has gone through regular order from the start, working its way through the Budget Committee where amendments were considered and adopted from both sides. Chairman Enzi has been a very effective floor manager as we have been considering the budget resolution, obtaining consensus from both sides of the aisle to ensure that the Senate has considered a number of amendments in a timely fashion. That is something that is not always so common around here. I want to take a moment to note the great job the chairman has done in getting us to this point. As we all know, without a budget resolution, there will be no tax reform. This is the first step to getting us to pro-growth tax reform, which will unshackle the sleeping giant of the American economy, something from which all Americans will benefit. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I assure our colleague from Pennsylvania that nothing in this budget resolution will deprive any person of the benefits they receive under Medicaid--no one. This budget resolution will not do that to anyone in the country. I can promise him that. It is ironic, though, to hear my colleagues talk about cuts in Medicaid when no one is proposing cuts in Medicaid--no one. All we are talking about is reducing the rate of increase in the growth of a very important and necessary entitlement program. Someday, when they grow up, these same children are going to have to pay back the money that we have borrowed in order to sustain these programs today. So we need to look at the whole picture here and learn and figure out how we can meet our current needs but also be responsible enough not to spend money today that our children and grandchildren are going to have to pay back tomorrow. Mr. President, I have come to the floor to talk primarily about tax reform because that is going to be the task that we undertake following the passage of the budget resolution. The President of the United States invited the members of the Senate Finance Committee over to the White House, and I have just returned from that meeting. It was a bipartisan meeting of the tax-writing committee in the Senate. That is what the Senate Finance Committee is. We heard during the discussions that the President's preference would be for this to be done on a bipartisan basis, and there was no one there present who said: We insist that this be done on a partisan basis. In other words, everybody there agreed with the President that it would be better for the country and that we would be able to come up with a better product--it would be durable, and it would be sustainable--if, in fact, we were able to do so on a bipartisan basis. In taking that to heart, Chairman Hatch, who is the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has previously stated his intention to have an open amendment process in the Senate Finance Committee. Typically, what happens is that there is some base bill--sometimes referred to as the chairman's mark--that is the starting place for legislation in our committees. What we do is to come up with what we think represents the closest thing to a consensus of those who are interested, actually, in pro-growth tax reform and what that would look like, and then open it up to Democrats and Republicans alike to offer their amendments to change it. If they have a majority vote in the committee, it will pass and change the bill. If they have a vote and it loses, then the bill will stay as it is. I am, frankly, a little bit surprised to hear from some of our colleagues that they actually want us to avoid the committee process and want us to come out here on the floor and come up with a bill that all 100 Senators can agree to. That is a terrible way to operate. It is, basically, a recipe for failure. What we need to do is to return to what we call regular order around here. All that means is this: Let's go through the traditional process of legislating, moving bills through the committee, and letting everybody participate. Then the majority leader can bring a bill to the floor with there being the same opportunity to offer amendments and to have votes. If you get a majority vote, you win, and your amendment is adopted. If you lose the vote, then it is not, and it does not change the content of the bill. I really wonder whether we ought to go back to that old cartoon that talks about how a bill becomes a law. I remember when I was growing up ``I am just a bill on Capitol Hill'' or however the lingo goes. Some people have seen that on the internet. Even some of the pages here, who are much younger than I am, are shaking their heads, indicating they recall that. That is how a bill becomes a law. Our colleagues across the aisle act like this is a revelation, that this is somehow unprecedented and is a terrible way to do business. Consistent with what the President has requested and what we would like on a bipartisan basis, let's give that a try. That is what we talked about over at the White House, and I think we owe it to the American people. Honestly, I think that if we were able to come up with a bipartisan tax reform bill, the country would be astonished--it would be shocked--that we were actually working together in the best interest of the American people, rather than relying on the same old, tired talking points and being sort of ensconced in our own bunkers, lobbing shots across some demilitarized zone at each other, politically. I think the American people are tired of that. Frankly, some of us who have been here a while are frustrated by the lack of productivity and by resorting to those same old tired talking points, living in these bunkers and not getting as much done as we need to for the American people. There is a good reason why large-scale changes in our Tax Code haven't been made since 1986, and that is because it is hard. It is hard to get a consensus on a bipartisan basis, but it is long overdue, and the American people are demanding it. The first step in the process of passing pro-growth tax reform that will leave you with more of what you earn in your pocket and will actually raise the living standards of hard-working families is for us to pass a budget resolution this week to give the Congress the tools we need to get the job done. Now, it may very well be--well, I can hope, anyway--that we won't need to resort to the technical tools we get from a budget resolution, the reconciliation instructions, and that we can actually do this on a bipartisan basis, but if we can't, then this budget resolution will provide a roadmap for tax reform and provide a pathway to get our Federal spending under control, not by cutting but by reducing the rate of growth in some of our programs. I don't know anybody who believes that the current Tax Code is working. One of the flaws in our Tax Code is that it favors production overseas as opposed to buying and building in America. It keeps overseas trillions of dollars that could be brought back here and used productively growing businesses, creating jobs, and increasing wages. Keeping your corporate headquarters in Dallas or Denton instead of Delhi or Dubai shouldn't be a disadvantage, although that is what happens under our current Tax Code. Of course, we know that for every provision in the Tax Code, there is some lobbyist, some entrenched special interest that is going to fight like the dickens to keep that provision in the Tax Code. We have already heard some of the lazy arguments and the scare-mongering that are always based on unjustifiable assumptions. In this case, there are some people who say: Well, if we let people actually keep more of what they earn, it won't change their behavior at all. They say: If we let businesses keep more of what a business earns, they won't invest it in their own business and create new jobs. I think that defies common sense, and it defies experience. That is why we see, on the business side, countries like Ireland, which used to have one of the highest tax rates in the world, or the United Kingdom, cutting their business tax rate--because they realize that brings businesses to their country, it creates jobs, and it helps grow the economy and make a lot of other important things possible. Two recent studies illustrate why the naysayers are off base. One is by the White House Council of Economic Advisers and shows a clear linkage between corporate tax rates and real wages. It shows that reducing the corporate rate--this may not seem obvious on its face, but this study says that reducing the business rate for corporations from 35 percent to 20 percent will translate into a minimum of a $4,000 increase in income for the average household. The second study comes from another expert at Boston University and concludes that lowering the corporate rate from 35 to 20 percent will mean a rise in income of $3,500 per household. This used to be a bipartisan acknowledgment. I remember that in 2011 President Obama gave a speech to a joint session of Congress where he acknowledged that we needed to cut our business rates to bring that money back here onshore and to keep our businesses from moving to other countries. I mentioned several times on the floor recently that I was shocked when I read an article a couple weekends ago that said that IBM--one of the largest corporations in the world--has more employees in India than it does in the United States. I am sure that is caused by a number of factors--access to a workforce, a well-trained workforce, the cost of doing business--but it has to be influenced by our highest tax rate in the world. These authors say the new plan that has been proposed by Republicans will raise the growth of the economy between 3 percent and 5 percent and real wages between 4 percent and 7 percent. If you cut corporate rates from the highest in the world to 20 percent, it will raise the wages of workers from 4 percent to 7 percent. Both of these studies suggest that tax reform will benefit working Americans. I have to tell you that the President made this point over and over again at the meeting we had this morning. He said: I am not interested in giving tax breaks to the wealthy. I want more middle-class, hard- working families to see the benefit of tax reform. He said: People who are wealthy are doing just fine. They don't need any help in the Tax Code. But the people who do need help are hard-working families who are seeing stagnant wages or seeing their standard of living decrease because of their high tax rates. So who in good faith could stand in the way of this happening? Who would stop us from giving workers a raise? Well, we are ready to hear all the preaching. I know it is coming, but that shouldn't deter us from doing our designated task. We shouldn't allow petty ignorance to go unchallenged, and the sort of deliberate class warfare that pits different taxpayers against each other--we should not tolerate that. Let me conclude because I know other colleagues want to speak. The American people are anxious, and they are frustrated. They are upset with what they see happening in Washington--or I should say not happening in Washington. The reason is because they want us to realize the two points I just mentioned. They are waiting for us to get it and to base our fiscal policy on what is honest and true. We can't ignore this issue any longer, and we will not--first by passing the budget resolution this week and then moving on a bipartisan basis through the Senate Finance Committee, the House Ways and Means Committee, to come up, hopefully, with a consensus tax reform plan that will get our economy growing again and allow hard-working American workers to keep more of what they earn and, in the process, help improve their standard of living. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Blunt).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Blunt).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Blunt).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Blunt).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Blunt).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran) and the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Shelby).