Steny Hoyer

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I want to say to my friend, the majority leader, with all due respect we raise a lot of heat in this town. Unfortunately, on the cusp of a meeting that was convened to try to reach some agreements on very important issues to the American people, the heat was raised very, very substantially by the President of the United States. That was unfortunate. Anybody who thinks that the heat wasn't raised and was saying that there was not going to be a deal I think is incorrect. But that is not why I asked for the 1 minute. Why I asked for the 1 minute is, Mr. Speaker, the American people are relying on us to come together and agree on things they know are very important to them: their families, their community, and their country. Let us not accuse one another back and forth of bad faith, and let's lower the heat and let's try to get that work done.

Mr. HOYER. The gentleman wouldn't yield to me, but I am glad to yield to him.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I rise to talk about a bill that poses a great danger to our country and a great danger to our people, particularly our people who are struggling, who are living from paycheck to paycheck, because this bill, contrary to the assertion of our Republican colleagues, will not help them, and we are going to talk about that. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin), a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee, and my friend.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his kind comments and for the information he gave. As a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee he is, I think, as knowledgeable about the history of these tax cuts as anyone can be, so I thank the gentleman for joining us in this effort to educate our friends and colleagues and the American public on the consequences of this bill.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Larson), one of the senior members of the Ways and Means Committee, who has been very focused on sound tax policy, on policy to save Social Security for generations yet to come, who is one of the more responsible leaders in this House, and my friend.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Connecticut for his comments and particularly highlighting how the majority party, in considering this legislation, cut out the public entirely. Speaker Ryan, when he took the speakership, talked about transparency. He talked about regular order. He talked about doing things so that the people would know what we are doing. Not only were there no hearings in the House, not only were there no witnesses in the House, as the gentleman knows, there were no hearings in the Senate, there were no witnesses in the Senate. In a short timeframe, the Republicans are trying to pass a massive increase in the national debt so that, in effect, as the gentleman knows, they say they are cutting taxes. I am going to talk about how that is not really true. Particularly for the middle class it is not true. But they are substantially raising taxes on every one of the children in this country who will become more indebted and in their time will have to pay back the money that is borrowed to give this tax cut. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for highlighting those very important facts and I thank him for his service on the Ways and Means Committee. General Leave

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, at this time I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, the subject of my Special Order, as we have seen, is the very dangerous tax bill that this House passed and that the Senate is now considering. In fact, of course, the Senate bill is worse than the House bill, if one can imagine that. On November 16, the Republican majority in this House passed a bill to raise taxes on 36 million middle class households and place our country another $1.7 trillion in debt. Now, you will hear $1.5 trillion and you will hear $1.7 trillion. What is the difference? The difference is about $200 billion that we will pay in interest to others to effect this tax cut. So not only is it going to be the $1.5 trillion immediately impacted by the tax cut itself, it will be the $200 billion additional that we will have to pay to borrow the money to give the tax cut and, as I am going to point out, give that tax cut essentially, for the most part, to the wealthiest enterprises in America. 227 Republicans voted to do that to their constituents. Every single Democratic representative who was present, joined by 13 Republicans, did what, in my opinion, many of their colleagues wanted to do, but for political reasons, not policy reasons, chose not to do. They did so, Mr. Speaker, following impassioned remarks by Majority Leader McCarthy and by Speaker Ryan. Both addressed this House and the American people and claimed to be pushing these tax bills in order to help the working people of our country, a worthy objective, an important objective. Perhaps one could justify this extraordinary escalation of the national debt, probably the largest increase in the national debt of any single bill that has been passed. They cited struggling families and the need to provide a leg up to those in our middle class. Those, of course, are very resonant messages, very important messages. Frankly, we ought to be talking about how we create jobs, not debt. They are being employed to sell a tax plan that would do exactly the opposite of what they say. In his speech on the floor, Speaker Ryan lamented: ``Seventy-eight percent of our workers in this country today are living paycheck to paycheck. . . . Instead of thinking about getting ahead, families are struggling just to get by.'' He is right about that and he is right to be concerned about that. What he is wrong in is his response. Those living paycheck to paycheck will be the ones hurt the most by this tax scam. Let me repeat that. The Speaker talks about those living paycheck to paycheck. That concern is an absolute legitimate concern for every one of us in this House and every Member of the Senate. Unfortunately, he has offered a bill, however, that will hurt the very ones he says that he wants to protect. They will see their taxes go up over the next decade. In that same period, as middle class families are struggling to get by, they will watch the wealthiest get farther and farther ahead. This is not about class warfare. This is about a judgment of who needs help, who needs lifting up. He talked about the people who need lifting up. The problem is that he didn't lift them up. They will watch the wealthy be lifted up, and they are very high right now. God bless them. Why, I ask, would the Republican tax plan take $1.7 trillion away from our children and grandchildren and give 62 percent of it to the top 1 percent? Mr. Speaker, the people get it. The people think this bill is not going to help them. That is what polls show, and they are right. Under the Republicans' plan, it is wealthy individuals like Donald Trump who win, and regular working Americans and our middle class who are trying to get ahead who lose. House Republican leaders cajoled their members. Cajoled is a very polite word. They pressured and they scared their members. They said: If you don't pass this bill, you are going to lose the election not because the people are for it, but because, as one Member said from New York, their donors demanded it. They urged their members to vote for a flawed bill many of them did not want and that none of them believed would become law. They did that so they could hand the reins to the Senate to send back a version no one had yet read or contemplated. They put their House majority on the hook to accept whatever the Senate would pass word for word. We will see whether they do that. That Senate bill that is now being considered would deeply harm middle class families, particularly those in congressional districts across the country where more taxpayers choose to deduct their State and local taxes, like my State and other States. Dozens of House Republicans from such districts voted enthusiastically to move the process along. In other words, they voted against their taxpayers and for their party--party above people--to move it along by supporting the House tax bill with the promise that it would be improved in the Senate. These members would be asked to make further concessions against the interests of their constituents to vote for the Senate bill, were it to come to this floor, because it is worse for their constituents, not better. That is not how Congress is supposed to work, Mr. Speaker. That is not regular order. The American taxpayers and American businesses seeking to grow in our economy have been asking Congress to enact tax reform that is bipartisan and permanent. You heard Mr. Larson talking about the 1986 bill. It was a bill that was worked out between President Reagan; Speaker Tip O'Neill; Chairman Dan Rostenkowski, a Member from the Democratic Party from Illinois; and the gentleman from Oregon, the chairman of the Finance Committee, a Republican. The Republican bills in the House and the Senate can be called neither bipartisan nor permanent. So what can we call them? In his floor remarks before the vote on their House bill, Speaker Ryan called it: ``The single biggest thing we can do to grow the economy, to restore opportunity, and to help middle-income families that are struggling.'' That is not true, Mr. Speaker. However, it is the single biggest thing we can do to put our children and grandchildren further into debt. I have heard so many of my Republican colleagues stand on this floor and say that we cannot spend this money because our children will have to pay the bill, and they are right. We have a pay-for problem, Mr. Speaker. We ought to be paying for what we buy. Here, we are not paying, we are borrowing $1.5 trillion, as I said earlier, to give to some of our wealthiest citizens; for that is what their plan would do, raise taxes on the middle class today, and on our children and grandchildren tomorrow, to pay for the wealthiest few to get tax cuts that they don't need and that won't grow our economy. Let me stress, I think everybody in this room, everybody in the country, would like to be wealthy. This is not talking about penalizing the wealthy. It is simply to say: God bless you. You have done well, but we need to make sure that others do well as well. The University of Chicago's Booth School of Business released a survey, Mr. Speaker, on November 21, just a few days ago, in which 42 expert economists were asked whether the Republican tax bill would produce the higher economic growth promised by its authors; 42 of the most prominent economists. Only one--only one--said that it would do so and, ironically, later admitted he had misread the question. None of the 42, not one, agreed that the tax cuts for the very wealthy included in the Republican bill would eventually pay for themselves; and that is why we say, it is one of the greatest debt- creating pieces of legislation that any of us have considered. Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who presided over the basis for 4 years of balanced budgets, so he has some real credibility on how to bring balance to our fiscal posture in America--he served at the time of historic budget surpluses. He pointed out this fallacy in his op-ed in The Washington Post on November 15. He said this: ``The tax cuts,'' he wrote, ``will not increase growth and, given their fiscal effects, would likely have a significant and increasing negative impact.'' He went on to make several compelling arguments about the dangers of the Republican tax proposals. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a copy of his op-ed piece. [From the Washington Post, Nov. 15] Op-Ed: The Republican Tax Plan's Five Worst Dangers (By Robert E. Rubin) The deficit-funded tax cuts advancing through Congress are a fiscal tragedy for which our country will pay a huge price over time. While the details of the tax plan remain in flux, its fundamental contours will not change. Nor will its $1.5 trillion of deficit funding, the amount stipulated in the recently passed budget resolution. Perhaps it's hopeless to expect those in Congress who have long bemoaned deficits and the debt to oppose the plan. If, however, as a matter of conscience or renewed reflection they decide to take heed, here are the fiscal dangers posed by the plan. To start, the tax cuts will not increase growth and, given their fiscal effects, would likely have a significant and increasingly negative impact. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center's latest report estimated that, over 10 years, the average increase in our growth rate would be roughly zero, counting the crowding out of private investment by increasing deficits but not counting other adverse effects of worsening our fiscal outlook. The Penn Wharton Budget Model, using the same approach, estimates virtually no increase in long-term growth. Goldman Sachs projects an increase of 0.1 percent to 0.2 percent in the first couple of years and an average increase over 10 years of just 0.05 percent per year, not counting any of the adverse fiscal effects. These estimates reflect three underlying views held by mainstream economists. First, individual tax cuts will not materially induce people to work more. Second, corporate tax cuts will likely have limited effect on investment or decisions about where to locate business activity, given the many other variables at play. Third, deficit-funded tax cuts will have little short-term effect on growth, except perhaps for some temporary overheating, because we are at roughly full employment. With no additional revenue from increased growth to offset the tax cuts' cost, the publicly held debt of the federal government would increase by $1.5 trillion. An additional danger is that the actual deficit impact would be increased by abandoning the Congressional Budget Office's nonpartisan evaluation that has been used for decades by both parties in favor of partisan calculations by those pushing the tax cuts. Adding $1.5 trillion or more to the federal debt would make an already bad situation worse. A useful measure of our fiscal position is the ratio of publicly held government debt to economic output or gross domestic product, called the debt/GDP ratio. In 2000, the debt/GDP ratio was 32 percent. The ratio is now 77 percent. Looking forward, the CBO projects the debt/GDP ratio to be 91 percent in 2027 and 150 percent in 2047. After $1.5 trillion of deficit-funded tax cuts, those future ratios have been estimated to increase to roughly 97 percent in 2027 and 160 percent in 2047. These estimates likely substantially understate the worsening of our fiscal trajectory. That's because they do not account for the increasingly adverse effect on growth of the difficult- to-quantify effects of fiscal deterioration. Exacerbating our already unsustainable fiscal trajectory with these tax cuts would threaten growth in five respects. These are highly likely to be substantial and to increase over time. First, business confidence would likely be negatively affected by creating uncertainty about future policy and heightening concern about our political system's ability to meet our economic policy challenges. Second, our country's resilience to deal with inevitable future economic and geopolitical emergencies, including the effects of climate change, would continue to decline. Third, funds available for public investment, national security and defense spending--a professed concern of many tax-cut proponents--would continue to decline as debt rises, because of rising interest costs and the increased risk of borrowing to fund government activities. Fourth, Treasury bond interest rates would be highly likely to increase over time because of increased demand for the supply of savings and increased concern about future imbalances. That, in turn, would raise private-sector interest rates, which could also increase due to widening spreads vs. Treasuries, further reflecting increased concern about future conditions. And even a limited increase in the debt/GDP ratio could focus attention on our fiscal trajectory's long-ignored risks and trigger outsize increases in Treasury and private-sector interest rates. The ability to borrow in our own currency, and to print it through the Federal Reserve, may diminish these risks for a while, as might capital inflows from abroad. But these mitigating factors have their limits; at some point, unsound fiscal conditions almost surely would undermine our currency and debt markets. Finally, at some unpredictable point, fiscal conditions-- and these market dynamics--would likely be seen as sufficiently serious to cause severe market and economic destabilization. We have an imperative need to address our unsustainable longer-term fiscal trajectory with sound economic policies. Few elected officials want to face this fact, but, at the very least, they should not make matters worse. We can only hope that responsible elected officials will prevent this irresponsible tax plan from being adopted.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, furthermore, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, a nonpartisan group, Speaker Ryan was flat wrong, flat out wrong, to say that their plan would ensure that ``the average family at every income level gets a tax cut.'' The Joint Committee on Taxation says that is not true. I presume the Speaker was misinformed, because taxes would go up on all income groups below $50,000. Perhaps the Speaker misspoke. Speaker Ryan said: ``I am a chart guy.'' Well, I like charts myself, Mr. Speaker, and I want to bring up this first chart. I will bring this a little closer so I can explain this. The Speaker claimed that a family of four making $59,000 would get a ``$1,182 tax cut in the first year alone.'' Well, now if you hear that, that sounds, I suppose, like a pretty good deal. Unfortunately, for that family, their cut would shrink every year. This is the shrinkage. And then it would drop precipitously. By 2024, it would become a tax increase, increase, increase, increase. And, as you see, that increase escalates the 4 years: 2024, 2025, 2026, and 2027. So starting in the seventh year of this program, middle America, $50,000, you get a tax increase. But guess what? That is not what happens to the wealthiest in America. It is even worse. The Speaker mentioned the family making $59,000 a year, and what he said is: They get $1,182 a year in a tax cut. What he didn't say is what the upper 1 percent get. They get $1,198 per week-- 52 times more than the middle class families that the Speaker spoke about and lamented the fact that they needed more dollars in their pocket. He didn't talk about the wealthiest. He didn't say what they got. I don't blame him because, in his bill, he decided to give $1,198.52 a week to the wealthiest, and $1,182 a year to that middle class family he says is struggling and living paycheck to paycheck. What kind of fairness is that? What kind of rationale is that? What kind of real help to the middle class is that? That is about, by the way, $25 per week versus $1,198.52 per week. Speaker Ryan showed us a chart that highlighted how, under the House bill, those middle class families promised a tax increase get to see an extra $1,182 in savings the first year. We put it down, and then we put 52 layers above that for the people in the upper 1 percent. Under that same plan, as their cut shrinks--you saw that in the last chart--the wealthiest taxpayers would see an average tax cut of $1,198 every week. And it is even a wider disparity under the Senate bill. Now, that is a gulf of disparity, a gulf of unfairness, a gulf of not helping the average working person in America. But the Senate bill--the Senate bill--is even worse. The Senate GOP tax scam would increase taxes on 82 million--remember I said in the House bill, 36 million middle class taxpayers got an increase? Well, the Senate has doubled that, actually more than doubled that. Eighty-two million middle class households will get a tax increase under the Senate tax bill. And with substantial tax increases on 36 million middle class households over the next decade in the House bill, it is hard to imagine a worse plan, yet, somehow, Senate Republicans achieved it. The Tax Policy Center, another nonpartisan analytic group, found that, under the perverse structure of the Senate bill, sunsetting individual benefits in a few short years, even as it offers permanent-- get this, follow this. We are talking about--Speaker Ryan spoke from that rostrum, talked about these struggling Americans living paycheck to paycheck. He offered a bill, and the Senate is now doubling down on the proposal of making sure those struggling Americans got, over the life of this bill, less and less and less, and then finally, paid more and more and more, while the wealthiest had no cut. The Tax Policy Center said that the sunsetting individual benefits in a few short years, even as it offers permanent corporate tax cuts, 82 million middle class individuals and households will pay more in taxes than they would under the current system. Mr. Speaker, I want to make that point again. The Tax Policy Center says people are going to pay more under this tax bill, some 82 million of them, than they would under the current system. On top of that, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has pointed out that, under the Senate bill, undermining the Affordable Care Act--so not only will their taxes be increased over the life of this bill, but 13 million Americans would lose their healthcare under the Senate bill--not the House bill, but under the Senate bill. And that is what the House is going to be asked to vote on. I hope the Senate doesn't pass that. Mr. Larson talked about sequester and the PAYGO Act requiring a $25 billion cut in Medicare as a result of this bill. The Senate has added in there legislation to adversely affect the Affordable Care Act, which will adversely affect 13 million Americans; some of them may be the same people who get the tax increase, some may not. They would kick 13 million off healthcare. So the Republican tax plan is not bipartisan, and it is not permanent tax reform. The way you achieve those, as I said at the beginning, is through bipartisan cooperation. But, as Mr. Larson pointed out, there was no intention to do that, no intention to include the public, no intention to have markups over a period of time. They did have markups, but they were very short in duration, and no American had the opportunity to weigh in and give their opinion. There were no hearings, and there were less than zero witnesses. I guess there can't be less than zero. There were zero witnesses. So the bill is not a tax cut. Speaker Ryan has also tried to describe it as a job-creator. Now, again, we are talking about, correctly, the folks in this country who are living paycheck to paycheck and having a hard time, and we need to help them. We need to work on creating them jobs. By the way, there is no jobs bill that has been sent down here from the President, but they claim this is a jobs bill. As a matter of fact, they claim that it not only explodes the debt, costs taxpayers $1.9 trillion, but it would create, they say, 890,000 new jobs. Now, in order to create what they say are 890,000 new jobs--and, by the way, going back to Secretary Rubin, he does not believe that will happen. He is the one that led us to balanced budgets. In fact, every one of those jobs, every single job is going to cost $1.9 million to create. That is what the Speaker said. This is going to create 879 million, we are going to borrow $1.7 trillion to do it. By golly, you could give everybody 100,000 bucks, and you would be way ahead of the game. But that is not what was done. We are creating large, large debt, and we will not create the jobs the Speaker said. And if we did, they would cost $1.9 million per job. According to the conservative Tax Foundation, using the most optimistic model projecting economic growth so far presented, that may be technically true, over 10 years now. But with a price tag of $1.7 trillion in added debt over the same period, that means that each job would cost $1.9 million, while 82 million working Americans, those struggling Americans of which Paul Ryan spoke, would get a tax increase under the Senate bill--nearly $2 million of added debt to create a single job. Nearly $2 million of added debt to create a single job. So this clearly isn't a jobs bill either. This has already been discussed, but let me reiterate the key point I made earlier. It can't be called bipartisan. Republican leader after Republican leader after Republican leader has lamented the fact that we passed the Affordable Care Act without it being bipartisan. The difference, of course, was we had literally thousands of meetings, scores--well over 60--of hearings, amendments offered by Republicans and Democrats. It took over a year of consideration by the country, well vetted-- controversial, but well vetted. This bill has been rushed through without hearings, without any kind of consideration and input from the public--in 1986, 30 hearings; in 2017, zero hearings. I am repeating what Mr. Larson said, but it is important to understand the dramatic difference: a bipartisan bill with President Ronald Reagan and Speaker Tip O'Neill leading the way for bipartisanship and agreement on a bill that, by the way, was revenue neutral, it did not create any new debt, as opposed to the $1.7 trillion--that is with a T, trillion--that will put every child in America deeply in debt for decades to come. In 1986, 450 witnesses; in 2017, zero. Bipartisan support, yes; bipartisan support, no. Markup, I mentioned markup. That is when you put the bill together, when you give it thoughtful consideration. You offer amendments. You try to perfect it. Twenty-six days in 1986; 4 days in 2017. This is a bill of over 600 pages. I remember everybody saying how long the Affordable Care Act was and you possibly couldn't do it. Again, over a year and a half of consideration of that bill; 4 days, introduced, the next week markup, 4 days, on the floor. I was here in 1986, Mr. Speaker, the last time we rewrote our Tax Code. That was a truly bipartisan process. I hope everybody read the remarks of Senator John McCain when he came back to the Senate and voted to move the process forward on the Affordable Care Act but then voted against the final product. He voted, and he gave a speech in which he said, speaking to the president of the Senate: Mr. President, I have been here for some period of time, and my experience has essentially been that, when we did things in a partisan way, they were neither lasting nor very good. But when we do things in a bipartisan way, they are much better and they are much more permanent. There is much more competence in that product that was reached in a bipartisan way. Speaker Ryan made a point in his remarks about how long overdue we are for a tax overhaul, and he said it has been 31 years since we last did this. Now, of course, he didn't say: I was chairman of the Ways and Means Committee for 11 months and didn't report out a single tax bill. I am not sure why, but that was the case. We did bipartisan in 1986. We did permanent tax reform. We did it together, and we did it in a way that was paid for. That is not what this is. Neither the House bill nor the Senate bill achieves those key aims. The Republican tax overhaul process is dangerously flawed precisely because it is partisan, because it rejects the benefits of compromise in favor of the pitfalls of expediency. I called it, in my speech in opposition to its adoption, ``reckless and feckless.'' It was reckless because it would heap that $1.7 trillion with a T, $1.7 trillion of additional debt on our party, on our country, on our children, on our people. Bob Rubin, in that column which I referred to, said that that debt would undermine expansion because it would rob the capital markets of money that could be used to build small businesses and to build medium-sized businesses and invest in large businesses to create and keep jobs. It is feckless because the same people who used to call themselves fiscally responsible--Senator McConnell, Speaker Ryan, Senator Hatch, others whom I could name--have all stood on the floor of the House or in a press conference and said we need to have the debt reduced, and yet they offer a bill that adds $1.7 trillion to the debt; feckless because the same people who used to call themselves fiscally responsible are now choosing to ignore fiscal sustainability in favor of a short-lived political win. This is not about policy. It is about politics. It is about appealing to a relatively small group of very, very connected people, but it is our country that will lose. I told people during that speech that I have been in office for some time. I served in the State senate and now in the House. It takes no courage--no courage--to vote for a tax cut. What takes courage is to pay for what you buy, whether it is national security, which I support, whether it is education, which, if we don't invest in, our country will not be great. It is great in part because we have invested in our education system. Unless we invest in the health of our people, which is the health of our society, we will not be great, and unless we invest in the security of our people domestically, in law, in order, enforcement, in protection for our people. It will not be great unless we invest in basic biomedical research to make sure that the diseases that exist now and that may exist in the future can be met with medical cures and palliatives. We will not be great if we sink our country deeply, deeply, deeply into debt and do not have the courage to say, in this generation, we will pay for what we need and not simply buy and pass the debt along to our children and to our grandchildren, because that is what we are doing in this tax bill. It is not only an intellectually bankrupt policy, it is an immoral policy that we pursue. As the Senate version takes shape, Mr. Speaker, Republicans who voted grudgingly for the House bill ought to be deeply concerned; and I hope, for the sake of their country, they are good people. There are good people on both sides of this aisle. There are conscientious people on both sides of this aisle. There are Americans on both sides of this aisle, Americans who have sworn to protect and defend the Constitution of our country and have, as well, sworn to protect the people of this country. There ought to be deep concern among people of good conscience, concern that it does not meet the very same criteria that Speaker Ryan set forth in laying out what tax reform ought to achieve and what he claimed their House bill achieved. Neither does it adhere to the Speaker's clear promise not to package together separate matters into the same legislation. Make no mistake, the Senate bill House Republicans will be asked to vote for isn't just a tax hike for the middle class, although that it is. It is also a repeal of a significant component of the Affordable Care Act, which will hurt that same middle class. It may have been difficult for Republicans to cast their votes for vague promises on November 16, but I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, it will be even more difficult to do so for a legislative product that puts their constituents, those the Speaker talked about struggling just to get by, people who, if they have a $500 debt, are not sure they can pay it, it will affect those folks and put them in even greater danger should the Senate bill make it back to the House. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues in the Senate to reject this bill. I urge my colleagues in the House to look deeply into their souls and not at their polls and reflect upon what they are doing to their country by perpetuating the fiscally irresponsible policies of borrowing, of borrowing, of borrowing and not having the courage to pay this generation's bills now and not pass them along to our children and to our grandchildren. Every Member of this House and of the Senate, Mr. Speaker, ought to look themselves in the mirror and say: When I gave those speeches, when I referenced that to the press, was I being honest? Am I following a policy today that is consistent with that assertion? I think they will come to the inexorable answer: No. If I vote for this tax bill, I am not. Therefore, I hope that all of us will reject this partisan piece of legislation that vastly increases our debt, increases the taxes on middle class workers, threatens Social Security with a $25 billion cut, and threatens our economy. Let us have the courage to serve our people honestly and take the tough vote and then come together in a bipartisan fashion and do what we showed we could do in 1986: pass a bipartisan bill that, yes, makes our corporations competitive internationally and, yes, gives the bulk of the tax cuts to those who the Speaker referred to as struggling. They are the ones who need relief, and we could do that in a bipartisan fashion, and we can pay for it. David Camp showed us the way. I didn't agree with all of his bill, but he showed the courage--a Republican from Michigan who was chairman of the Ways and Means Committee--and put up a bill on tax reform that was paid for. The Republicans were in charge of this House and they dismissed it out of hand, too tough. Mr. Speaker, let's do the right thing. Let's reject this bill. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. This is the most irresponsible bill that I will have been confronted with in the 37 years that I have been in the Congress of the United States. This bill, Mr. Speaker, is both reckless and feckless. It is reckless because it would add more than $1.7 trillion--the chairman says over $2 trillion--to the debt over a decade in a shameful act of hypocrisy for its supporters who, for years, have called for fiscal responsibility. It is feckless because its authors write it with an eye toward politics, not policy. There is no courage in voting for this bill. It is easy to vote for a tax cut. What is hard to do is paying for what we buy. Neither side does that particularly well. There is no courage in voting for this bill, only a suspension of common sense and their now abandoned commitment to fiscal sustainability. Furthermore, my Republican friends call this bill a tax cut. The gentleman who just spoke, the whip, said it is a reduction in rates, but 36 million working Americans will receive a tax increase under this bill. It was a very careful articulation of reduction of rates, but taxes for 36 million Americans, working Americans, will go up. Furthermore, they call this bill a tax cut. It is not a stretch of the imagination to presume that, given Republicans' urgency to reject bipartisan compromise and deflect public input, the Members of this House will be asked to accept whatever version of the tax bill can pass the United States Senate. Yesterday, the Senate Finance Committee rejected this bill 36-0. The Senate Finance Committee, headed by Republicans, rejected this bill 36- 0. I am reminded of what Representative Matt Gaetz, a Republican, said last month about the budget resolution that teed up this tax plan. He said that we were being ``asked to vote for a budget that nobody believes in so that we have the chance to vote for a tax bill that nobody's read.'' Mr. Speaker, I won't ask anyone to raise their hand if they have read this bill. One hand. Those who take this vote will have to live with it and just hope that whatever mystery tax package their Senate colleagues send over here won't gut whatever concessions they have extracted I heard the whip say no special provisions in this bill. I don't have the time to go through every special provision that has been used to get people to vote for this bill. Mr. Speaker, this isn't the tax reform the American people were promised or the tax reform the American people want. Mr. Speaker, let's sit down together. Let's sit down together, the chairman and Mr. Neal, two responsible, good Americans, sit down together not in a partisan way, but in a bipartisan way. That is the way we did the 1986 bill. That is why it was such a responsible piece of legislation. Let's enact tax reform that focuses on the working class, the middle class, the people who need the money, not give over half of it to the richest people in America. I don't have any beef with them, we would all like to be rich, but they don't need a tax cut, and the middle class does. Why give 50 percent of the revenue to them? Let's enact tax reform that focuses on the middle class. Let's enact tax reform that doesn't give half the benefit to those making more than $900,000 a year. Let's enact tax reform that improves our long-term fiscal position rather than adding the $1.7 trillion to our debt that the CBO projects that this bill would add. As former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin pointed out in an op-ed in today's Washington Post--and, by the way, he was the Secretary of the Treasury during the only 4 years of balanced budgets that we have experienced in the last 50 years.

Mr. HOYER. Vote ``no'' on this bill. Look to your souls, not your polls or your political accounts.

Mr. HOYER. Reject this sellout of America's future.

Mr. HOYER. * * *.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I was here when Democrats and Republicans came together to enact bipartisan tax reform in 1986. We paid for our tax overhaul and never once asked future generations to foot the bill. President Trump said in July that tax reform is, and I quote, ``going to be easy.'' I will admit that, to someone like him who is new to government and who may not understand fully how Congress works, what we achieved in 1986 may, in hindsight, appear to have been easy. It wasn't. It was difficult because it required compromise; it was difficult because it required trust; and it was difficult because it required both parties to make tough choices and share the burden of taking responsibility, along with the benefit of claiming victory. Somewhere along the way, Mr. Speaker, it seems that many in the Republican Party lost sight of this truth. First on healthcare, and now on taxes, they have decided that it would be easier not to work with Democrats at all, so they have chosen a partisan path, where the only ones with whom they have to compromise are themselves. It is ``going to be easy,'' they said. And the result: We now expect, on this floor, a bill so dangerous and so reprehensible to the taxpayers of this country that nearly every major organization representing taxpayers, small businesses, workers, farmers, seniors, home builders, realtors, teachers--and I could go on--oppose this bill. There are more serious problems with the Republican tax bill than time to address them on this floor, so I want to highlight the three that make it so utterly dangerous to our economy and to the middle class. First, most of the benefits of the tax cuts Republicans are proposing will benefit only those at the very top 1 percent; the 99 percent left behind. According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center's latest analysis, under the Republican plan, 47 percent of the tax cuts will benefit that top 1 percent, just 1.2 million households making more than $900,000 a year. Let me repeat: the top 1 percent will get nearly half of all the tax cuts in this bill, and 50 percent for the 99 percent. Second, the Republican plan raises taxes on 36 million middle class families. That is not what the Speaker said it was going to do. He said he would give everybody a tax cut. That was not true, and is not true. 36 million middle class American households will see their taxes go up over the next 10 years as a result of this Republican plan. And third, the Republican plan will explode the debt by more than $1.7 trillion over the next decade. This bill is the granddaddy of all debt creators. This means that those tax cuts, more than half of which benefit only the top 1.5 percent, will be paid for by a huge tax increase on our children and on our grandchildren. The late Senator Russell Long from Louisiana liked to cite an old ditty about who gets stuck with the pain of tax increase. He said: ``Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree,'' meaning, of course, that none of the voters want a tax increase, so if you raise taxes, make sure it is someone else who is out of sight and out of mind. In this case, sadly, Mr. Speaker, that fellow behind the tree is a child. This is a tax increase on all those children. It is a child who can't vote and doesn't have a voice in this debate. The Republican plan asks Members to pile $1.7 trillion or more of debt onto our children and grandchildren and put the fiscal sustainability of our country at further risk. When confronted with this fact, we heard only the same arguments we heard in 2001 and 2003, before the last major Republican effort to cut taxes precipitated the worst recession in our memory and a period of severe budget tightening that led to disinvestment in our country under the threat of sequestration. That argument, flawed and false, is that these tax cuts will grow the economy so much that the ensuing growth will magically erase all the deficits we know their plan will accrue. So easy, Mr. Speaker, so easy. The cuts will simply pay for themselves, we are told. We have been told that before, of course. The cycle repeats: Republican promises that tax cuts will pay for themselves, followed by massive deficits, 189 percent increase in the deficit under Ronald Reagan, followed by Republicans insisting that we respond with austere cuts to investments in our people and in our opportunity. So easily they forget. But middle class Americans will not forget who is responsible when their taxes go up, when their tax increases pay for tax cuts for the top 1 percent, and when, in the years ahead, more and more investments need to be cut to pay the interest on the debt under which this plan will bury the children and grandchildren of America. And all because my colleagues across the aisle wanted to skip out on doing what they knew would be hard, just as they did when former Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp introduced his comprehensive tax reform that was responsibly paid for. That is Dave Camp, Republican, State of Michigan. He is retired now, but he offered a responsible bill, and it was not even considered by his committee. He asked his colleagues to do something hard, of course, but they dismissed it, dismissed it out of hand, because it would have required hashing out a difficult compromise. But easy is no synonym for successful. President Kennedy told us that we choose these things, that is, tackling our greatest challenges, ``not because they are easy, but because they are hard.'' So I ask my Republican friends--no, I urge them, set aside this dangerous, reckless, and irresponsible bill. Instead, let's choose the hard path that involves hard choices and trust and all of those things that made tax reform successful in 1986, which are the missing elements in this flawed bill. Mr. Speaker, Democrats are ready to sit down with you and work on this challenge, together. It won't be easy, that is a promise, but if we do it together, if we do it in a way that doesn't balloon the debt or raise taxes on the middle class, we have a chance to do it right. Let's take that chance.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. McCarthy) for the purpose of the majority leader telling us the schedule for the week to come. (Mr. McCARTHY asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for that information. I am going to have some specific questions about the tax bill, but before I do that, it is our understanding that substantial changes are being made in the tax bill that was put on the floor last Thursday, a week ago. Does the gentleman know whether that is accurate or not? I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, regular order is having hearings and witnesses, is it not? I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his remarks. I don't share his enthusiasm for this bill, which I think will be very harmful, will explode the debt, and be a bait-and-switch on the middle class whether it will get a tax cut early and a tax increase later on. Is the gentleman aware, when he talks about growth, that in the comparable 9 months of 2016 to the same months in 2017 under Trump, that there were 326,000 more jobs created in 2016 than have been created in 2017 in those analogous months? Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, a lot more is the answer. Why is the NFIB, Mr. Speaker, against this bill if it is so good for small business? Why is the AARP against this bill if it is so good for small business? Why is the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which is worried about the national debt, against it? Mr. Speaker, since I have been here, my Republican friends have been talking about we have got to balance the budget. The President said he is going to balance the budget in 9 years. That was hooey. Our Republican friends have said they are going to balance the budget. They said it in the Price budget. They said it in the Ryan budget. The budget deficit keeps getting bigger, and they have been in charge of economic policy for a long time. The fact of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, I have got a list of 50 groups that are against this bill because they think it hurts both the debt and middle-income people. The distribution, according not to fact-checkers but the Joint Committee on Taxation, $1 trillion of the tax cuts go to business, $230 billion to individuals, and $170 billion on estates essentially. Now, that doesn't add up to the $1.7 or $1.8 trillion that has been computed to be the deficit created--the additional debt--by this bill. In fact, that is why this bill is being rewritten right now. I guarantee my friend--and he can call me this next week--that the bill that was introduced last Thursday will not look like the bill that we will consider on the floor. It won't. It won't because, first of all, the debt is a problem for, apparently, some people. It is a big problem for me. We ought to pay for what we buy. That is what the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Camp, did: a bill that was paid for--an honest bill that was paid for, as was the 1986 tax reform bill. It did not add to the debt. This adds an extraordinary amount to the debt. As a matter of fact, it adds in one fell swoop the debt that was created on the Reagan administration approximately $1.7 trillion. It is being rewritten now. My presumption is, as we have done 49 times this year, that this bill will be presented under a closed rule in a transparent Congress, where everybody's views are going to be considered. I stand here and say that the gentleman is not going to bring this bill to the floor with an open rule where amendments can be offered, where people can discuss options, and we can see what the ramifications are to middle class taxpayers. The Joint Committee on Taxation also pointed out that, of this figure, individuals are going to get a tax cut of which Mr. Ryan talks about of $1,182--a typical family, he refers to them--but that figure will start to go down in 2019 and will go down further in 2020 so that it is a bait-and-switch. You get it up front, but we are going to take it away. In the Ways and Means Committee, one of the reasons, Mr. Speaker, I tell the majority that I am not very enthusiastic is because they asked: Do we also do this for businesses? Do we also do it for the estate tax? Do we also do it for the wealthy? The answer to that question is no. Only the middle-income worker has their tax cut reduced over the next 5 years, but not so with business, not so with the wealthiest taxpayers in America, and not so, obviously, with the estate tax. So that, I can tell the gentleman, is why I am not nearly as enthusiastic about it as some others would be. We limit State and local tax deductions, which the middle class takes. We limit the mortgage interest deduction used by homeowners. We eliminate the student loan deduction and we eliminate the medical expense deduction. So if you have a major medical expense, you are going to lose under this bill. It eliminates the deduction for moving expenses if your employer wants you to go more than 50 miles from your home. It eliminates the deduction for the adoption tax credit. That could be a credit of $13,570 per eligible child that you will lose. It eliminates the deduction for teachers that helps them purchase pencils, papers, rulers, and other materials for students. It eliminates the deduction for dependent care assistance--a substantial challenge for many of our families in America. It eliminate personal exemptions, which Americans can currently deduct for themselves, a spouse and dependents that grows to the size of the family. If you have a large family, you lose under this bill. If you have one child, the majority leader may be right. When you get to two children, three children, and four children with no deductions, you are going to lose under this bill. That is why I am not very enthusiastic about it. I tell this leader, Mr. Speaker, perhaps the changes will make me more enthusiastic. Perhaps there will be a recognition that this is not the bill that is going to do what it is purported to do. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his remarks. Mr. Speaker, I heard almost word for word the majority party intone that vision and prediction when we passed the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts-- almost word for word. That economic policy stayed in place until 2009. Why? Because the Republicans controlled the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. And what did it bring us? An almost Hoover-like depression. Not quite, because when we came into office, we invested in bringing back a declining economy. Mr. Speaker, the majority leader didn't respond when I said the growth of jobs was better in 2016, under Barack Obama, than it has been under Donald Trump. We are going to have an opportunity to debate this bill, but I will tell my friend, when he says this is the process, the process is going to be that the chairman of the committee will come in with a major amendment to this bill that none of us on this side will have seen, and the bill will be brought to the floor next week. My friend, the majority leader--and I want to say something: he is my friend, and we do cooperate on a positive fashion--and I disagree strongly on this issue. I am against the creation of debt. He mentions the budget. Okay. That is a fair point. But I have been pretty consistent throughout my career to join with the Peterson Foundation that says we have got to get a handle on this debt. We have a growing economy and 4.4 percent unemployment. The stock market is going up. So what do we have here? An extraordinary stimulus bill with $1.5 trillion, $1.6 trillion, $1.7 trillion, $1.8 trillion of debt, presumably, as the majority leader admits, to stimulate the economy. Very frankly, if Democrats were doing this, we would be savaged by the other side. We will debate this, and we will look forward to seeing how the bill is going to be when it comes to the floor. Hopefully, we might get the manager's amendment, or, better said, the chairman's amendment, prior to its coming to the floor. I would hope we would have, at least, maybe even 48 or 24 hours' notice of what that amendment is going to look like so that not only we, but the American people, who will have no opportunity to come in and give their opinions or testify, at least they will know what we are voting on. We will try to make sure they know. One other issue I would like to speak about, Mr. Speaker, before we end, and that is the request that the President of the United States made to us. He talked about the order issued by President Obama dealing with childhood arrivals who came here as minors, not on their own volition, called DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. There were a number of Republicans who had a press conference today, and they said we ought to pass that bill before the end of this year. I urge the majority leader to pass this bill by the end of next week, before the Thanksgiving break. This, Mr. Speaker, I believe is an issue on which, as Mr. Barton said, who is one of the senior Members on the Republican side of the aisle, if it is brought to the floor, it would have over 300 votes. Representative Barton said that, not me. I said that last week. I am glad that Mr. Barton agrees with me. We need to take care of this issue at the request of the President of the United States, who said: I love these kids. He didn't follow that with: I am not going to send them out of the country. What he said was that they were not protected the proper way and asked the Congress to take care of this. I have urged the majority leader, Mr. Speaker, for the last 2 months, to bring this to the floor. I know that a task force has been appointed. I don't know that the task force has reached a conclusion, but I would urge the majority leader and Speaker Ryan, who urged the President not to rescind the protection of these young people, urged him not to rescind President Obama's order. But when he did, the President said: I am going to do it because it wasn't done properly. It is the Congress' responsibility. Mr. Leader, I would urge you to bring to the floor the Dream Act, which is the manifestation of the response to that. There are other options as well. We understand that. But something ought to be brought to the floor so that these young people are not twisting in the wind through Thanksgiving and Christmas. This is the country they know. This is the country in which they have been brought up. When Rush Limbaugh says, ``We are not going to send these kids home,'' I can't believe that any of us on this floor are going to vote to send these young people home. We need legislation to pass to protect them and to give them the confidence. There is a wonderful editorial--I urge all of you to read it--from Bob Gates, our former Secretary of Defense under both Presidents Bush and Obama. He wrote an editorial about the thousands of, essentially, DACA children, young people, who have served in our Armed Forces valiantly. As a matter of fact, he said the attrition rate is a lot less with DACA-protected individuals than it is with others. Bob Gates is right. We ought to act. President Trump, in this instance, is right. It is our responsibility. We ought to act. Fred Upton said that today in the press conference. Joe Barton said that in the press conference. The gentleman from Washington State, who led the press conference, said that. Mr. Leader, this is an issue I think on which we agree. The tax bill is going to be an issue on which we are in contention. Let's give the American people another example, as we have in the past, of a place where we can work together, get something constructive and positive done for our country and for these young people. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his remarks. I will say on this floor--the fact-checkers check me--millions and millions and millions of middle class taxpayers will get a tax increase under this bill. Check me. Millions of people. Why do I say that? The Joint Committee on Taxation tells me that. Other think groups tell me that from the conservative side of the ledger. So we will argue this bill, but I will repeat again that I have heard that argument over and over and over again. I heard it in 1981, and we exploded the debt. I heard it in 2001 and 2003, and we exploded the debt. We had the deepest recession anybody on this floor who is sitting here now has experienced. I hear it today. The reason the Peter G. Peterson Foundation is against this is because they believe exploding the debt by another $1.5 trillion will be an extraordinary detriment to our country. I want to say to every Member, Mr. Speaker, when you get up and say: I don't want to hurt my children, there may be people who get a tax cut under this bill, but I guarantee you the people who are getting a tax increase, in addition to the middle class I have just talked about, are the children. They are going to have to pay off this debt. We will not pay it off. When you speak on this floor and say it is an immoral act to put our children more deeply into debt, if you believe that, you will not be able to vote for this bill. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, he did not answer my question, however. Will people have an opportunity to testify on this bill? The answer is no. No American will have an opportunity to come to a hearing. In 1968, the gentleman from California, the majority leader, was not here. I was here. We had hearings over months, both sides of the aisle. Over 450 witnesses testified not on tax bills that may have been offered at some time in the future, including the Camp bill. When the Camp bill, Mr. Speaker, was reported--actually, it wasn't reported. When it was put on the table by Chairman Camp from Michigan, who is now retired, the Speaker's response was, when asked by the press, ``What are you going to do with that bill?'' he said, blah, blah, blah, blah. In other words, what he was saying was all talk. We are not going to do anything with that bill, and that bill never saw the light of day. It was paid for, Mr. Speaker. It was tough love. I didn't agree with everything in the Camp bill, but I congratulate Congressman Camp for having the courage to put a bill on the floor that was paid for, not creating $1.5 trillion in additional debt that our children will have to pay. They are not here to testify either. I don't want to really get into a debate on the specifics. We are going to have a lot of time to do that next week, and I intend to do it next week, but he talked about small businesses being reduced to 25 percent. They will be if they make over $500,000. That is why the NFIB is not for this bill, Mr. Speaker, talking about small business. They are the spokespersons for small businesses, and they are not for this bill. We will talk about the substance, but the process mirrors the process for the Affordable Care Act: no hearings, no witnesses, very, very little time for the public or the Congress to digest the substance of this bill dropped yesterday. It is going to be marked up on Monday. That is 96 hours to consider a bill well over 500 pages. Mr. Speaker, I asked about process. The reason I asked about process and regular order is because regular order provides for input from the people we serve, the public, about whether the bill is good, bad, or indifferent and how it will impact them. We are going to debate it here. We represent those people. But regular order is hearing from them before we act, not after we act. Yes, we are replicating the Affordable Care Act: put on the table, quickly passed, jammed through, sent to the Senate. And it didn't work, Mr. Speaker. I don't think this will work either. I was here in 1986, Mr. Speaker, when Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan, Bob Packwood, who was the Republican's chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and Dan Rostenkowski from Illinois, the Democratic chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, worked together with Jim Baker, the former Secretary of State but then Secretary of the Treasury, worked with us to come up with a bill that could be passed. And it was passed, Mr. Speaker, with overwhelming votes from both sides of the aisle. It was the last time we passed tax reform. Since then, we have just passed tax cuts. Under Ronald Reagan, we passed a tax cut in 1981. The deficit increased under Ronald Reagan 189 percent. Under George H.W. Bush, the deficit increased 55 percent in 4 years, 189 percent in 8 years. Under Bill Clinton, the debt increased 36 percent; George Bush, 87 percent after the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, and we were promised that they were going to energize the economy and dynamic scoring would come into effect and the country would be rolling in clover. Seven years later, we had the deepest recession anybody serving in this body has experienced, Mr. Speaker, and the debt exploded. Barack Obama, just by contrast, inherited the worst economy any of us has seen--the worst economy--hemorrhaging 787,000 jobs per month in January of 2009. We had to bring the economy out of that deep recession, and we invested dollars. But even given all that necessity and the $700 billion bill that we passed, that George Bush passed, where two-thirds of Republicans were opposed and which kept us out of a depression, Barack Obama increased the debt by 1 percentage point more than George Bush. I say to my friend, the reason for having hearings, the reason for having economic experts like Mr. Bartlett, who worked for Ronald Reagan, who said that tax cuts do not pay for themselves. They say $1.5 trillion. I guarantee you, Mr. Speaker--I may not be here when we can find this out--this is going to be far above $1.5 trillion in additional debt, and my children and my grandchildren and my great- grandchildren will be exposed to paying that bill. It is a shame, Mr. Speaker, that we do not have extensive hearings on this bill in the House and in the Senate. My judgment is the Senate doesn't expect to have hearings on this either. They are just going to try to jam it through, Mr. Speaker, and that is not good. That is not good for this institution. Much, much more importantly, it is not good for the present generation or generations to come. We will debate, Mr. Leader. I know you are passionate about the substance. You are very knowledgeable about the substance. We talked about it in private, and I admire the passion that you have and the information that you argue. I may differ with your information, but we will have the opportunity to debate that, I think, next week and the week after. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, you noticed that he didn't talk about any of the statistics I mentioned about job creation under Barack Obama. He didn't talk about the 62 million jobs that were created in 32 years, as opposed to the 35 million jobs, just half of what we did in less than 4 years than they had as President of the United States. And what he didn't talk about was--he said: You know, we Republicans were in charge of the Congress the last 6 years of the Clinton administration. That is right. And what Bill Clinton said: Let's save Social Security first. Let's not cut out revenues that we need to invest in the education and the growth of our economy. They weren't for that, but they couldn't do anything about it. Then, guess what happened. They took the Presidency. They had the House and they had the Senate. Why couldn't you do what was done under Bill Clinton then, when you controlled everything, I ask my Republican friends, Mr. Speaker? Why couldn't you, when you controlled every organ of government, do what you say was done under the Clinton administration, because you were in the minority, very frankly, or you were in the majority and controlled things? Why couldn't you do it when you controlled everything? Why did you leave us with 4.8 million hemorrhaging jobs as you came out of office, and your economic program was still in place that you put in place in 2001 and 2003, and the deepest recession you and I have experienced in our life times? And I am older than you are. You didn't answer that. You continue to talk about what is going to happen. I tell the story about the guy who comes in and he wants to be the left fielder for the Nats, and he says: You know, I am going to hit 350 next year. I said: But you hit 260 last year. He says: Well, yeah, I know, but this year I am going to hit 350. And the other guy comes in and says: I would like the same job. I hit 325 this year and I hit 324 last year. Who do you think you hire? The whole point is, Mr. Leader--I say to the Speaker--is that performance counts, not just talk, not just promises. Because I will tell you, Mr. Leader, I have been here a long time and I heard the same language in 1981 from David Stockman. He now says it was baloney. I heard the same talk in 2001 and 2003. It didn't work out so well. So, Mr. Speaker, I am going to go on to another subject because we need to go to another subject, but we need to have this debate because it is critical for my children, my grandchildren, and my great- grandchildren, and for generations to come as to whether this country is, like we did it under Clinton, on a fiscally sustainable path where we are balancing budgets, or whether we are going to go back to the deep deficits. He didn't respond, 189 percent increase in the debt under Ronald Reagan. One person in America, Mr. Speaker, can stop spending: the President. He can veto spending bills. In my 37 years, we have never had a veto overridden of a President who vetoed a bill because we spent too much money; not once in the 37 years I have been here, Mr. Speaker. But I want to go on to another subject that ought to be less controversial because I think the majority of Republicans and I think, unanimously, the Democrats want to see us do what the President, apparently, has asked us to do. And that is, protect the DACA students, the DACA doctors, the DACA teachers. We have a Dream Act that has been filed. Every Democrat supports it. We want that to come to the floor in this transparent, open process, and I have talked to the majority leader about it. The President, contrary to Speaker Ryan's advice, rescinded the protections for the childhood arrivals who arrived here through no fault of their own. He said to the Congress, it needs to be done in legislation. He didn't say it needs to be done in legislation with a lot of other things. And the Speaker has said we are going to take one issue at a time. I won't bring out that quote, but the majority leader has heard me use it before. So I urge the majority leader because I believe he does not want to send these mostly young people who don't know any other country but America, who see themselves as Americans, who have been educated in our schools, serving in our communities, positive participants in growing America like so many immigrants before them, a nation of immigrants. Send me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses. We should have the DACA bill on the floor before we leave for this Thanksgiving. Mr. Leader, I said this with respect to the Export-Import Bank, that a majority of your party would vote for that if it came to the floor. We got it to the floor and, as I predicted, a majority of your Members voted for it. I believe that very close to, if not all, a majority of your party will vote for this, and the overwhelming numbers in this House will vote for that bill. I would urge my friend to bring it to the floor before we leave for the Thanksgiving break on the 16th of November. I would urge that because we are going to have some very messy 8 days after Thanksgiving, with great workload on our desks; not the least of which is how to deal with the sequester, how to deal with funding government for the balance of the year, what to do with flood insurance, and so many other issues; not to mention our supplemental that we need to do with respect to Houston and Florida and Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. So I urge my friend to work with us to bring the Dream Act to the floor, or bring your alternative to the floor. But let us not leave these people, who the President says he loves, who are positive Americans in everything but paper, who have been here almost all of their lives. Some came at 2 or 3 years of age and know no other country. Let's bring a bill to the floor that we can end before we go on the Thanksgiving break, in a united way--we are going to be divided on the tax bill. We understand that--but in a united way on this, where even Rush Limbaugh says we are not going to send these kids home. I would hope that you could do that, Mr. Leader. I believe you have it in your heart to do it, and I would hope that we could do it. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, we are going to debate the substance of the bill; we are going to debate it fully. We think it will not hold up well under that debate. Therefore, we will have a significant difference. He is right. The best economy anybody in this House has experienced-- the best economy--was the last 4 years of the Clinton administration, period. Guess what we had? We had a little bit of a tax increase. We increased the gasoline tax, and we tried to pay to for infrastructure. We haven't increased it since then. The Republicans said: You do that, oh, the economy is going to go down the drain. The best economy any Republican has experienced in their lifetime is under Bill Clinton. We balanced the budget 4 years in a row under Bill Clinton, the only President you can mention that balanced. It never balanced under Ronald Reagan. It never balanced under George H.W. Bush. It never balanced under George Bush. As a matter of fact, as soon as they took office, they made sure we wouldn't have further balances because they cut taxes in 2001 and 2003, but they didn't cut spending. He talks about President Obama. I know the majority leader will be interested in these statistics. I didn't count January of 2017 because, after all, that was the Obama economy. Trump had not done anything on the economy, but let's start with February 2017. Under Donald Trump, 232,000 jobs were created. That is great. That is good. I would say that the Obama economy is still working. Same exact month a year earlier, not 232, but 237,000 jobs were created under Barack Obama. March 2017, 50,000 under Trump. March 2016, 225,000 jobs created under Barack Obama. April 2017, 207,000 jobs. Barack Obama was a little down that month, 153,000 jobs. 145,000 under Trump, 43,000. Then June of 2017, 210,000 under Donald Trump, 297,000 jobs under Barack Obama. July of 2017, we are getting more recent. Under Trump--now he has been in office a little longer--138,000. What was it under Barack Obama? 291,000 jobs--double. August of this year, just a few months ago, 169,000 under Donald Trump; 176,000. Last month we had hurricanes. I will give the majority leader that. We lost 33,000 jobs. Under Barack Obama, same month a year ago, 249,000 jobs created. As a matter of fact, under Barack Obama, we created 11,773,000 jobs. Under George Bush, 2 million--excuse me--lost under George Bush, private sector jobs, a loss, after the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, lost 1,159,000 jobs. The last 12 months of the George Bush administration, 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, we couldn't change economic policy. We were in charge for the last 2 years, couldn't change it, lost 4,568,000 jobs. Now, as a matter of fact, I have done a little thing for 68 years. Over 68 years, we had 36 years of Republican Presidents and 32 years of Democratic Presidents. Under Republican Presidents, from Truman to Obama, there were 35,448,000 jobs created, Mr. Leader. Under Democrats, in 32 years, 62,669,000 jobs. Now, I would like to go on to another subject, as we could go on debating this all day, but I will yield to my friend.