Richard Neal

Mr. NEAL

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. DelBene), who is very successful.

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell), the very quotable Congressman.

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I certainly am.

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer), a very capable member of the committee, and a champion of renewable energy.

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

Mr. NEAL. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. So, in 1 month, we have taken the entire revenue system of the country without one public hearing, without any witness testimony, without the solicitation of one expert. ``We,'' meaning the Republican majority. They have decided to go forward with this reckless plan. Contrast this with Reagan and O'Neill and Rostenkowski and Packwood in 1986. When Gephardt and Bradley first offered their bill in 1982 on tax reform, 4 years ensued before the measure came to the floor for passage, and, in that time, 450 witnesses offered testimony. Every expert from every nook and cranny in America was invited to offer their vision of what a better tax system might look like. And those individuals--and I knew them all because I went to the committee when Mr. Rostenkowski was the chairman--saw that as the fabled achievement of their time in a bipartisan manner. Do you know what else? Secretary Reagan and Chief of Staff Jim Baker sat through the markups on that tax reform measure. Now, Secretary Mnuchin, instead, has said, nobody at the top will get a tax cut. And then they cut the rate from 39.6 at the top to 37. Well, nobody at the top will get a tax cut. We are going to double the exemption on this estate tax so that you might now keep $22 million rather than $11 million, without any formalization of taxation. My friend, Mr. Brady--and he is my friend--he spoke before about the people's money. Well, you know what the people's responsibility is? A million new veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. That is the people's responsibility. When we talk about responsibility and the people's money, Medicare is the people's responsibility. Social Security is the people's responsibility. As we celebrate the extension of life expectancy in America, Medicaid today now cares for people with dementia and Alzheimer's disease. That is the people's responsibility. They have carefully taken theology and wed it to science fiction. Remember what we heard around here all these years? Don't worry, tax cuts pay for themselves. That was the offering in 2001, $1.3 trillion worth of tax cuts. Well, we get to 2003, another $1 trillion worth of tax cuts. By the way, there was time in between for a repatriation holiday, at 5\1/4\, all advertised on the basis of job creation, and layoffs ensued almost the next day. This money is going to be used for stock buybacks and dividends. There will be little investment in this lost opportunity where we should have invested in community colleges and vocational education and apprenticeship programs. Six million jobs in America go unanswered every single day because of a skills alignment problem and also the horror of what opiate addiction has done across the United States. It has sidelined 2 million people. What they are telling us today is the following: We have got tax simplification. What happened to the postcard? As I said earlier, we are going to have to carry around a billboard for tax simplification to figure out what is in it. They keep talking about phase-ins and phaseouts. I am telling you, we will all be passed out by the time they get done with this. This is more complexity. And wait until people have a chance over the next few weeks to sort through what is in this bill. But here is something you might give some thought to: the bottom quintile, you are going to get $60 a year. The second quintile, you are going to get $380 a year. The top 1 percent, they are going to get $51,000 a year. The top 0.1 percent, they are going to get $193,000 a year, all in the name of middle class tax relief. As we proceed to the holiday, they are telling us this is their Christmas present. And you know what they are doing with it? It is going to be Christmas hangover debt, and they are putting it on the credit card and adding $2.3 trillion to the Federal debt. Merry Christmas. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind), a very capable member of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman.

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn), the assistant Democratic leader.

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the Democratic leader.

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Velazquez), who will tell us about the great harm that this does to New York and to the island of Puerto Rico.

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett), a valued member of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Judy Chu), the former revenue commissioner of the State of California, who is going to tell us about the State and local tax deduction ending.

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Larson), the former president of the State Senate and a well-informed member of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I would like to inquire as to how much time is remaining.

Mr. NEAL

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, might I inquire as to how much time I have remaining?

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, we have heard this discussion back and forth tonight about tax relief for the middle class; and we have heard the other side say that you are going to get $1,189 for a family of four, I think, making $59,000 a year. But what they don't say is that they are going to take away the State and local tax deduction; they are going to take away the ability of children to deduct interest payments on student debt; that they are going to shave back the mortgage interest deduction; get rid of the historic tax credit; that they are going to get rid of new markets tax credits. And here is the best one of all: as champions of the middle class they are, they are going to repeal the estate tax. The gentleman from Pennsylvania, who is my friend, said that we need to stop talking about wealth. Well, how about approaching it this way? We are wealthy and we are not going to take it anymore, because that is essentially what this argument is about. When you look at the distribution tables as to who gets what in this tax proposal, the concentration of wealth at the very top is highlighted time and again. When we talk about tax relief for the middle class, when we examine what this is about to do to California, to New York, to Massachusetts, and to Connecticut, to name, but a few of the States that are going to pay a penalty for this tax plan-- And I dispute fully what the chairman said about the Obama years. Fourteen million jobs were created during the Obama years. Twenty-three million jobs were created during the Clinton years. The day that George Bush left, we were losing 800,000 jobs a month in America. That is the reality. When you look at economic growth during those years, the 2 percent that we look at was not enough. But it has now been almost 13 years when middle class people have not had a pay raise and, time and again, we have heard the preposterous argument--and, boy, did it get us into trouble--that tax cuts pay for themselves. You cannot find a mainstream economist that will say that tax cuts pay for themselves. Now you hear the repeated argument that, if we cut taxes and we add dynamic scoring, based upon what might occur, or maybe, or if, then we are told that this is going to alleviate slow productivity and slow growth in America, all based upon the premise of tax cuts. You know what we should be doing tonight, Mr. Speaker? We should be talking about investing in human capital. We should be talking about the 6 million jobs that go unanswered in America every single day. We should be talking about community colleges. We should be talking about the idea of apprenticeship programs and, yes, investing in vocational education. We should be also talking about, finally, what to do about the 2 million people in America who have opiate addictions and don't go to work every day. We should be concerned about the labor participation rate in America. Instead, the answer always becomes the Holy Grail of Republican economics; cut taxes for the people at the very top, and plead the case that what you are really doing is for people in the middle class. The alternative minimum tax is devoted to people at the top, and the idea of repealing the estate tax for so few people in America is outrageous. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, apparently the gentleman forgets the difference between the Clinton years and the Bush years, as it relates to the deficits. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi).

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Judy Chu), who is the former revenue commissioner of California and who knows something about revenue projections.

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn), who is the assistant Democratic leader. In reference to my friend, Mr. Kelly, Mr. Clyburn is a real champion of the middle class.

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), one of the best legislators in the House, the Democratic whip.

Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Higgins), who is a valued member of the Ways and Means Committee.