Ron Wyden

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. I would like to yield 5 minutes of my time to the Senator from Ohio, Mr. Brown.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my motions to commit be printed in the Record.

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, with this amendment, Senators Rubio and Lee stopped far short of meaningful relief for millions of vulnerable American families and leave out altogether so many deserving children like the Dreamers. After 2025, Rubio-Lee offers a double standard. Their child tax credit expires, even while multinational corporations get permanent tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas. Democrats want to provide strong, permanent protection for all working families, rather than temporary protection for some like Rubio-Lee. The best way to protect these families is not through a puny bandaid approach but through permanent help that America's struggling families richly deserve. Madam President, I make a point of order that the pending amendment violates section 302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, Senator Cruz's amendment expands tax subsidies for upper income households to aid private or parochial schools by allowing 529 account balances to spend up to $10,000 a year on private or parochial school tuition and supplies. Colleagues, this is nothing less than a backdoor assault on the public K-12 education system. The real goal seems to be to take more and more children from the public schools and put them into private schools and shrink the funds that would be available to the public schools that give all of America's children the chance to get ahead. Members should oppose the amendment because it undermines America's public education system. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, millions of Americans must be watching in stunned disbelief tonight as the Republican Senate betrays the middle class for the benefit of faceless, multinational corporations. Colleagues, how many middle-class families need to see their hard- earned pay snatched away in tax hikes before these corporate handouts are no longer worth it? How many more Americans need to see their jobs shipped overseas before corporate paymasters no longer call the shots? How many Americans need to lose their healthcare or see their premiums shoot sky-high before this is stopped? What is happening tonight is the worst of the U.S. Senate. There is a trail of broken promises--broken promises to working families in the mad dash to pass this bill. The American people understand this is the first step of continuing attacks on Medicare, on Medicaid, and on Social Security. This vote will not be forgotten. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I would like to respond briefly to the majority leader, who touted what he claimed would be great benefits coming from the Republican tax reform bill. Colleagues--and I say to the public that is following this--this isn't tax reform at all. What this is, is a grab bag full of special interest goodies for multinational corporations, powerful political supporters, and lots of people who are in the position to have vast amounts of influence to sway the Tax Code their way. The fact is that the independent tax umpire, which is called the Joint Committee on Taxation, has just told us that 37 million middle- class families are going to pay more in taxes in 2027. Those are the consequences of the Republican bill that writes into black letter law a double standard--permanent breaks for the multinational corporations and, of course, temporary breaks for the working class. I believe we will have more to say today on analyses that are being done by the Joint Committee on Taxation, but already we have seen a variety of reports indicating that this proposal is going to produce negligible growth and big deficits. That is why Republicans are talking about how they would like to have some kind of trigger to deal with this proposal. Well, what has been in the bill is the Republicans' wildest dream, which says a lot about their priorities. If their wildest dreams about magical growth come true and this bill causes Federal revenue to skyrocket, multinational corporations would get yet another automatic tax cut. They already go from 35 to 20. By the way, when we had our bipartisan bill, Senators Coats and Gregg didn't insist on going to 20 or spending hundreds of billions of dollars more that could go to the middle class, beyond what the bipartisan bill called for. Then, on top of that, the trigger says that if the Republicans get their magical unicorn mathematics about growth--if the growth fairy arrives--multinational corporations will get yet another tax cut. I would like to respond briefly to what the Republican leader said, because this does not resemble the kind of tax reform Ronald Reagan and Democrats wanted. I will close just by way of saying that it did not have to be this way. Seventeen Democrats, led by Senators Manchin, Kaine, Donnelly, Heitkamp, McCaskill--a big group, with a tremendous outpouring of good faith, said: We would like to have a bipartisan bill. They asked me to come because I have written a bipartisan bill. I want to show the contrast between what Ronald Reagan did in 1986 with Democrats and what has happened, unfortunately, here. In 1986, Bill Bradley--someone I have talked about a bit on the floor, a Democrat who served on the Finance Committee, committed to good government, to growth and innovation--flew all over the United States to work out with Republicans the various provisions of tax law that would make the bill bipartisan. So in 1986, Democrats flew around the country to meet with Republicans to get bipartisan reform. This year, Republicans have not been willing to walk down the corridor to discuss specific provisions about how we can move forward on a bipartisan tax reform bill. That is why our moderates are so concerned that we are missing a great opportunity. The multinationals are awash in cash. By the way, look at the first letter from the Joint Committee on Taxation. We could be looking at interest rates that will make it hard for people to buy a house or buy a car because of what this bill produces. This bill is not tax reform. It is a grab bag of goodies for special interests. It embeds into the tax law a double standard with breaks for the multinationals and vanishing benefits for the middle class--and, most importantly, it didn't have to be, and it still doesn't have to be. There is another alternative. That is what 17 moderate Democrats expressed, and I was proud to join them. We will have more debate on this over the course of the morning. But since the leader did talk about how this was sort of a textbook case of what tax reform ought to look like, I wanted to make sure that we started this morning by injecting a little bit of reality with respect to what is actually on offer. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, just to respond briefly to the chairman, the chairman, I think, said about eight times that what really ought to be the focus here is working together. I so share that view. As we start voting today, I would just like for the public to understand that this side was never given the chance on this tax bill to work together--never once. The majority leader announced, right at the outset, that the most partisan process would be used. It is called reconciliation. It means that it is our way or the highway, that we have the votes, and that is the end of it. I appreciate what the chairman has said about emphasizing our working together, but that was taken off the table by the majority leader when we started, when it was declared that we would use the reconciliation process. There are other areas that I will just touch on. The chairman made mention of the fact that everyone over here is for socialized medicine. Right now, what we are trying to do is to ensure that we don't have upheaval in the private insurance marketplace because of the majority's effort to unravel the Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Act is not socialism. It focuses on private sector choices through the exchange. What the challenge is going to be is, if you further hammer this effort to increase choices in the private sector marketplace, you are just going to cause more problems for our people and make it more difficult for us to hold down the costs of medicine. I will close this section of the discussion simply by clarifying again this point about the middle class, because Senator Brown was right with respect to the number of families who are going to get hammered under the Republican bill, but when the Republicans said that is a partisan group, the figures Senator Brown talked about are supported by nonpartisan organizations as well. The Joint Committee on Taxation, which is composed of the people who are our independent tax referees, has indicated that by 2027, more than 50 percent of middle-class persons are going to see a tax hike. That is not a Democratic group; that is not a Republican group. That is an independent group. I think that this has been instructive this morning. I am one who has dedicated my time in public service to trying to find common ground. I see Senator Cornyn and Senator Toomey, both of whom I have talked with about bipartisan tax reform--and, again, the chairman, whom I very much enjoy working with. Yet this tax bill has really been an anomaly; it has been so different from everything else. It is important that the public knows that when there was discussion about working together, the majority leader took that prospect off the table. It was ruled out--not going to happen. This was going to be a partisan bill. This would be just the opposite of what Democrats and Ronald Reagan would have wanted. That is why 17 moderate Democrats, earlier this week, made one more plea, as we will continue through the day to talk about, that if you want to do tax reform right, it has to be bipartisan in order to bring certainty and predictability to the private sector. It is not about socialism. It is about certainty and predictability for private sector growth. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I first want to respond to the Senator from Texas, and then I am going to pose a question to the Senator from Ohio. The Senator from Texas talked about how everybody on this side was obstructing bipartisan tax reform. I am a little puzzled by that, having written the only two bipartisan tax reform bills that have been before the Senate. Maybe the Senator from Texas will bring his bipartisan tax reform bills over and we could look at them at some point. One of the keys to that bipartisan proposal--and it relates to the point made by the Senator from Pennsylvania--was our cosponsor, Senator Gregg. Our former colleague, who is very knowledgeable about economics, said that what he wanted to do was to make it more attractive to do business in the United States. The heart of that bipartisan bill was to make it more attractive for small businesses and businesses of all sizes to create red, white, and blue jobs. This bill does just the opposite. It makes it more attractive to do business overseas. It is not what the bipartisan bill was all about. It is not what our former colleague, Senator Gregg, signed onto when he went onto our bipartisan bill. I think I would like now to pose a question to my colleague, a valuable member of the Finance Committee, about why the patriot corporation legislation is so important. I think my colleague believes that it is so important--as I did with Senator Gregg, the Republican from New Hampshire--that we ought to make it more attractive to have red, white, and blue jobs. Is that really what my colleague is working on here?

Mr. WYDEN. I very much appreciate what you and Senator Durbin are seeking to do because not only have you tried to generate bipartisan support for it--I was there at the White House when you handed it to the President. That was what the moderate Democrats tried to do again a couple of days ago, to say: Look, we want to show enormous good faith behind the cause of bipartisanship. I sure wish the Republican leader, Senator Cornyn, had stayed on the floor because he was attacking Democrats for obstructing the cause of bipartisan tax reform. He knows full well that I have written two bills. By the way, Republicans said, as part of that bill--unlike this one-- that they want everybody in America to get ahead, not just the folks at the top. The senior Republican, Senator Gregg from New Hampshire, Republican chairman of the Budget Committee, made the agreement with me to make it attractive to create red, white, and blue jobs, not to make it more attractive to ship jobs overseas. So I want to give my colleague the last word with respect to the importance of this, but people ought to understand, A, Democrats have been showing for months--for months--how strongly we feel about doing this in a bipartisan way; B, my colleague on this particular issue, patriot corporations, handed this proposal to the President asking for bipartisanship, and we have had a bipartisan proposal for years. Senator Cornyn has never had a bipartisan tax reform proposal. I would like to let my colleague finish up.

Mr. WYDEN. Will my colleague yield?

Mr. WYDEN. I think my colleague is making an extremely important point. I think what is important in his projection is that we have seen this movie before. Isn't this what happened in the Bush tax cuts and so many of these other projections? They get the sugar high by running the big deficits up by the breaks to the multinationals and the donors and the like. Then, they don't get the jobs. Then, they get these big deficits. I think what the Senator is talking about is that, then, they come back and go after the hunger programs, Medicaid, and Social Security. Is that what my colleague is talking about?

Mr. WYDEN. We can see if we can work this out. Senator Thune has been very gracious. Would it cause great consternation over there to give Senator Sanders 3 minutes, myself 5 minutes, and then go right to Senator Thune?

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I brought with me to the floor a copy of the just-released analysis by the Joint Committee on Taxation. These folks are the independent tax referees for the Congress. I pushed very hard for several weeks in order to get this dynamic score for the Republican tax bill because, as the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, I have heard my colleague say week after week that all we need to do is to get the dynamic score, and people will see the value of our bill. So we got the score. The score ends the fantasy about magical growth, about unicorns and growth fairies, suddenly showing that tax cuts pay for themselves. In fact, this report showed that this bill would lose more than $1 trillion even with the dynamic score. It slows the growth of the American economy after 2025. It is the total opposite of what was promised. Even with the dynamic score, what we are seeing is that the sponsors of this bill are spending $1 trillion and not helping those who need the help. The numbers are now in. This is the hard evidence that this bill basically isn't much more than a holiday bonanza for multinational corporations and powerful interests. I have heard a number of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle already criticizing the analysis by the Joint Committee on Taxation. I am sure they are unhappy because this certainly unravels all of their projections, and they continue, despite the fact that the hard evidence is in. They are still saying that their tax plan is going to produce a magical unicorn and rainbow fantasy of economic growth. The facts are now in. The Republican plan loses $1 trillion. This Republican plan slows economic growth. The growth fantasy is over. It is over--

Mr. WYDEN. As soon as I have a chance to finish my statement.

Mr. WYDEN. I am happy to extend the courtesy that sometimes I don't get from the Senator, but I am happy to do it. The growth fantasy is over with this projection. I am happy to yield to my colleague.

Mr. WYDEN. What I would say is this. Sure, there is what amounts to negligible growth, but this slows the growth of our economy after 2025. That is not what we were promised. In fact, let me just recap a little bit the Republican promise. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said this bill would generate so much growth that it would take care of the $1.5 trillion and generate $1 trillion on top of it. What a difference between Steve Mnuchin's projection of $2.5 trillion and the number that I have on this sheet from the Joint Committee on Taxation--$407 billion worth of revenue. I appreciate my colleague asking that. It helps us to clear up a little bit more of what is at issue. I appreciate Senator Thune being so gracious and giving me the extra time. Mr. President, I have a UC request, if I could. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Franken, myself, and Senator Nelson be added as cosponsors to amendment No. 1720.

Mr. WYDEN. I want to thank the Senator from South Dakota for indulging me.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, before he leaves the floor, I would like to thank Senator Cardin for his leadership on so many finance issues and especially for highlighting today, as part of this major debate on tax reform, the importance of infrastructure. The fact is, you cannot have big-league quality of life with little-league infrastructure. My colleague has made the point that repatriation would be a natural as one of the two bookends for infrastructure. It would ensure that we would have some funds we could count on, some publicly available funds, and I think it would be a natural fit with the kind of bonding that Senator Hoeven and I and others have been interested in. I am here to talk on another subject, but before he leaves, I would like to thank my colleague for his comments. Mr. President and colleagues, it is fair to say that it is throwback Thursday here in the Senate. It is also a big day for the Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin--not only because we are dealing with taxes, not only because there is another glamorous photo shoot with a big sheet of dollar bills, but this is also the 1-year anniversary of what has come to be known as the Mnuchin rule. It was November 30, 2016, when news broke that Mr. Mnuchin was the likely nominee to head the Department of Treasury, and that morning, the Secretary-to-be went on TV and delivered what sounded like a very sweet promise. Here is what he said about the Trump administration's ideas for the issue we talk about tonight, tax reform. I am going to quote Steve Mnuchin directly. He said: ``Any reduction we have in upper-income taxes will be offset by less deductions so that there will be no absolute tax cut for the upper class.'' In case anybody missed that last part of his statement, he said ``no absolute tax cut for the upper class.'' And he didn't stop there. He went even further in hyping big plans he had. He said: ``When we work with Congress and we go through this, it will be very clear: This is a middle-income tax cut.'' This is all part of the anniversary, to kind of refresh everybody's memory. After that pledge, I talked about this matter with Mr. Mnuchin during the Senate Finance Committee. He smiled. He was thrilled that I was recalling the pledge he made. When I brought it up, I said: Well, we could just call this the Mnuchin rule. Mr. Mnuchin, at that time, thanked me, and he said: There would be great esteem in having the Mnuchin rule with both the Buffett rule and the Volcker rule. He said: I take that as a great compliment. So here we are a year later, and what a difference a year has made. The Mnuchin rule is now a broken promise for the history books. This week, Republicans scramble to pass a tax plan that reaches into the pockets of working people in the middle class and showers trillions of dollars in handouts to multinational corporations, high-flyers, and the politically connected. I think it is also important to remember that the Mnuchin rule was just one part of the sales pitch. Now there is a whole lot more to the con job. Republicans have said time and again that the tax cuts would pay for themselves. Time and time again, we heard about the unicorns. We heard about the growth fairy. The magical growth will be so powerful that new revenue is going to come pouring in, and the tax cuts are going to be fully paid for. In addition to that, I think it is important to recognize this on the special anniversary. The Secretary went even further. He said that the tax cuts wouldn't just pay for their $1.4 trillion cost, they would bring in, on top of the $1.4 trillion, an additional $1 trillion. Well, today--after pushing and making sure that we could get it before we actually had the key final votes--we were pleased to receive from the independent referee on taxation, the Joint Committee on Taxation, the official dynamic scoring analysis that they did of the Republicans' plan. Let's be clear, folks. Now that we have heard from the independent tax umpires, we can say officially that the magical growth fantasy is over. I say that also in the context of bipartisanship, because in the course of writing the two bipartisan bills that I authored--first with Senator Gregg, second with Senator Coats--I said that I happen to believe that behavior matters. I believe a good, bipartisan tax reform bill will generate some revenue. And the Congressional Budget Office agreed with me. But it is not going to be fantasy land-type growth. The reality is, after Mr. Mnuchin said that what was going to happen was that the Republican plan would pay for the $1.4 trillion cost and generate another $1 trillion on top of it, what we now know as a result of what I was sent today is that the Republican tax plan, even with dynamic growth factored in, actually loses more than $1 trillion. There is other bad news on top of that. The Republican tax plan, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, slows down economic growth after 2025. So you put the kibosh on two major selling points that we heard about month after month after month from Republicans in selling this plan. The tax cuts don't pay for themselves, and there is no new wave of growth headed our way. The party of Reagan is on a mad dash to run up the deficit by $1 trillion, slow down the economy, and raise taxes on more than half of the middle class. And the only analysis Republicans can get to back up their tax plan is either cooked up by the in-house staff at 1600 Pennsylvania or is based on revenue-neutral tax bills that don't even exist. By the way, there is more news a year into Mr. Mnuchin's work. The Secretary promised a comprehensive analysis from the Treasury Department that would prove his claims, prove that there would be more growth, more jobs--red, white, and blue opportunities--for our people; that the tax cuts would pay for themselves or, as he said, would generate much more revenue than that. The Secretary of Treasury promised us that. He promised us that repeatedly, that we would get that analysis of what this bill would do for growth and jobs and improving the quality of life for our people. Let me tell you, that was another broken promise, yet one more in a chain of broken promises over the months and a particularly important one because the Treasury Secretary made some especially surprising projections, and, in effect, we asked him to back them up. He said he would, and now we know that not only is he not going to do it, apparently he had no intention to ever do it. Based on the news that broke this morning, as far as I can tell, Secretary Mnuchin never even asked his Department to do the comprehensive analysis of the bill that he promised. On top of that, his Treasury Department buried a recent paper that showed that the overwhelming beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts aren't workers, they are shareholders. They said it didn't agree with the Department's current thinking. Let me be clear. I think it sounds like another part of the coverup at the Treasury Department. Colleagues, a year ago, Secretary Mnuchin told the American people that there would be no absolute tax cut for the upper class. ``It will be very clear: This is a middle-income tax cut.'' Then he said that the tax cuts wouldn't just pay for themselves, that a trillion new dollars of Federal revenue would come pouring in. Not a single word of that has turned out to be true. The Mnuchin rule is the most expensive lie since George W. Bush stood on an aircraft carrier and said that the mission in Iraq was accomplished. And the idea that these tax cuts will pay for themselves isn't just a little off the mark, it is a trillion-dollar misfire. What we have here is a con job on the middle class, and Secretary Mnuchin and his allies have covered it up every single step of the way. My Democratic colleagues and I have said over and over again that we agree that the Tax Code is broken. We share our colleagues' view that there ought to be an opportunity for a bipartisan bill. And every single time I have spoken on this subject, I made it clear that it doesn't have to be this way. In the beginning of the week, I joined 17 moderate Democratic Senators. Senator Donnelly said it very well--I mean, really an outpouring of enthusiasm for taking a bipartisan approach to do tax reform right. A bipartisan approach is not just some kind of pie-in- the-sky happy-talk; bipartisanship is what gets you the certainty and the predictability you need to grow private sector jobs that are good- paying and are driven by innovation. And I know it can be done. I am glad to see that the Presiding Officer of the Senate here tonight is from the State of Indiana. One of the two bipartisan bills that I wrote was with one of his former colleagues, Senator Dan Coats, who is not just a very well-liked Member but is somebody who believes deeply in sensible economic policy. He was on the Finance Committee. We worked on this for a substantial amount of time. You know what. It is not easy to write a bipartisan tax reform bill. You have to have some give-and-take. Senator Bradley would fly all over the country to work with Republicans to try to find common ground. Right now, we can't get people to even walk down the corridor to help put together a proposal. It didn't have to be this way. We had opportunities for bipartisanship. It is something I feel very strongly about because I spent literally hundreds of hours with two very fine, very conservative Republican Senators in order to put together two actual bills--bills with bill numbers, bills that were proposed in the Senate. But what a difference between that approach and what we have seen from Secretary Mnuchin--not a single effort--not one--from Secretary Mnuchin to talk specifics about what it would take to get a bipartisan approach. Then we had, as I have noted tonight, these promises--promises of making sure the focus would be on the middle class, making sure it would generate additional revenue. It has been a trail of broken promises, when it could have been an opportunity to bring everybody together and to give everybody the opportunity to get ahead. Well, one of my very favorite phrases is from the late Israeli diplomat Abba Eban, who said: Americans always get it right. He paused and said: After they have tried everything else. Well, my hope is that Secretary Mnuchin will see the error of his ways, see why the policies I have described aren't right for the American people, see why it is important for the administration to change course and push for what Democrats here have called for, a bipartisan approach, which our moderates eloquently spoke to this week. We have bills that can help guide us. I hope, in the future, we can break with the kinds of policies I have had to describe on the 1-year anniversary of the Mnuchin rule and decide that we are going to change course, have a tax policy that focuses on the middle class, puts money in their pockets, gives everybody a chance to get ahead, and that the Secretary will recognize that his claims about what the Republican tax bill is all about are not borne out by the facts. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I call up a motion to commit at the desk on behalf of Senator Nelson.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, a number of Senators have been inquiring as to what will happen next with respect to the handling of the tax legislation. My sense is that, in a relatively short period of time, the Senate will be voting on the motion to proceed to this legislation. I just want to take a couple of minutes to talk about why I am going to oppose the motion to proceed. The fact is, right now, on a topic that will involve $10 trillion worth of tax policy changes--the biggest change in the Tax Code in 31 years when the U.S. Senate votes on the motion to proceed--we, essentially, will not know yet what the Senate will be debating. There are rumors; there are whispers, but the fact is, as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, which has authority over taxes, I haven't seen the text of the bill that we will actually be debating. The bill seems to have changed practically every half hour. It has certainly been a moveable feast for the super lobbyists, but there are a couple things we already do know. We know, for example, it is not going to give a fair shake to working families. What we have talked about again and again in the Senate is that the Senate leadership is committed to a double standard with respect to the American economy: temporary breaks for the middle class--they vanish in a few years--and permanent breaks for those at the top. We can do better than this. The middle class is responsible for 70 percent of the economic activity in our economy. They are the ones who buy the cars, who buy the houses. They send kids to childcare. Instead, many of them certainly fairly soon are going to be further in the hole than they already are. So this is a piece of legislation, both on the substance, from the standpoint of what my colleagues have been talking about in terms of the double standard--I mean, we already have in our economy essentially two tax systems, one for the cops, the nurses, autoworkers, and timber workers. Their tax system is compulsory. Their taxes come right out of their paycheck. There are no Cayman Island deals for them. The people at the top pay what they want when they want to. The reality is, what it looks like we are going to get--as I say, I don't have the details-- is going to make this work. So a number of Senators have asked, for example, about the passthrough provisions, important to small business. We don't have the details on that. We have Members who care about how we are actually going to not rack up hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of debt in the years ahead. Some Senators have suggested that there be triggers. I happen to think they are gimmicks in all of the approaches I have heard. They just don't seem to add up. We don't have the details on that. What we do know--and I know there are several other Senators who would like to speak--is, we have never had negotiations in the Senate Finance Committee over the specifics of this legislation or any other. We have never had a legislative hearing. When Ronald Reagan and Democrats got together in 1986, they had more than 20 of these hearings. I will just tell my colleagues in the Senate, Bill Bradley, the former Knick and basketball great who was on the Finance Committee--and I like to kid colleagues that he was another tall Democrat on the committee with a much better jump shot than I--he always would tell stories about how he would fly across the country to meet with Republicans to talk about the specifics of tax reform. Back then, Senators went to great lengths to talk to each other about the specifics of tax reform. In this instance, the majority hasn't been willing to even walk down the corridor of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to talk about the specifics of tax reform. The Senate is better than this. I was part of the bipartisan group yesterday, and Senator Donnelly, our colleague from Indiana, really set out what became an outpouring of good faith among something like 17 Senators who said we can find common ground here. I happen to know we can find common ground here because with two Senators, who happen to be very close to the distinguished majority leader, Mitch McConnell, I wrote two full bipartisan Federal income tax reform bills--my former colleagues, Senator Gregg and Senator Coats. We can do this. This is what the Senators said yesterday. We can find common ground. There is not a Senator here who doesn't agree that the Tax Code is a rotting economic carcass. It is a dysfunctional mess. Every single Senator understands it is broken. Since it has been 30 years since the last reform, there have been scores of changes to the Tax Code that really cause as much confusion as they do benefits. So I know we can do this. That is what Democratic Senators said yesterday. They said we want to work together in a group led by our colleagues Senator Manchin and Senator Kaine, who brought us together. So we are going to vote, and I think it is going to be soon, on a motion to proceed. I would just tell Senators, as of right now, we don't yet know what the Senate is going to be debating, and on those crucial issues I just mentioned, we still don't have any information. Yesterday, the Joint Committee on Taxation told me they hoped to have what the Republicans said was the essence of why their bill works: a dynamic score of the tax legislation. We haven't seen that either. I hope our colleagues will vote no on the motion to proceed because I don't think it is too much to say that as Senators, when we are talking about going to a bill that involves $10 trillion worth of tax policy changes in the Senate, we ought to know what the Senate will actually be debating. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I call up the motion that I have at the desk.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I listened to the remarks of my colleague, the distinguished Senator from Wyoming, and he said there were 70 hearings on taxes. I think it is important that the American people know that there was not one single hearing--not one--on this bill. There were no discussions of the specific provisions in this legislation. There was no hearing on the personal responsibility requirement in the Affordable Care Act, which is so essential to that law and to what we ought to be looking at strengthening in the years ahead with respect to cost containment. So I just want to set the record straight right at the outset of the debate. Since I have heard once again that there were 70 hearings, I think it is important that the American people know that there was not one on this bill. Contrast this to 1986, when Democrats and Republicans got together and there were more than 20 hearings--more than 20 discussions on specifics about how to work together and find common ground on this enormously important issue. The Senate is 20 hours of debate away from a broken promise of truly historic proportions. This was supposed to be the year that the working people of America regained a powerful voice in Washington. Instead of a strong voice, what they got was a big con job. If this Republican tax bill passes, Washington is going to reach into the pockets of working Americans and cut a big check to multinational corporations, to tax cheats, and to the politically powerful and well connected. The bill before the Senate would enshrine an economic double standard that makes permanent second-class treatment of Americans who work hard and do their best day in and day out to provide for their families. For the cops, for the nurses, for the mechanics, and for those who work retail, this Republican tax plan is a big gamble. They don't get any special tax dodges--no Cayman Islands deals for them. Those folks are stuck clinging to the hope that they will not be among the millions hit with an immediate tax hike. Even for those lucky Americans who do see some benefit, there is bad news coming down the pike. All they get out of this Republican plan is the fleeting sugar high of temporary tax cuts. That is not the case, though, for multinational corporations or powerful high fliers who wield big political power in this town. Under this tax plan, the basic message to them is this: You can pay what you want, when you want, and, if you are lucky--really lucky--you may pay hardly anything at all. That certainly is not what working people were promised in the fall 2016 campaign. That is not what Republicans have spent month after month telling Americans their tax plan would do. The Republican rhetoric doesn't match the reality of this tax plan, and every day we get frightening news reports about the harm it is going to do to working people and the middle class. Just yesterday, I received a letter from the independent congressional tax experts known as the Joint Committee on Taxation, and they gave us really important information about the bill. Buried in one of those answers was information that ought to put a scare into millions of Americans who work hard every day to get ahead. This bill showers trillions of dollars on multinational corporations, but the fact is, these multinational corporations are already awash in cash. What it means, according to these independent congressional tax experts, is that interest rates are going up. The Federal Reserve will have to tighten the screws of the economy. But here is the bottom line for what it means for a middle-class American in North Carolina, or Oregon, or anywhere else in the United States: If you want to buy a house, this bill is going to make it more expensive. If you want to buy a car, this bill is going to make it more expensive. If you want to get a credit card, this bill is going to make it more expensive. If you want to take out a student loan, this bill is going to make it more expensive. It is not just harm for typical families. The cost of doing business is going to rise for the brewery owner or the tool-and-die maker who wants to build a new facility or purchase new equipment. They would like to hire new workers, but they will find that the money they need to do it is getting drained by higher interest rates. In short, higher interest rates will wipe out the benefits of this bill for a lot of small businesses and add pain to the tax hikes that are going to hit millions of families. The only businesses and individuals who will not feel the effects I just described are those sitting on mountains of cash--those who will never need to borrow to get ahead. That is just one of the latest of truly frightening details about what this destructive bill would do. If there was any doubt remaining, it is clear based on those tax experts that individual working Americans and families are going to be on the hook for handouts to multinational corporations. Republicans have spent months shouting from the hilltops that they were bringing jobs back. The President made it a centerpiece of his campaign. Jobs are coming home, he said. Corporations that ship jobs overseas are going to be punished. The plight of so many mill and factory towns is over. It is too bad that those talking points from stump speeches and interviews never made it into the proposals on paper, because the tax plan that is actually before the Senate does the opposite. Under the new notion of taxes for American companies overseas called the territorial system, corporations will get a bigger tax cut if they lay off their American workers here in the United States, pack up, and move abroad. It creates colossal new loopholes, a true bonanza of new tax gifts for the tax cheats, for the people who have sophisticated help to cut corners. When it comes to international tax rules, my view is that the United States shouldn't get suckered into a race to the bottom with a bunch of no-tax, resort-lined islands to please the tax avoidance industry and their lobbyists. That is a truly expensive competition in terms of taxpayer dollars and jobs, but this Republican plan forces working Americans to pay up. The tax experts we rely on here in the Congress make it clear that the Republican corporate tax scheme loses revenue, but the individual tax changes raise revenue. That is a whole lot of tax lingo for saying that working people are going to get fleeced so that multinational corporations can pay a lot less. Here is how it is going to work. More and more Americans will face a tax hike with every passing year. Stealthy tax tricks will force people into higher tax brackets over time, heaping a heavier burden on their shoulders. Millions of working Americans are going to lose their healthcare and the tax credits that make insurance affordable for them and their family. Put all together, it is an immense amount of money being taken from people who are already walking an economic tightrope-- an economic tightrope in North Carolina and Oregon and everywhere else--where they balance food costs against the fuel bill and the fuel bill against the cost of housing. An immense amount of money is being taken from them and being handed to multinational corporations that ship jobs overseas. This is not a plan to create red, white, and blue jobs. This is not a plan to turn the lights back on in factories that went dark many years ago. This is a plan to sell out millions of Americans--American workers and their families--and the damage will get even worse when the deficit climbs into the stratosphere. As I begin to touch on the deficit, I want to note that it didn't have to be this way. I wrote two fully bipartisan Federal income tax reform bills with our colleagues. I believe they were here before the Senator from North Carolina joined us: Dan Coats, now the head of national intelligence, and Judd Gregg, the former Republican chair of the Budget Committee. The three of us--Senator Gregg first, then Senator Coats--made changes to ensure that American companies could be competitive for red, white, and blue jobs. We understood that you had to have a competitive rate to grow those companies. But we certainly didn't create new breaks for shipping jobs overseas, and--because I am going to touch on the deficit now--our proposal was revenue neutral. So it didn't have to be this way. That is what Senator Manchin and Senator Kaine said yesterday, along with 17 Democrats. We wanted a bipartisan alternative that didn't create new incentives for shipping jobs overseas and that didn't jack up the deficit, but I certainly was surprised when I saw early on that Senate Republicans, who had given so many speeches on their concern about the deficit, said: It is kind of OK with us if we have a net deficit of $1.5 trillion. And as the Joint Committee on Taxation has essentially indicated to me, it would be higher than that. All of the deficit hawks in the Republican Party just flew away. That was surprising because it seems like just yesterday when the Congress couldn't buy lunch without a whole cast of Republican deficit hawks doing some pretty serious hollering about the deficit. But based on history, what is coming next is pretty predictable. We have seen the movie before. The deficit hawks come flying back after ideas like the one we are looking at in the Senate become law. We have already heard the Speaker say, what is next? Entitlement reform, which means Medicare, Medicaid, and anti-hunger programs. The Speaker said that is what is next. That is next on the docket. Everybody listening ought to know that is code for attack, and it is multiple fronts on these kinds of programs for the most vulnerable people in our country--the lifeline programs, the safety net programs I have just described. What we are going to hear, because this is the script from earlier movies, is we have these big deficits. Oh, my goodness. There is a lot of red ink. America can't afford the safety net. They will say we have to do something. Instead of being willing to go after the people at the top, history says the people who really face the burden of those deficit reductions are the most vulnerable. The first big legislative push after the Bush tax cuts, for example, was an all-out assault on Social Security. The fact that it was stopped doesn't mean Medicare or Medicaid or other safety net programs like Social Security are going to be safe this time around. The policy on offer, in my view, is simply a disaster. It makes a mockery of the approach Ronald Reagan took with a big group of Democrats. I know so many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle admire President Reagan greatly. This bill is the opposite of what President Reagan did. What President Reagan did is he said to those big multinational corporations: I have to ask you to give up some money in order to make sure the middle class, the individual ratepayer, will get a fair shake. This is just the opposite--180 degrees away from what Ronald Reagan did. We are going to have an amendment on the middle class pretty soon, but what could be more stark than the fact that the tax cuts for the multinationals are permanent, and the relief for the middle class is temporary. This bill is the opposite, the total opposite, of what Ronald Reagan worked on in 1986. Our colleague Senator Enzi--and I have worked with him often, and I am sad to see us have such differing views on this--said we have had 70 hearings. I can tell you, the once storied Senate Finance Committee never even attempted once to craft a bipartisan bill. We said for months that was our preference. That was what was stated in the letter the vast majority of Senate Democrats signed. That is what we said when we were invited to the White House to meet with the President. We said it repeatedly. I mentioned the two bills I wrote. They are the only two bipartisan Federal income tax reform bills--the only two we have had since 1986. By the way, they didn't go as far as Ronald Reagan went. Ronald Reagan, in 1986, said, for purposes of taxes, a dollar is a dollar is a dollar. We are going to have the same rate for those who make money on investments that we do for those cops and nurses who get that wage, that ordinary income. I have indicated on the floor that Senator Bradley, former New York Knick--and as I like to say, another tall Democrat who served on the Senate Finance Committee with a much better jump shot than mine--is incredulous at this process. He is just slack- jawed when he asks about what is being done to bring both sides together. Senator Bradley, and others on the Republican side, in 1986, flew all over the United States to get together with senior Republicans and Jim Baker, Richard Dorman, and others to talk about the specifics of getting bipartisan tax reform together. You hear the stories, and you see that is the way you tackle an issue like this. Bill Bradley flew all over the country to work with Republicans to get a bipartisan tax reform bill. Right now, the majority on the Senate Finance Committee wouldn't walk down the corridor of the Dirksen building once to talk about anything resembling how we would put together a bipartisan proposal. So the process we have seen here makes a mockery out of Reagan-style reform. Some have asked, was this foreordained, did it have to be. I have already made it clear that I don't think it had to be. It is hard work putting together a bipartisan bill. Senator Gregg, for example, when he was in the Senate, I think was one of Leader McConnell's top economic advisers--chairman of the Budget Committee. We used to say in our house, Judd Gregg is scary smart. We sat next to each other in chairs in our office for almost 2 years to put together a bill. It is heavy lifting, but it can be done. A lot of that work was brought into other efforts since then--the question of the Bush proposal, bipartisan commissions, or a variety of other ones. It is pretty hard to do when the majority leader says, on the first day, the very first day out, we are going to use the most partisan process--budget reconciliation and, in effect, say: What we are telling the other party is we don't want your ideas because we don't need your votes. Sometimes it got almost a little ridiculous because I know there were times when statements were made by the Republican leadership that no Democrats were interested in bipartisan tax reform, despite the fact that in the few instances where a White House official would call and ask our opinion, Senate Democrats would meet. That was the point of the press conference that was held yesterday with 17 Democrats from various parts of the country, as well as legislation I have described that was written. By the way, in the work product Republicans finally produced, they took some of the ideas from the bipartisan bills; for example, increasing the standard deduction, but we tripled the standard deduction without any takeaways, like the State and local deduction or the permanent exemptions, and what that meant is, in the bipartisan bills, if you passed something like that, people adjust their wages, and immediately working-class folks get hundreds and hundreds of dollars more in every paycheck. Not only were there no discussions--and I have seen Republican Senators stand out on the floor sometimes and hold up a sign: What we are doing is the Wyden-Coats bill. Nothing could be further from the truth, whether it is on the international provisions I mentioned or the personal provisions. I was so proud to stand with Senate Democrats in a meeting yesterday put together by Senators Manchin and Kaine, once again, stating that it doesn't have to be this way. What is the rush to take taxes for multinational corporations from 35 to 20 percent? Back when I was working with Senator Gregg and Senator Coats, the Republicans, we didn't have multinational corporations saying we should go to 20 percent. The difference between 25 and 20 percent is $500 billion. My colleagues yesterday were saying--moderate Democrats--we are serious about tax reform, both on the individual and the corporate side, but it ought to be based on bipartisan give-and-take, not something like we have seen. Republicans in Congress and the administration's top salesmen have spent months and months telling the American people that in the long run, their bill is going to pay for itself with explosive growth. They had cheerleaders, those who cooked up these phony growth forecasts based on revenue-neutral reform proposals that don't exist. Respected economists will tell you tax cuts don't pay for themselves. In fact, when we had a chance to have some discussion not about a specific bill but some ideas about taxes, the Republican economists who were before the Finance Committee said the tax cuts wouldn't pay for themselves. The honest predictions say that any growth caused by this bill is going to be modest. After they have spent years insisting--I can't tell you how many times I heard this--that we would have dynamic scores, Republican Senators are rushing the independent scorekeepers to try to get a thorough analysis, but we don't have it as we are on this floor debating the bill. Finally, we ought to forget that this bill has been getting a rewrite behind closed doors for weeks now. A number of my colleagues on the other said what was important to them is we have what is called regular order. Regular order is probably not a concept people talk about in too many coffee shops unless they traditionally get eggs or toast or something, but what it means is, you have a process where both sides work together, and you have a chance to discuss ideas and differing approaches or offers. We haven't had anything like that. We haven't had an open process with open debate and real amendments. What we have seen is a mad dash to pass a bill that can't stand scrutiny in broad daylight. If this bill really got scrutinized and had a chance to be examined, we would see a lot of Americans coming to their Senators and saying: Senator, no way--no way--should you support that bill. What is on offer is a plan to force working people and working-class families to pay for handouts to multinational corporations and tax cheats. This bill does not deserve to pass. My view is, it really doesn't deserve the ink that was used to print it on paper. The process that has culminated in this scramble to drive this through, drive it through with the most arbitrary process imaginable, I consider shameful. With that, I yield the floor.