Chris Van Hollen: “Thank you, Mr. President. I see Senator Menendez from New Jersey has arrived. He is a cosponsor, together with Senator…”

“Thank you, Mr. President. I see Senator Menendez from New Jersey has arrived. He is a cosponsor, together with Senator Cantwell and myself, on this amendment, and I want to thank Senator Cantwell for her leadership. She has covered a lot of important points. The main one is, from the beginning of our Federal Tax Code in 1913, we have established a principle in the United States to avoid double taxation. It makes no sense that any citizens of this country send a dollar of tax to their State governments to help schools or roads in their State, and then they are turned around and taxed on that same dollar by the Federal Government, but that is exactly what this Republican tax plan is doing. Now, weeks and weeks ago, the Republican leader, Senator McConnell, and the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, made these public statements about how these Republican tax bills weren't going to raise taxes on anybody. They both had to publicly reverse those statements because, in order to provide huge tax breaks to the biggest corporations of this country, this bill will require millions and millions of middle-class families to increase their taxes, and a main vehicle for doing that is by removing the deduction for those citizens. I am just going to give you some quick numbers: 100 million Americans today use the deduction for State and local taxes. In fact, half of the families in my State of Maryland use it.…”