Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I rise to talk about a job-killer tax bill that is coming to Congress this week, and if you don't watch out, it could be coming to your hometown soon. Up until yesterday, Mr. Speaker, I thought the new GOP tax plan was just run-of-the-mill, upside-down class warfare waged by the wealthiest people in the country against everybody else. I knew 80 percent of the windfall of the tax cut would go to people making $912,000 a year or more--the richest 1 percent of the country. I knew it would repeal the alternative minimum tax, the only reason that Donald Trump paid any taxes at all in the 1 year we know he paid taxes over the last few decades in 2005. I knew it would repeal the State and local income tax deduction, which would be terrible news for tens of millions of middle class people in States across the country, including mine in Maryland. I knew it would repeal the estate tax which only affects the wealthiest one-half of 1 percent of the country. All of these provisions would help to create a hereditary oligarchical elite like the hereditary oligarchical elite in Russia today. This huge penthouse suite party will be paid for by the rest of us and blow a record-smashing $2 trillion deficit hole into our economy and programs like Medicare and Medicaid. I knew all of this. It is predictable enough. But then I noticed a provision yesterday that is absolutely gobstopping, shocking, startling, eye-popping, unbelievable in the GOP tax blueprint.…”