Al Franken: “I rise this evening in opposition to the tax bill before us. I think the problem in our country isn't that wealthy…”

“I rise this evening in opposition to the tax bill before us. I think the problem in our country isn't that wealthy people in this country aren't wealthy enough; the problem is, the wealth gap has grown to the highest levels in my lifetime. This bill would make that wealth gap even bigger. Senator Paul Wellstone often said: ``We all do better when we all do better.'' He knew the economy does better when there is a strong middle class and when working families have more money to spend. Unfortunately, the Republican tax bill does the opposite of what Paul Wellstone argued for. Instead of helping working families, it raises taxes on at least 14 million of them, and it uses this revenue to give $1 trillion to the superrich, all while adding $1.5 trillion to our national debt. This is, at its core, an awful bill. When President Trump took office, he pledged that he would look out for the ``forgotten men and women,'' not the wealthy. This bill is a betrayal of that commitment. I believe Congress should work on a bipartisan basis to make our Tax Code fairer and simpler for working families, and that is what I have advocated for since I joined the Senate. Democrats have made a good- faith effort to work in a bipartisan manner on a tax reform bill with Republicans, but Republicans have chosen, from the very start of this Congress, to take a purely partisan approach that has left Democrats entirely out of the discussion.…”