On the recordNovember 30, 2017
I thank Senator Merkley for his leadership. Mr. President, this current Tax Code--I would love to see tax reform. I have long advocated for it. I actually would like to see the business rates go down. I would like to see the money come in from overseas and some incentives put in place. But this bill is extreme. This bill puts a $1.4 trillion hole in the debt. That is what it does--additional debt. In fact, just yesterday, the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation said that even when you account for any economic growth--and this is the umpire here--that would add $1 trillion to the Federal budget deficit over the next decade. So what I would like to see--and what I thought we were talking about at the beginning of the year--is a bipartisan effort. Seventeen of us who are willing to cross the aisle and who have had a track record of working on bipartisan bills stood up just this week and said: Work with us. Instead, what we have is a partisan bill that blows up the debt. We have a partisan bill that would be devastating to our economy. No one has even had a hearing. No one has even looked at what the consequences would be in this bill. Literally, on the hour, we are getting calls in my office from small businesses, from regular people, from Main Street businesses that have no idea what is going to happen to them under this bill. All they know right now for sure is that it adds over $1 trillion to the debt.…
