-9999
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, in a few minutes, Senators will vote on the Tax Relief for American Workers and Families Act. There has been a lot of discussion and debate this week about it, and I will make just a few final points.
Republicans are talking a lot these days, trying to convince Americans that they are the ones who support children and families, not Democrats.
The Republicans talk about supporting small businesses. They talk about competing with China. They talk about how terrible it is that nobody can afford a home in America. And they talk about cracking down on fraud in government programs.
The bill that the Senate will vote on in a few minutes helps with each and every one of these issues. Now, we are going see whether Senate Republicans really, in fact, do want to help, whether they are offering anything more than talk.
Over the last couple of days, I have read lots of comments from Republican Senators who say that it is really time to wait and that, if Republicans take control of the Senate, they will write a better bill. So I would ask: Better for whom?
One thing I am sure of is it won't be a better bill for the 16 million kids who stand to benefit today--today--colleagues, from the proposal we are going to vote on. And it won't come as any comfort to families who are getting clobbered on rent or the small businesses that are going to fail if they don't get help now.
The House of Representatives passed this bill back in January. It was the product of work with Republican Chair Jason Smith and I, but it also included a year's worth of negotiations with colleagues here in the Senate. That bill got 357 votes--almost an even split between the two parties. And as I have said before, in the House of Representatives, at this point, it would be hard to get 357 votes if you were just out ordering a piece of pie.
The only reason our bipartisan bill didn't become law 6 months ago was because of the delay of Senate Republicans. I offered to make changes. I met with a significant number of Senate Republicans personally.
They talked about what their proposed ideas were for compromise, and I offered them. I offered them. I said it publicly in the Senate Finance Committee. It wasn't good enough, although they looked a little bit like the dog that caught the car.
But in old-school basketball terms, Senate Republicans just continued the delays. It was kind of the old four-corners offense: stall and drain the clock.
But for the millions of people who are hurting, those folks can't afford for the Senate to just keep waiting.
Now, the reality is, when it comes to tax policy debates, this is the easy stuff. The difficult issues don't get agreement from 357 Members of the House of Representatives.
The debate on taxes is sure to get a lot harder when Congress is going to have to deal with trillions of dollars in tax changes coming down the pike.
If Senate Republicans can't work across the aisle or work with a House that produced 357 votes, there is going to be some very, very heavy lifting next year.
And I will close with this. Every Senator now has a choice. The results here are not predetermined. Republicans can choose to side with children and families. Republicans can choose to side with people who are walking an economic tightrope just trying to pay the rent. Importantly, Republicans can choose to side with small businesses.
The fact is, the problems small businesses are having today, to a great extent, are due to the singlehanded efforts of Senate Republicans, who did nothing but derail an effort to fix research and development expensing.
In fact, they were willing to derail research and development expensing in the 2017 tax bill when everybody said we need this to compete with China. Senate Republicans said: Nah, we are interested in giving tax breaks to people at the top rather than small businesses.
So they gutted--gutted--research and development expensing for small business. Not a single Democrat voted for it. And then they promised to fix it in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. All those years, Senate Republicans said they would get a break for small businesses on the research and development issue.
Now, a lot of those small businesses have to go out and borrow to keep their doors open. So we offered to work that and other issues out. But Republicans said: Gee, we are just going wait around until 2025.
Well, I want to say to my colleagues and I want to say to the country, for a lot of these small businesses, the research and development issue is a lifeline. I have had them come to me and say: Ron, I am not even going to be around in 2025 for somebody like the Senate Republicans who want to wait.
I say we ought to help them now. Make no mistake about it, a Senate that passes this legislation can allow our bill to go to the President of the United States right away--right away--and help goes out to those 16 million families, the 4 million small businesses that depend on research and development expensing and the families that got clobbered with disasters. We have a chance to help those families who, after they got clobbered with disasters, got clobbered by an outdated tax code. We would fix it. We would fix it today.
And because of Senator Cantwell, hundreds of thousands of units of affordable housing could get on the way today.
So Senate Republicans can do those things that I just described. And the way I see it, you know, if you show up for work around here and you have a chance to help 16 million kids, 4 million small businesses, scores of businesses that have been clobbered by disasters and create hundreds of thousands of units of housing--doing all that sounds, to me, like one hell of a day at the office.
So Senate Republicans can choose to help that way or they can continue with excuses, empty talk, and what are sure to be their plans for the future: locking in even more handouts to big corporations and the wealthy.
This is a thoroughly bipartisan bill; 357 votes in the House of Representatives--every Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee voted for this bill.
So I say: Let's help the kids and the families. Let's help the small businesses. Let's help those who need housing. Let's be there for those who face disasters.
I say to my colleagues on the Republican side: This is a chance to help everybody in America--everybody. I hope my Republican colleagues make the right choice. I strongly urge them to vote yes and side with the children and families all over the country.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source