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Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, with the change of our clocks in recent days, the Sun seems to shine later in the day and days are getting longer. We are even starting to feel signs of spring in the air here in Washington, DC. But along with the longer days and the budding flowers, something else is rapidly approaching that Americans find far less palatable, and that, of course, is tax season.

Americans have long had a distaste for taxes in this country, going back to the Boston Tea Party--a protest over seemingly minor taxes imposed by the British Empire that helped spark the American Revolution. While we may not find ourselves clamoring for a revolution on April 15, it remains, nevertheless, a hapless ritual of forking over a good percentage of our hard-earned wages to the Federal Government-- something none of us looks forward to.

Fortunately for the American people, Senate Republicans have delivered a series of important victories through the Working Families Tax Cut Act that will set them up for a far less painful tax season than they would have experienced if the Democrats had been in charge. In fact, our Democratic colleagues uniformly voted against any of these tax cuts.

With the 2017 Trump tax cuts set to expire, Americans would have experienced the largest increase in history if it weren't for this new legislation--and again, our Democratic colleagues were OK with that. We saved the average Texas family more than $3,000, and we prevented 62 percent of Americans from seeing a tax increase. Small business owners alone would have seen their Federal tax rates increase by nearly 50 percent, and American households would have faced a more than $4 trillion tax hike. Democrats, as I said, were OK with that.

By now, at least most of my colleagues have become familiar with some of these top-line numbers, but today, I want to highlight a few provisions that have seen a little less daylight even though they will serve as a boon to working families all across our Nation.

As we all know, 56 percent of American voters have said that affordability is their top concern. I am actually surprised it is that low, but 56 is no small number. Parents of small children in particular are feeling the affordability crunch even more than their childless peers as they try to stretch their paychecks to meet the increasing costs of housing, groceries, and childcare each month.

While there is no silver bullet that can magically make the cost of raising a family go away, Republicans have delivered provisions through the Working Families Tax Cut Act that will attempt to lessen that burden. For example, back in 2017, Republicans doubled the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000. In 2025, that was scheduled to go back to $1,000, but Senate Republicans built on their prior success and permanently increased the child tax credit to $2,200 per child. We ensured that this was not via temporary provision, and we provided that it would not be eaten up by inflation by making sure that it was permanent and tied to inflation so that the child tax credit can keep pace with the increasing costs of raising a child over time. Parents who are married and filing jointly can earn up to $400,000 and still be able to claim this credit.

In addition to expanding the child tax credit, Republicans took steps to alleviate what is perhaps one of the most commonly cited concerns that parents face, and that is the increasing cost of childcare.

Some families are spending as much as $15,000 or more per year for each child in full-time childcare--higher than the annual median cost of rent in the United States, with even higher costs for the very young. This marks a more than 50-percent increase over the past decade--far outpacing inflammation.

These skyrocketing costs leave many families with two working parents in a very difficult dilemma: They can either eat this cost or choose to have one or the other parent give up their income entirely in order to provide full-time childcare. This choice can bring with it a great deal of mixed emotions, with the tradeoffs involved being much more complex than simply the dollars and cents on either side of the ledger. And this isn't to mention the situation of single parents, who often have even fewer options on the table.

Once again, there is no single legislative fix to this dilemma, but Republicans have taken important steps toward addressing the struggles that working families face in the Working Families Tax Cut Act by enhancing the paid family and medical leave credit and the employer- provided childcare credit.

The paid family and medical leave credit is a general business credit that is now offered to employers who provide paid family and medical leave to qualifying employees. That makes it a lot easier for these businesses--often small businesses--to offer this childcare support for their employees. Our 2025 legislation strengthened this credit, broadened the eligibility to make it more widely available, and made it permanent.

This provision will reward businesses that offer these valuable benefits to their employees, allowing mothers to recover from childbirth and allowing both mothers and fathers the time they want to bond with their newborns in the first important months of their lives.

We also built on these successes by bolstering the employer-provided child tax credit. This credit rewards businesses that provide childcare to their employees, whether by constructing an onsite daycare center or by assisting employees with subsidies or other options that help them afford childcare.

By incentivizing onsite childcare options, which can make the dropoffs and pickups less logistically challenging, and offsetting the high costs, this tax credit is another step toward a less stressful experience of parenting in America--and if there is anybody who needs a little less stress, it is parents.

But this isn't the end of the pro-family provisions in the Working Families Tax Cut Act. We also bolstered the adoption tax credit by making it partially refundable--up to $5,000--in order to support those who have decided to build their families through the heroic path of adoption. We increased the dependent care assistance exclusion--up to $7,500 from $5,000--and we increased the child and dependent care tax credit, which will help millions of families offset the cost of childcare by nearly $1,000, on average.

There is no doubt that raising a family in today's world is a rewarding but challenging experience, but thanks to the historic inflation that the Biden administration imposed on the American people, this already daunting journey became much harder. While, again, we don't have a silver bullet or a magic wand that can make all of these rising costs go away overnight, I hope that the pro-family reforms that we champion in the Working Families Tax Cut Act can make this journey easier on the millions of parents around the country.

So while none of us are looking forward to filing our income tax returns come April 15, I hope that working parents will see a little bit of well-deserved relief in their pocketbooks as a result of these provisions that Republicans provided in the Working Families Tax Cut Act and which President Trump signed into law.

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