the bipartisan alexander-murray bill. the c.b.o. report confirms that the murray-alexander bill is a great deal for the american people. it does precisely what it was intended to do -- stabilize the marketplaces, help prevent premiums from skyrocketing, and reduce the deficit. by c.b.o.'s estimate, by nearly $4 billion. as senators alexander and murray noted, the report shows that their bill will, quote, benefit taxpayers and low-income americans, not insurance companies, unquote. even "the wall street journal" editorial board, no liberal kabal, that's for sure, said today, quote, the bipartisan compromise proposed by senators alexander and murray now officially falls into the category of so obvious it should pass immediately. that's not chuck schumer talking. that's not even mitch mcconnell talking, for those

on the hard right who might doubt mitch mcconnell's fidelity. it is the beacon of the hard right, the "wall street journal" editorial page, and they say again alexander-murray falls into the category, quote, so obvious it should pass immediately. so my fellow republicans, what are you waiting for? everyone on your side wants the bill. jump on it. support it. let's get this done. let's help stabilize our markets, whatever our views are on health care. and above all, these reports should be all the evidence that president trump needs to come off the sidelines and endorse the bill. it doesn't bail out the insurance companies. that's what he said he was worried about. it doesn't cost government money. and, in fact, it reduces the deficit by $4 billion. so there is no good reason for president trump to continue to obscure his position.

leader mcconnell has said he will put it on the floor if the president says he'll sign it. by delaying, the president is harming health care markets, causing significant uncertainty and doing nothing but hurt americans who are trying to afford health care. so, mr. president, it -- and i mean president trump, president trump -- not you, my dear friend, the senator from alabama. so president trump, if you don't pursue this bill, the consequences will fall on your back, make no mistake about it. on taxes, later today, the house will likely vote on whether or not to pass the budget resolution that recently passed the senate. my colleagues in the house should be aware that this budget will explode the deficit by

$1.5 trillion. that's under the best of circumstances. that's under circumstances where they find $4 billion of -- $4 trillion of pay-fors. probably unlikely. it will slash medicare and medicaid by $1.5 trillion. and it will set up the same awful partisan process that caused the republican effort on repeal and replace to fail, because when you try to do it in one first party, it's fraught wh peril. if you do it in a bipartisan way, few people on either side can try to pull the bill off course, but they won't succeed because they don't have the votes. i would remind my friends in the house who purport to be deficit hawks, you are voting for a budget that will increase the deficit by $1.5 trillion. many of these house members, particularly in the conservative wing of the caucus, particularly those in the freedom caucus,

have spent their entire careers on the barricades railing against the evils of deficits. what a stunning hypocrisy it would be to abandon those principles today and vote for this budget simply because it gives tax cuts to the wealthiest of americans and the most powerful, largest of our corporations. now, i'd also remind my republican friends in the house, particularly those in new york and new jersey, california, wens, virginia, illinois, washington, minnesota, that voting for the budget today is tantamount to voting for the elimination of the state and local tax deduction. and that would sock it, sock it to the middle-class taxpayers in their states and districts. most of our republican friends from those states, they are blue states, but there are red districts, suburban, well off. they get clobbered if you take away the state and local

deduction. those are the constituents hurt the most. not the rich and not the poor. the middle class and upper middle class. and not only will it raise their taxes dramatically, most people would lose deductions between $10,000 and $20,000. that ain't chicken feed. but it would raise home prices. sorry. it would lower home prices. a recent study by the national association of realtors done by pricewaterhousecoopers, the esteemed accounting firm, showed that eliminating state and local would erode property values, the rock of the middle class, by 10%. to the middle-class folks in new york, i believe around the country, your home is a piece of the rock. you struggle each month, pay the mortgage, pay the taxes, pay the upkeep, but you're hoping by the time you reach later middle age,

that you'll own that home, and that gives your kids a place, or it gives your kids a nest egg when you pass on. but this bill, by eliminating state and local, reduces across america on average home values by 10%. so it's a double whammy to the middle class. raising your taxes and lowering your home values. why would we do that? you don't have to take it from me. i'll tell my republican colleagues, peter king. rock-ribbed republican who has a lot of courage. this morning, i saw him on tv talking about investigating hillary clinton. but here's what he said about repealing the state and local deduction. he said, quote, it will devastate my district forever. that's a solid middle-class and upper middle-class republican

district on long island. here is what else peter king said. how anybody from new york or new jersey can vote for this budget without knowing what is in the tax bill is beyond me. he was referring to the state and local. now, i salute peter king for telling it like it is, having the courage to stand up and say to his own party's leadership, i will not forsake my constituents for a tax bill where i don't even know what the details will be. the remaining members of the new york, new jersey, california, and other delegations have a decision to make. will they protect the middle class, the tens of thousands of homeowners in their districts, or go along with the hard-right agenda that will cost their constituents hard-earned money for groceries, home repairs, and other needs, and do that all so

the very wealthy can get a huge tax break, all so our biggest corporations which are flush with money can have even more money. wrong. i hear on the other side we're talking about a tax bill for the middle class, to eliminate state and local deductibility hurts the majority of middle-class people in this country. that's what will happen if you keep that in there. now, some will say in the house -- i've heard one of my colleagues from new york, republican, say that schumer, he's a democrat, he's beating up on republicans. but i went through this in 1986, the last time we had tax reform. it was democrats who were pushing the bill. senator bradley, a legend in this chamber, leader gephardt, one of the democratic leaders in the house. despite their entreaties, i told them not only would i not vote for any reform bill that had

state and local deductibility in it, but i would lead the charge and round up others, and i did. i got a lot of flak from my fellow democrats, but it was the right thing to do for my middle-class constituency in southern brooklyn. so when i asr republican colleagues to buck their leadership, to help their middle class constituents, it's something i did with democratic leadership the last time tax reform was on the floor. now, some are already rationalizing their vote to approve the budget by putting their hopes in the vague possibility of some kind of compromise on state and local deduct ability. the hash fact is there is no compromise to be had on state and local. if you want to make taxpayers choose between the mortgage deduction and state and local, it's like asking taxpayers to decide whether they want to cut off their right arm or their left arm. some are talking about a cap.

well, where are you going to cap it? more than 50% of the total value of the deduction goes to taxpayers with incomes below $200,000. cap it too low and almost all those middle class taxpayers get whacked. cap it too high and it doesn't raise enough money to offset all the cuts my republican friends want to give the corporations and the top 1%. republicans in the house shouldn't stake the votes on the prospect of a good compromise on state and local because there's not one to be had. the bottom line? any republican plan that limits salt is the equivalent to robbing middle-class families of tax benefits and handing it over to the wealthiest americans and biggest corporations. there is no, no compelling reason to do it. people aren't clamoring for it. we don't need to take a trillion dollars from working families and give it to millionaire

c.e.o.'s, period. and if that weren't enough reason to vote no, mr. president, the republican leadership is still debating capping pre-tax contributions to 401(k) plans. you here that retirees and potential retirees? in their craven thirst to give the wealthiest people in america a tax break, they're going to say you can't save money for retirement tax free. what a gut punch to the middle class that would be. despite the president's claims to the contrary, representative brady and senator portman have said that a 401(k) cap is still on the table. so you know what this bill has become? again in its desperation to help the wealthiest? it's like a quiz show. which way do we hurt the middle class to pay for it?

door one, state and local deductibility. door two, cap retirement. who knows what they'll pick in door three. could be the mortgage deduction. asking middle class people to choose which poison to take so you can help the wealthiest makes no sense. so i would urge my colleagues in the house and here in the senate stop doing this partisan bill that was dictated by the hard right, very wealthy individuals, very rich corporations, huge corporations. work with us. we want to create a bipartisan bill that helps the middle class. we're for tax reform. and we can get something done. please stop this train in its tracks early on before it's too late and you'll regret it. there are a large numbers of democrat, including this minority leader, who want to sit down with republicans and come up with a deficit neutral,

middle class small business oriented bipartisan tax relief bill, not a plan to benefit the richest 1% or the largest and most powerful corporations who are already flush with cash. we want to work with our republican colleagues on a real bipartisan deal. defeat this budget and we will. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. morning business is closed. under the previous order, the senate will proceed to executive session and resume consideration of the palk nomination which the clerk will report. the clerk: nomination, the judiciary, scott l. palk of oklahoma to be united states district judge for the western district of oklahoma. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from west virginia. a senator: thank you, mr. president. i rise again today to highlight the importance of enacting tax reform.

mrs. capito: i listened to the democratic leader's speech. i've heard that speech a thousand times, a thousand times how only wealthy americans are going to benefit from anything that the republicans can come up with. you know what? americans are smarter than that. americans are smarter than that. i represent a state, west virginians who have struggling economic situations. and if i were to go out on the street in west virginia and as i talk to individuals there and ask would you like more of your hard earned money at the end of the day and have a tax cut and tax relief, i can guarantee you a hundred percent they would say heck, yeah. i can spend my money better at home with my priorities than what you're doing in washington, d.c. so let's not let that argument rule the day. as i said, we're smarter than that. so let's talk about what this bill does. i've talked -- this is now my

fourth, actually, in a series of something i believe in, which is tax reform for everybody in this country. my first one described the benefits that we will have on economic growth, something that was not mentioned by the previous speaker. we've been stagnated so long that the economic growth will rise almost -- every middle class worker will benefit from this and every small business will benefit from this. my second speech was about small businesses. 95% of my state is -- are small business. 95% of my state is small business. last week i highlighted the importance of passing the budget resolution to allow congress to move forward and we did that. so today i want to talk about the importance of tax reform for middle class families and the impacts that this bill will have on them, the very real impacts. you know, raising a family is very expensive today. a recent study from the

department of agriculture found that middle-income households will spend over $230,000 raising a child, a staggering -- staggering. almost half of american families are struggling right now to come up with $400 if they were to have an emergency expense. and in west virginia where the median income is $41,000, hardly the wealthy, families are forced to take -- make hard trade-offs as they balance their checkbooks each month. expenses are going up. yet most americans haven't received a raise in years. so we need to help working families, especially those living paycheck to paycheck. and this is one of the primary goals of our tax reform. we want middle class, middle-earned income folks, hardworking folks to get more in their pocket to decide what they want to do with their money. i raised three children.

i know just putting shoes on your children is an expensive proposition. maybe you want to plan for a trip or save for college. well, to pay for child care and to save for college at the same time is almost impossible for our young families today. and the framework that we have set forward i think will help our families in many ways. first, it calls for a significant increase in the child tax credit. yesterday a number of my colleagues from the house and the senate, we joined with ivanka trump to highlight what an improved child tax credit would mean for working families. the tax reform proposal would allow families to take a higher per-child credit saving money on their taxes, money that they've earned, money that the families deserve to spend on their own, and many that can have significant impact to our families. we also would create a $500 tax credit for families who are

caring for a nonchild dependent. many americans find themselves in the sandwiched generation where they're not only caring for their children, they're caring for their parents at the same time. so this will help those families. second, the proposal nearly doubles the standard deduction or the zero tax bracket from $24,000 for -- it raises it up to $24,000 for married taxpayers and $12,000 for single taxpayers. what kind of impact would this have on a state like mine? well, 83% of the taxpayers in west virginia take the standard deduction. they're going to get a doubling in their standard deduction. that's more money for them to take home, to put the value of where they want to spend it with their own families. so four out of five west virginia working families will benefit from that. that is an enormous savings, and even more taxpayers are likely to benefit as the larger standard deduction means that

fewer people will itemize. so we expect that figure to go up from 83% up. it makes filing taxes simpler and it makes it so that our taxpayers can file on a single form without all of the extra forms, time, and money that it takes. and finally, most importantly, families will benefit from the economic growth that tax reform will bring to our country. this is probably the biggest impact that tax reform will have for working families. we'll lower the corporate rate, yes, for companies, but we've got to make our companies competitive across the globe. we're not. we're not competing. what kind of effect does that have? fewer jobs and lower wages. companies know if they invest in their work force, if they invest in the wages of their work force, they're going to have a more productive work force to produce products, to sell products, to enhance the quality

of life of their communities. many of these large corporations that are scattered around our country really do a lot of work in the community service parts of our country, whether it's helping with schools or whether it's helping with the baseball teams or sponsoring a robotics team. so why does that matter to working families? more than $2 trillion in profits earned by american companies is kept offshore because of the flaws in our current tax system, $2 trillion. and i think some of those estimates might be low. shifting to a more fair and competitive system will bring those dollars back to the united states. those companies want to invest in our country because they know that we have the safest, most -- safest investments. we have the most technologically advanced and we've got the best worworkforce and in is great nes

for american families. lowering that corporate tax rate from 35 to 20 could increase the pay for the average american by about $4,000. my small business round table, when i asked would would you do with tax relief, the first thing she said was raise the wages of my seven employees. so i think this would be good news for working families, certainly good news for 50% of the west virginia workers who work in small business. we need to make sure that we work together, that we target our tax relief to middle-class families. mr. president, you and i were at lunch the other day with the president. priority one the president said, this tax cut must be targeted to the middle class, the working families in this country. and that's what this bill has put forward. larger tax credit, larger standard deduction, unlocking the wages by lowering the competitive tax rate, and

despite our hard work, too many middle-class families are falling behind and we want to make sure that trend stops. so all of us i think can join together. this is going to go through committee. both parties will have lots of opportunity to weigh in. and i look forward to looking into the eyes of the working men and women in my state and saying not only is help on the way but help is here. thank you so the presiding officer: without objection. mr. rubio: mr. president, over the next few weeks, the united states senate, the house, the congress, everybody here in washington is going to be engaged in what i think is one of the most important and potentially impactful impacts we've had here in a long time. for a place that's been so criticized for not doing anything, we have a chance to actually do something that's going to matter and help the people and help the country, and it's called tax reform. it actually goss the heart and soul -- it actually goes to the heart and soul of our nation and

who want to be and who we've been up to this point. we are a nation that has embraced free enterprise. there are people that don't believe in free enterprise. there are people that believe in different variations of free enterprise. but by and large america has believed in free enterprise, which means that the government doesn't try to control too much of the economy. people have private property and private businesses. you have rules to make sure that people don't cheat or steal from one another. but by and large we believe in a private economy. why do we believe in a? i think you have the teens it. it is not just a pure economic one. you luke back -- you look back at our founding. we do not do a good enough job of teaching young americans that america was not created as a nation to bring together a common race or a common ethnicities or common religion. there are a lot of nations around the world. most of the nations that have ever existed have been a homeland for the people that were born and have lived in that one place, not us. we were founded on the idea that you could bring different kinds of people from different

backgrounds and unite them as one people, despite their differences in background and ethnicity and in religion. you could unite them behind a very powerful iraq, the idea that all of us are -- you could unite them behind a very powerful idea, the tied all of us were born with the right to pursue happiness. it has changed the world. it has been the identity of our counsel. it is among everything else what makes us unique and special and in every generation that's been challenged economically, socially, culturally, and we need to continue to fight for that. one of the core principles behind equal opportunity is the ability to fulfill your economic potential, to grow up and be what you want to be and do what you want to do, hope a company, work for a certain industry or career ar stay home and -- or stay home and raise children. we are a nation that believes that we all have a god-given right to pursue that. and it is something that free

enterprise makes possible. now, the difference between free enterprise and people who want government to control everything is the best analogy i could think of is imagine a pie -- yeah, let's just use a pie as an example. i can't bring one on the floor, but just imagine one in your mind. imagine if i said to you, this pie will never grow, it will always be the same size, and every single one of us gets a slice. if the pie can't grow and every gets a slice, then the bigger your slice, the smaller my slice. and that's what people that don't believe in free enterprise argue. they argue that the pie really can't grow, so you need government to make sure that that spy equally, or equal enough among everybody. the tax code is bun of the ways though it. -- the tax code is one of the ways though it. there is another a it is the argument that that pie doesn't have to stay that size.

we can make it a ba pie that's a lot bigger. it doesn't matter how big the other person's slice is as long aces your slice is big, too. more for them doesn't mean less for you. that's one of the unique attributes of free enterprise is that everyone can be better off without anyone being left worse off. and that's the theory. it doesn't always work in practice for a lot of different reasons. that doesn't mean an ar conflict of interest we do need government. i'm not anti-regulation. i am anti-overregulation. i fly on airplanes. i'm sure we're all gre offers st airplane is inspected. i think all of us want to make sure when you open a bottle of medicine prescribed to you is actually the medicine. when we eat food, we want to make sure it's not poisonous or will spread disease. these are all products of

regulation. the same true is economic. that's why we have antitrust laws. that's why we have anti-- that's why we take on anticompetitiveness because it actually undermines free enterprise. i'm not talking about corporatism, because there are a lot of countries around the world that claim to be free enterprise, but they really aren't. it's four or five big companies control everything. everybody else either works for them or is unemployed. that's not what i'm talking about. i'm talking about free enterprise, a nation and a system in which someone can quit their job, open a business, compete with their former employer, and put them out of business because you're better than they are, or at least take away some of their customers. that's free enterprise. that's what we believe in. what has challenged free enterprise in this country in the 21st century and you sense it in people's frustrations? there is two things. the first is there is a lot of global competition. it wasn't true in the 1960's and 1970's. we forget germany, japan. these countries were wiped out

completely during world war ii. it took them decades to rebuild. america was the only show in town for much of the 60's, all through the 70's. all the other countries watched us grow and started doing the things we did. they started deregulating. they most certainly started cutting taxes. the result has been over the last 20, 25 years, most countries in the industrialized world, the big economies, charge companies a lot less in taxes than we do. what that does over time, it makes us uncompetitive. that's why not a day goes by that you don't read about some american company that was bought by a company in another country and moved over there. they pay less in taxes over there than they do here. for anyone who doesn't realize that, you're missing a big part of this. we are not the only show in town anymore. we have to compete. that's why our tax code is important, because if it becomes uncompetitive, you are basically forcing and/or inviting companies to leave the united states for more favorable tax treatment. and that's happened. and do you know who has paid the price?

not the rich people. you're a wealthy investor. you can invest your money anywhere in the world. even if you make your money here, i promise you, you have the best lawyers and best accountants to find every loophole to save you money. if that doesn't exist, you will hire the best lobbyist to make one. in the end, the truly wealthy, the billionaires, and the owners of these extraordinary amounts of wealth, they are -- they'll figure it out. do you know who gets hurt? the people who get paid every two weeks. that's who gets hurt because when those companies leave the united states, they take their jobs with them. the list of those there are and the more people we have competing for less jobs, the less people get paid at a time when everything costs more. there is another thing that's hurting us, and it's not part of the tax reform, but it's the way growth is now distributed. we can no longer just assume if the economy grows, everyone will be better off automatically because the prostitute is in the 21st century, there are some careers, some industries, and some jobs that pay substantially more. if you want to talk about haves and have-nots in the 21st century, the haves and the have-nots are the people who

have advanced education and the right skills and the people that do not. we have got to close that gap, the vocational training. that's a separate topic that has to be dealt with and critically important and the way growth is distributed. you have no growth to distribute if you don't have growth. that's why this is so important. when you hear all this talk about wealthy corporations getting huge tax brakes, -- breaks, it's not necessarily true. it really, really is important for people to pay attention to the details and not just the talking points on this. let's take, for example, let's say company x is a publicly traded company. they sell stock on wall street and the like. next year because we lower taxes, that company makes a million dollars more than they did this year. what can they do with that million dollars for a publicly traded company? there are really only four things you can do with that money. all four of them help working americans. the first thing they can do is grow the business. they can say we like our business a lot. we now have a million dollars more than we thought we were going to have. but we believe so much in our

future, we're going to take that million dollars and invest it to grow a company. we're going to open a new factory, open more stores and hire more people as a result. we're going to invest in more equipment which means the people that make that equipment have more work. that's the first thing you can do with the money you might save on taxes. here's the second thing you might have to do. maybe you don't grow your business, but with a -- that million dollars extra that you have from the tax cuts, you're going to have to pay your employees more because now they're going to quit and go work for somebody else. so all of a sudden you are now in a position to be able to hire good people and retain them by paying them more and by offering better benefits to keep them. that's the second thing you can do with the money. here's the third thing you can do with a million dollars and the tax cut that you didn't plan on having. you can lower prices. you can say i'm in competition with these five other businesses to sell the same thing. we're going to use our million dollars to lower our prices just a little bit and just enough so that people buy it from us instead of them. do you know what that other company is going to have to do? they are going to have to lower prices, too, could compete with

you. do you know who benefits from the lowering of the prices? the middle class. the people who are going to shop there will be paying less because of the competition. that's the third thing that can happen. the fourth thing that can happen and the one that gets the most criticism is well, they will just pay it to the shareholders in dividends. okay? who are the shareholders? the shareholders are wealthy people that trade in wall street and spend all day in front of a computer and have these brokerage accounts that handle their accounts. they are part of it. do you know who else is shareholders? millions and millions of americans. if you are a firefighter or a police officer with a union pension, you are a shareholder. you might not be aware of the companies you have shares in, but it's in your pension, and the future of your pension will depend on how those investments go. if you are a 401-k holder, you're a shareholder. just because you're not in front of the computer every day checking your t.d. ameritrade account does not mean you're not a shareholder. you're a shareholder. virtually every sort of investment mechanism for retirement in america is invested in what they call

equities, is invested in the market, is invested in stocks and bonds. in fact, those things are doing better. it's helping you retire. so that's why the business side of this is so important. it will help grow the economy, but it actually will also help people because there is nowhere else for that money to go. the other type of small business, which is actually the majority -- the other type of business, a pass-through. most businesses are organized as that. that is you pay on your personal rate. you're a small business owner with three employees, you're an s corporation. at the end of the year, you pay your taxes on your personal rate. your rate is actually higher than the company -- companies, the corporations. except you can't hire the lawyers and the accountants and all the other expertise. you are actually in many cases paying more than the big companies. they would be helped, too. they would be on tax reform that lowers their rate and makes them competitive. beyond ensuring that people are either going to have better retirement funds, lower prices, more pay or more jobs, the otheg

small businesses, the vast majority of which are owned by people that are not multimillionaires and billionaires, the other thing we can do to help working class people in this country is an expansion of the child tax credit, and it's an idea that senator lee and i have been pushing for for the better part of two years. it wasn't always universally popular, but i will explain three reasons why it's important. in fact, not only is it important, it has to happen. if you don't do that, then this -- if we don't do that, then someone could argue this is not a middle-class tax cut. but if we do it, it will be perhaps the single largest middle-class tax cut in modern history. the child tax credit is the credit you get per child. obviously it phases out at some point the more money you make. why do we have it? we have it for two reasons. number one, because we truly believe that the family is the most important institution in society and parenting is the most important job you will ever have. i don't care what you are. you're a president, a senator, a congressman. i don't care what you do. the most important job you will ever have, the most important

job you will ever have, the most impactful thing you will ever do is raise a family. and so our tax code accounts for that, and it should. the second thing -- and it's raising children is expensive. if you're raising children right now or have any time in the near past, you know how expensive it is. i don't know where they get these numbers, but it sounds right to me. the department of agriculture estimates that to raise a child from the time they are born to the time they are 18 is about $230,000 per child. that's a staggering amount of money. that doesn't even count college, by the way. all you have to do is spend just ten minutes. just go out one day this weekend and talk to the people you know who are working parents and ask them. they're going to tell you one of the most expensive things they face, especially between the time their children are born and the time they turn 4 or 5 is child care. over two-thirds of the states in this country, it costs more, costs more for child care than it does to go to college. imagine you make $800 a week that you take home but you have

to spend $400 a week on child care for your two kids. that's half your paycheck. i'm not saying a child tax credit fixes all that. i'm saying that's a cost that keeps going up. it's the reason why the tax credit has lost about $300 in value from the time it was last expanded in 2003. and then the other thing to add to it is if you look at some of the changes being proposed on the personal reduction, that's another $500 off. in essence, unless the tax at $800 per child, we are just breaking even. that's why we have to have a child tax credit that's at least $2,000 to really have an impact. and the other thing we have to do is make it refundable. what that means, it has to apply against payroll tax. medicare, social security taxes that come from fica, immediately off your paycheck. everybody pays that tax. not everybody pays income tax because if you don't make more than a certain amount of money, you don't have an income tax liability. but you are paying taxes. it's called the payroll tax. if we don't deal with that, if we don't make the child tax credit apply to that, then

you're basically not cutting taxes or not helping the vast majority of people who need it. there has been some speculation that this would be too expensive and cost a lot of money. it's not true. number two, it's their money. you don't get it unless you owe it, and you don't owe it unless you're working. all we're saying is let people keep more of their own money to pay for the cost of living. they will have to spend that money. we know a large number of families in this country are living beyond what they make. that's why credit card and debt has risen over the last 20 years. so they're going to take that money and going to spend it and spend a lot of it on raising the children. they're going to spend a lot of it on the things we talked about. i'm not saying this alone will change it, but hopefully the child tax credit combined with a growing economy in which there are more jobs that pay more and pliefs -- prices are lower are truly going to help people, and we have to help people in that regard. this has to be a critical component of tax reform. i wanted to set the stage for that because unfortunately it is

a complicated thing. unfortunately taxes are very complicated, more than they really should be, and there is going to be a lot of misinformation out there about who this actually helps and how the economy actually works, and so it's really important for us to be clear and up-front about why it is we are doing the things we're doing. when i hear all this talk about helping millionaires and billionaires, they are probably the people that care the least about some of this tax reform. they are going to be finding a way -- they just want to know what the rules are. they want to know what the rules are because they will figure it out one way or the other. if the taxes are too high, they will take their money to another country. if they are low enough, they might invest it here. either way, they will be fine. the people we really want to help are working people and small businesses. and the tax code is a part of that. it's not the only part of that, but it's a big part of it. and that's why this has to happen. it has to happen. it's been far too long. and i guess my last point is i want everybody to kind of take a step back and say 50 years from now when people read about this time in american history,

they're going to ask themselves what was wrong with those people? did they not realize that all these other countries were taking their jobs? and one of the ways those jobs were leaving is because they were giving them away. you were literally inviting people to leave by acting so arrogant about yourself that you thought you could charge them anything you wanted in taxes and they would stay. and that's just not true anymore. i'm not sure it ever was entirely true, but it's less true today than ever before. and in the end, the people that are really being hurt by this are the people whose jobs don't pay enough, at a time when everything costs more. the people that are really being hurt by this are the people that wish they could start their own business, but they can't because they don't think they can make enough money to survive. people that are really being hurt by this are parents that are trying to raise their children at a time when everything costs more. but their paychecks aren't keeping pace. the people that are being hurt by this are the people that sit down every month and kind of write out on a piece of paper, this is our budget for the month, and about 14 or 15 days into the month, something comes in the mail that you didn't

expect was on its way, and all of a sudden that whole budget got blown up, and now you have to use a credit card to pay for it. the people being hurt by this are the people that kids are now 17 years old, and they are like i want them to go to college. i just have no idea how they will be able to go. even with financial aid, they will have to borrow money to go to school. and now they are in debt before they even vote in their first election, they already owe ten grand. so we've got to help them if we are going to rebuild the country's economy. tax reform is a key part of it. here is my last point. there has been a lot of talk about debt and that this is going to grow the debt. that actually doesn't have to be true, because if you lower the tax rate and businesses are hiring more people, creating more jobs, and growing, that's going to grow your economy. and when you grow your economy, you have more taxpayers. when you have more taxpayers, you have more revenue. even though you didn't raise the rate, you will still collect more money, because even though you don't have more taxes, you have more taxpayers. and so that's a big chunk of this. depending on what -- just a

normal -- you know, not unrealistic growth rate would more than pay for the money that people are saying we're not going to collect as a result of this. that's part one of it. the other thing that's interesting to me is if we stood here today and said let's take $1.7 trillion and spend it to build stuff that the government does, there would be no problem with that. that would be seen as stimulus. that's positive. that's good debt spending. but how we say let's take money and give it back to people so they can spend it themselves, that's bad debt, that's ridiculous. and the third thing that i would say is you're never going to tax your way out of this debt anyway. even if we taxed everybody in america next year, if everybody in america that made a million dollars next year, we confiscated every penny of it and said your tax rate this year is 100%, it don't even make a dent on the debt. that's how big the debt is and how fast it's growing. you can'r wait out of it or cut your way out of it either.

the only solution to our debt long-term is you have to do two separate things and do them both. you have to grow your economy. you have to. that pie has to grow. number two, the debt has to be held back so it doesn't grow as big as the economy. if you grow the economy by 4% and grow the debt by 4.5%, then you're not going to get there. so you got to do both. this is part one. part one is grow the economy. part two is going to have to be to bring our spending on a sustainable path so that the growth and the benefits of the growth and the revenue from the growth isn't being taken and used to pay for even more government. to use a best analogy, if you owe a lot of money and you only make $2,000 a month and next month you get paid $3,000 a month but you add $1,500 a month of expenditures, then you're still owing more money. so you got to do both. you've got to generate more revenue through growth, not through more tax, and you've got to hold the long-term line on spending. but this is step one of that

two-step process. and we have a chance to do it here before the year is out. we have to do it. and i believe we will. it will be hard. it should be hard. i was -- i read these articles, tax reform, people are arguing about it. they should argue about it. they don't have a lot of arguments about economic policy in china, by the way. because there is not much of an opposition. but in america we're a republic. there are different ideas. there should be different ideas. tax reform should be controversial because it's important. there should be debate. and there will be. so we arrive at good public policy. nothing wrong with that. it's a good thing. not a bad thing. as long as that debate is geared towards reaching a result. and in the end i will tell you this. if we don't do it, i actually think we'll hurt our economy. not keep it the -- keep it the way it is will hurt it because a lot of businesses, a lot of employers and americans assumed this would happen given who won the elections in 2016. they already made investment decisions on the assumption that

some of this was going to happen. and i'm telling you, if it doesn't happen, the collapse and confidence will hurt the economy badly. failing to act will actually reverse whatever gains we've already made this year on the expectation of growth and will actually shatter people's confidence in america's future. if you're sit thrg today thinking where am i going to open this big plant and hire a thousand people and you see tax reform collapse in the united states and the people in the house and the senate and in the white house are all supportive of tax reform and they still couldn't get it done, you're going to say to yourself, guess what? i'm not investing in that place. because even when the people who are in favor of it are in charge, they still can't get it done. not doing tax reform won't r won't lead to status quo. it will actually lead us worse off. that's why the child tax credit has to happen, by the way. not only can we not pass it without it, we can't justify it without it. so i'm optimistic we're going to

get there. it will be a lot of work but it will be good work. it will be the reason why so many of us are here to begin with. we come here to make a difference. we come here because we want to contribute toward making things better. not perfect, better. this will make things better. for all the people who complain about and spend years here and nothing ever happens, this is a chance to see something hab in our time here and -- happen in our time here and look back and say we made a difference while we were there. that's what we're endeavoring to do and i'm excited that i believe we're going to do it. it will be long, hard, but it will be fun and good for our country and for our people. and it will be -- if we do it right, one of the most rewarding things any of us will ever do in our time here in public service. with