. . . . i appreciate that very much. i came to you on a number of other items, and you couldn't accommodate me, you still offered a way forward. mr. neil made a remark and i think accurately, that we are going to see a lot of you next year. couldn't do a change of this magnitude and not be coming back for technical changes. don't have to vote for the original bill to be part of fixes you think will make it

better, and i know both the chairman and mr. ross well enough to know they'll seriously entertain those kinds of suggestions. see this as it's a huge step, no question. haven't done anything like it in a generation and a half, but there will be a lot of work after this to continue to do, and there will be something, i can assure you none of us anticipate today that will pop up. i would urge you do it. in that area, we have talk about it before, number of concerns that native american tribed had. i know some were impossible to accommodate given the rules and limitations on policy, but i encourage you to look at those areas going forward. i also want to say i like -- i was my friend mr. ross $2,000 for family that makes 73 grand is a lot of money, and the fact that you're doubling the

standard deduction is a boon to everybody but particularly those at the lower end that pay taxes. the fact that you're doubling dg the child tax credit, boon to everybody with children. the fact you moved the refundable portion up to 14 didn'ts for people not paying any taxes at all, income taxes. i think is a huge thing. two questions. first question is, my friends on the other side made the point this open the door to cutting entitlemented. it does open the door to entitlement reform. a big difference between reforming and reducing them. i think in some casesty upper end, having the same social security and medicare plan for wayne buffett and donald trump that you have for ma and pa kettle on the farm living on social security, we out to be looking at that there savings to be had. and i'm not talking about cutting but you may have to look

at raising the cap. in the tax system, how much of the taxes are income taxes both corporate and personal, the total amount of revenue the government makes, versus payroll taxes. >> so, the individual and the corporate together, one and a half trillion dollars or so, excise taxes, the payroll taxes, all those others for medicare, social security, unemployment, on and on and on, are a huge part of the budget, which is -- and right now, frankly, they are helping programs that are financially in trouble. >> i just say this to make exactly that point. this is a debate that's most appropriate on your committee and i encourage you to have it going forward. if your figures are right -- i assume they are, mr. chairman -- the entire discretionary budget of the united states of america is more than covered by income taxes.

so if you have a problem, it's because we are not funding medicare, medicaid, and social security at the level that it takes to pay for themselves. we're drawing down on the medicare -- excuse me -- the social security trust fund right now. we're not putting enough in there right now. we have a surplus for a reason. great bipartisan compromise of 83. the baby-boomer put the money i there they saved the system for their parents, built up a reserve, but we know because life spans are so much longer now we'll have to revisit these kind of issues. that's not cutting. that's deciding -- that's right-sizing what these programs ought to be and whether they should be one-size-fits-all or get nuanced. it's important to know the entire defense of the united states and all the discretionary programs, thing is love, like funding the national institute of health to secure disease or center for disease control to protect us all, or trio to help first generation students and gear up, those students usually

drama from households that pay very little in the way of income tax and deserve benefits and opportunities a every other personnel. income tax portion of this is really paying for all of that now. so, we're not talking about cutting entitlements. second question -- and mr. -- >> can i answer the first one as well. >> absolutely. i'll come back to in the next one. >> the argument i think that applies here is that the work -- the payroll tax is the most onerous tax that middle class americans pay. if follow the logic of the argument you made, which is legit, about expanded life expectancy in america, there's going to be a greater reliance on medicaid for dementia and for alzheimer's disease. >> absolutely true. >> so that's part of this argument. we can't celebrate on one hand expanded life expectancy and day we republic cap this bent another or that benefit.

mr. johnson signed the mid cat act, almost an afterthought for the boar. today especially health care, 70 cents on the dollar goes for medicaid. >> believe me -- >> nursing home care. >> we have a lot of common ground here. trip the amount of funding for alzheimer's. >> the genius love medicare and social security is that we do treat them as earned benefits because of the payroll tax. now, we don't disagree, we have probably closer to agreement than you think in terms of not being sufficient money going into those funds and that we ought to look at raising caps and restructuring burdens, because we are in a very different era than when these programs were designed. they're just demographically not sustainable anymore. there's not a matter of people wanting to cut them. if they don't change them, they're going interrupt you have -- you guys in enc will play a wig role in that. >> you're leading to a key point, social security and pled care is so important but they're made solvent and paid for how

many people working, and what kind of salaries are they getting. and we have too many who aren't working and paychecks have been stagnant for a decade or more. this type of tax reform gets people back in the workplace, gets them getting salaries and paying in the social security medicare. this is incredibly helpful to shore up the programs. >> i agree with that and we're seeing anticipatory reaction to that in terms of higher growth we have seen the last couple of quarters and good job creation and relatively low unemployment, although we have a lot of people, how you define who is unemployed and is not is worth looking at. one question, and mr. neil, did the committee -- i don't know the answer to this. i'm curious. did democrats present an alternative tax proposal? >> we didn't. we offered a series of amendments and the purpose of the amendment offering was to change the contures the tax

debate and that didn't happen, and i think part of our response was based upon the idea that there were no hearings, all took place in less than one month, and in the conference committee we were fairly limited to asking questions after we offered opening statements which only contributed to the incendiary nature of the conference committee played out. my own impression is that there was not really an effort here to extend the opportunity for us to have developed a plan with the majority, and mr. ross congratulated me for suggesting a tax mockup during the daytime, i have to tell you, kevin agreed that medley because that's good policy. idea we'll rewrite the tax structure in the thousand ski and go do 4:00 or the morning, i this was done in darkness and we agreed quickly that it would be done during the daytime hours, and i don't think we went beyond 7:00 at night. >> i think chairman agrees with

that. >> yes, if i could, this in contrast to the way the aca was passed. let's just sort of speak to it. i think the larger point i was making was this, and that is i perceive this process that yielded this result differently than mr. neil. i don't view the as a one-month process. i view this as a five-year process. the prelude was chairman camp's draft that the ways and means committee put together. then chairman ryan and now under chairman brady. the notion that this has been done in basically 30 days i'm arguing is an overcharacterrization, and i think i will, however, stipulate that we will be making changes, obviously, moving this consequence will have to be revisited and that will be true by definition. >> the gentleman yield. >> by all means. >> on the camp propose sag, i must congratulate david camp because of the wait was modeled.

and he broke it down to a series of subcommittees and we took testimony, publicly and privately, from scores of people and individuals. and mr. camp came back with a recommended 25% corporate rate. mr. obama, they came back with a corporate rate of 28%. hence the argue. maybe between the two of those we could find common agreement and kept the preferences and discussions in the coached the idea this was done for repurposing the idea of post card, really didn't happen. >> well, unfortunately the senate gives gets the vote around here. think my friend will come much closer to realizing than and our friends on the other side and we had the opportunity to ask the question ask and that's the answer we got. we needed to move. there's a lot of compromises in the bill. there's some ways in which i think the senate improved our bill. i think there's multiple ways in which we improved heir bill, including starting the corporate income tax immediately, having a

year worth of hiding tax avoidance and tell them have a tax cut in the year and see what happens to the economic activity. let me just end with this because i've gone over time. i want to thank you all. i do. i think i agree with mr. ross' point. i watched this, dave camp is a good friend of mine and i went to a lot of these dinners and briefing sessions he had for people that weren't on the ways and means committee. i served with paul ryan on the budget committee for four years, and then watched him in ways and mean does the same thing. watched my friend, the chairman, build on that. so i think you have actually good at very long process here. a lot of discussion. i think you have improved the product over the course of that. i think you can improve it again. people forget this but after obamacare was passed, we actually did pass seven or eight pieces of legislation, got rid of things like 199 tax forms that everybody was going to have to do, and a number of things

that were republican ideas that democrats adopted, that probably did strengthen the bill fiscally at least and came together, so i hope my friends on the other side, i understand having a big fight and a big disagreement here and it's legitimate. it's politics. on the other hand i think this process will be an ongoing one. i think we improve the bush tax cuts strangely enough, in n the fiscal cliff debate which i voted for. generated more revenue in the end, but it locked down tax cuts for people making less than $50,000 a year. it saved 85% of those tax cuts for 98% of the american people and whether it was an adjustment up, to deal with the revenue situation, i reminded people at the time, this is actually a tax cut because all these things are going to be gone and everybody will by better off. i think this process will work the same. so i hope going forward after we

have robust debate that the process for improvement continues, that the door is open and that the minority participates now. i know they will. my friend, mr. neil, isary available. this is a good product but i think can be made better and will be made better. that, yield back, my chairman. >> thank you, mr. slaughter. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. brady, why didn't carried interest get removed? i know the president campaigned on it. mixed it several times and seem to be a primary interest of his, that go away. >> so, to this whole process we listened, and what we learned is people didn't want hedge fund being able to get carried interest so they don't. we heard -- we want people to make capital investments, put it at risk, work to grow that and only if they held it long-term should by be able to get cap

gains. the decision was bread to put a three-year holding period to ensure that you had to put capital in, and that only if you were in that investment for the long term would you be able to benefit. that was a common ground that eliminated abuses of carried interest but preserved it for, for example, the real state partnerships in your town that invest in that local industrial park or build that strip center or that movie theater. these are long-term investment is. they're not abusing anything and they're not gaming anything. they're helping build our infrastructure and community and that's preserve ford them. >> that brings up another point. the public interest bonds. we've got a lot of concern, in new york, that's gone. >> those were private activity bonds were retained so they're -- >> they are still -- >> as they are. >> i in other words today they'd had been removed. >> huh-uh. >> that's good news. i'm not going to ask questions

because i took up a lot of time. i do want to ask unanimous consent to put this report in that i just got, it and is by the senate democrats, bit i'm sure it's accurate because what it is is a report that shows that' since the senate passed the bill, eight, nine days ago, companies have already announced $70.2 billion in stock buybacks for the wealthy shareholders and investors. that's just in nine days. 70.2 billion. further evidence that the g.o.p. failed to significantly grow the economy and would instead be a massive give away to corporations and the top one percent. and i -- these are major corporation, only 29 of them in this group. so, if that is 29 have already gob out dis70 billion, saying they're not going to use that for anything except buy back stock and bonuses, that's note going create a heck of a lot of

jobs or expansion, thank you very much. >> can i commend on that shared interest? held for five years so this really isn't much of a reform. in addition there was broad suggestion everywhere that whole notion of carried interest, it's ordinary income. >> gentwoman yields back her time. the distinguished gentleman from georgia. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you all for being here. want to get into the issue how we event the committees from meeting after 7:00 p.m. >> the gentleman is out of order. the jayce out -- gentleman is out of order. already occurred to me. [laughter] >> hold on. we have been doing a better job. >> let me say, mr. chairman, we have absolutely been doing a better job. i want to tie into that. mr. neil mentioned this was a missed opportunity. i've been in this institution for seven years with the voting card of the seventh district of

georgia and never seen an authorizing particularly on issue as complicated a tax be gas of a listener and have as much of an open door as chairman brady has and chairman ross has. i can think of times, late in into the evening, not a week ago, not a month ago, but in the case of chairman brady, it must have been nine mocks -- months ago i sat down with plan that ha had been well thought through. i talked with your chief of staff about ideas and you asked, where can we go and what can we do? i remember sitting with mr. ross at dinner 18 months ago, talking about writ is we can go and how we can do better. if is there a missed opportunity, i would say to are in neil, it is a missed opportunity because i have never seen the process be as open and inclusive as it has been this time around and i'm grateful i stipulate that we can do better,

but to chairman sessions' point, he has run this committee in a more transparent way than we have seen in -- on our side of the nile a lot of years. mr. neil, can you t of,nk as you think that through chairman you have had an opportunity to work with, there is a republican chairman that you can think of that was a better listener, was more collaborative thinking than the one you have notice just breaks all the model, all the molds, that i've seen, and i see this as an opportunity. i think about what you all achieved on the ways and means committime. agree with my friend knock new york, this was supposed to be revenue neutral tax reform. which is what we passed together. now, we passed i without any democratic votes when the budget committee issued those reconciliation instructions. wished had been more collaborative. if we had know democrats in the

senate pushing for revenue neutral we could have held the house position. if you and i agree this is a missed opportunity, have we ever had a better one than the one we have right now? >> mr. brady and i get along fine. we have been friends for a long period of time. we go back and forth, we speak, mr. ross the same thing. mr. ross is lucky enough to have inherited my subcommittee chairmanship; that's not the point. on friday last week, the development community was taken care of with the new provision. treated in a different way. this was patch and paste. every time somebody said i don't like this or i don't like that, well after the conference committee had met, this was still being put together. and i think that is the missed opportunity that took place here. also think the politic offered the situation developed, and i think it's a fair statement to say that it was more anxious for victory and they were going to do it with or without us.

my average is once again, that the 86 act based upon legislation that was filed in 82. ronald reagan and jim baker sat through the markup. in the ways and means committee, and in the end, more than 300 members of the house voted for that whole idea of tax reform. some of these issue idaho have not been index ford inflation, we'll be back to you. i if there was one reality, mr. well, that you would be aware of, it was what happened with allege concerntive minimum tax because it was never indexed for application. a year, more poor people were been ensnared and i hope at we go forward on on this we'll address these issues quickly so that the very purpose of what we wanted to do here is accomplished. i hope that we can do this in a bipartisan manner. >> the political model that gets developed is hard to overcome as

it develops and we have that opportunity -- >> speaking of -- >> ed -- it's become worse. >> but ace sit here tonight in bipartisan agreement that we're going to be back at this table again in a month or in six months or in 12 months, working -- whether it's a technical correction or an opportunity do even more than what we have done here, recognizing that we'll be back here together, we have choice of whether we continue to harden tonight or maybe wait until tomorrow -- >> in agreement as we like each other. >> you mentioned social security. it just drives me crazy. we'll have these partisan discussions back and forth. you either have to tax me more or give me express probably both. to balance social security trust fund for folks in their 40s like ale and everybody at this table knows it. everybody at this table knows you have to tax me more or pay me less and probably both, and yet, we'll just pull that out of

the pocket as a political bludgeon when the time is appropriated, and mr. chairman i think about the challenges that you have been up against. you fought for revenue neutrality and you led it through the house and i'm grateful. you fought for permanency. i think one of the things was most proud of that we did together here was to say if it's worth doing, it's worth stick with and you fought and pulled as much through the senate conference committee as you could, but the fact that i know you believe it, and the fact that i know you can lead to us victory here gives me great home when he come back and get another bite at the apple, we'll be able to do that. >> what i would like to ask, though, because i hear it over and over again, heard it again tonight, be a big business has a -- over hard-work taxpayers. i go back to early conversation witches both chairman. we weren't talking about tax

cuts. we were talking about wage growth. we weren't talking about how to advantage -- in a business, how to advantage somebody who is working at a business, trying to pay their -- what is that answer? again, if folks knew you on a personal level they would know how hard wow york fork work families. what is the easy answer you tell folks against they barrage of misinformation that drives home that point that this was never -- the only reason it's important to have a business succeed is because the folks who work at that business have to succeed. microsoft can pick up and move across the globe tomorrow. the men and women who work at microsoft are still going to be living in my neighborhood when that happens. can you men me with that. >> we don't choose between the hard working individual and their family in that hard-working business they work at. we help both. so that median average family, four in the seven inch district

of georgia, sees a tax cut of 2,743. that is average small business making $60,000, they're the doughnut shop in your home town, they see a $3,000 tax cut for starters, and we make it easy for them when they buy that equipment, that new computer, add the store next to them or expand, so they're immediately able to write that off and put that money back in their workers and their growth and success. so we believed the strengthen paychecks allows you keep more of itth it, strengthen that local business so they can invest more, spend -- and by the way, so they can compete in win anywhere in world, including here in georgia. the key part of the tax code. growth and paychecks and keeping more of what you earn. >> mr. neil. >> thank you. so, in 2001, we were promise there was going to be parallel

comment growth based on the bush tact tax cuts. growth was negligible. in 2000, another trillion dollars for tax cuts and in twerk ten's billion offered dollars brought back at five and a quarter threw repatriation. so today american corporations sitting on $2.3 trillion, 3 double-offshore, and some would argue that there's even more that's available that's on the sidelines. the thing is all of a sudden this is going to be reinvested and going to create a rise in wagessed and investment. that doesn't seem to be the case based on early speculation, gary cohn is asking crowes what they don't to do consecutive i with the money they're going to give that money to dividend, buy back of stock, and their 6 million jobs in american that go unanswered, back to the issues of skills gap. $6 million to department of labor reported that go unanswered. that's why this is a missed opportunity. to your earlier point.

>> mr. ross. >> thank you, mr. wood y'all. i think there's couple of things to distinguish what the observation that mr. neil just made. one was the repatriation of the past was a repatriation holiday. it was not a permanent policy. what we're proposing is something entirely new to switch from an international still which antiquated to a territorial system, lower the toll charge, and allow that now come back on a one-time basis and then make so it you never have to have that hassle again. fundamentally different than an episodic holiday. look at the work of the tax foundation, one reason chairman brady was so articulate and such strong proponent of expensing is because expensing creates growth. expensing tills the business, throw away the depreciation schedule.

if you're bog something, write off in year one and that just intuitively tells you that is something that is incredibly significant, as to polls of ceos in peck public meetings i don't find that persuasive. what ceo is going raise his hand in some setting like that to be swarmed by the press that says, what are you plans? so i think what we can look forward to is that the fruit, the benefit, of ultimately a tax code that is not entirely permanent, but heaven knows the chairman was an incredible advocate for moving things on a permanent basis, and that the reason is that is the foundation upon which growth happens. one other quick point. if you distill this down in my way of thinking there's two things that are really going on here. for your constituents and mine and everybody in this room's constituents. one is just merciful tax relief. i come from the state of

illinois. my general assembly jammed threw massive tax hike in july. go on the "chicago tribune" tax calculator and type in $90,000 for your home irthey're paying $900,000 in additional taxes. my state is begging for tax relief and this bill comes over the hilltop and offers them tax relief. there's merciful tax relief that people need. the six the foundation upon which we want our economy to grow. we want this to be the economics of invitation, not the economics of envy that is so -- that some folks are stuck on, but in order for there to be more opportunity you have to have incentives for business to invest and therein lies what is at the foundation of this bill. >> i do long for that day because die still believe there's more that we agree on

than we disagree on. thank you to the polling mr. neil cite. if more folks were talking about how happy they were instead of how dire things are, we would get different poll results across the board. i remember the first time i heard president obama mention deemed repatriation. i was pretty shocked by the idea first time i heard it. now it's in kevin brady's tax bill. we're deeming repatriation for bringing dollars back that would never be here. they would never going to be. might have been building the next factory overseas and weren't going do be here. now we have a shot at that. are the economics of productivity and wage growth as tightly connected today? they're not but it starts on day one, instead of tax breaks that start a year later as ronald reagan and tip o'neill crafted in the early '8s so we're going to get butter results for families than we would have

otherwise. there's so much to celebrate here. i will just echo what my friend from wyoming said, all the slings and airline rows -- air rows on both sides of the aisle to all 0 three of you gentleman, always a kind word and a real commitment understanding the gravity of the opportunity that each of you have and the roles you play, and i wish that more of my constituent back home could see what that means, the level of commitment that each of the three of you have, not just your cob city opportunities but to the country and i thank you for it. >> the gentleman gaves back his time. the gentleman from massachusetts. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i would be fairly brave but probably extend my communities and our time has only controlled two minuteses of the time. mr. chairman, you began this meeting by saying that the republicans were only giving people what they want.