REPUBLICAN TAX CUTS

On 2025-05-05, Representative Thomas R. Suozzi (D-NY-3) delivered a floor speech titled "REPUBLICAN TAX CUTS" in the House.

REPUBLICAN TAX CUTS

Congressional Record, Volume 171 Issue 74 (Monday, May 5, 2025) [Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 74 (Monday, May 5, 2025)] [House] [Pages H1849-H1852] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] REPUBLICAN TAX CUTS (Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr. Thompson of California was recognized for 30 minutes.) General Leave Mr. THOMPSON of California. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order. The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from California? There was no objection. Mr. THOMPSON of California. Mr. Speaker, I want to start today with some good news. I think it is fantastic that the Golden State Warriors played an incredible basketball game last night and brought them to victory over the Rockets out of Texas and are going to advance onto the next round of the basketball playoffs. So I congratulate the Dubs. Sadly, that is where the good news ends. What we are going to talk about for the rest of this evening is some bad news, bad for the American people. The Republican plan to extend the Trump tax cuts for billionaire donors like Elon Musk is a bad deal for the American people. During this Special Order, we are going to lay out exactly how reckless this Republican plan is to extend the Republican Trump tax cuts. An extension of the Republican Trump tax cuts would disproportionately benefit those who need it the least, would recklessly increase our Nation's deficits, and it fails to prioritize hardworking Americans' contributions. Republican tax cuts get our priorities exactly backwards. When Democrats passed tax cuts, we focused on who needed the help the most. The tax cuts that Democrats passed and that President Biden signed into law were some of the most significant middle-class tax cuts we have seen in a generation. In 2021, our expanded child tax credit nearly cut child poverty in our country in half. We also made historic expansions to both the earned income tax credit and the dependent care credit which dramatically cut child poverty. In other words, when Democrats do tax cuts, we focus those tax cuts on those who need it the most. The Republicans on the other hand are looking to extend tax cuts that are overwhelmingly tilted to benefit those who need it the least. Under the Republican tax bill, a taxpayer who makes $1 million or more saw an average tax cut of $79,000, where a taxpayer making $50,000 only saw about $270 in tax cuts. Putting this another way, for every dollar they are giving to the average working person, they are handing $288 to a person making over $1 million every year. Let me be clear about that statistic. I am not talking about a millionaire, not someone who is sitting on a house and a 401(k) that they have worked for and saved for for 30 years to hit $1 million. This is what they are giving to someone who makes $1 million every year. Now, I don't know how you feel, Mr. Speaker, but I don't think people who are making $1 million a year are the ones who need a helping hand in this economy. Now, suffice it to say, we have made this point once or twice before, and every time we do we get the same response from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle. They say: People who make over $1 million pay a lot in taxes, so, of course, they get a bigger tax cut. However, that argument is full of prunes. Let's be clear. Congress is perfectly capable of cutting taxes for working people without also cutting taxes for those at the top. That is right. Believe it or not, Mr. Speaker, you can lower the tax rates at the bottom without also lowering the tax rates at the top. In fact, last year, the Treasury Department did a study. They looked at how much it would cost to extend the Republican Trump tax cuts so that everyone making under $400,000 a year was held harmless. There was no impact on the bottom 98 percent of the income distribution. How much did it cost? They said it would cost $1.8 trillion. Now, that is not pocket change. We all know that, but it is a heck of a lot less than the recent Joint Committee on Taxation estimate of $4.6 trillion that it will cost to extend the Republican Trump tax cuts that favor those who don't need any help. {time} 2030 The thing is, if Republicans would be willing to abandon their goal of cutting taxes for the most fortunate, if they would genuinely focus on the middle [[Page H1850]] class and focus on offsetting those tax cuts in a responsible, deficit- neutral manner, I bet they could get a lot of colleagues on my side of the aisle to join them in that effort. Instead, they have embarked on a go-it-alone strategy, and go it alone they will. As long as their goal is to reward their big donors with massive tax cuts while leaving working people behind, they can go it alone. Someone who knows the impact that these tax cuts have had on taxpayers across our country, the negative impact they have had on working people across our country; someone who knows well how these Republican tax cuts stole from people who live in high-cost areas their ability to deduct their State and local taxes, costing constituents in those areas thousands and thousands of dollars a year; someone who knows well what that is and has been working tirelessly ever since they did that, ever since they foisted that tax increase on people in high- cost-of-living areas; and someone who has been working on it ever since they did it, trying to work with people on both sides of the aisle to figure out how to resolve the State and local tax deduction is my colleague, Tom Suozzi from New York. He is a great Member and a member of the Ways and Means Committee. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Suozzi). Mr. SUOZZI. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank him for bringing attention to this important issue. I am going to talk about the State and local tax deduction in some detail, but first let me just say generally that what we are talking about is so important. We have so many of our friends on the other side of the aisle who are constantly talking about how the government spends too much money and how deficits are getting so much bigger. Here, under their tax bill that they are proposing right now, they are going to increase the deficit in the United States by $4.5 trillion. Now, that doesn't make any sense. Why would they propose something when they have people on their side who their singular most important issue is reducing the deficit, but they would increase the deficit by $4.5 trillion? Now, my colleague talked about the tax cuts from 2017, well, a lot of my residents didn't see a tax deduction. They saw a tax increase. The reason they saw a tax increase is because they capped the State and local tax deduction at $10,000. Let me just explain what the State and local tax deduction is. The State and local tax deduction was in place for 100 years, from 1913 until 2017. In 1930, they started the Federal income tax code in the United States of America. When they said we are going to tax people's income at the Federal level, a lot of Governors, mayors, and local elected officials said, no, they don't want a Federal income tax because that will stop them from raising the taxes at the State and local level. Since America's founding, government was mainly paid for at the State and local level through State and local taxes. The Federal Government was funded by tariffs, quite frankly, a very interesting topic for today. When the mayors and Governors protested, they said: We don't want to have a Federal income tax because you are going to hurt us. We don't want to pay taxes on the taxes we have already paid at the State and local level. The Federal Government said: Don't worry about it. We will put a deduction in place that says you can deduct your State and local taxes from your income, so you don't have to pay taxes on the taxes you have already paid. Okay, let's do that. They put it in place for 100 years. In 2017, they said we are going to cap this deduction that has been in place for over 100 years at $10,000. They took the long arm of the Federal Government and reached into local governments. They violated the covenant of federalism, and they said: We are going to make you pay taxes on the taxes you have already paid to your States, to your cities, to your towns, to your villages, to your school districts. We are going to tax you on the money you have already paid in taxes at the State and local levels. That caused some people's taxes to go up, especially in high-tax States that happen to be Democratic States, such as in New York, New Jersey, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Rhode Island, and Hawaii. They caused people's taxes to go up because they could no longer deduct their State and local taxes. It is not fair. In fact, people have moved away from our States to other lower tax States. Why are taxes higher in my State and in your State compared to, say, Florida and Texas? They are higher because in New York State and in California, we insure our children. We have the lowest rates of uninsured children in the United States of America and the lowest rates of uninsured adults in the United States of America, whereas Florida and Texas have the highest rates of uninsured children and uninsured adults. Our taxes are higher in our States because we pay our teachers, police officers, firefighters, and other public workers in public employee unions and other union workers higher wages. They don't like unions in Florida, Texas, and other low-tax States. It is not fair that in States like mine and yours, Mr. Thompson, and other Democratic States, we are net donors to the Federal Government. We send more money to the Federal Governm