The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“THE TAX SCAM AND THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION” mentioning the Department of Interior was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H72-H75 on Jan. 9, 2018.
The Department oversees more than 500 million acres of land. Downsizing the Federal Government, a project aimed at lowering taxes and boosting federal efficiency, said the department has contributed to a growing water crisis and holds many lands which could be better managed.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE TAX SCAM AND THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2017, the gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Chair for the opportunity to talk about a couple of issues here on the floor of the House. I really have two things I want to talk about today. One is the incredible tax bill that was passed by the Congress and signed by the President just before Christmas, a tax bill that has profound effects on the American economy, most of them negative and bad, but also a tax--I will use the word ``scam''--that will really--well, if you happen to be superwealthy, it is terrific.
I guess, Mr. Speaker, the President, when he went to his Christmas party at Mar-a-Lago, spoke to his guests, most of whom I suspect were rather wealthy, and he said: I just made you a whole lot richer.
Indeed, he did. So we will talk about that in a little more detail.
I also want to talk about the ongoing Mueller investigation. On the floor of the House, from time to time, many of my colleagues from the Republican side come here to the floor, or on cable television, and attack Mueller, attack the FBI, and anybody else who happens to be standing nearby, in an effort to discredit the special counsel's investigation of what happened in the 2016 Presidential election.
It seems to me that here in America, since the very first days of our constitutional government, we have always said that we are a country of laws and that the laws dictate what we do.
{time} 1800
We are not a country of individuals that dictate what happens but, rather, a country of laws. What is happening here in this effort to discredit the Mueller investigation is to move away from that nearly century and a half of profound importance in how people govern themselves not by the will of an emperor or the will of a king or even the will of a President, but we govern ourselves by the laws that are enacted by elected representatives: Senators, Members of the House of Representatives, in the case of the National Government, or legislatures, county commissioners, county supervisors, or city council members.
We are a country ruled by laws that are enacted by the citizens; however, the effort to discredit, to derail, to stop the investigation of the appropriate entity--in this case, the Department of Justice, acting through the special counsel--is contrary to the fundamental foundation of the way in which we govern ourselves. That is to say that that discrediting, that effort to stop the investigation of whether laws were broken, disobeyed, or not followed completely undermines the foundation of our government and our relationship as individuals.
None of us want to be subject to the whims of an individual like a king or an emperor or a President. We want them--in this case, the President--to act through the law, that is, to follow the law and, in this case, an agency within the executive branch, the Department of Justice, to carry out its responsibility to determine if the laws have been followed, if there has been a breach of law, if there has been some other element that is contrary to the rule of law. It is that simple.
So I would ask my Republican colleagues here in the House of Representatives and in the Senate and those who are constantly on cable television who are attempting to knock down the Mueller investigation, to discredit his investigation, to discredit the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies of the Federal Government to slow down, to stand back, and to let the operation that is fundamental to our well-being, that operation of enforcing the law to occur and see where it goes, let the investigation play itself out and not get caught up in questions of whether the Steele dossier was the reason for the investigation. It was not.
Clearly, today, we have learned from Senator Feinstein, whom I thank and whom all of us should thank, for making public the 10 hours of testimony from Fusion GPS available for all of us to see so that we can, as individuals, judge the validity of the charge that has been made that somehow the Steele investigation is all that this is about. It is not. It was not and is not. It is about information that came to the FBI from multiple sources, including counterintelligence information developed by our intelligence agencies. That then led to the investigation and eventually to the establishment of a special counsel.
So take a deep breath. Let this process unfold. Let the facts lead the way. Let the development of those facts be done, and let us then judge the outcome of the investigation.
It seems to me that a lot of the heat that has been put on the FBI and the Mueller team comes from a fear that there is something to fear. So the question should be asked: What is it that you fear?
Why is it that you are doing so much to try to waylay, discredit, stop the investigation?
Is there something that you know that the American public should know?
Is there something that you fear that Mr. Mueller will find out about the 2016 Presidential campaign, about connections to Russia?
Do you know something that would cause you to so aggressively try to stop the investigation? Perhaps you do, in which case, come to the floor and share with us.
I will let it go at that. It just seems to me that we ought to recognize that we are a nation of laws. We are not a nation of a king or an emperor or of a President. We are a nation of laws in which the President's task is to faithfully carry out the Constitution and the laws. If you don't like the laws, come here and change them or go to the Supreme Court and get a ruling that somehow that law is not constitutional. That is the way we should do it.
So enough of that. I have taken a few moments to look at this profoundly important issue about the very nature of government in the United States.
Let me take up another issue, which I actually opened on for just a few moments, and that was tax policy.
I have stood here on the floor before, many times, and talked about the tax bill as it was being developed, and I raised the alarm that somehow this tax bill would not be good for American families and working men and women in America.
I always want to start this discussion with this placard. Those of you who have followed me on the floor may have seen it before, but I want to frame what I am concerned about. I want you to understand the scope of this discussion and why it is of concern. I found this to be an extremely useful way to frame my values and, I think, to frame the values of my colleagues in the Democratic Party.
What is it that we want to accomplish?
What is the value that we put forth?
What is our goal?
What are we trying to do with our public policy statements?
What did we attempt to do with our unanimous opposition to the tax bill that the House of Representatives and the Senate passed and the President signed?
This is the framework. If you would, this is the statement of values. It comes from Franklin Delano Roosevelt. That is actually etched in marble at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial here in Washington, D.C. These are his words: ``The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much.''
Let me repeat that: ``The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.''
For myself, and I know for my Democratic colleagues, this is the touchstone. These words are the touchstone about our policies, about the programs that we push forward. These words are the touchstone that give us a foundation upon which we then analyze the legislation and come to a conclusion to vote ``yes'' or ``no.''
In our analysis of the tax scam, we found that that legislation, now law, failed this test. It failed the fundamental test.
Did that legislation help those who have little or did it add to the abundance of those who have much?
The answer is this from the Joint Tax Committee: during the 10-year life of this legislation, the result of the tax scam is that 83 percent of the $1.5 trillion goes to the top 1 percent.
How can that be? How could it be that a piece of legislation that has been enacted and is now the law of the land will, over the next decade, shift more than $1.5 trillion to those who are already the richest men and women in this Nation, if not in this world?
Why? Why would we add a king's ransom--no, a national ransom--to those who already have 80 percent of the wealth of this Nation?
Why would we do that? Why?
Why would we ignore this test?
We didn't. We Democrats did not. We said ``no'' 186 times because it fails the fundamental test of fairness.
We know across this Nation, it is in economic study after economic study, that America has concentrated wealth in the handful of the top 1 percent to an extent only seen once in America's history before this time, and that was the Gilded Age at the turn of the 19th century. Never, other than now and then, did so few have such a high concentration of America's wealth.
Now, there are those who would argue that is a good thing because all of that wealth will be spent and trickle down to the rest of America. There is not one economic study anywhere that says that trickle down will actually happen; but, rather, what the tax scam bill does is to continue the concentration of wealth for the next decade.
So what of the poor, what of the elderly, what of the students in school who are borrowing vast sums of money so they can get an education?
What of the men and women who have been able to acquire a health insurance policy through the Affordable Care Act because they were able to have that cost of the premium subsidized?
What of those people?
The working men and women of America were dealt a very, very bad hand. But, Mr. Speaker, as the President said when he walked into his club for a Christmas party after signing the bill: I have made you so much wealthier.
So here we are. We had meetings today with military. We need to build new nuclear bombs. We need to build new missiles. We need new ships. We need new tanks.
{time} 1815
Whether they do or not, you can debate, but there is an incredible demand for money from the military. By the way, we need to fight wars. We need to prepare for conflict on the Korean Peninsula.
Need, need, need, we need--yes, they do need. Not all of it. I would disagree with much of it, but nonetheless, enormous demand.
And in this tax bill, where is the money for that? Where is the money for the military?
If you are a military hawk, ask yourself: Where is the money?
It went to the top 1 percent and American corporations that already had $2.5 trillion of cash stashed away in their treasury. They didn't need more money. They were not even investing what they had, yet they received even more as a result of this tax scam.
So what is the purpose of all of this?
Oh, did I mention that in this bill--for that family out there that was able to get health insurance for the first time so they could have a baby, so they could have an operation that they needed, so they can have continuing access to preventative care, do you know what was in this bill? Do my colleagues understand what was in this bill?
Six, seven, eight million of our American families will lose their health insurance as a result of this bill, and all the rest of us are going to wind up paying anywhere from 10 to 20 percent more premium cost as a result of the language that was in this bill that restricts and literally guts the Affordable Care Act. A test of our progress.
So what did the tax scam do?
It shifted a king's ransom--excuse me--a Presidential ransom to those who already have much, the top 1 percent. There you have it, 83 percent of it. And it purposely harms millions of Americans because they will lose their health insurance as a result of the language of this bill that guts the Affordable Care Act's programs.
How could it be? How could we do that?
We Democrats didn't. We said: No. This is bad public policy.
Now, guess what. That was step one of what I like to call the Texas Two Step.
Do you know what step two is?
Step two is to suddenly wake up and realize: ``Oh, my, we have just added $1.5 trillion plus interest, maybe another 3- or $400 billion of interest to the national debt. Oh, my goodness. We have to do something,'' they say.
In fact, it has already been said by our esteemed Speaker. Not the gentleman that is in the chair at this moment, but Mr. Ryan. He has already said: We have to take the next step now. We have to cut entitlements.
Oh, my, the entitlements, we have to cut them in order to deal with the huge new deficit that was created by the tax plan. Wait a minute. Mr. Speaker, you just created the deficit and now you want to go after entitlements. Stop. Time out.
Do we understand what an entitlement is? Do we know what an entitlement is?
Let me tell you. Social Security. Medicare. Oh, we are talking about seniors. Social Security. Seniors.
You mean we have got to cut entitlements, Social Security? Oh, Mr. Speaker, that is what you want us to do? You want us to cut Medicare?
You are suggesting we do that by raising the eligibility age, not from 65, but maybe 67, 68. Terrific. And you just cut the ability for these people to get health insurance at the same time? How does that calculate?
In my mind, it doesn't.
Did I mention Medicaid?
You know those programs--Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, education--those are entitlements.
That is what you want to cut? When 60, 70 percent of Medicaid goes to seniors, nursing homes, other disabled people, extended care, and nursing home facilities, that is what you want to cut?
Guaranteed, as sure as I am standing on the floor at this moment, that is the second step.
And I am not dreaming this up. These are the words of the Republican leadership in this House and in the Senate. So be prepared, America, there is a critical fight, an absolutely important fight that is taking place in your National Legislature, the Congress of the United States. It is about the very future of this fundamental notion.
What are we here for? Are we here for the superwealthy, those who have much? Or are we here for the rest of America?
I know where the Democrats are. I know why we are here. I know why we fight every single day for policies that address issues that help those who have little.
We respect those who have much. They are wonderful people. Well, not all of them. But that is not our concern. They are doing quite well by themselves. It is those who have little.
I see my colleague from New York has joined us.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Jeffries.)
Mr. JEFFRIES. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentleman from California for yielding and for his forceful advocacy and brilliant articulation of the GOP tax scam and all that it represents.
It really is a wolf in sheep's clothing. It is the ultimate hustle. It is nothing but a classic bait and switch. It is a fraudulent Ponzi scheme. The notion that this bill is designed to help benefit middle class folks and working families, those who aspire to be part of the middle class, is such complete fiction when 83 percent of the benefits of the GOP tax scam will go to the wealthiest 1 percent in America.
We know that at least 36 million middle class families, if not more, will experience a tax increase. Medicare, as was just articulated, will be undermined, the deficit will explode, and our children and grandchildren are being asked to shoulder at least $1.5 trillion in additional debt to pay for tax cuts for millionaires, billionaires, special interests, corporations, and big donors to our friends on the other side.
Don't take my word for it. There have been Members of this House who have indicated they needed to get this massive tax cut for wealthy individuals done or their donors would stop contributing. We didn't say that. That is folks from this Chamber on the other side of the aisle when talking about the urgency of jamming this reckless tax scam down the throats of the American people.
As the Congressman, the distinguished gentleman from California, just articulated, the whole premise that anyone other than the wealthy and the well off is going to benefit is built upon the fraud of trickle-
down economics, when there is absolutely no evidence that trickle-down economics has ever done anything for everyday Americans.
When Ronald Reagan cut taxes on millionaires in 1981, we didn't get explosive economic growth. We got an explosion in the deficit.
When George W. Bush cut taxes on millionaires and billionaires in 2001 and 2003, we didn't get explosive economic growth. We got the Great Recession in terms of the legacy of the Bush economy.
Then there was the so-called great Republican experiment in Kansas, where a Republican State Legislature and a Republican Governor massively cut taxes on the wealthiest, top folks in Kansas.
And was there massive economic growth?
No. We got prison riots, overcrowded classrooms, and crumbling infrastructure.
Those are the facts. That is what so-called trickle-down economics has yielded, and now this fraud is being perpetrated on the American people.
It is shameful. It is our children and grandchildren who are going to deal with the consequences of this highly partisan effort to benefit the wealthiest amongst us. It is a raw deal for the American people.
We are going to offer a better deal for the American people; focus on better jobs, better wages, and a better future; focus on higher pay, lower cost; and giving the American people the tools to succeed in the 21st century economy by focusing on a real infrastructure bill, real training, real community college opportunity, real tax reform for middle class Americans and those who aspire to be part of it.
I thank the distinguished gentleman for yielding, for his leadership in this area, and I look forward to working together to deliver to the American people the better deal that they deserve.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Jeffries very much for his remarks. If he can stick around, maybe we can have a colloquy here and discuss this a little better.
Mr. Jeffries and his two colleagues, the gentleman from Rhode Island
(Mr. Cicilline) and the gentlewoman from Illinois (Mrs. Bustos), developed the Better Deal discussion, and I would like to talk about this in the context of infrastructure.
Now, in the next couple of weeks, the President says he is going to deliver to the Congress his infrastructure plan. Well, we know across this Nation that we definitely need infrastructure. He just talked about it a moment ago. And the question will arise: How do you pay for it?
This year, right now, the current fiscal year where we are talking about ``can we fund government before it shuts down,'' $150 billion was ripped out of the Treasury. It is gone for the wealthy tax cuts.
So where do we get the money to pay for infrastructure? How do we do that?
Here is my fear. My fear is that the wealthy 1 percent, top 10 percent, the big corporations have already got their big chunk of the pie, 83 percent of it.
Where do you go to get the money?
I think that the proposal coming from the President will be to tax fees on folks who are using the transportation system.
And who are they?
They are the American families. They are the people commuting to work on the trains or in the buses or in the cars. We need to think through how is it that we can do the infrastructure so there are better jobs, better wages, and better life for Americans?
Mr. Speaker, I yield to Mr. Jeffries to expand on the way in which the Better Deal proposal that we talked about can accomplish that transportation education.
Mr. JEFFRIES. Mr. Speaker, it certainly is the case that because of the GOP tax scam, because of the $1.5 trillion in additional debt that we, as a country, will now have to shoulder so that massive tax cuts can be provided to millionaires, billionaires, special interests, corporations, and big donors, that we are not necessarily in a position to responsibly fund the type of infrastructure plan that the Nation deserves to fix our crumbling bridges, roads, and tunnels.
{time} 1830
We believe, as Democrats, that the American people, in that regard, deserve a better deal, a better deal, again, focused on higher pay, lower costs, and the tools to succeed in the 21st century economy.
One of the ways that you deliver better jobs is through a meaningful infrastructure plan that is appropriately funded, not on the backs of working families, middle class folks, and everyday Americans. It should be funded in an appropriate way. Those who can afford to pay should be paying their fair share. But we just went through a reverse Robin Hood process as it relates to this tax bill, and that is unfortunate.
I am hopeful that we will proceed in a bipartisan way. The President has indicated that he thinks that would be an appropriate approach. We will see whether that is a genuine articulation of a way forward or not. But we cannot repeat the mistakes that were just attendant to the process of jamming this tax bill down the throats of the American people and jamming us in a way that will hurt everyday Americans.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman for laying out the essential agenda of the better deal proposal that the Democrats are putting forth. There are many, many elements to this.
He mentioned education. Infrastructure is a piece of it, medical care, research, and so forth.
Staying with the infrastructure, the Democrats have proposed several different ways to pay for the infrastructure program. Two of those, or one big one, is now gone.
American corporations held $1 trillion--I think, almost $2 trillion--
of profits offshore. In the tax, bill that money cannot be retrieved. It is going into the coffers of the corporations if they bring it back to the United States, with a very small tax.
One of the proposals brought forward by the Democrats was to repatriate, bring that money back to the United States and use it to support infrastructure, to use it to pay for immediate bonds, that we could then sell those bonds and use that money for infrastructure investment. That, of course, is gone as a result of the tax bill.
There is another proposal that really, I think, dovetails with the extraordinary ramp-up of the stock market. A lot of that has to do with transactions, billions of transactions every day. A small fee of less than one one-hundredth of a penny on each transaction would raise billions of dollars and go directly to deal with what is a problem in the stock market, and that is computerized gambling that goes on in the stock market.
There are other ways that we have proposed to raise the money, but one of the things that I fear is that the President is going to come up with a plan that saddles working men and women of America with the infrastructure cost.
Already, working men and women pay for most of the infrastructure. They are the ones who are driving the cars, paying the fees and so forth. This, we have to tackle. We need to do it in a bipartisan way as Mr. Jeffries has suggested, but we ought to do it in a way that tries to claw back as much of that unnecessary wealth that has been transferred to the superwealthy.
I yield to the gentleman from New York.
Mr. JEFFRIES. Mr. Speaker, I think that is exactly right. The gentleman's concerns and suspicions are well-founded based upon the approach that was taken by this Congress on the other side of the aisle in connection with the tax bill.
So the individual tax cuts, to the extent that there are any that will be felt by the American people, are modest; the corporate tax cuts are massive.
The individual tax cuts are temporary; the corporate tax cuts are permanent.
The ability of individuals to take a State and local tax deduction has been decimated; the ability of corporations to use the State and local tax deduction on their corporate tax return is untouched.
The moving expense deduction for individuals has been eliminated, but corporations can continue to take moving expense deductions for closing down a factory or a plant here in America and shipping those good-
paying American jobs overseas to China, India, or other parts of the world.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, did I hear the gentleman correctly that an individual who lost their job, for whatever reason, and moves to another State can no longer deduct the moving expense? Is that correct?
Mr. JEFFRIES. That is correct.
Mr. GARAMENDI. However, a corporation that decides to close that plant, that facility, that laid off that individual, and open a factory in China can deduct the cost of doing that?
Mr. JEFFRIES. Absolutely.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Something is radically wrong here.
Mr. JEFFRIES. It is totally outrageous, and it is exactly why the gentleman's concern about what our colleagues may be attempting to do with respect to the infrastructure bill is real. Because what we have just seen is an effort to massively transfer wealth from individuals and from everyday Americans to wealthy Americans and incredibly well-
off corporations in ways that should never be possible in the United States of America.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I was reading the tax bill yesterday, which is not a good read, and I found a provision that was of particular interest to me. Back in the 1990s, I was Deputy Secretary for the Department of the Interior, and we were trying to deal with the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.
We have also, since that time, had this little thing called the Deepwater Horizon. There has been a small 9-cents-per-barrel fee that the petroleum industry has been paying for the cleanup of oil spills. The big ones, Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon, there was even more money as a result of the legal action taking care of them.
Little oil spills in the rivers and lakes and harbors are cleaned up using that fee. It is about $400 million a year--small, but absolutely essential. In the tax bill, they eliminated that small fee, and it is a
$400 million windfall to the petroleum industry.
You go: Why would you do that? Who, then, is left to clean up? It is going to be the taxpayer in the State.
Mr. Speaker, did the gentleman mention State and local taxes? He is from New York. I am from California. Perhaps the two of us can get in a bit of a rage that the tax bill forces Californians, New Yorkers, Pennsylvanians, and Illinoisans to pay a tax on a tax that they have paid.
I yield to the gentleman from New York.
Mr. JEFFRIES. Absolutely. And I found this sort of whole discussion of trying to punish taxpayers in California, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, and Pennsylvania to benefit States in the Deep South or other parts of the country that already receive more from the Federal Government than they give in return to taxes to be outrageous, and this will just continue the inequity.
New York regularly sends $40 billion more to the Federal Government than we get back in return, and they have just made a bad situation worse. The same for California.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, it is probably not really appropriate that we get into a rage about the way in which this tax bill purposefully harms contributor States and forces the taxpayers in those States to pay Federal taxes on the taxes that they have paid to the State governments.
We could probably go on and on here for some time about the inequities and the harm that this tax bill does, and we certainly should. We should probably come back tomorrow and every day thereafter and tell the American people what has happened to them as a result of this tax scam.
In doing so, I really want to thank the gentleman and his two colleagues for developing, within the Democratic Caucus, a set of proposals, legislative proposals, policy changes, that will give the American public a better deal. We can juxtapose that against the tax bill, which is a raw deal for the American working family, but the gentleman has developed a better deal.
In the days ahead, I would love to join the gentleman and his colleagues juxtaposing the tax bill against the proposal that it is beneficial to working men and women in America, so perhaps we can do that.
Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would like to wrap up, I will follow him with a wrap-up.
I yield to the gentleman from New York.
Mr. JEFFRIES. Mr. Speaker, I look forward continuing to work together for the gentleman's advocacy. We will dissect this tax bill for the American people, continue to discuss it, expose its fraudulent nature, and also lay out in clear terms the better deal we are offering, focused on better jobs, better wages, and a better future.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank Mr. Jeffries, Mr. Cicilline, and Mrs. Bustos for developing the Better Deal program for our caucus.
Mr. Speaker, I am going to end where I started. So, for the American people, I want them to know where we are coming from as Democrats:
``The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.'' If you want to know where I am coming from, read that sentence.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________
