Understand how much of a hole its going to blow into the Housing Production but i expect that there are other unintended consequences by twhesm just found out last night that wind and solar will also have the same issue in being impacted by this. I hope we can adopt my amendment and fecks this. I hope we can slow down and understand this important part of our tax code. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Senator grassley. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, im not going to vote for this amendment but i do appreciate that she brings up an issue that we better be very, very certain about, not only because of low Income Housing but also because of Renewable Energy and she mentioned wind and solar, something that should not be touched, and it is hurt very badly in the house bill. Shouldnt be tutched by any of this stuff. We made an agreement three years ago to be in transition get rid of the tax credit 20, olar 21, for wind in and as i indicated yesterday or two days ago in our discussion in my very same subject discussions with secretary mnuchin that every tax bill has transition provisions in it and this is a transition provision that we have for wind and solar going back three years, shouldnt be screwed around with, let it play out and he agreed with that and so im going to be following whether or not the senator from washington has a good case here and she does, i intend to have it fixed not only from the standpoint of what she wants to accomplish but from the standpoint of whea the Renewable Energy weve already reached an agreement on. Could i ask is that right, mr. Abramson, the only thing that would be allowed would be the r d credit . Yeah, when youre looking at the inbound provision, inbound minimum tax theres a modified taxable income calculation made and you deduct certain payments that are made outbound but you also add back in for purposes of calculating the modified tackable income the modified the r d credit but not other credits. This is just, anyway , my point, the larger point is just that, you know, were trying to get our arms around all of this. Were trying to understand the impacts here. I just, i hope our colleagues will understand how important to understand the consequences of these things. Thank you. I would recommend the senator withdraw the amendment and work with all of us and see if we can resolve it. Just quickly, mr. Chairman, i did talk to you briefly about this and i think that the 10 which is what that minimum tax is is a relatively low number, so there shouldnt be these sorts of issues that would be significant but if there are, i think we should take a look at it. If senator cantwell is willing to have a further discussion of it, im happy to do that. I think because of the offset youre not going to get support on this side but whatever you prefer to do, id be happy to try to work on this for both of those tax credits. Im sorry. Do we have time to fix this . I think in the context of floor debate, not in committee as i understand it. But lets go ahead with the vote. Clerk will call the roll. One minute. Well listen to senator wyden first. Very brief. Weve known for some time that americas housing policy needs a remodel. We started that effort with the pass act in 2015. It was bipartisan. The chairman recalls that. Then weve been moving at least for some time in the right direction under the cantwell patch effort for additional housing. I think this proposal in the mark actually goes backwards. I hope my colleagues will support senator cantwell and we continue the bipartisan progress we began the pass act in 2015. Clerk will call the roll. The clerk mr. Grassley. No mr. Crapo. No. Mr. Roberts. No mr. Enzi. No mr. Cornyn. No. Mr. Thune. No. Mr. Burr. No mr. Isakson. No. Mr. Toomey. No. Mr. Heller, no. Mr. Scott. No by proxy. Mr. Cassidy. No. Mr. Wyden. Aye. Ms. Stabenow. Aye. Ms. Cantwell. Aye. Mr. Menendez. Aye by proxy. Mr. Carper. Aye. Mr. Cardin. Aye. Mr. Brown. Aye. Mr. Bennett. Aye. Mr. Casey. Aye. Mr. Warner. Aye. Ms. Mccaskill. Abstain. Mr. Chairman. The chairman votes no. Clerk will report. Caller the final tally is 11 the clerk the final hallly is 11 aye, 14 nays. Amendment is defeated. Warner number three. Ive got a special deal for you. I would love to speak, ive got two amendments in a row id love to speak to number 328 first and not ask for a vote, i just want to inform members and then i want to speak to warner amendment number 1 which i would ask for a vote on. Ok. On warner amendment number 328, warner number 3, one of the things that i did agree with what you did in this legislation is you put back in section 127 that allows mployers to spend up to 5,250 a year to continue employees education using pretax dollars. I think thats important for our work force to have the training they need. My amendment, which i hope well have a chance to discuss at a later date, which has broad bipartisan support which is supported here by 127 different organizations, most of your statesen republican side will give that same opportunity, if youre allowing an employee to use pretax dollars to pay someones ongoing education, this would also allow that same amount to be used in pretax dollars to pay down student debt. Student debt is at 1. 45 trillion. It cripples a lot of individuals. We ought to give the same benefit for paying down student debt as ongoing education. And i withdraw the amendment in terms of its vote. Thank you. Mr. Warner let me now talk to amendment number 1, amendment number 326. This, as someone who felt for a long time that we do i concur with my colleagues, many on this side, and most on the other side that we need to rationalize our Corporate Tax rate and repatriate some of those the corporate dollar. My concern has been that those repatriated dollars are oftentimes not used for investment in the United States. In fact a survey done a few minutes ago of over 300 executives at major u. S. Corporations basically said the vast majority said what they would use those dollars for is pay down debt. If we look at the last couple of quarters, corporate profits have been at record highs, weve seen quarters where 95 of all corporate profits were used for Share Buyback buyback and dividends. My amendment is simple. It would require taking companies, taking advantage and i all i ask my colleagues to do is listen on this one. Require Companies Taking advantage of this preferred rate for repatriated funds, deemed repatriated rate, to use at least some of those dollars brought back at this enormously low rate to actually reinvest, and we can negotiate what the percentage is, to reinvest in meaningful Work Force Training programs for those low and moderate income workers that fall below 82,000 a year. Unfortunately over the last 15 years we have seen a traumatic decline in the amount of employerpaid Work Force Training. In a world where no skill set is going to give you the ability to stay employed throughout your life, i believe we need to incent businesses to do that kind of training, train thats meaningful that will allow them to stay employed. I believe theyre going to take advantage of this dramatically preferred rate, they ought to have skin in the game in terms of training their existing work force. Its a reasonable amendment and i ask for its consideration. What are we voting on right now . Thats the one im asking for a vote on. The worker training one . Clerk will call the roll on warner number one. The clerk mr. Grassley. No. Mr. Crapo, no by proxy. Mr. Roberts. No. Mr. Enzi. No. Mr. Cornyn. No. Mr. Thune. No. Mr. Burr. No by proxy. Mr. Isakson. No. Mr. Portman. Mr. Toomey. No. Mr. Heller. No. In scott. No by proxy. Mr. Cassidy. No. Mr. Wyden. Aye. Ms. Stabenow. Aye. Ms. Cantwell. Aye. Mr. Nelson. Aye. Mr. Menendez. Aye by proxy. Mr. Carper. Aye. Mr. Cardin. Aye mr. Brown. Aye. Mr. Bennett. Aye. Mr. Casey. Aye. Mr. Warner. Aye. Ms. Mccaskill. Aye. Mr. Chairman. The chairman votes no. The clerk will report. The clerk 12 ayes, 14 nays. The amendment is defeated. Where do we go now . Who is up next . I think im up next. Cardin number 10. I have good news for you, im not going to be asking for a vote on this amendment. I do want to explain to my colleagues the progressive consumption tax. The United States, it is true, has the highest marginal income tax rates in the industrial world. And one has to ask why . We are not competitive with our marginal tax rates. Admittedly our effective tax rates are lower but for businesses our marginal rates are out of step with the international community. And if you ask why i think senator warner sort of put said this yesterday that for the percentage of our economy thats devoted to government, the United States is near he bottom of the industrial world, not at the top. So why do we have the highest margall tax rates . The reason of course is that were the only industrial nation in the world that doesnt use consumption revenues to help finance their federal government. We use only Income Tax Revenues. As a result, this chairmans mark is trying to reduce the marginal tax rates using basically only Income Tax Revenues to do it. Consequences, large increase in the debt. 1. 5 trillion. Consequences, youve done things that are going to hurt a lot of people like the state and local Tax Deductions and cutting people off health care. Consequences, you have temporary provisions that will have to be taken up and unlikely that this tax bill if it becomes law, will survive even one year without changes. Again as we saw in 1986, you change the tax code 10,000 times since 1986. Doesnt give you a great deal of predictability. 10 the bill that i filed, the progressive consumption tax, would recognize that we could have a competitive tax code and what it does, it establishes a 20 highest Corporate Tax rate a 28 highest personal income tax rate, starting with families over 100,000 in taxable income. Behe that theyd pay no income taxes. A 10 consumption tax which by the way is adjusted, i assume senator burrs the benefit of having border adjusted taxes, this is something senator thune and i looked at last year, the last congress, one of the real problems in our business tax code is the fact that we rely shoally on solely on income revenues rather than consumption revenues. Its progressive. We look theat distribution schedules and its progressive as our current tax code and also put in here, mr. Chairman a Circuit Breaker so that if it raises more revenue than we say, well return that excess revenue to the taxpayers of this country. I really do believe well come back to this proposal, maybe not in this congress, but well come back to this proposal and i wanted to share this wisdom with my colleagues today but i ill not be seeking a vote. Thank you, senator. Who is next . Thank you, mr. Chairman. I want to go back to health care and the tax code for a minute. Again, we are doing tax policy here around health care and when we look at another way, very significant way, to help working people its to help Small Businesses. Ms. Stabenow so i offered an amendment that reflects a bill that ive introduced, the health care for Small Businesses act, and instead of people losing their health care or premiums going up, what we ought to be doing is helping Small Businesses that have the majority of people working for them that dont have health insurance. D in michigan, theres 856,302 Small Businesses, mr. Chairman, and they employ about 1. Million people. When the Affordable Care act was passed, i authored an original Small Business tax credit in the process of going through everything it ended up in my mind losing its strength. It wasnt as robust as i think it should be. Its complicated and many Small Businesses arent taking advantage of the current credit. Its just not as good as Small Businesses need. And only companies with fewer than 1 employees are eligible for the maximum credit right now. So what im proposing is that we have a robust tax credit for Small Businesses where the majority of people are that dont have health insurance. And that is for employees, up to 50 mes, there would be a 50 tax credit. For Small Businesses. Up to 50 employees. And the credit would phase out after a wage income of 50,000. So this would actually be a major win for Small Businesses and for employers and for communities and for our economy if we want to really address one of the big pulls right now in providing health care and bringing back health care costs. It would be to support Small Business. And so the amendment is, as i indicated, is based on a bill i have that was supported by the National Retail federation, the Small Business council of america, the National Association of insurance and financial advisors, third way, Small Business majority, and main street alliance. This would be a very positive change in the tax code that would help more people get health care and would help Small Businesses. And i would urge colleagues to support it. Mr. Chairman. I recommend a vote against this clerk will call the roll. The clerk mr. Grassley. No. Mr. Crepo no. Mr. Roberts, no. Mr. Enzi. No. Mr. Cornyn. No. Mr. Thune. No. Mr. Burr. No. Mr. Isakson. No. Mr. Portman. No. Mr. Toome. No. Mr. Heller, no. Mr. Cassidy. No. Mr. Wyden. Aye. Ms. Stabenow. Aye. Ms. Cantwell. Aye. Mr. Nelson. Aye. Mr. Menendez. Aye by probblingsy. Mr. Carper. Aye. Mr. Car kin. Aye. Mr. Brown. Aye. Mr. Bennett. Aye by proxy. Mr. Casey. Aye. R. Warner. R. Warner. Aye by proxy. Ms. Mccaskill. Aye. Mr. Chairman. The chairman votes no mr. Bennett. Aye. Mr. Hatch clerk will report the result. The clerk the final tally is 12 aye, 14 nays. Mr. Hatch amendment is defeated. We go to senator cantwell number 2. Senator cantwell, its your amendment. Ms. Cantwell i hope we have enough time to discuss this amendment because this is one of my fundamental concerns about this bill. When we started saying we were going to talk about tax reform and changing making our corporations more competitive, as somebody who represents a state with a lot of international companies, i wanted to talk about that. I wanted to talk about the innovation economy of the future. And what we could do to stir and innovate more given our tax code. But as we discussed this and we changed our policies from not being a revenue neutral bill and certainly not focusing on closing some of the loopholes within corporations, thee the attention was turned to getting revenue to pay for the Corporate Tax break from our state and local deductions. Now why is that most concern to me . Because i feel like so much of the debate is focused on these large, east coast states. The state of washington, like several other on this panel, nevada, and florida, and south dakota, and wyoming, we dont have an income tax. And if you look at the states that ranked in the top whatever, 15 or 20, as most tax efficient states in the country, those that dont have a major tax, our economy has grown faster than the National Average every year since world war ii. So we have grown an economy, we have grown great businesses. But we have also attracted and depended on our ability to deduct our local sales tax, our sales tax, our property taxes, and obviously were having this debate over in the house about other issues. The point here is this. The majority of funding of this bill is based on these local deductions. And i have done my best to keep pace with the changing of these legislative proposals for the last 10 days. Every day i ask for, well, how does it affect our constituents . And as we continue to complain about the fact that so much of the burden is taking away deductions from our citizens an raising their taxes, people keep changing the bill. So the house has made changes. They probably promised a lot more people they were going to make changes today. Here in this committee weve made changes. We continue to make changes. In fact, mr. Barthold do we have the latest j. T. C. Scoring on this . A couple of tais ago i had the estimate that it was 20 of this middle income group which ended up being about 300,000 people in the state of washington. So ive asked for the latest table, do we have the latest table . You have the latest revenue table for the chairmans bill as modified. Ms. Cantwell do we have a distribution table . That was distributed this morning, j. C. X. 17. Ms. Cantwell that shows the percentage of people affected. The number of people in each income area that will be affected. The last page of the table, of jcx58 page 7, provides the estimate of the number of tax filing units in each income category. Ms. Cantwell the number of people whose taxes go up and the number whose taxes go down . We have not completed an analysis of that. Ms. Cantwell thats what i thought, i was just verifying that. Thats my point, mr. Chairman. This is a very important issue for my state. And its a very important issue about the overall debate of this tax bill. Why should we pay for a Corporate Tax break by putting it on the burden of the middle class. And so these deductions, i read a letter yesterday partly from a veteran from my state saying im waking up thinking i might end up paying 5,000 more. Ive given estimates and i know you guys keep making changes to the bills, i hope you can avoid this but you havent gotten there yet. I still have people in my state who are going to pay more tax. Even with the doubling of the standard deduction. Even with the Child Tax Credit changes. Even with all of this. There are thousands of people in my state that are going to pay more. Now, im sure if i went and knocked on the door of these corporations and said to microsoft and amazon and some of the other people in washington state, is that what you intended . Is that where you inten