Nomination put forward for the person who will permanently be proposed to head up the o. C. C. , joseph otting. And in mr. Otting, we have another example of somebody whose entire career has been spent working with banks and other major Financial Institutions to try to evade important Consumer Protections and taxpayer protections. In fact, mr. Otting and his bank were able to profit very handsomely from the mortgage crisis. The c. E. O. Of one west during part of that crisis was the person whos now secretary of the treasury, steve mnuchin. He was the head of one west during the foreclosure crisis. During that time, one west had what many have called a foreclosure machine in place. And mr. Otting, who is going to be in the, the head of the o. C. C. And who we would hope would be more independent as required by the charter of the o. C. C. , he was there working for the secretary treasury, steve mnuchin, at one west. And mr. Otting was there working at one west when the bank foreclosed on nearly 40,000 americans. And one west received more than 1 billion in taxpayer money to cover one wests losses. Those are exactly the kind of losses that were trying to avoid in the aftermath of the crisis, that were trying to avoid by adopting the wall street reform bill, doddfrank, so that taxpayers, our constituents, arent left holding the bag for decisions made by people like mr. Otting and mr. Mnuchin. According to one media summary, one west bank, quote, rushed delinquent homeowners out of their homes by violating notice and waiting period statutes, illegally back dating key documents and effectively gamed foreclosure auctions. End of quote. In the reverse mortgage business, one west controlled Firm Financial freedom engaged in practices that led to more than 16,000 foreclosures, a far greater number than would be expected based on the companys market share. Elderly individuals who had recently suffered the death of a spouse were victimized. In one case, mr. President , Financial Freedom attempted to evict a 90yearold woman from her home over a 27 cent error on her insurance payment. In another case, a New York State Supreme Court judge called one wests foreclosure practices, quote, harsh, repugnant, shocking, and repulsive. Unquote. And yet, the person that has now been nominated to lead the o. C. C. , the office of the comptroller of the currency, a person who is supposed to be looking out for consumers and taxpayer interests and providing for a sound Banking System that doesnt melt down our economy, is mr. Otting. He was the person who was in the middle of these bank one west foreclosure transactions. And so, mr. President , i hope that this body will not support that nomination. Now, mr. President , i started by talking about the tax bill. And i want to get back to making a few more remarks about that tax bill, because theres one thing thats in common between the nomination of mr. Otting to oversee much of the Banking System and the tax bill, which is that both of them are part of an effort to provide big gifts to big banks and to corporate america. Were seeing the Trump Administration trying to use government power to help these large, big Financial Institutions at the expense of consumers and at the expense of taxpayers. Lets just take a look at what happened yesterday and is continuing to happen in the Senate Finance committee. Republicans on that committee and the republican tax plan couldnt have sent a clearer message than they did just yesterday, that the republican tax plan puts big corporate interests first and leaves the rest of the country behind, including millions of people in the middle class who will be left holding the bag. So under the new tax plan, the tax cuts for corporations, those big tax cuts reducing the rate from 35 to 20 , they go on forever. They go on for the first ten years. They go on for the next ten years. They go on forever. But for everybody else, for those other americans that get some tax cut under this bill, all those tax cuts go away after ten years. They get sunset. So if youre one of the folks in the middle who republicans say, hey, this bills for you, and you will get some benefit, its going away. But the Corporate Tax cut is there forever. I want to be clear, there are lots of folks in the middle, millions and millions, who arent even going to see any initial tax benefit. In fact, theyre going to be paying more in taxes. We also saw as part of this bill yesterday an effort to repeal important provisions to the Affordable Care act. Changes that will result in 13 million americans losing access to Affordable Health care and premiums being jacked up by 10 on the individual market. So lets do the math here. 13 million americans lose access to Affordable Care act. Premiums go up by 10 . Middleclass families, millions of them pay higher taxes all to finance a permanent Corporate Tax cut. Now lets take a moment and look at who these multinational corporations are, because ultimately the benefits, the profits, they go to the c. E. O. s and executives, and of course they go to the shareholders. So lets look at who some of these shareholders are that are going to get this whopping big tax benefit from cutting the Corporate Tax rate. Mr. President , when you dig under here a little bit, you discover that 35 of u. S. Corporate stock is owned by foreigners. People who arent americans. 35 of the people who get the benefit of that gigantic Corporate Tax cut are foreign stockholders. And according to the institute of taxation and economic policy, those foreign stockholders are going to get a 31 billion windfall from the republican tax plan in 2019 alone. Now even before the sunset of the individual taxes, Corporate Tax rates go on forever, millionaires and billionaires are the biggest winners under the plan. You know, President Trump reportedly made this phone call to a number of senators just the other day saying, hey, guess what . You know what . Im going to be a, quote, big loser under this republican tax plan. Thats what President Trump said. Well, mr. President , prove it. President trump release your tax returns as president s have routinely done for decades, and show the American People that this plan doesnt enrich the trump family and the trump businesses. Because heres what the Chicago Tribune says, quote, trump says hes a big loser in g. O. P. Tax plan. Experts say it could save him tens of millions of dollars. Unquote. In fact, just one part of the republican tax plan, cutting the taxes on large estates, could give President Trumps heirs a windfall of 4. 4 million. And thats because the plan doubles the amount of money that is exempt from estate taxes. Im talking here about the senate plan. The senate plan provides that 4. 4 million windfall because the exemption today is for states under 11 million. In other words, if youre a couple with an estate under 11 million, you dont pay a single penny in federal estate tax. The Senate Republican plan takes that up to 22 million, and in doing so will provide President Trumps heirs with a big windfall. In fact, if you use the house plan, which repeals it entirely, were talking about a windfall of over 1 billion. The republican plan also eliminates the alternative minimum tax. Now that was a provision put in the tax code to provide some equity because a lot of wealthy people with good lawyers are able to take advantage of lots of deductions that Many Americans until the middle are not aim Many Americans in the middle are not able to claim. And so we want to make sure that folks who did make a ton of money couldnt escape all of their responsibility to the rest of the country to pay their fair share of taxes. And thats why we adopted the alternative minimum tax. Well, we know that back in 2005, President Trump when he filed his tax returns had to pay a tax in that year because of the alternative minimum tax. In fact, in that year it was 31 million. So lets get rid of that provision. And that will help a lot of very wealthy people escape any tax obligation, even as folks in the middle pay theirs. Now theres another way that Trump Enterprises will benefit from this republican tax plan, and thats through the socalled passthrough business provisions. These are businesses that dont pay Corporate Taxes. Their profits are passed through and taxed on their individual returns of their owners. And a lot of people want the public to think that all these pass throughs are small mom and pops. Mr. President , i want to be there. We want to help mom and pops. We should be providing some tax benefits and relief to mom and pops. But everyone who looks at this knows that a lot of those are not mom and pop. In fact, many of them are on the fortune 500 list in the United States, the 500 wealthiest entities. In fact, some of these passthrough entities are in the fortune 100 list. Not mom and pops. And guess who owns more than 500 passthrough entities . The trump organization. They will get a big windfall. So President Trump, show the American Public your tax forms before you go around telling people that youre going to be a big loser out of this plan. Now its not just about President Trump. This is one example of the very wealthy americans who are going to get a windfall under this plan. A provision that was put into the Senate Republican plan will help a lot of very wellheeled lobbyists here in washington, d. C. So if youre a married lobbyist under the Senate Republican plan making up to 500,000 a year, you get to claim a deduction for 17. 4 of your income. Thats an 87,000 Tax Deduction if youre making 500,000 a year. But if youre the secretary working for that lobbying firm or youre somebody hired to help clean up the firm, sorry, youre out of luck. You dont get that special lobbyist passthrough tax rate. Now, mr. President , the question is whos going to pay for all of this at the end of the day, because were providing this huge tax giveaway to big corporations. Were providing tax breaks to the very wealthiest estates in the country. Its, by the way, only about two out of 1,000 taxpayers. There are less than 5,000 taxpayers in the country each year who end up paying that estate tax. The very wealthiest in the country. But who is going to pay for all of this . Well, millions of middleclass taxpayers are going to pay under this plan. And we know from the joint Tax Committee that in 2019, the Senate Republican plan will raise taxes on more than 13 million middleclass families, people with incomes below 200,000. By 2025, more than 21 million middleclass families are going to get a tax hike. Right. This is a plan thats being sold to the public as something to provide middleclass tax relief, but the joint committee on taxation, these are the pros, the nonpartisan experts here in Congress Tell us that that plan is going to raise taxes on 21 million middleclass tax families. One of the biggest sources of this increase in taxes for middleclass families is the complete repeal in the senate bill of peoples ability to deduct state and local taxes. More than 100 million American Families use this deduction today. Repealing it is double taxation, pure and simple. Those taxpayers now pay a dollar in tax to their state, whether it be the state of maryland, the state of oklahoma, waldorf it may be. Now they are going to be paying federal taxes on the dollar that they sent to support the state government, and the senate bill, mr. President , is a whole even worse than the house bill. The house bill is bad on this issue, but it was hard to believe but the senate actually made this provision even worse. And if you look at this chart, its interesting because what you find is that the huge Corporate Tax cut which helps a lot of foreign investors. In fact, as i indicated, 35 criminal of all those stockholders are foreign investors, so thats going to give them in just the year 2019 a 31 billion tax break. Right . This is money we are sending to foreigners, foreign stockholders. And in that same year, we find out that americans, many folks who are in the middle, middleclass americans are going to pay 34 billion more in taxes. So youre asking middleclass American Families to finance big tax cuts for foreigners who own stock in american corporations. What a gift to american middleclass taxpayers, a direct transfer from them to foreign stockholders. When you also deny people the ability to deduct their state and local taxes, youre also taxing decisions by state and local governments, which is ironic since our republican colleagues have always said that its best to leave most decisions to our local and state leaders because theyre close to the people. Now youre taxing the decisions that they make to support their schools, to support their firefighters, to make investments locally. Now taxpayers in those communities have got to pay their local government or pay their state, and then they have to pay the feds on that same money that they just paid to their city or to their state for Important Services like schools for our kids. And, mr. President , here is the crazy thing about this republican tax plan. Even after you ask middleclass American Families to pay more, millions of them, millions and millions of them to pay more so that foreign stockholders will get a tax break, even after you do all that, it raises the National Debt by 1. 5 trillion. 1. 5 trillion. Now, for many years, i served as the senior democrat on the house budget committee, and at that time the current speaker of the house, paul ryan, was the chairman of that committee. He talked all the time about the dangers and risks of adding to our National Debt. And do you know what . That is actually an area where we found some agreement, because we shouldnt have an everrising National Debt, and yet this republican tax plan is calculated to increase the National Debt by a whopping 1. 5 trillion. So people cared about our National Debt when that was used as a reason to propose cuts to medicare and medicaid and social security, but when it comes to financing tax breaks for foreign stockholders and big corporations, apparently that debt doesnt matter. Mr. President , i have a prediction to make. I have a prediction that if this tax bill goes through and we blow up the National Debt by 1. 5 trillion, speaker ryan and everybody else who told us about the risks and dangers of a big National Debt, all of a sudden theyre going to rediscover their commitment to reducing the National Debt. Forgot about it when it came to financing big tax breaks, but you know what . Gosh, it really is a big deal. And then theyre not going to talk about rolling back the tax breaks they just gave the big corporations. Theyre going to go about cutting important investments. Cutting medicare, cutting medicaid, cutting education. And do you know why im very confident that we can predict thats whats going to happen . Because our republican colleagues are told us. Its right there in the budget. Its in their budget that passed the senate and passed the house. Just open up those budgets. Almost a 500 billion cut to medicare. 743 billion, to be exact. 1 trillion cut to medicaid in the republican budget. Big cuts, big cuts to domestic investments, and thats the category of our budget that funds education, modernizes our infrastructure, medical research. Its all right there in the republican budget. So i hope, mr. President , that the American Public is going to have a chance to focus on this. I understand why people are trying to speed this through, speed it through the house before thanksgiving, speed it through the house and senate before the end of the year. But people are beginning to wake up to this, and i can assure my colleagues that when they find out exactly whats in this republican plan c. Consent they are going to be very, very angry, because all those middleclass families that were sold a bill of goods thinking that they are going to get this big tax cut, huhuh. Millions of them are going to see a tax increase to finance tax breaks for big corporations and very wealthy americans, and pay for it by rising National Debt and ultimately cuts to Important Health and Retirement Security programs, as well as education. So i hope that people will turn back now. The way to do this is the way tax reform was done in 1986. In a bipartisan transparent fashion. Mr. President , lets get back to doing this the right way. Mr. Mcconnell mr. President . The presiding officer the majority leader. Mr. Mcconnell are we in a quorum call . The presiding officer the senate not in a quorum call. Mr. Mcconnell i cuck that notwithstanding rule 22, that at 11 30 a. M. On thursday, novembe