We would reduce to 22 . The current bill has it at 20 but 22 is just as competitive as 20 . Just like the current bill, it would be lower than the global average rate of 23 and just like the current bill would move us from last place to third place among the g7 countries. So it is just as progrowth. It makes us just as competitive, but it allows us to do the proworker reform that we decimately need. That we desperately need. It allows us to change the Child Tax Credit in the current bill to help working families even more. It would make it fully refundable up to the amount you pay in payroll tax. It would eliminate the marriage penalty, meaning that you would be paying more in taxes if you were a marriedum than you would if you are an individual. Number three, it would index it, the tax credit, to a chained c. P. I. , which means as inflation and the cost of living goes up, the credit doesnt lose its value. The one thing i want to emphasize is, who does this help . I have had some people in the past and even today who say, why are you doing this . This is like welfare. I find that offensive. I find it offensive not because i am offended by people who need the help and are in the Safety Net Program because theyve come upon difficult times but because the people that we are trying to help are not on government assistance. Theyre workers. You have to work to get this credit. In essence shall the credit applies against your Tax Liability be it payroll tax or income tax. For a lot of people that are working, they dont make enough money to be paying a lot of income tax, but they pay up to 15. 3 of what they make it payroll tax. It is their primary Tax Liability, and if you dont allow the credit to apply towards that youre not helping them. And who are they . Who are the kinds of people that were talking about . In essence, who are these workers . Think youre the waitresses mark i can a 20,000 a year. Theyre not fully benefiting from this credit right now. If we do it the way senator lee and i are talking about doing, they would. They are the home health aid, the office clerk, the welders making 35,000 a year. Theyre the truck driver, driver, the nurse, the firefighter making 45,000 a year. The ones who have been left lined for over three decades because no one fights for them. They have been ignored and disrespected. And theyre not accounted for in this bill. And theyre raising families. Our future taxpayers. And it costs money to raise a family. And the more children you have, the more expensive it is and our tax code should recognize that. And we make a reasonable proposal in that regard. And now id like to turn to senator lee and ask him to expound on the importance of this for americas workers and why if we are fuel to be a pro why if we are truly to be a proworker reform, the payroll tax is essential. Mr. Lee thank you, mr. President. I am grateful to my colleague, the distinguished senator from florida for his worker this issue. He noted a couple of issues that we focus on. Noted the marriage tax penalty, a more obvious feature defect within our tax code. There is another detect he also mentioned that doesnt get as much play as it should. It doesnt get as much play, especially considering the amount of damage it z its called the parent tax penalty. Heres how it works. We have American Parents from one end of this country to another who are essentially propping up, securing the future of our senior entitlement programs, not just once but twice, and in a pretty unfair way. You see, they prop up Social Security and medicare two times, first as they pay their taxes and, secondly, as they incur the cost associated with child rearing and thereby prop up and secure Social Security and medicare. You see, Social Security and medicare are paid foreign paygo basis. Meaning todays workers pay for the benefits of todays retirees. Todays children are toms workers who will be working to pay the taxes to fund the Social Security and medicare Retirement Benefits of todays workers who will be tomorrows retirees. Now, thats costs add up over time. According to one very lowball estimate, an estimate that doesnt include a lost things it probably should, including things like education, Higher Education and so forth, a family raising three children can reasonably expect to incur 700,000 in childrearing costs, just as they raise their three children. Those three children are going tok on to be tomorrows workers paying the Social Security and medicare benefits for todays workers, tomorrows retirees. This is important. And we need to end the marriage tax penalty. We also need to end this parent tax penalty of the best way to do that is to make sure we increase the Child Tax Credit up to 2,000 as the Current Senate proposal would do, but just as importantly, we need to make that sum refundable up to 2,000, up to the total amount of taxes paid, including payroll Tax Liability, in other words up to15. 3 of earnings. If we do this, mr. President , it is not going to end the parent tax penalty altogether, but it is an important first step. I also want to echo something said by senator rubio a moment ago. I think it is worth mentioning here. This is not a handout. This is not a welfare benefit. This is money that theyre making. Its not welfare when you say the government is not going to take away something that youve worked harass for, that youve earned. That youve worked hard for, that youve earned. We should be dont for those people who are americas ultimate, most important entrepreneurial class. Americas most cherished group of investors. You see, the most important Investment Decisions are not necessarily just those made around the boardroom. Theyre made at the altar, theyre made in delivery wards in hospitals. Those are the investors we need to be encourage and certainly not punishing. Mr. President , we can fix this problem. We need to do it by passing the rubiolee amendment and increasing refundability so that we can all benefit from this and so that americas families can stop being punished as the result of the interaction between our tax code and our senior entitlement programs. Thank you, mr. President. The presiding officer the senator from virginia. Mr. Warner mr. President , i come to the floor today to join other colleagues from both sides of the aisle to talk about this tax debate. You know, we dont do tax reform nearly enough here in the United States. It seems we take it on about every 35 years whether we need to or n but if theres one lesson that weve learned from previously tax Reform Efforts is that while they can do a lot of good, they can also do a lot of harm. And i have to start by expressing my extraordinarily deep frustration with the process that weve gone through. Today we are considering a bill that was drafted in secret, designed with more gimmicks and loopholes that ive ever seen, and is being rushed through in a process without impact from all of us on this side of the aisle and without even appropriate impact of its true financial analysis. In many ways, to quote the president , what got us here is the worst of washington. If you want to see swamp 101, look at the process of this tax bill. A 300page tax bill that was released on the eve of a holiday weekend, only days before it was marked up in committee. And over a fourday markup, two significant rewrites of this bill were presented. One consisted of over 100 pages of changes and a second was release add mere 30 minutes was released a mere 30 minutes before members were asked to vote on literally its myriad of provisions. Now, less than two weeks later, were considering that bill or a variation of it on the senate floor. Were voting either to procedure of the bill later today on then on p amendments tomorrow before we evening have any analysis from j. C. T. And we know that near the end of a debate on the floor, another bill will magically appear from the Majority Leaders Office without any time for those of us who want to do tax reform to have a chance to genuinely review or analyze its provisions. It makes this process, i believe, enormously dishonest. I know my friend from delaware has just come on. Ill speak quickly, because i know hell raise some of these same concerns. One of the things that ive been most involved with since ive been here in the United States senate is trying to grapple with our nations overwhelming debt. Were a country thats run up close to 20 trillion of debt. And both sides both sides have been part to that over the last 70 years. But what i have heard from colleagues on both sides of the aisle is that when youre in that deep of a hole, you ought to stop digging. And that we need to make sure that if were going to do triumph, we do it if were going to do tax reform, would do in a physically fiscally responsible way. It starts with a 1. 5 trillion acknowledgment that that money will somehow magically appear through magical growth. But, when you peel that away a little bit, it is bad enough that its not really 1. 5 trillion in Additional Debt that were adding. The real number is 2. 2 trillion. Let kneel you why. Let me tell you why. Off of the 1. 5 trillion Additional Debt thats haded, that alone will generate more than 230 billion of additional Interest Payments over the next decade. Raising the cost of the bill from 1. 5 trillion to roughy 1. 7 trillion. And then in an effort that really takes the cake in a place where both again be, both sides have been known to use gimmicks, this legislation includes 37 different expiring provisions, provisions that are popular, provisions that a number of my colleagues have said give middleclass tax relief. Well, the interesting thing is, all of these provisions are due to expire five to six years within the tenyear windex window. And rather than acknowledging the true cost of the bill, what people have said, we know what were going to create. Were going to create a whole new series of fiscal cliffs in the neighbor manufactured 500 billion that the expectation will be that theyll become so popular that congress will go ahead and have to extend these provisions again without paying for them. In terms of gimmicks, dont take my word for it. You only need to listen to the words of the president s own o. M. B. Director, Mick Mulvaney who acknowledged that the tax bill had a lot of gimmicks to it. You add that 500 billion to the 2030 billion of additional interest, the 1. 35 trillion that you start with what we are talking about today is 2. 2 trillion addition to our debt. For all my friends who for years have stood with me on the floor of the senate and spoken out against adding this additional burden to our kids and grandkids, i hope theyll talk a moment and rethink their support there are this legislation. Their support for that legislation. How will this get paid for . I believe there might be some dynamic growth, there might be some addition from smart tax reform that would add to the growth of our economy. But nothing near what this bill assumes. In fact, its even worse than that in earn ways. Not only will this add over 2 trillion to our debt and deficit, but weve even had the audacity of the secretary of the treasury, secretary mnuchin, who said this bill is going to be so good for our economy that its going to decrease our debt by 1 trillion. Yet there is no responsible budget projection of any economist from left to right that makes any kind of assumptions that would make that prediction true at a and if we go back and look in recent american history, when you pay for tax cuts with borrowed money, you end up with a pretty bad situation. Many of my friends on the other side of the aisle like to cite Ronald Reagan. I think president reagan was a great president in many ways. The 1981 tax cut did provide a shortterm stimulus but then that stimulus ran out and our debt and deficits blew up, grew dramatically and president reagan had to raise taxes in 1982 and 1984. Likewise again, president bush in 2001 inheriting a surplus, promised again the magic of tax cuts will grow our economy. Instead we ended up with very little job growth and a debt and deficit now that is rapidly approaching the full size of our economy. And if we went out and looked at scoring of the effects of this kind of tax cut, weve seen the Tax Policy Center that did a dynamic score saying how could build and growth come from a tax cut. They said this bill costs at least 1. 5 trillion. The penn wharton, an organization well respected by both sides of the aisle did a dynamic score on this legislation as well. Theyre saying minimum costs of 1. 5 trillion. And Congress Official scorekeeper, the group that we look to for outside advice, the joint committee on taxation, we are rushing this bill through so quickly that weve not even allowed our official scorekeeper to come up with a score. This is not the way to do a onceinageneration tax reform process. The truth is when you do a tax cut with borrowed money in periods sort of where we are right now, relatively full employment, there is no historical precedent at all that youll see any kind of Economic Growth. Again, dont take my word for it. Alan greenspan, the respected fed chair, pointed this out just within the last two weeks that tax cuts paid for with borrowed money do not provide the kind of growth that this budget projects and this tax reform projects. Now i could go through a whole litany of other concerns with this legislation. I for one believe we do need to do International Tax reform. I for one believe we need a Corporate Tax rate thats more competitive. I for one believe we need repatriation and to bring back tax profits that have gone abroad. But weve seen analysis recently that shows that this legislation may actually increase the amount of american jobs that are pushed overseas, for example, because of the averaging of tax rates in their socalled territorial system where a company could build that factory in a relatively high tax state, move that intellectual property to a place like the Cayman Islands, average out the tax bill combined and end up paying the country, our country, nothing. And at the same time continuing to see job loss around our country. There are a group of us, close to 17 of us, and many of my colleagues on the floor today, that came together yesterday, that said to our republican colleagues time out for a few minutes. We will work with you to do a responsible tax reform effort. We share many of the same goals. But unfortunately, the process that were going through here today to reach some kind of arbitrary Christmas Present for the president is not the way we ought to be doing responsible tax reform. I hope my colleagues will reconsider. I hope theyll take the offer of the 17 of us who said well look at Corporate Tax reform. Well look at lower rates. Well look at repatriation. Well look at ways to make businesses more competitive. And join with us and do this in a way that we can all be proud of. If were only going to do tax reform once every 30 or 35 years, we sure as heck owe the American People a product that we can all be proud of, not a product thats rushed through with one party only that at the end of the day will leave our kids and grandkids paying the bill for decades to come. With that, mr. President , i yield the floor. A senator mr. President. The presiding officer the senator from delaware. Mr. Carper thank you, mr. President. Nine years have passed, colleagues, since i first joined the Senate Finance committee. Nine years. And for each of those nine years, ive looked forward to working on tax reform. As a member of the house of representatives a million years ago, i had the privilege of working on tax reform legislation led by president reagan, led by tip oneill, dan rostenkowski, bob packwood, others that actually worked and got us where we wanted to go with lower raises and a simplified code. But tax reform takes time. It takes a lot of energy. It takes a lot of effort, a lot of give and take. When we did that in 1986, Congress Took two years of public hearings, two years of meetings, two years of bipartisan negotiation. The idea that a permanent and enduring tax reform plan today can come to fruition in mere weeks is what they call in my state the triumph of a mans hope over experience. The tax legislation that is purely partisan written in the dark and rushed to the finish line is bound to be poorly designed and riddled with inadvertent errors. Flawed process results in a flawed product. When considering any tax policy, i look through, mr. President , a prism of four questions. Number one, is it fair . Number two, does it foster Economic Growth or impede it . Number three, does it simplify the tax code or make it even more complex . And number four, is it fiscally responsible . Those four questions. Unfortunately, the republican tax reform plan fails the test on, sadly, all four of these questions. All four. According to the nonpartisan we just heard this from the senator from virginia, according to the Nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office this plan would increase taxes on millions of americans beginning next year. By 2019 the c. B. O. Found that americans earning less than 30,000 a year will be worse off under this tax bill. Worse off. By 2021, americans earning less than 40,000 will be worse off. And by 2027, most americans earning less than 75,000 a year will be worse off. Not better. In fact, within ten years more than threequarters of the tax cuts in this bill will go to the richest 5 of americans. Think about that. Within the next ten years, more than it threequarters of the tax cuts in this bill will go to the richest 5 of americans. In fact, almost twothirds of the