Pleasure to introduce to you a great friend of the american taxpayer and kevin brady you and the chairman of the ways and Means Committee and then its the house and then 1996 and then two years before and he was a senior. This is a key part of the conserve tich and there going to go to the United States and improve the well being. The plans would improve the individual tax rates and the Capital Gains and dividends and would be reduced dramatically and increase the standard reduction and then the tax rate and then its most of this would make it more attack tif and then thats the justice and thats going to be the u. S. Produce and then the same as the foreign produce and according to the tax preference to imports that we have now and the tax rates reduce the works, savings and investments and then we will move forward and quickly and then people and then thats the forms on their lives and a whole. One of the heros here in congress and one of my great friends in Congress Police welcome chairman kevin brady. [ applause ] thank you for the leadership. I dont know about you but its an exciting time to be an conserve tich. The work thats been done over the last decade for the solutions to change directions of the country and now is the opportunity to do that. I dont know about you but when i went to bed on election night, i kept on thinking one thought and the American People gave us another chance and another opportunity to change the direction of the country in a major way as the republicans with the unified republican government and we have a great responsibility here and its an exciting opportunity and i think clearly voters rejected what they have seen now for too many years and thats bigger government, higher taxes and washington knows best and washington will manage every moment of your life, so here is your opportunity that we have dreamed of o, and we have to take full measure of that opportunity and inheritage again thank you for all of the work that you have done to lead up to this moment. I would like to walk you through the better way of proposal and what we call the bill to growth tax code proposal. It starts here, you know, i think that the greatest treat to our long term is our growing National Debt and i think that spending cuts can get us half way or more and back to the balance budget. If you want to complete the job and actually start to pay the national dete national debit, we need a stronger economy. Were struggling through the worst in the century. Millions of americans can not find full time work. You cannot go online without reading about another company considering moving the manufacturing and the research and headquarters over seas. We dont have to settle for that type of economy. The built for growth and the tax proposal that we propose aims to reverse all of that. So when we begin this earlier this year, i set out two goals for the tax reform. First rather than the tax code design simply to ring money from you and this is what we have today, we need a tax code built for growth and designed to grow wages and jobs and the u. S. Economy and then the america from the dead last and the global competitors back to the led pack and keep us there. We want to be among the best places on the planet to invest and create the job and to move the headquarters. Those two areas grow and go back and fort and then grow the Decision Making in the tax reform. Were proposing reforms excuse me three major reforms and then we go all the way into growth in the jobs and wages and by proposing the lowest tax rates on the job creators and then redesigning the tax code so that we can win and compete anywhere in the world, but especially here at ahome. The second reform is that were proposing a tax code so fair and simple and then 95 percent of the americans will be able to file using the postcard file system. Thirdly, because were proposing so much fair and simpler tax code is a fair and simple Tax Collector, so were proposing to bust up the irs and redesign it in an agency that i will talk about in a moment. If you hear me use the praise propose a lot, theres a reason for it. Were looking for a proposal to jump start the economy. On job and they were representative in the tax and then proposal and then the corporations and then we live in the businesses hands but and then its in washington and to grow and then its full and unlimited expensing and then the businesses of all sizes and then thats the divisions in the proposal. If you go back and were all in main street job changes and not necessarily job and then thats the last 50 years and thats the main job and then its Government Spending and then its one in its in the main streak job and then its Business Investment and then its the first time to allow immediate and then its the businesses and not competing on the main street and then around the world today and then the tax codes no longer competitive and we tax the businesses here and then washington tax is in affect and today and then its the tax broad and then thats the business rate and then thats invest in the new jobs and manufactures and then zero and then we dont stop either and thats the main competitors tax that made American Products today or the disadvantage here in america and disadvantage abroad. We propose to match that tax code and take the taxes off and make American Products being sold around the world and put it on the imports coming in the United States. This levels the Playing Field for American Made products and competition Going Forward in the future will not be based on tax code but price, service and quality. When you do that, consumers win. Its going to simplify the tax code and thats stunningly complex. Thirdly, and perhaps most importa importantly this makes sure that we have eliminated every tax incentive to move the jobs, innovation or headquarters over seas. Our goal is not to stem and stop businesses in america from locating over seaings, but our goal is to bring the investments back we will become a 21st century magnet on this planet. We also eliminate the double tax and the second tax alternative minimum tax on businesses and perhaps my favorite part of the whole built for growth tax proposal is we propose to permanently eliminate the debt tax. This tax is still the number one reason that family farms are not passed down to next generations. It funds a day and a half of spending. Its time to let it go. Those provisions in jobs and salaries according to the Tax Foundation will grow the u. S. Economy by over 9 percent and will grow after the tax and wages by nearly eight percent and create several million new jobs and then will take america back into the lead pack of the tax codes on the planet. Our second reform comes from this. As you know since reagan performed the tax code in the 1980s, its exploded in size and tripled in size 70,000 pages and come pleexs and the former chairman of the committee once described it. For years they have asked why cant we have a tax code so fair and simple that can fit on a postcard our tax team went to work and were proposing that fair and simple and the most americans revealed a postcard style system. Here is how we propose to do that. First we flatten out in the tax bracket. There were 15 adifferent tax brackets and he lowered those and flattened them out. Today there are still seven. We po pose to flatten them out just down three brackets. It does not need to be more complicated than that. We lower the rates for the simple reason and then the reward worked and then the productivity worked to encourage people to be productive and to keep more dollars in peoples households and families to reach their dreams, so we flatten the rates and brackets and lower the rates. We believe that its important to protect more of those first dollar families earn, so we propose to increase the standard deduction and fairly significantly and approximate we think that protecting the first dollars are important with the income workers over young people starting their first jobs in school or young couples with kids and seniors where every dollar counts. We protect more of them with the larger production. We go further than that and this next provision maybe in my view the second part of what were proposing. After we flatten the brackets, and after we have lowered the rates, we propose that the dollars that you earn from savings and investments to cut the tax rate by half, so if youre at the 12 percent bracket, your savings and earnings would be half of that at six percent. Here is why, were not nations savers and we have to award those that set aside the money for the future. This is incredibly helpleful for those who seek in need to save, but its incredibly pro growth and thats the common and here is how and this seems like the simple example and we will remember this from the High School Days perhaps and the economics and its a good reminder why the savings investment is for the growth. When you and i earn a dollar, there are three things that we can do with it. We can earn it, save, spend it, invest it. You can buy a donut, thats what i do with my disskash their income. You can save it and go to the local bank. Not much interest on that. Thank you fed. You can find a way to save it. That money does not stay in that local institution, but goes back out to the local businesses. Maybe to the owner of the donut shop so that he or she can buy a second mixer or another glazer or deep fat fryer. Maybe add another worker for that predawn shift. Thats really good for the local economy. I know at this point jim is asking himself why does this guy know so much about donut shops. The third thing that you can do is invest it. Invest it, so perhaps in the stock market or mutual funds or perhaps its invested in that donut business, so that they can add a second location or a third. Maybe expand the lunches. Thats incredibly pro growth for that local community, and the reason that we go proposed to you significantly lower rates and savings and is to encourage the rewards and savings and grow to the local economy in a major way. Then the postcard itself, as it asked ourselves, even though only about a third of americans itemized, what do they count on . What weve proposed to you is this, to keep on the postcard, uhm, a limbed number of deduction in the credits. First, we know that for most americans, the home is a biggest investment you make in your lifetime so we propose to keep the mortgage deduction. We look to make it smarter and better but we keep that on the postcard. Secondly, we propose to keep the deduction and credit for charitable giving. We like charitable giving. We think its important to give to your local church, local community, a college you believe in, important to encourage charitable giving. We know, too, its expensive to raise kids. We have two teen aimingers ourselves, we know that. So we propose to keep the child tax credit. In fact, to increase it a bit to help families with those costs, and then its, college is incredibly Post High School spiels incredibly expensive so we propose to keep the help you get for college. In fact, were redesigning that as well to make sure that it applies just as equally to those who are seeking technical skills, which are expensive as well, so my High School Senior has decided hes going into welding. Someday he wants to own his own custom fabrication shop. Were shopping today Technical Schools and skills are expensive as well. We need those types of workers so we proposed to redesign that to make sure encouraging skills at every level outside of college, and then other than one provision help get people from welfare to work that will be redesigned in a major way, thats it. Thats what we propose for the postca postcard, that fare, that simple, that understandable. As i started athe beginning when i said we propose this to you, heres my main point, for republicans, this is your postcard. Its not ours. You can add anything back to this you want. We can add single provisions, we can add dozens of provisions back, hundreds of provisions back. As long as you know to do that we have to send more money to washington and hope we can beg to get some of that back. When you put in Energy Efficient windows in your home we can put it back no problem. The credit you get that 7,500 credit you get for buying a tesla we can put that back. The credit you get for your gambling debts, now that that would affect anyone in this room we can put that back. We can put back anything the American Public back. We hope you can get some of it back so this is your postcard, not ours. This is why were listening so intently right now on the tax reform proposal weve laid out. And the final form is because a fair and simple he tax code demands a fair and simpler Tax Collector and the irs today is a huge agency with the power to destroy lives and businesses and it is targeting americans based on their political beliefs. Thats not acceptable, so we proposed to bust it up, redesign it into three much smaller, much focused unit, a unit focused on business, staffed with tax experts on business to accurately and quickly answer business questions and resolve dispute disputes for our businesses large and small. Families focused on Customer Service. I dont know how many of you tried to call the irs lately, if you got through and spoke to three different people you got three different answers. That level of Customer Service or lack of it is not acceptable in your organization, its not acceptable in that agency. So we propose a second unit focusing on Customer Service and timely actions. Finally because ive grown so tired in my home, i didnt move to washington. I live in the Community Woodlands just north of houston and four years i have heard from families and Small Businesses that get into tax disputes with the irs, sometimes relatively minor one. They will spend years and years and thousands of dollars and even when they win theyve lost so were proposing a small unit inpent of treasury and the irs in effect to Small Claims Court so americans can quickly and accordable ifly get their disputes resolved without spending thousands of dollars on attorneys and accountants. The 21st agency with a sing already Singular Mission of Customer Service. As you lookality the three proposals you may be thinking this sounds too good to be true, but its not. Weve designed this to break even within the budget, considering the Economic Growth that will come with it. So the only way to do that, the only way to lower rates for everybody is to eliminate the hundreds of special tax provisions for some, so thats what were proposing to you, significant tradeoffs to move to this. For example, in business, were proposing not to deduct your net interest costs. It is a change from where we are today, theres good policy reasons for doing that. For example, allowing full expensing where we write off things immediately in the first year, and carry that forward. If youre also borrowing to do that in writing off that interest, at this point were giving you a negative interest rate. Were paying you to buy stuff. Eliminating that as well allows us to go to a more progrowth dramatically more progrowth tax code overall. Thats a big change from what we do today, why we ask businesses large and small to test drive the new blueprint to give us back the feedback as we work to improve this at every step. For families and individuals, for example, so there are hundreds of provisions that apply to come. For example, in our case, we can dotted our two boys. Its the biggest blessing kathy and i could ever have. We didnt take advantage of the adoption tax credit. We were just in the wrong tax bracket for that but thats important to people. What were proposing to the American People is rather than have hundreds of those provision that apply to some at some point in their life, why dont we lower the tax rates for everybody and americans use it for the priorities in their life, wherever that may be. Another, we propose for those onethird of americans who itemize that we dont deduct the state and local income sales and property taxes, which is a big change from where were at today, but heres how it works under the current tax code, we keep your taxes high. You send your money to washington, you hope you can call some of it back to offset your local taxes but whats going on is that everyone is subsidizing each other so taxpayers are subsidizing city taxpayers, middle class taxpayers are subsidizing higher earners, low tax communities in states are subsidizing high tax communities and states. Our proposal is this, rather than high taxes and everyone subsidize each other, why dont we lower the taxes and everyone pay their own. The added benefit here is that the federal tax code will no longer subsidize higher taxes at the local level. We think thats a big change from where were at today and why were asking the American People to consider the postcard to look at this, and the deductions and the provision its that count to them, and bring us that feedback as well. And so jim, i want to stop to take questions from the audience, but i will make the same request to you as we do to everyone we meet, and ive done more than 40 town Hall Meetings on this back home, ive traveled the country to do the same coast to coast, to lay out the built for growth tax reform plan as well, test drive this. Test drive this proposal and bring us back your feedback. Dont take one provision out of this like the Interest Deductibility and drive it like its that old clunker of a tax car we are athey today. What were proposing is a new car. It has different features. It drives much differently, most economists believe it drives much faster than the tax code were in today. T