Today, the Senate will have a procedural vote on moving to a tax bill that the House passed six months ago.
At the time of House passage, myself, [Senate Finance Committee] Ranking Member Crapo and other Finance Republicans made it clear to Democrats this bill would not pass muster in the Senate absent substantive changes.
So, over the past seven months, what steps have Senate Democrats taken to earn Republican support?
Did they engage with Ranking Member Crapo and Finance Republicans in good faith negotiations to find a bipartisan path forward?
Did the Finance Chairman schedule a markup to provide Republicans an opportunity to shape the bill through the committee process?
Did the Democrat Majority Leader schedule floor time to allow [for] robust debate and [an] amendment process to permit the Senate to work its will?
The answer to all these questions is a resounding ‘no.’
Democrats couldn’t be bothered with a trivial thing like legislating. After all, they have nominees to confirm, and God forbid we work more than three days a week.
With respect to the tax bill, it includes an assortment of tax provisions – some good and some bad.
The good includes extensions of pro-growth tax policies, such as allowing employers to immediately write-off research expenses and capital investments. Both of these are key to boosting worker productivity and wages.
The bill also includes disaster tax relief and extends to our ally, Taiwan, tax treaty-like benefits to strengthen our economic ties and counter China. Both have overwhelmingly strong bipartisan support and could pass easily if Democrats would stop holding them hostage for political gain.
As for the bad, the bill includes a multi-billion-dollar expansion of welfare under the guise of providing middle-class tax relief through an expanded child tax credit.
The fact is, this bill has very little middle-class tax relief to speak of.
For 2023 and 2024, only $3 billion out of the provision’s $33 billion cost is attributed to tax relief. The remaining $30 billion, or 91 percent of the overall cost, is pure spending. These are transfer payments to those who pay no federal income tax.
Under this bill, those who only work sparingly – and in some cases, not at all – would see benefit increases of $1,000 or more.
Meanwhile, if you’re a single parent raising two kids while working full-time [and] earning $40,000 a year, chances are, you wouldn’t see a dime this year.
Last Congress, I proposed real relief for middle-class families by indexing the Child Tax Credit to inflation.
This proposal would have immediately increased the credit amount to account for its loss in value since President Biden took office.
I offered this proposal as an amendment to the Democrat’s Inflation Enhancement Act, but not a single Democrat voted for it.
This current bill includes a watered-down version of my proposal.
It doesn’t do anything to make up for the fact that middle-class families have seen their cost of living increase 20 percent since Biden took office.
I’ve long supported the child tax credit as a way to support families and fight poverty by rewarding work.
As a former chairman of the Finance Committee, I spearheaded expansions of this credit to better target relief to low-income families.
But provisions in this bill would depart from fundamental principles that have always guided child tax credit expansions. This includes that the credit be tied to work and linked to the payment of tax – whether that’s income or payroll taxes.
In breaking with these principles, the proposal in this bill would undermine the credit’s traditional role as a work incentive, favor part-time work over full-time and worsen marriage penalties imbedded in our social welfare system.
As a result, the changes in this bill undermine the pro-work welfare reforms adopted on a bipartisan basis in 1996.
Those reforms led to precipitous declines in welfare caseloads, and increased employment and incomes among single mothers.
Delinking assistance from work, as this bill does, threatens those gains.
I fully support lending a hand to families in need of support. But our policies must be focused on providing a hand-up, not just a hand-out.
-30-