Floor Statements

Mr. President, I have 11 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

Committee on Armed Services

The Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, January 30, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Korean Peninsula and United States strategy in the Indo-Pacific region.''

Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs

The Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, January 30, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Financial Stability Oversight Council annual report to Congress.''

Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation

The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, January 30, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Growing the Future: Opportunities to Support domestic Seafood Through Aquaculture.''

Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation

The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, January 30, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``One Year Later: The American Innovation and Competitiveness Act.''

Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, January 30, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing on subcommittee assignments and the following nominations: Melissa F. Burnison, of Kentucky, to be an Assistant Secretary of Energy (Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs), Susan Combs, of Texas, to be an Assistant Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Douglas Nelson, of Idaho, to be Solicitor of the Department of the Interior, and Anne Marie White, of Michigan, to be an Assistant Secretary of Energy (Environmental Management).

Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, January 30, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``The role of the Geological Survey and the Forest Service in preparing for and responding to natural hazard events, as well as the current status of mapping and monitoring systems.

Committee on Environment and Public Works

The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, January 30, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Oversight Hearing to Receive Testimony from the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt.''

Committee on Foreign Relations

The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, January 30, 2018, at 2:30 p.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Economic Relationship between the United States, Canada, and Mexico.''

Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions

The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, January 30, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Reauthorizing the Higher Education Act: Access and Innovation.''

Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions

The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, January 30, 2018, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Roundtable on Small Business Health Plans.''

Select Committee on Intelligence

The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, January 30, 2018, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a closed hearing.

Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to speak about what our tax reform and tax relief legislation actually does.

I want to start by welcoming in advance the President of the United States to Pennsylvania. The President is going to Pittsburgh, PA, to talk about the specifics of our tax reform and the effect it is having. I really wish I could be there with him, but we don't know when we are going to finish up here, as the President knows very well. We might be here well into the evening, and I have multiple obligations to which I have long been committed in addition to juggling that. Unfortunately, I will not be able to get to Pittsburgh with the President, but I hope to have another opportunity to celebrate this victory for Pennsylvanians and Americans because that is what it is.

When we set out to accomplish the biggest tax reform in at least 31 years, we had two big goals.

The first was to make sure we implemented a direct tax cut for working families, for middle-income families, and for the overwhelming majority of families and individuals whom we all represent. That was goal No. 1--to make sure we cut taxes for the people who are working every day, living paycheck to paycheck, working hard, and making America what it is. That was item No. 1.

The second thing we wanted to do was to reform what was a completely archaic, unbelievably complicated, inefficient, and really terrible business tax code that had become arguably one of the very worst in the world and one that was systematically discouraging investment in the United States.

So those were the two goals--direct tax relief for ordinary Americans and making the business tax code competitive. I am thrilled to be able to say that I believe we achieved both goals.

First of all, it is a simple, straightforward, factual matter that we cut taxes on the vast, overwhelming majority of taxpayers--the families and individuals who pay taxes. That is just a factual matter. That is easy to confirm. Of course, that has the effect of increasing the take- home pay for anybody who is working. You can increase your take-home pay by either getting a raise from your employer or by paying fewer taxes on what you earn or both, and we knew for sure that we were cutting taxes and that there was going to be a take-home pay increase.

I predicted at the time that we would also be creating an environment in which there would be upward pressure on wages, where over time we would start to see people getting bonuses, pay rate increases, and wage increases because we would be creating a dynamic in which employers would be competing more and more for workers so that, in effect, they would be bidding up the compensation for the workers. That is what I predicted, and I was confident that would happen within some number of months or a year or so. So I had to come down to the floor today and confess that I was wrong--very wrong--about the timing of that. You see, we didn't have to wait 3 or 6 or 12 months for our constituents-- the people whom we represent--to see the benefits in the form of higher wages. They started happening immediately--I mean, within days. It has actually been stunning.

It has been about 1 month since we passed this sweeping tax reform, and many hundreds of businesses--those cumulatively employing well over 2 million workers--have announced bonuses, wage increases, expanded benefits, and increased contributions to pension accounts. They have cited the tax reform as the mechanism that has enabled them to do this for their workers.

What is so exciting about this is that this is happening even before the wave of new investments has even been able to begin. This is happening because companies know that with lower tax rates, they are going to have more free cash flow. They are going to use some of that to invest in growing their business, but they have already announced that they are using some of that to enhance the compensation of their employees.

Let me give you some examples. These are just Pennsylvania-related companies, a handful of the ones I am aware of. It is typical of companies across the country. Comcast, a big employer based in Philadelphia, announced specifically that as a result of the tax reform, they would make a $1,000 bonus payment to 100,000 frontline nonexecutive employees, and they committed to $50 billion of capital expenditure over the next 5 years. How many tens of thousands of jobs is all of that capital expenditure going to support? It is a big number.

That is not all. Out in Pittsburgh, PNC Financial Services, a substantial large bank in Pittsburgh, announced right after the tax reform that they would pay $1,000 to 47,500 of their employees, and, in addition, they would contribute $1,500 to each of their employees for participating in their pension savings plans. They are also raising their base wage. Their minimum wage for employees at PNC goes up to $15 an hour. No Federal Government edict is forcing them to do it. This is what they want to do. It is so that they can attract more and competitive employees. They have also increased their contribution to their charitable foundation--$200 million to a charitable foundation that supports early childhood education. That is PNC.

Navient has 900 or so employees in Wilkes-Barre, PA, and they announced that they are giving a $1,000 bonus to their non-officer employees--98 percent of their employees. That is not the top brass, but everybody else is going to get a $1,000 bonus.

Customers Bank in Wyomissing, Berks County, PA, announced that as a result of the tax reform and the tax relief they are getting, they are going to be able to offer people who have a checking account with them a higher rate on their deposits. In another benefit for consumers, they are going to increase their charitable giving.

NexTier Bank in Butler County, in Western Pennsylvania, is giving a $1,000 bonus to all their employees.

As to Walmart, I think we all saw that. There are Walmart employees in every State of the Union, and there certainly are in Pennsylvania. There are over 160 Walmart locations in Pennsylvania. They are giving a bonus of up to $1,000, raising their starting wage, expanding their paid leave policy, and their adoption assistance program for their employees, all in response to the tax relief and reform that they know is going to be good for their business, and they already decided to make it good for their employees as well.

That is just a small handful of the companies that I know of in Pennsylvania that have made public announcements about this. How many more are there across the country? It is a huge number, and it is growing rapidly, and it is fantastic.

I think it is fantastic. I think it is fantastic when the people I represent are able to earn more to support their family, get a bigger bonus and get a bonus they might not otherwise have gotten at all.

I know this view is not universally shared. The House Minority Leader

Pelosi doesn't think very much of this. In fact, she said: ``In terms of the bonus that corporate America received versus the crumbs that they are giving to workers to kind of put a schmooze on--it's so pathetic . . . I think it's insignificant.''

I have to state that I don't think it is pathetic, and I don't think it is insignificant. I think to a family that is struggling, a family that is working hard, a family that may be living paycheck-to-paycheck, as most families do, these are not crumbs. This makes a difference. For the people who wonder, because they heard so much from our colleagues on the other side that this is not going to help middle-class families, any mystery that people may think surrounds this will be resolved very soon because the IRS has already released new withholding guidelines. The Treasury has done their evaluation, and they have concluded as the Joint Tax Committee concluded, that over 90 percent of all individuals and families filing and paying taxes will see a tax cut. So they are adjusting the withholding table so that the take-home pay goes up and so that the money that workers pay to Uncle Sam goes down.

Honestly, I have to state that I am convinced that the best in all of this is yet to come. The best is yet to come because it is too early for us to have yet benefitted from the wave of new capital investment. We have made it more affordable for businesses to invest in their workers, to invest in their businesses, and to invest here in America rather than overseas. We have made that more affordable so more is going to happen, and when it happens, people are going to get the benefits from the jobs they have to provide those capital goods. Other people are going to benefits from jobs that are necessary to operate that capital equipment. Wages will rise because workers will become more productive. This is what is in store for us, and this is what is so exciting.

It is not just my theorizing on this. Last week the CEO of PNC, Bill Demchak, was quoted in the Wall Street Journal. He said:

For all the investment decisions that companies make, the

U.S. just got that much more attractive. . . . It's going to

win more than it won before in terms of where people choose

to do business activity and invest.

I couldn't agree more. This is clearly going to be the result. We are allowing American businesses to compete and to win in a competitive global economy. This is going to increase the supply of capital. It is going to increase the productive capacity of the American economy. It is going to provide better tools for workers when they have that capital that they can work with that makes them more productive. That enables them to earn higher wages, and with all the need for more workers that this is going to generate, it is going to continue to put upward pressure on wages, because that is what companies are going to have to do in order to attract and retain the employees they need.

So I would say that I think we are well on our way to seeing the fruits of this reform. I think it is going to be extremely constructive. I am thrilled that our legislation has already begun to have tangible benefits for the people we represent, and I am convinced that the best is yet to come.

I yield the floor.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I rise to speak about the conference report we will be voting on later this evening. Before I do that, I want to mention a few folks by name who deserve a big thank-you for the incredible work they did to get us to this terrific point we are at today.

I wanted to start with Leader McConnell. His vision and leadership made this possible, and I am grateful for that. I want to mention Chairman Hatch, who also helped to guide the Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over our Tax Code; Chairman Enzi, the chairman of the Budget Committee--without a proper budget resolution, this moment would not have been possible; Chairman Murkowski, who has fought for so long to open up this little tiny postage stamp in an incredibly remote part of Alaska to prudent energy development, and finally, tonight we are going to pass the legislation to do that; Senator Cornyn, our whip, who is also a member of the Finance Committee and played a very important role; Senators Thune, Portman, and Scott, with whom I worked very closely for a very extended period of time to try to find the consensus that I think we have reached among Republican Senators.

I want to mention Senator Corker. I had many long and ultimately very fruitful conversations with Senator Corker, who approached this in a very thoughtful and responsible way. I am very grateful for him.

I want to mention some of the staff who worked incredibly hard on this: Mark Warren, who handles tax policy for Senator Thune; Zach Rudisill, who works for Senator Portman; Shay Hawkins, who handled this brief for Senator Scott; Andrew Siracuse, who works for Senator Cornyn; and Bart Massey, who handled this responsibility for Senator Enzi, and Matt Giroux. They all did terrific work.

A big special thanks to some of the guys on my staff who did an amazing job. Randy Herndon joined my team earlier this year and did an absolutely extraordinary job. Fortunately, he has an incredible wealth of knowledge about tax policy, and he was able to put that to work for Pennsylvanians and for Americans in a tremendously constructive way. Brad Grantz, my legislative director, also helped to guide this process. Dan Brandt, who is my chief of staff, did some great quarterbacking.

I should point out the Senate Finance Committee staff who worked incredible hours and did a great job--Jay Khosla, Mark Prater, Jen Acuna, and the rest of the Senate Finance Committee staff, and also Brendan Dunn in the leader's office, who played a very important role.

Speaker Ryan and Chairman Brady in the other Chamber played an indispensable role in getting us here, as did Tom Barthold, who leads the Joint Committee on Taxation, quantifying every wrinkle along the way in the final product, as well as his team.

I should also mention that the President provided constructive leadership along the way, and we worked extensively with Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and the Director of the National Economic Council, Gary Cohn, from the White House.

This took a long time to put together and involved an enormous amount of work, but I am so proud of what we have brought to this floor and what I believe we are going to pass later this evening. The process started over a year ago when members of the Finance Committee began to tackle what seemed like a very daunting challenge--the most ambitious tax reform in 31 years. Could we really overhaul the entire Tax Code and achieve two very important accomplishments and do it with the very narrow majority we have, knowing that our Democratic friends did not want to participate in this process, and try to get this all the way across the goal line?

I am thrilled to be able to report that I think we have accomplished those two big things. What are they? No. 1, we were determined from the very beginning that we would not even attempt to bring a bill to the floor unless it lowered the tax burden on the families we represent-- individuals, families, middle-income and lower income families. That was No. 1. No. 2, we wanted to fundamentally restructure the business side of our Tax Code so that American workers and businesses can compete and win in a global economy against anybody. I have to tell you, we did those things, and I think that is why this is going to pass tonight.

First, on the individual side, this is absolutely a direct tax cut for the vast overwhelming majority of low- and middle-income taxpayers. They will simply pay less in Federal taxes. That is the reality.

By the way, most high-income taxpayers will have some tax savings as well. I don't apologize for that. I am in favor of lowering the tax burden on everyone. While not every last individual is going to have a tax cut, the vast majority of people will.

We do it through a variety of mechanisms. I will not go through all of them, but a couple of the mechanisms that I think people understand and appreciate are, one, we doubled the standard deduction--what does that mean? That means that a couple filing jointly, as most married couples do, the first $24,000 of income they earn doesn't get taxed at all--zero, nothing. They don't owe a dime to the Federal Government on the first $24,000 that they earn. That one step alone results in a tax reduction for many millions of Americans. In addition, we lower marginal tax rates so that the income people earn above $24,000 gets taxed at lower rates under our bill than under current law. We also dramatically increase the child tax credit so that families with children get this additional benefit on top of the ones I just mentioned.

The net effect of all of this is that every single income category pays less in taxes. You don't have to take my word for it; that is the joint tax nonpartisan review of our bill. And low-income earners receive the largest percentage of benefits of all.

For people who are listening to this debate, whether in the Chamber here or watching C-SPAN, I can understand that they could be a little frustrated because they hear our Democratic colleagues say: This is a terrible deal for the middle class. Some have even said it is a tax increase. And they have heard me and other Republicans say this is absolutely a tax cut for the middle class. Who are they to believe? I understand that frustration.

Let me suggest that there is a simple way to cut through all of this--there are two, actually.

No. 1, look what happened on the Senate floor during debate on this. The same sort of argument was taking place when a Democratic Senator offered an amendment to take our tax policy for low- and middle-income families and individuals and make it permanent. If this were a bad deal for the middle class, presumably all the Democratic Senators would vote no, but they did not. They voted yes. It was really quite an extraordinary compliment to our work that they offered an amendment to take what we did--which is not yet permanent; we weren't able to do that; we are going to come back and revisit that, and I hope we will make it permanent--and said: This is so good, we should make it permanent right now. So I appreciate the compliment. I appreciate the validation of the tax cut, that this is for low-income and middle- income families, and I want to work with them to make sure it is permanent. We should be able to do that.

The second way we know where the truth lies in this debate is in late January, early February, just check your paycheck. Take a look. Withholding is going to go down because you are going to owe less money to Uncle Sam, so you are going to get a take-home pay raise. It is as simple as that. So the mystery will be all gone when people take a look at their check and discover that, yes, look at that, I actually got the pay raise those Republican guys said we were going to get. I am looking forward to when that happens and, at that point, I think this debate will shift to other topics. That is my guess.

I also want to touch on the tax reform on the business side because I think that is what is likely to drive the economic growth and the opportunities I want to see for the people I represent. It comes in a context. The context is the weakest economic recovery in the history of the Republic. After a very severe recession in 2008, we never really had the booming recovery we have always had in the past. It is not a huge mystery why. Our Democratic friends had complete control of the elective government, and they did all of the things they wanted to do. They had the ability--and they did--huge, repeated tax increases with no reforms, a virtual takeover of healthcare, an avalanche of new regulations, and a massive spending binge. They did all of those things and, unsurprisingly, we got a weak economy, not a strong economy.

One of the specific problems we have had and that has plagued us ever since that recession is a collapse in the growth of the capital stock, which caused a collapse in the growth of productivity, and without productivity, it is not at all surprising that workers aren't getting raises. The path to higher wages for workers is allowing workers to become more productive. To be more productive, they need better tools, and better tools are acquired through investment.

So that was lacking, and that is the heart of what we are fixing. Our reform goes right to this challenge of lowering the cost of deploying capital. What do I mean by deploying capital? What I mean is investing in the very kind of equipment that makes workers more productive and allows them to earn higher wages.

A simple example is, you go to a construction site and there are two guys working and one of them is working a backhoe and the other is working a shovel. They are both digging a hole. They are both moving dirt. Which one do you think is getting paid more? The guy operating the backhoe is always making more money because he is able to be so much more productive than any human can be with just his bare hands and a shovel. So when we make it more affordable for businesses to go out and buy new tractors, new equipment, new machinery, that gives them the chance to put those more valuable tools into the hands of their workers.

By the way, someone also has to build those things. Someone has the job at Caterpillar of making that tractor. Someone has the job of making that vehicle. Someone has the job of making the machinery.

So all of these things coming together are a very powerful driver of economic growth--not the only one. Not only do we lower the cost of acquiring that equipment, we also lower the top rate that businesses pay.

We have arguably the most uncompetitive Tax Code in the world--the top rate of 35 percent. What we do in our bill is we lower that rate to 21 percent--slightly below the average of the nations we compete with; pretty close to the average. This is going to free up American workers and businesses to compete and win in all kinds of fields where we are getting beaten today. That is going to come to an end because when we have a chance to compete on a level playing field, American workers and American business, we compete and we usually win. We are going to get back to winning.

We also recognize that most businesses in America are not organized as C corps, they are organized as

passthroughs--small, subchapter S companies, partnerships. So we have a corollary, a reduction in tax rates for them. It comes as a deduction against their earnings. It doesn't apply to all partnerships. Professional services partnerships, for instance, don't get this treatment. I would like to revisit that. I think we want to revisit that because I personally would like to see this treatment expanded to that category, but the vast majority of businesses--partnerships, S corps, C corps--are going to experience a significant tax cut that is going to allow them to compete.

Another big, important feature is moving away from this global taxation system we have. We have all been so disturbed by the stories we have read about of American companies being acquired, sometimes by a much smaller company overseas, not because the economics of the transaction make a lot of sense but because the Tax Code drives them. It just makes very little sense, from a tax point of view, to have a multinational company headquartered in the United States.

So we have been driving these transactions that are terrible. They usually cost us jobs. They cost us growth. This comes to an end with this reform. We are not going to have this system where we punish business for bringing money back home to the United States. This punishment ends, and it is going to encourage a huge inflow of capital, of accumulated profits back into the United States, because no longer will companies be facing a penalty tax unique in the world. That is over. It is a very constructive development.

What does it mean when you take one of the world's worst business tax codes and you turn it into arguably one of the best? It means more investment. It means more people all around the world are going to want to invest in America. It means more Americans are going to want to invest in starting a new business or expanding an existing business. It means more business will be able to afford the tools and the equipment and the vehicles I referred to earlier. That is the source of economic growth.

Some of our colleagues on the other side don't seem to acknowledge that this is a reality, but there is no great mystery here. When you lower the cost of something, you get more of it, and when we lower the cost we impose on businesses becoming more productive, we will have more productivity.

All of this comes at a very interesting time in the economic cycle. What I am referring to is the fact that we are arguably close to what economists think of as full employment--4.1 percent, 4 percent. Very seldom does the American economy go below 4 percent for extended periods. It means that when this money gets put to work--when companies go out and start buying this equipment--they need workers to fill the orders, but then they need workers to operate the equipment. Demand for workers is going to go up.

What happens when demand for workers goes up at a time when there is a relatively small number who are not employed? It means upward pressure on the wages of those workers. This is exactly the dynamic we have been waiting for and we are going to trigger that and we are going to watch this happen. I think it is going to start relatively quickly-- probably next year--that we will start to see upward pressure on wages. That means the people I represent are going to find that they have options, they have higher compensation, they are getting a pay raise because their employer--it is not because employers suddenly wake up one day and decide: Oh, I will just be more generous today. It is nothing of the sort. This is the only way they can hold on to their workforce, hold on to the employees they need.

So it is very likely we are going to see an increasing share of the total economic output in the hands of the workers who produce it, and I think that is a terrific development.

A couple of other points I want to touch on briefly. One is that this legislation also effectively repeals the individual mandate of ObamaCare. Technically, what we do is we zero out the penalty. The penalty for noncompliance goes to zero, and so that is equivalent to repeal.

First of all, this is a great strike for freedom, in my view. It is appalling to think that the Federal Government has the right to force an American to buy a product against his or her will--a terrible infringement on the freedom of Americans.

Our Democratic colleagues have described this repeal as a stake through the heart of ObamaCare. Think about what a damning indictment that is about ObamaCare. It is a stake through the heart. If the only way ObamaCare can survive is if people are forced to buy the product against their wishes, what kind of product could that be? What kind of business model depends on forcing people to buy your product because they will not buy it if it is voluntary?

So not only is it a significant strike for freedom, it is also tax relief for low-income folks. This ObamaCare penalty in Pennsylvania, in my State--and I think my State is typical--83 percent of the people who get hit with this tax penalty are in a household that earns less than $50,000 a year. So this is more direct relief for low- and middle- income folks.

The last point I want to make--and I see my colleague from Ohio on the floor. He did amazing, great work getting us to this point. He was a pleasure to work with and enormously knowledgeable, and I just want to congratulate him for where we are today.

A quick word about the deficits. Let me start with a very simple observation. I am convinced that when we pass this legislation and it is signed into law, the Federal budget deficits will shrink as a result of this legislation. It is very simple. The reason I say that is the economic growth, the response to the reforms, the very profound reforms we are making are going to give us a bigger economy to tax, and the extra growth, the bigger economy, means more revenue to the Federal Government. So you could reasonably ask: Well, OK, how much more growth do you really need, though, in order to offset the lost revenue that comes from some of the changes you are making? Fortunately, that is a simple exercise in arithmetic.

We know what the answer is. Whether it is Joint Tax or the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan analysis is, we will need to average between two- and four-tenths of a percent of extra GDP growth--extra economic growth--each year, on average, for the next 10 years. If we do that, then we will have a smaller deficit as a result of this legislation, not a larger one.

So, for me, what this bill comes down to is a simple question: Do you believe in America? Do you believe in the capacity of the American people to restore the vibrant growth we used to take for granted, decade after decade of annual growth of over 3 percent that caused people's wages to rise and the standard of living to grow?

We have had this period that has been stagnant, and some of our friends think, Well, that is what America is now. Just get used to it. Accept it. That is the new normal--barely 2 percent growth, if you are lucky. I think that is nonsense, and it is not true.

I still believe in America. I still believe in American workers. I still believe in our system. I still believe we are capable of restoring the kind of growth that has always been our birthright.

I think this legislation takes a huge step in that direction. It is a direct, immediate tax cut and, therefore, a pay raise for the hard- working people I represent, and it is a series of reforms that is going to encourage economic growth that will result in higher wages and a better standard of living as well.

I am thrilled with the opportunity we have tonight, and I urge all of my colleagues to support this legislation.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 1 minute in opposition.

Mr. President, this harkens back to a moment earlier in this debate when the Senator from Oregon, the ranking member of the Finance Committee, described the repeal of the individual mandate as driving a stake through the heart of ObamaCare. Think of what a confession this is by our colleagues on the other side of what a disaster ObamaCare is--that it is dead, that it is done if people are not forced against their wishes to purchase a product that does not suit their families' needs and/or that they cannot afford. What kind of business model--what kind of person?--could possibly justify having to force people to buy its product? This is not only an egregious affront to any sense of personal freedom, but it is proof positive that this doesn't work.

There is another aspect to this as well, and that is that the tax that we impose on people who cannot afford these ObamaCare plans but that they are forced to buy is a regressive tax that falls wildly disproportionately on lower and middle-income folks. In my State of Pennsylvania, 83 percent of the families who are hit with this tax live in households that earn less than $50,000.

I urge my colleagues to reject this motion.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a letter from the Government Accountability Office, GAO, be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I am going to be brief. I am going to yield to my colleague from South Carolina, and I think my colleague from South Dakota has a few comments.

I want to respond to some of the points my colleague from Colorado made. First, I want to thank him for bringing out our chart. What our chart illustrates is that every category of income earners in America gets a tax cut under our plan. If you look toward the left of the chart, you see that the biggest reductions go to the people in the

lowest income categories in a percentage term. My colleagues said percentages don't matter. I am a little bit confused because it seems to me that I think they do matter. I will give you an example.

Under our tax plan, our tax reform, and our working-class and middle- class tax cuts, the average single head of household--a single mom who, as head of household, has one child and earns the average income of $41,000, which doesn't make her a millionaire, or not typically, with $41,000--is going to have a $1,400 tax cut. That is a 75-percent tax cut for her. Now, maybe our colleague from Colorado thinks that percentage doesn't matter. I think it probably matters to her. A 75- percent reduction in the taxes that she has to pay probably matters to her. It is probably pretty helpful.

You could take the case of a family of four who earns the median national income. That is $73,000. On average, they will have a $2,200 tax cut. That is a 60-percent tax cut. So I am at a loss as to why that doesn't matter to that family. I think it matters a lot. I think that family can do a lot with that $2,200.

The fact is that our bill lowers taxes for every category of income earner, and the proportionate share is the greatest for the lowest income earners. This is good for working Americans and middle-class Americans.

I yield to my colleague from South Carolina.

Mr. President, how much time is remaining on the majority side?

OK. Thank you, Mr. President. I will be brief because I think my colleague from South Carolina has a comment he wants to make.

Let me respond just briefly to my colleague from my State of Pennsylvania. Our bill increases the child tax credit. Our bill lowers the tax burden on every category of income earners, including working families, middle-income families--every category.

As my colleague from Colorado demonstrated kindly, he showed in the chart that the biggest proportional savings go to the lower-income families, and the pro-growth policy is going to create more job opportunities at higher wages. So let's see: more money in child tax credit, less taxes owed on the part of families, more job opportunities, and higher wages. I think it is a pretty safe bet that this is good for kids. I think it is a pretty safe bet that when families get to keep more of their money, that is probably good for their kids. I think most of my constituents would probably agree with that.

We have heard folks on the other side suggest that we are actually not cutting taxes on the middle class. This is unfortunate because we have enough areas where we disagree without having to make up areas that aren't true. Our friends on the other side like higher taxes; we like lower taxes. They like to redistribute wealth; we like people who earn it to keep wealth. We focus on growing the economy; they want to grow government. We have honest differences in priorities, so I wish we would focus on where there are actual differences and the facts in question. But there is no question that we are lowering taxes on middle-income families because we are lowering taxes on every category of wages.

The people who are watching on C-SPAN and the people who are listening in the gallery must get a little frustrated and must ask themselves: Well, who can we believe? We hear one side say: This is lower taxes for working families. We have the other side say: Oh, it is higher taxes.

I have a suggestion. I know there is a solution. You could look it up at Joint Committee on Taxation, but that is tedious. You have to go to the website, you have to find it, and then you would see in the tables--because they are unambiguous--that taxes owed go down in every category.

Do you know when people are going to know for sure what the answer is? It is going to come in January when the withholding in their paycheck changes and when their take-home pay goes up because the taxes they owe go down. I know we are still a few weeks away from that, but when this passes and gets signed into law, the proof is going to be very clear, and people are going to see it.

Here is a quick word about the repeal of the individual mandate. My friend and colleague from Oregon described it. I am paraphrasing, but I think I will get it about right. He described the repeal of the individual mandate as driving a stake through the heart of ObamaCare or something equivalent to that. I couldn't help but think: What an incredibly damming indictment of ObamaCare. Think about what that means.

Think about what they are saying if repealing the individual mandate drives a stake through the heart of ObamaCare. The individual mandate is the provision which says that you have to buy this whether you want it or not. You have to. You are forced to. The government dictates the terms, the government effectively dictates prices, and you must buy it. If you don't, you will get hit with a penalty, a tax penalty.

We don't actually repeal the mandate, but we eliminate that tax penalty, and that is going to be very helpful for low- and middle- income families, working-class families. In Pennsylvania, 83 percent of all the people who get hit with this individual mandate tax live in a household with income of $50,000 or less. That is who is paying this.

But what I wanted to stress for a moment is what a damming indictment it is of ObamaCare that it only works, according to its proponents, if people are forced to buy the product. It is so badly designed, it is so terrible that people will not buy it voluntarily, despite huge subsidies.

We don't change any of the subsidies. They are all available to anyone who wants to participate. We don't change the rules. We don't change eligibility. We don't change anything except one thing. We say that if you decide this plan doesn't fit your family or if you decide for all the subsidies you get it is still not worth it for you to have this plan and you opt out, you will no longer be punished with this tax. That is the only thing we do in this bill.

Since we eliminate that coercion, which forces people to buy it, our colleagues on the other side say that drives a stake through the heart of ObamaCare. It seems to me that a product or a service that people have to be forced to buy and that is killed if they are not forced to buy it probably isn't a great deal for those people, and I think we just got that admission.

With that, I yield to my colleague from South Carolina.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I object.

Mr. President, two points I would like to address, and then we have other Republican colleagues who would like to use our time as well.

One, I want to address the comments made by my friend--and he is a friend of mine--the Senator from West Virginia. I have worked closely with Senator Manchin on a variety of pieces of legislation, some relatively ordinary and noncontroversial and others quite controversial. We have been through some battles together, Senator Manchin and I, and I enjoy working with him.

I hope he is going to support this product in the end. I am not sure he will, but he might--I don't know--and he probably has some good ideas he could bring to this.

Let me be very clear about the process we have used here. First of all, this legislation has gone through the regular order. It has gone through the committee. It was extensively debated in the committee. It was marked up in the committee. There were many dozens of amendments debated and voted on in the committee. The committee document, which is very similar to the final document we are going to vote on tonight, has been available for weeks.

Here is one of the problems we faced from the onset in this. Very early on in this process, the vast majority of our Democratic colleagues announced they wanted to leave the room with respect to a tax reform discussion. Now, as it happens, Senator Manchin was not among them, but 45 of the 48 Democratic Senators sent a public letter, and they stipulated the terms under which they would be willing to work with us on tax reform. One of the terms was that we had to use a process that could allow them to kill it by a filibuster, if they wanted to. That was one of their terms.

If they were going to participate in the process, they were demanding that we would have to empower them to kill the final product by a filibuster, if they wanted to.

Well, I just think that tax reform, tax relief for low- and middle- income families like we provide in this bill and the pro-growth policies through the reforms in this bill are too important to allow the minority to kill it by filibuster. It would have been malpractice on our part to allow that possibility, and so we didn't.

All that means is one thing. All it means is, the final passage on this legislation is not 60 votes, but it is 51. That is all. Any Democrat can offer any amendment. Any Democrat can join us in supporting this legislation. That was also true in committee, and it will be true right through the end of this process.

Our Democratic colleagues also had other stipulations in their letter. They said there can be no savings in the tax reform package for the people who pay 40 percent of all the taxes. It is actually really hard to do pro-growth, meaningful tax reform if you say the people who pay 40 percent of all the taxes must not be allowed to get any benefit whatsoever.

Another feature in their letter was that there could be no savings for the very substantial category of American businesses organized as what we call passthroughs--these are partnerships and subchapter S corporations--because under the stipulations in their public letter, there couldn't be any benefit at all to anyone whose income was in the top 1 percent. Well, there are a lot of passthroughs that have some ownership on the part of people who are in that income category.

My point is, they were systematically taking themselves out of the discussion from the very beginning. Despite that, we had an open process. We had unlimited amendments, and they participated in that process.

Now I would like to address the issue my colleague from Maryland raised, which is the deductibility of State and local taxes. I just want to say, for me, disallowing the deductibility of State and local taxes and offsetting that with lower income tax rates for everyone-- which is what we do in our bill, among other things--it is a matter of fairness. It is just a simple matter of fairness.

Under our current policy, which our Democratic colleagues would prefer we keep, the current policy of allowing people to deduct their State and local taxes and requiring higher Federal income taxes for all Americans as a result, that amounts to a subsidy that is paid by people in low-tax jurisdictions that gets sent to people in high-tax jurisdictions.

For the life of me, I don't understand why my constituents in Dauphin County, PA--a relatively lower tax place--should have to pay higher Federal income taxes so a very wealthy guy who owns a penthouse on the Upper West Side of Manhattan can deduct the very substantial taxes he chooses to pay because he lives in a very high-tax jurisdiction.

How is that fair that a person of much more modest means should have to subsidize a person of great means through the Tax Code? I don't think that is fair, but it is also unfair not just from one State to another but even within a State it is really not fair.

Let me illustrate my point with an example. Let's imagine you have two families who have the same financial circumstances. They are neighbors, but they happen to live on either side of a municipal boundary. One family lives on the side of a town that provides a lot of services and has high property taxes, which pays for the services. Maybe they pick up the trash. Maybe the town picks up the leaves. They provide lots of services. They have a nice community center. So the family has higher property taxes to pay for all of that.

Then the other family on the other side, in a different township right next door, they don't get their leaves picked up, they don't get the trash hauled away, they don't have a nice community center, but they have lower property taxes.

Now, the family who doesn't have all those services, they have to privately contract for those services. They have to go hire a company to take away their trash barrels. They have to hire a company to take away their leaves. They have to pay to join a gym or a recreational facility, and they don't get to deduct any of those expenses. They don't get to deduct the cost of paying someone to take their trash away or leaf removal or their membership at a local gym or facility like that.

So how is it fair that one person gets all of those services and gets to deduct the costs in the form of deducting the property taxes that pay for it, and the

other person, otherwise identically situated, does not get to deduct the cost? That just does not strike me as fair.

So all we are doing is saying: Let's be fair about this. Let's just be fair. Let's disallow that deduction. For the most part, we do preserve a portion of that, but the principle is to reduce the ability to deduct these taxes because it is more fair, and then what we can do as a result is we can lower the income tax rates paid by everyone.

I think that is a step in the direction of fairness, and it is one of the things that I think is a good feature in the bill.

I see my colleague the Senator from Montana is here so I will yield the floor to him.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there now be 30 minutes, equally divided, for debate only, with no amendments or motions in order, and the majority leader be recognized at the conclusion of that time.

Mr. President, I want to talk about one of the truly pro- growth features in this tax reform that is going to encourage investment in the United States, new business creation, startup, expansion, and hiring that will be associated with that. That means new jobs, more demand for workers, and higher wages.

What am I referring to? I am referring to one of the things we do on the business side of this tax reform. The way I think about it, there are several big features that are going to drive economic growth on the business side of the Tax Code. One is certainly lowering the top rate from the 35 percent that makes us uncompetitive in the global economy to 20 percent, which puts us pretty close to dead even among our competitors. That is one. That is an important part.

The second one that I think is even more powerful is simply allowing businesses to recognize, for tax purposes, expenses when they actually occur. Allow businesses, when they buy equipment and put that equipment to work in a factory or when buying earth-moving equipment or new machinery, to recognize that cost when it occurs. By allowing them to recognize that cost when it occurs, they can afford to purchase more of that equipment.

Why is that important?

That is important because that is the source of enhanced worker productivity. Workers are more productive when they have machinery and equipment to work with. This is why capital drives productivity growth. It is the investment in that new equipment that creates demand for workers but also makes the worker more productive. The example I like to use that I think illustrates it reasonably well is this: If you go to a construction site and you have two guys working on that site and one of them is operating a backhoe and the other is using a shovel, they are both digging a hole; they are both moving dirt. Which one do you think gets paid more? It is not a close call. The

guy who is operating the backhoe is getting paid more on every such job site in America, not because there is a law that requires it but because he is a more productive worker. He has a skill set, and he is using major equipment that allows him to be much, much more productive than any human being can be with a simple hand tool. That is an illustration of how it is that when a company is able to put that equipment to work, the worker benefits.

That worker operator is not the only one who benefits, because somebody has to make the backhoe. Someone has to work at the factory that builds the backhoe that was bought. So what we are doing when we allow this expensing to occur--when we allow businesses, for tax purposes, to recognize the expense when it occurs rather than gradually over time, we simply make it more affordable for business to put capital to work, to buy the kind of equipment to help them grow and help them help their workers become more productive. That is why this is a very constructive, pro-growth feature in our tax reform that is going to be very, very helpful to workers.

But there is a third feature in our business tax reform that is also going to be great for America, and that is going to be our change from the current global tax system that we apply on the subsidiaries and affiliates of multinational companies--the change away from a global system to a territorial system. So what does that mean? So a global system is the system we have today, and America is unfortunately almost unique in the world in having this very counterproductive system.

Here is how it works. If a subsidiary of an American company goes overseas--say they go to England--and they open a business there because they want to serve the English population and they want to sell a product in England. So they go to England, they open their business, they make a profit, and they have to pay a tax to the English Government. That is normal. That is what any company operating there has to do.

What America does, what we do in our Tax Code that almost no one else does is, we say: After you have paid that tax to the English Government, if you would like to dividend that money back to your parent company so it can be invested back home in America, we are going to charge you another layer of tax. We are going to make sure the combination of what you pay there and what you bring back home hits 35 percent, which is our current rate. It is completely uncompetitive.

So, if you think about it, the rest of the world has a different system. They have the system which we know as a territorial system, and the idea there is the subsidiary in England pays its tax to the English Government and then whatever aftertax profit they choose to send home to their parent, if it is a French company or German company or a company somewhere else in the world, there is no additional tax layer.

So which country do you think has a competitive advantage doing business in England? Anyone other than the United States. This has been the very reason that you have seen these inversions, these American companies getting acquired by other companies. In many cases, it is not about the economics, it is not about synergies, it is because there is a tax advantage to having a multinational headquartered almost anywhere other than the United States. There are a lot of good jobs at a corporate headquarters. There is management and sales and finance and planning and all kinds of really good jobs. We are losing these systematically because we have this system that nobody else in the world has--almost nobody else has--that punishes companies when they bring that money back home.

So what are we going to do? We are going to change our system from one of the worst in the world to what I think is going to be one of the best. What we are going to do is we are going to say: Well, a company operating overseas has to pay that local tax, but we are not going to punish that company with another layer of tax when they bring that money back home to America and invest here. Most estimates of how much money--I should point out, you only get hit with that tax penalty if you bring that money home and reinvest it in America. That is how crazy this is. It is called the deferral system.

The common popular estimates by the economists who looked at this is that there are somewhere between $2 trillion, maybe even more than $3 trillion of earnings by the subsidiaries of American-based multinationals, where they have paid the tax overseas, as they must, but they refuse to bring the money back home because they don't want to get hit with this huge tax. So think about all this money that is overseas somewhere else and not being invested in America.

I have had conversations with CEOs who have told me they want to invest in the United States, but the tax makes it prohibitively expensive to bring it home, and therefore they are looking for opportunities overseas where they will not have this tax.

We have to end this and we are going to end this in this bill and that is going to put an end to the tax incentive for these inversions-- the movement overseas of corporate headquarters. It is going to make America a great place to invest and to headquarter a multinational company, and it is going to encourage that kind of growth. It is one of the central pillars of our business tax reform that is very constructive and very important.

I see my colleague from South Dakota is with us, and I will yield the floor now to him.

Mr. President, I would be happy to enlighten the Senator from Oregon. What my provision does is it applies to any college that chooses not to receive Federal funds under title IV, which is a very big category of funding for higher education. It is the provision that authorizes Federal financial student loan programs, for instance.

So the theory is, which you may or may not agree with, but the view is, if a college chooses to forgo Federal money and the students that attend have to find their own way to get there, it is diminishing the burden that college would otherwise impose on the

taxpayers, and so it is perfectly reasonable, in my view, to exempt such a college from the tax on endowments that we are applying generally. That is the answer to your question.

Mr. President, I think there are very few probably who choose now to forgo all of this taxpayer money, but any college in America that wanted to could do so. So any college that decided to adopt the policy I am alluding to here would choose to forgo the taxpayer money subsidizing their students and, if they choose to do that, then they wouldn't have to pay tax on their endowment. It would apply to any college that made the choice.

I believe that Hillsdale College would qualify for this, as would any other college that chooses to forgo title IV funding.

There are other colleges that choose to forgo the funding. I am not sure how many of them also have an endowment large enough at the moment that it would have an impact on them. I have no idea how long it might take them to develop an endowment. But the point is, anybody who is in this category would have this same treatment.

I do not.

The answer to your question is, I have no idea, and it doesn't matter.

I advocated this provision.

Are you finished with your question?

I will answer it again. You may choose to disagree, and that is fine. We can have our different opinions on this. But my view is, a college that chooses to say ``We don't want to take any Federal taxpayer dollars'' and therefore saves the taxpayer I don't know how many millions altogether--usually thousands per student--I think it is quite reasonable that a college that chooses to not put that imposition on the Federal taxpayers ought to be able to be exempt from this tax. It would be available to any college that made that choice. Several colleges in America make this choice, and any others that choose to would be able to participate.

The point is, the college that is qualifying for this is choosing not to impose a tax burden on the American taxpayer. They are not allowing their students to take the Federal taxpayer benefits that are available to them. They choose not to. They save taxpayers a tremendous amount of money when they make that choice. I think it is reasonable to allow them not to also have to pay this tax on their endowment.

I think people who give to the endowments are treated the same as people who give to any other endowment.

The criteria is, if the school chooses to save Federal taxpayers very substantial amounts of money by forgoing the title IV funds, then the school would not have to pay the tax.

And it is a completely irrelevant point. The fact is, the school is choosing to save the taxpayers a lot of money by forgoing money that would be available to its students. So it is very reasonable to have this modest savings that is available to a school that makes that choice and saves the taxpayers this money.

It is a universal provision available to any school that chooses to take it.

Yes.

I don't know the history of litigation against most colleges, including Hillsdale.

This is not my understanding. I do understand that my colleagues on the far left do not have a fond opinion of Hillsdale, but I do. I actually think it is a wonderful institution, and I commend them for their choice, as other colleges, of forgoing taxpayer money that they could be taking, the burden they could be imposing on taxpayers, but they choose not to. I think any college in that category, whether it is Hillsdale or any other college, ought not to have to pay the tax on the endowment.

Why would you choose to mischaracterize this provision the way you just did? You said it is for one college, and you know that is not true. This is criteria available to any college in America, and any college that takes it will get that benefit.

If my colleague doesn't like that provision, he can offer an amendment to strike it. This is a wide-open process.

Mr. President, the Senator from Oregon referred to many other deserving schools. I don't know which of them choose to forgo this taxpayer money, and if any of them do, then they qualify.

If you do not like the provision, you are free to offer an amendment to strike the provision. That would be my recommendation.

I made my recommendation. If you dislike the provision, you can offer an amendment.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there now be 30 minutes, equally divided, for debate only, with no amendments or motions in order, and that the majority leader be recognized at the conclusion of that time.

Mr. President, taking the time in opposition, first, I want to acknowledge that we share the goal of making the individual tax rates permanent, and I hope we will have an opportunity to do that, but, more importantly, I want to thank the Senator from Virginia for acknowledging and complimenting our work, acknowledging that we have cut taxes for working-class and middle-income families.

There are people who came down here during the course of the last couple of days suggesting that somehow wasn't true. I appreciate your honesty in acknowledging that we did, in fact, cut taxes for middle- income families, for working-class families, so much so, in fact, that you want to make our policy permanent, and I commend you for that. Unfortunately, you also added a huge tax increase on the very businesses that are going to help drive our growth.

By lowering our rate to 20 percent, which is what we do in our bill and which you would undermine, we would lose the opportunity to create new businesses, existing business growth, and the wage and job growth we want to drive.

I would suggest we work together on making our individual tax cuts permanent in the future, but I would urge my colleague to oppose this amendment in the current form.

Mr. President, the pending amendment No. 1846 offered by Senator Kaine has unknown budgetary effects. Therefore, I raise a point of order against this measure pursuant to section 4105 of H. Con. Res. 71, the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2018.

Mr. President, Hillsdale College has been unfairly maligned on the Senate floor. The fact is, Hillsdale College was the first college in America to prohibit in its charter any discrimination based on race, religion, or sex and was an early force in the abolition of slavery.

But it is not really about Hillsdale college, exclusively. This is a broader idea. The idea here, and it is in this amendment, is that for any college that chooses to forgo Federal funding for its students-- chooses not to be a burden on the taxpayers that way--it is reasonable for us to respond by sparing that college a tax on the endowment fund. That is all.

Now there are colleges, a number of colleges, including one in Pennsylvania, that choose this mode. They

would prefer to have the freedom to operate as they see fit rather than have to deal with Federal regulations, and I suspect that is a big part of what the real problem is on the other side of the aisle. But, folks, I think it is a perfectly reasonable proposition that if a college chooses to forgo the very substantial funds available to it from Federal taxpayers, it is OK to say that it will be exempt from this endowment. So I urge my colleagues to vote no on the amendment.

Mr. President, I just want to respond to my friend from Oregon.

I have enjoyed the many, many conversations that he and I have had on tax reform and other policies, but I want to strongly disagree with his characterization of this process.

What our friends on the other side of the aisle want to do is to be able to kill tax reform by filibuster. That is their goal here. That is what they want to do. In fact, they were kind enough to be explicit about it in a letter that they made public, in which 45 of the 48 Democratic Senators stipulated the terms under which they would be willing to work with us on tax reform. One of them--one of those terms--included that we had to use a process that would allow them to kill it by filibuster. They put that in writing. There were 45 of the 48 who signed the letter.

Now, how could we proceed and deliver the tax relief and the tax reform that we want to provide for the American people and our economy with the Democrats holding the threat over our heads that they would be able to kill it by filibuster?

Let me finish my point. Then I will be happy to yield.

Mr. President, obviously, it would be malpractice for us to allow them to kill this that way. So we have taken an approach that fully allows unlimited Democratic participation, but at the end of the process, it is a simple majority vote, and a minority will not be able to kill this bill by filibuster.

In every step along the way, our Democratic colleagues have had every opportunity to weigh in, to engage. We had I don't know how many hearings on this. We had a full markup in the committee. Unlimited amendments were offered, debated, voted on. Here, over the next--I don't know--day or two, I expect that we will have many more amendments. There is no limit to the amendments that our Democratic colleagues can offer. It is not true to say that the reconciliation process precludes bipartisan participation. I hope that it doesn't.

This bill cuts taxes for middle-income families. That is a fact. It is not a convenient fact for some of my friends on the other side of the aisle, but it lowers taxes for working-class families and for middle-income families. That is a fact. It is going to help encourage tremendous economic growth by allowing our businesses to be competitive. That is a fact, and we will get into why, and we will get into

the details. The fact is that this is exactly what our economy needs right now. More importantly, it is exactly what our constituents need right now.

There is nothing about this process that precludes my Democratic colleagues from offering their amendments, engaging in a debate, and supporting the product in the end. By the way, I am still hopeful that there will be some support in the end because I think that it is going to be pretty hard to explain opposition to working-class and middle- class tax cuts and corporate tax reform that is going to generate strong economic growth.

I am happy to yield to the Senator from Ohio.

I thank the Senator from Texas and the Presiding Officer.

Let's describe what is really going on. There are two big accomplishments with this legislation that I am really proud of, and they are the reason that this is going to succeed and that this is going to be a big success for the American people.

The first thing we do is we absolutely directly lower the tax on lower income and middle-income Americans, hard-working families, and folks who live paycheck to paycheck. The fact is, virtually all of them are going to get a significant tax cut. That is fact No. 1.

The second fact is, we fundamentally restructure the way we tax business so that we can be competitive, so that our workers can compete and win against companies from anywhere in the world, so that we will have more jobs, more companies, and existing companies will expand.

Those are the two things we are trying to do. That is what is in this bill, and that is why this is a great deal for the people I represent. Let me go through these individually.

The first is on the individual side of the Tax Code. I have said it before, and I will say it again. It doesn't matter how many times my colleagues on the other side get this wrong, the fact is, we are lowering taxes for every single

income category--absolutely, no exceptions, every category, and they know it. They absolutely know it. We do this through a number of mechanisms.

We double the standard deduction, so that on the first $24,000 that a couple earns, they pay no tax at all--none, zero, nothing--and then the income above that is taxed at very low rates, and there are other deductions that are available beyond that. The fact is, that is one of our tools. Another is that we lower the rates. The rates that are applied to income are lower under our bill than under current law. We increased the child tax credit dramatically. That is another huge source of savings for people who have children in our country. That is a fact.

Let me start with this simple chart, which is a simple and compelling fact that is going to be hard for our colleagues on the other side to ignore.

A family of four who earns a median income, which is $73,000 in America--a family of four: mom, dad, and two kids--is going to save $2,200 a year in a lower tax bill. Their taxes go down by $2,200 a year. How is that not a tax cut? How is that not good for that family? It is, and that is a fact. That is absolutely typical. That is just one illustration.

The second fact--and this chart is a little bit harder to read, but the folks on the Joint Committee on Taxation quantify whether people in different income categories are going to pay more or less. It is broken down into narrow incremental changes in income, showing people who earn less than $10,000; people who earn between $10,000 and $20,000; $20,000 to $30,000; all the way up. This column is titled ``Change in Federal Taxes.'' In every single category, the dollar amount goes down. It is negative because every category of Americans is going to have a savings. We designed it that way. By design, there is a tax savings for all working families, all categories of income, all middle-income families. That is the reality. That is a fact that is illustrated here. And it is not my word; it is the Joint Tax Committee in their report of November 27.

Finally, let's take a look at the last chart. What this shows is who gets the biggest percentage of relief, because it is not uniform across all the different categories of income. What do we see? The biggest tax cuts tend to be for the folks who have more modest income. Again, this is not my data. This is from the Joint Committee on Taxation, completely independent of us. The higher income folks get some tax relief, but it is not as much, relative to the percentage increase of savings for lower income and middle-income people. So those are the facts.

We can have lots of discussions about things on which we disagree, and we disagree on a lot of things. These guys want higher taxes. We like lower taxes. These guys like to redistribute wealth. We like people to be free to earn more and keep more of what they earn. There are lots of differences, but let's at least stick to the facts. These are the facts.

Now, let me move on to a discussion about the other big part of it. I said that there are two big accomplishments in this bill. One is direct tax relief for the people we represent. That is a fact. The second is making the changes to our business Tax Code so that we can actually have the economic growth we have been waiting for and have the prosperity we have been waiting for.

The fact is that we have lived through the weakest economic recovery in American history. In every past severe recession--even ordinary recessions--the economy has always come roaring back, and we have achieved economic growth that puts us back on the path we were on before the recession. That is what is normal for America--strong economic growth.

It didn't happen this time. It didn't happen after the great recession, and it is not just a coincidence. Now, as my colleague from Texas pointed out, there are some folks on the other side who think that America isn't the country it was and just can't really have strong economic growth anymore. That is absolutely nonsense. It is ridiculous. We are entirely capable of restoring the robust growth that allows our constituents to have a better standard of living. There is nothing about America that has lost that ability to grow and prosper. That is ridiculous.

What has happened over the last 8 years is that we have had the wrong policies. President Obama and our Democratic colleagues got everything they wanted when they had complete control of the government: huge tax increases, massive wasteful spending bills they called the stimulus, government virtual takeover of healthcare, massive overregulation of the whole economy. Lo and behold, the result was exactly what we feared--really weak economic growth, actually unprecedented weak growth for an extended period of time.

Well, one of the problems they inflicted on us was some really bad tax policy and multiple tax increases. While the rest of the world has been making their tax code on the business side more competitive and more aggressive, we have actually gone backwards. We haven't had a major reform since 1986, and the incremental changes have been counterproductive. So here is a big chance to make a huge improvement.

One of the things I am most excited about with this is that I am completely convinced that the passage of our bill is going to address one of the most persistent and really maddening challenges that we have, which is stagnant wages of working Americans. They have been stagnant for years. So you might ask: Why are they stagnant? Again, it is not a great mystery, and it is not an accident. Under the Obama administration era, we saw a collapse in the growth of invested capital. That means investment in the kind of equipment that makes workers more productive.

It is growing worker productivity that allows us to have higher wages. Think about it this way. You go to a construction site, and you have two guys digging holes. One guy is operating a backhoe, and one guy is swinging a shovel. Which one is getting paid more? I guarantee you every time it is the guy operating the backhoe, and it is not because there is a minimum wage there that forces it. It is because the guy operating the backhoe is more productive. He has a set of skills, and he is using them on a big piece of expensive equipment. He is able to dig a lot more dirt in any unit of time than the guy swinging the shovel. When business is able to put capital to work, workers become more productive and they make more money. That is what is going to happen under our bill.

One of the things we do, fundamentally, about the business side of our Tax Code is that we lower the cost of investing in that new equipment--that new tractor, that new vehicle, that new machinery, filling that new plant with the ability to produce more goods and services. Our bill makes that more affordable, and when you make that more affordable, guess what, businesses buy more tractors and factories and backhoes. When they buy those things, someone has to operate them. That means they are creating new jobs. Guess what. Someone else got to have a job in building it in the first place. I know that some of our colleagues don't understand how that leads to growth. They don't understand. So I am trying to explain this. If you have more invested capital, you increase the productive capacity of the economy, you produce more goods and services, you have more workers needed to do that and more wages.

Guess what. Businesses don't go out and raise wages because they wake up one day and decide: Oh, I think I will be generous today. That is not what happens. What happens is they have to compete for workers. They need more employees. There is a limited number, and so they start bidding up wages. That is what I want to see, and we are going to see that. We are going to see so much demand for workers that companies have no choice but to offer more compensation, better terms. That is how people have a higher standard of living. That is how they get the pay raise they ought to have.

Let me mention another provision in our bill that is extremely constructive. We are fixing a badly flawed international treatment for our multinational companies. I think our Senator from Oregon, our Democratic colleague, has acknowledged real problems in the way our system works. The short version is that we have a system that encourages companies to move overseas. Has anybody heard of inversions? I think we all have.

Why do companies invert? It is because there is a tax code that drives it. It is now very hard to explain and justify why you would headquarter a multinational company in the United States when we see uniquely put multinational companies at a competitive disadvantage because of our tax system. So we are changing that so that we can compete.

It is very good to have multinationals headquartered in America. I have a number of them in Pennsylvania. There are great jobs in Pennsylvania supporting all of their business domestically and supporting a lot of their business internationally.

Now, in order to cover the cost of what we are doing--the tax reductions, the rates reductions, allowing the lower cost for deploying capital--we have some offsets. We have ways that we are asking business to pay more taxes, in some respects, where it will not be harmful for economic growth. We limit the amount of interest that a business is going to be able to deduct going forward. We limit deductions that favor certain industries over others. We limit deductions for certain fringe benefits, and we close a lot of loopholes. That helps us generate the revenue that allows us to have the constructive pro-growth features, like lower marginal rates and lowering the cost of putting capital to work. So that is what we are trying to do here. That is what we do in our legislation.

The effect of this is very, very clear. A large number of economists have acknowledged that it is going to mean more business investment, more new businesses being launched, businesses moving from overseas back to America, expansion of existing businesses. All of that activity requires more workers--all of it--to fill the additional jobs that are going to be created. That means more jobs, but it also means upward pressure on wages if everyone has a job now because businesses are going to have to compete.

To be continued.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his kind courtesy in agreeing to let me take 2 minutes to reply to my friend and colleague from Maine.

If this legislation is signed into law, we are going to have a smaller deficit in future years than we are on a path to have now, and I want to explain why. Fundamentally, I think most of us agree that tax reform done properly generates more economic growth than a terrible tax code. The right incentives lead to stronger growth. This is not a simple tax cut; this is a complete overhaul.

We have $5.5 trillion worth of tax reductions, mostly offset with $4.1 trillion of base broadeners. It is a net of about $1.4 trillion. The effect is to fundamentally change the incentives--incentives to invest, buy new capital equipment, bring money back from overseas, start new businesses. They are powerful.

The question becomes this: How much more economic growth do we need to generate in order to have additional Federal revenue that will offset the static score at which this bill is scored?

We know the answer to that; Joint Tax has given us the answer to that. What we need is a mere four-tenths of 1 percent of extra economic growth on average over the next 10 years. If we get that--less than one-half of 1 percent of economic growth--then we will fully fill in this hole and, relative to current policy, have a smaller deficit than we are on track for. We are talking about going from 1.9 percent economic growth, which is the current CBO's term projection, to 2.3. This year we are running at 3 percent, even before we do this.

I strongly urge my colleagues: If we pass this--if you care as much as I know the Senator from Maine does about our budget situation, if you care about our deficits, if you would like to have smaller deficits and less debt, pass this legislation. Let's have the economic growth that is going to swamp this really modest score as a percentage of the revenue that we are forecasted to take in.

Again, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his kind courtesy.

Mr. President, I believe the Senator from Vermont is next up, and he has graciously agreed to let me take 2 minutes of time out of our side now, before he speaks, so I appreciate that. I thank Senator Sanders.

Our colleagues were talking about a number of topics. One that they brought up was the SALT controversy, and the other was the individual mandate. I am going to very briefly touch on these and hopefully have a chance to expand on these at another time.

Let's be very clear about what SALT is. This is an acronym for the State and local tax deduction. This is a provision in the Federal Tax Code that allows taxpayers to deduct from their Federal return the State and local taxes that they pay.

Some States have very high State and local taxes, and others have relatively low ones. So what we have now in the current law is a mechanism by which low-tax States are required to subsidize high-tax States. It is not only States, by the way; it is also within a given State. But I don't know how it could possibly be fair to force my constituents who live in, say, Dauphin County, PA, and have relatively modest services and pay a modest amount of taxes--why they should pay more in income taxes to subsidize someone who gets to live in a multimillion dollar condo in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, but that is exactly what happens.

What we are doing is neutralizing this. We are saying: No, you are not going to be able to have this subsidy. Everyone is going to pay their own State and local taxes, and we will have a lower rate of Federal income tax as a result.

Let's be very clear. This benefits the wealthiest taxpayers. It is the wealthiest taxpayers who take the State and local tax deduction. A big majority of ordinary taxpayers take the standard deduction. They don't itemize. They don't take the State and local tax deduction. This is a blow for fairness among the States, but also within a State where you have varying tax jurisdictions.

The second thing I want to point out is the individual mandate repeal. That is what we call it. In honesty, as we all know, what we have done is--we are zeroing out the penalty, the tax imposed on people who cannot afford or do not wish to purchase an ObamaCare plan. That is all we are doing here. Not a single person is disqualified. Not a single person loses the benefit. There is no reduction in reimbursements to any healthcare providers. There is no spending. There is no reduction in spending. The word ``Medicare'' doesn't come up; ``Medicaid'' doesn't come up.

What we are simply saying is this: If you find that these ObamaCare plans are not suitable for you and your family or you can't afford them, we are no longer going to hit you with a tax penalty for the fact that you can't afford this plan that is not well suited for you. That is all.

Again, let's be clear about who this affects. This terrible tax hits low-income people the hardest. In Pennsylvania, 83 percent of the people who pay the individual mandate tax make less than $50,000.

What a terrible offense to our sense of freedom--the idea that the Federal Government would force someone to purchase a product or a service that they don't want to buy, a service or product that doesn't meet their needs, and then hit them with a tax if they don't purchase it. It was always a very bad idea. This is a blow for freedom, and it is a tax relief measure, especially for low-income people.

I thank the Senator from Vermont for giving me this time.

Sure.

Will the Senator yield?

Thank you.

I thank the Senator.

I just want to make a quick point. The Senator from Vermont is concerned that we are going to cut Medicare or Medicaid. Neither word appears in the bill.

Furthermore, if that were our plan, this would be the perfect vehicle to do it. It is reconciliation instruction. We could do it without requiring a single Democratic vote. We could do it. We could finish it. We have control of the House. If we had any intention of doing that, this would be the vehicle. But the words don't even appear.

I have to disappoint the Senator from Vermont by informing him that there is no secret plan to do any of the above. We are not in some process to spring something. If we wanted to make these changes in Medicare and Medicaid, this would be the vehicle because we have reconciliation protection.

I am not going to support any cuts for people who are on the program and need----

Those benefits.

We need this program for the next generation too.

Mr. President, my friend the Senator from Michigan has offered an instruction that says the corporate tax rate must revert back to 35 percent in the event that real average household wages do not increase by at least $4,000 by 2020. In our bill, the corporate rate goes from 35 down to 20 percent in 2019. On the basis of 1 year of a competitive corporate rate, we are supposed to believe that corporations are going to change their behavior and make the kind of investment that follows from the incentives we have when they know, if this were adopted, that the rate goes back to 35 1 year later? No. This is designed to be a self-fulfilling prophecy to guarantee that there can be no growth, and then we go back to uncompetitive, very high corporate tax rates that is stipulated right here at 35 percent

I will yield.

I will take back my time.

Let me explain how this works. The whole idea behind our bill is to create the incentives that will encourage the investment that hasn't been happening. The last 10 years, there has been a collapse, a collapse in the investment growth of capital stock, a collapse in productivity growth, and therefore stagnant wages.

What I want to do, and what my colleagues want to do, is see that wage growth that we have been waiting for that didn't happen under the last administration. The only way we can encourage that investment is if the investors know the tax rate is going to be there permanently. If we tell them you are going to get 1 year of a low rate, who is going to invest in a new factory for 1 year? No. It will not work that way. The wage growth will come when investors around the world and domestically have the confidence they are going to be investing in a competitive regime.

By the way, the average tax rate of the OECD--the countries that we compete with--is 22.4 percent. It is amazing that we are able to eke out even the feeble growth that we have at a 35-percent tax rate. Our bill takes it to 20 percent and allows us to compete, but you have to keep it there so that business will actually make those investment decisions, so that people will decide to launch those new businesses, and we will have the expansion of existing businesses. That is what our legislation does, and that is why I urge my colleagues to reject this motion to commit.

Mr. President, I wish to honor the life of Vietnam veteran TJ McGarvey of Upper St. Clair, PA. Mr. McGarvey passed away at age 74 on November 13, 2017. He is survived by his loving family and the countless friends and neighbors whose lives he touched during a lifetime of service and commitment to his country and community.

As a member of ``The Walking Dead,'' 1st battalion, 9th Marines, Cpl TJ McGarvey served in Vietnam from March 1967 to April 1968. Only a month after deploying to Vietnam, Corporal McGarvey was wounded. However, he refused to accept the Purple Heart medal he earned because he did not want to upset his mother with the news.

For many, having served their country in war fulfilled a selfless act of duty--not so for Corporal McGarvey. His service to his country and fellow vets would remain a constant for his entire life. TJ was cofounder of the Vietnam Veterans Leadership Program, a member of the Friends of Danang, and a fierce advocate for soldiers exposed to Agent Orange, and their families.

Just days before his death, his hometown of Upper St. Clair held a Veterans Day ceremony at the town's Veterans Monument Park. Much of the ceremony would honor TJ, whom a fellow veteran called ``the ultimate Marine.'' The park was the brainchild of TJ, who served as its president and key fundraiser. It honors every branch of the military and serves as both a monument to veterans and an educational instrument for visitors and local students.

TJ was known as a man of deep faith, committed to his family, and a leader in his community. As a longtime football coach at St. Louise de Marillac, generations of students looked to TJ as a mentor.

Ultimately, TJ's legacy will be forever linked to his efforts to ensure that veterans of the U.S. military will never be forgotten. In the 1980s, TJ tirelessly fought to erect a Vietnam veterans monument in Pittsburgh. The monument was dedicated on Veterans Day 1987.

The beautiful dedication to the soldiers who fought, died, and went missing in America's war with Vietnam lies peacefully along the banks of the Allegheny River on Pittsburgh's north side. A fitting tribute to the heroes of southwestern Pennsylvania ploughed by a man who lived a life quiet and humble, yet loud enough to help spark a change in the hearts of many. Here, at the confluence of three rivers which defines a community, TJ's poem defines the ethos of the monument--a tribute, but more so a fulfillment of a commitment to ensure our soldiers will never again be denied these two words: ``Welcome Home.''

It is with these words, etched in brass for all to see, that TJ adopted the voice of a remorseful community to right a wrong and fittingly honor a generation of heroes:

Welcome home to proud men and women

We begin now to fulfill promises

To remember the past

To look to the future

We begin now to complete the final process

Not to make political statements

Not to offer explanations

Not to debate realities

Monuments are erected so that the future might remember the

past

Warriors die and live and die

Let the Historians answer the political questions

Those who served--served

Those who gave all--live in our hearts

Those who are left--continue to give

As long as we remember--

There is still some love left.

TJ McGarvey's lasting legacy will not die, fade away, or be forgotten. As a small token of a grateful nation, I ask that the U.S. Senate stand with me to salute Cpl TJ McGarvey for a life dedicated to God, family, and his brothers in arms, reflecting great credit upon himself and the U.S. Marines.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to legislative session and be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each, after which the Senate stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. President, I want to echo the message of the Senator from Georgia. This is a terrific opportunity. This is a very big day. It is a big step forward on our path to restoring the economic growth that we have been waiting for all this time. I am very excited about this step forward and the remainder of the process to get this done, to get this bill signed into law.

Why do we need this? We have just lived through the weakest recovery in American history--feeble growth, stagnant wages, and a widening gap between the wealthy and the poor. That is what has been happening for years.

Some people say: Well, that is just the way it is. You just need to get used to it. That is the new normal. That is what America is about now.

That is complete nonsense. There is nothing inevitable about the American economy being weak and denying opportunity for the people we represent. It is a direct result of bad policy, failed policy that prevented us from having the recovery we would normally have after a recession.

What was that policy? Well, we saw it. It is very clear. It is not a matter of opinion, it is a matter of fact that productivity growth in America collapsed. It is a matter of fact that investment in the kinds of new plants and equipment that allow for productivity to grow collapsed. It is a fact that new business startups just dried up. People weren't able and willing to do it.

There is no mystery about why our economy was so weak for so many years. We had imposed conditions that made it impossible to have the kind of growth that is normal. Meanwhile, what was happening in the rest of the world? The rest of the world was systematically making their tax codes more competitive. The countries that we compete with around the world, in Europe and Asia, were lowering the rates they apply to business income, they were simplifying their codes, and they were moving to international systems that made it more conducive for them to generate investment into their countries, while we did nothing except let our Tax Code ossify. That is what has been happening these last many years.

What I am excited about is that this bill fixes exactly what is broken. This bill goes to exactly where the problem is and begins to turn this around. How do we do that? One of the things we do--a hallmark of this bill--is we are going to lower the cost of investing in the new plants and equipment that will allow American workers to become more productive. More productive workers get paid more in wages; that is just a fact. That is what is going to happen as a result of this bill.

Another thing we do in this bill is we get away from this terrible policy we have that is resulting in foreign companies buying up American companies. The way we treat income earned overseas is a disaster, and we are the only country in the world that does it.

I think you could make a case that today the United States has what might very well be the least attractive tax regime in the modern world, in the industrialized world. What is really exciting about this is that we are going to move from this system to what just might be the best tax system in the industrialized world. Think about the result that is going to have. I think the result is going to be breathtaking--new investment, new businesses being launched, existing businesses growing.

Take foreign direct investment alone. If you think about it, we have a global economy. Capital can move around the world with literally the click of a mouse, and people make investment decisions based on the climate of the place in which they are thinking about investing. When we have the worst tax regime in the world, who really wants to invest here? When we have the best, how are we not going to attract investment from all around the world, including very much in the United States?

So the changes we are making are exactly the right changes for this moment. That is true in another respect, and that is, if you think about where we are in this cycle, it has taken way too long to get here, but the unemployment rate is quite low now. We are getting close to full employment. So what happens when we create the incentives for businesses to grow, to invest, for new businesses to launch, for people to invest in America--what happens when that occurs in an environment where the unemployment rate is very low? It sets up a bidding war for workers. There is no other choice. As they grow, these businesses need new employees to get the job done. They have to pay ever more because they are competing with another business down the road that also wants to grow and also wants to invest in new plants and equipment.

What we are going to do is create a bidding war for workers. That means wages are going up. When wages go up, families have more take- home pay. When they have more take-home pay, they have a higher standard of living. This is exactly how people have a chance to live the American dream, when the economy is thriving and growing at the rate that America used to take for granted. I am here to say that those days are coming back.

We have some work to do. We are not done yet by any means, but I am confident we are going to get this done and, when we do, our constituents are going to live a better life as a result.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I rise to speak about the nomination of Professor Stephanos Bibas, on whom we have just invoked cloture, but before I do that, I want to take a quick moment to observe that we had a big development today--a big development in that the House of Representatives, the majority Ways and Means Committee members, led by Kevin Brady and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, have unveiled a tax reform plan that is a very exciting step forward in our ambition to bring tax relief and is a direct pay raise to hard-working Americans whom we represent, creating an environment where we could have much stronger economic growth and much more opportunity and rising wages for the American people.

So I congratulate Chairman Brady and all the members of the Ways and Means Committee. I know this process has a long way to go, but they are off to a great start with a very solid bill. I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues on the Finance Committee as we finalize our version of the pro-middle-class, pro-growth tax reform, and I am excited to see that step forward.

Madam President, let me get back to the issue of the candidacy of Professor Stephanos Bibas and say how enthusiastically I support his candidacy to serve as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

I thank the President for nominating Professor Bibas, I thank Chairman Grassley for moving Professor Bibas through the nomination process of his committee, and I thank Leader McConnell for bringing Professor Bibas's nomination to the floor. I also thank my colleagues who just voted to invoke cloture so that later today we can vote to confirm this terrifically well-qualified man to a really important court.

Let me touch on some of his qualities. Professor Bibas has a tremendous wealth of experience in the law as a legal scholar and a practicing attorney, so much so that the American Bar Association voted to give him a unanimous rating of ``well-qualified,'' and let me tell you why. No. 1, he starts with outstanding academic credentials. Professor Bibas graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University, and he did so at the age of 19. After Columbia, he studied at Oxford University in England and earned his law degree from Yale University.

He has clerked at the highest levels of our Federal court system. He clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and Judge Patrick Higginbotham on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

The fact is, Professor Bibas is an accomplished legal scholar. For 16 years, he has served as law professor at two outstanding universities-- the University of Iowa College of Law and the University of Pennsylvania School of Law. Professor Bibas has been a prolific author whose academic writings are frequently cited by the U.S. Supreme Court, courts of appeals, and other law professors. He has written two books and more than 60 articles, many of which have focused on criminal law and procedures. In fact, in his writings, he has expressed views regarding criminal justice reform that I suspect many of my Democratic colleagues would share. For instance, Professor Bibas has criticized what he sees as the overuse of plea bargains in our courts as being unfair to criminal defendants who then never get their day in court.

So there is no question that Professor Bibas has very extensive academic credentials, but he is also an experienced attorney. He has served on both sides of our criminal justice system. He has been a prosecutor, and he

has been a defense attorney. He has a balanced perspective from both sides of this part of our judicial system. He served as a Federal prosecutor in New York City, where he prosecuted over 100 criminal cases.

Currently, he is the director of the Supreme Court Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Bibas also argued six cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. He won a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision for a criminal defendant in the Padilla v. Kentucky case, a case that held criminal defense attorneys must advise their noncitizen clients about the deportation risk associated with a guilty plea. That was a Professor Bibas case. He has represented dozens of other clients before the Supreme Court, and most of those cases were pro bono clients--clients he did not charge any fees because they couldn't afford experienced counsel. He voluntarily provided that service for them.

Over the course of the work he has done, as a result of the work he has done for the Supreme Court, he has been praised by both Justices Kagan and Ginsberg. Justice Ginsberg praised him as ``among the very best of lawyers presenting cases to the Supreme Court.''

I hope all of my colleagues will support Professor Bibas's nomination. He has outstanding credentials, he has a wealth of experience, and I hope everyone will see that in his background.

I must state I am disappointed that Senator Durbin, our colleague from Illinois, has stated that he opposes Professor Bibas's nomination. Senator Durbin has stated that his opposition is because of an unpublished academic paper that Professor Bibas drafted in 2009. In that paper, he proposed the consideration of the use of corporal punishment as an alternative to imprisonment for certain criminal offenses, but Professor Bibas has stated unequivocally that he decided not to publish the paper because he realized that idea was wrong, was deeply offensive, and he does not support corporal punishment for criminals.

Professor Bibas also testified at his confirmation hearing that he fully understands and respects the difference between the role of a professor who considers theoretical questions and writes about them, on the one hand, versus, on the other hand, a judge who is deciding cases that impact the lives of real people.

One of the most important reasons I am an enthusiastic supporter of Professor Bibas is his clear understanding of the role of a judge in the American constitutional system. From my review of his record and from my conversation with him, it is clear he understands the proper role of a judge is to apply the law, including the Constitution, as written and not to make policy himself and that his obligation is to treat everyone absolutely equally, regardless of race, sex, wealth, political affiliation, political connections, or anything else.

Unfortunately, many liberals and progressives have a very different view of a judge. Many of my colleagues and others believe the Constitution is a living document, by which they mean that it really means whatever a judge decides it means. Under this view, changes to the law and Constitution can be made by unelected, unaccountable judges who then substitute their policy preference for the preference of the American people as reflected in their elected representatives. Some who hold this view even think judges should take into account such factors as a person's race, sex, wealth, or political affiliation in deciding cases. In my view, that is a deeply flawed view of the law and is fundamentally inconsistent with the principles of the separation of powers that is essential to our democracy, the sovereignty of the American people, and the fair and equal application of the law to all people. Contrary to this view, Professor Bibas understands the proper role of a judge is to apply the law as written and to treat everyone who comes before him equally, not to impose his policy preferences or impose the law differently for different people.

Finally, let me say a word about Professor Bibas's temperament and suitability for the bench. I think it is very clear that not only does he understand the role a judge is supposed to play, but he is a man of character and of a temperament that makes him very fit to be a judge. I will give you an example. In one letter of support for his nomination, a bipartisan group of 121 law professors from across the ideological spectrum stated that ``his fair-mindedness, conscientiousness, and personal integrity are beyond question.''

In another quote, ``We have no doubt that his judicial temperament will reflect these qualities and that he will faithfully discharge his duty to apply the law fairly and evenhandedly in all matters before him.''

I am very pleased and proud to support Professor Bibas's nomination to the Third Circuit. I am completely confident he has the intellect, experience, temperament, and respect for the limited role of a judge in our system, those attributes that are necessary for him to excel as a Federal appellate judge, and I am pleased to speak on behalf of this highly qualified nominee. I urge all of my colleagues to support his confirmation.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding rule XXII, all postcloture time on the Bibas nomination expire at 1:45 p.m. today.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there be 2 minutes of debate equally divided prior to each vote in the 11:45 a.m. vote series this morning.

Mr. President, we have an opportunity today to give ourselves the tool to pass a tax reform bill that will absolutely mean tax relief for middle-income and working-class families and will promote the kind of economic growth that we have been waiting for, but to do it, we are going to have to defeat this amendment and pass the underlying budget.

What my friend from Oregon is suggesting is that we give a minority in the Senate the opportunity to defeat tax reform by filibuster. That is what would happen if we were to pass this amendment.

I have to disagree strongly with the notion that somehow this is not a bipartisan exercise. There is nothing about reconciliation that in any way discourages or prevents full Democratic participation. We are going to have a markup in the Senate Finance Committee, and there will be unlimited amendment opportunities. If we are able to report something out, then there will be unlimited amendment opportunities on the floor. There is nothing that we could do to stop it if we wanted to because those are the rules of reconciliation. Every Democrat in this body will have an unlimited opportunity to weigh in on this, to influence this, and to amend this, and it will be a fully bipartisan exercise.

I urge a ``no'' vote on the amendment.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the GAO opinion letter dated October 19, 2017, related to the Interagency Guidance on Leveraged Lending of March 22, 2013, Federal Register citation 78 FR 17766.

Mr. President, I have 5 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

Committee on Agriculture

The Committee on Agriculture is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, October 19, 2017, at 2 p.m., in room S-1216, to conduct a hearing the following nominations: Gregory Ibach, of Nebraska, to be Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs, and William Northey, of Iowa, to be Under Secretary for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services, both of the Department of Agriculture.

Committee on Armed Services

The Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, October 19, 2017, at 9:30 a.m., in open and closed session to receive testimony on the roles and responsibilities for defending the nation from cyberattack.

Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions

The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, October 19, 2017, at 10 a.m., in room SD-430, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Examining How Healthy Choices Can Improve Health Outcomes and Reduce Costs.''

Committee on Foreign Relations

The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, October 19, 2017, at 10:30 a.m. to hold a hearing entitled ``Food Aid.''

Committee on the Judiciary

The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, October 19, 2017, at 10 a.m., in room SD-226 to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: Stephanos Bibas, of Pennsylvania, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Third Circuit, Allison H. Eid, of Colorado, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Tenth Circuit, Annemarie Carney Axon, to be United States District Judge for the Northern District of Alabama, Michael Lawrence Brown, to be United States District Judge for the Northern District of Georgia, Thomas Alvin Farr, to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina, William M. Ray II, to be United States District Judge for the Northern District of Georgia, Liles Clifton Burke, to be United States District Judge for the Northern District of Alabama, Walter David Counts III, to be United States District Judge for the Western District of Texas, Michael Joseph Juneau, to be United States District Judge for the Western District of Louisiana, A. Marvin Quattlebaum, Jr., to be United States District Judge for the District of South Carolina, Karen Gren Scholer, to be United States District Judge for the Northern District of Texas, Tilman Eugene Self III, to be United States District Judge for the Middle District of Georgia, and John C. Demers, of Virginia, to be an Assistant Attorney General, Scott C. Blader, to be United States Attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin, Mark A. Klaassen, to be United States Attorney for the District of Wyoming, William C. Lamar, to be United States Attorney for the Northern District of Mississippi, John R. Lausch, Jr., to be United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, and J. Douglas Overbey, to be United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, all of the Department of Justice.