{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.barrasso.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news-releases?ContentRecord_id=852CB1CC-D8C0-4244-8ABF-7C6FCE3D279A", "Congress is Set to Pass Historic Tax Relief Bill", "2017-12-19", "2017", "2017-12", "Republican", "House", "WY", "John Barrasso", "B001261", "www.barrasso.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "It saves people money, it saves them time, it gives them more freedom.\r\nClick here to watch Sen. Barrassos remarks.\r\nWASHINGTON, D.C. Today, U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) delivered the following remarks on the Senate floor on how Congress is set to pass a historic tax reform bill that allows Americans to keep more of their hard-earned money.\r\nExcerpts of Senator Barrassos remarks:\r\nAs I come to the floor, the Senate is approaching one of our most important votes in years.\r\nThe tax relief legislation that well be voting on will be great for America, great for the American people, and do a lot for the future of our great country.\r\nIts been a long process, theres been a lot of discussion, and years of preparation waiting for todays vote.\r\nThe Finance Committee has held over 70 hearings on this subject over the last six years.\r\nWhen we were debating it on the floor, we had about 285 amendments offered to this legislation.\r\nThere have been a lot of changes over the past few weeks, to include as many good ideas as possible.\r\nAfter all that, it is understandable that there may be some confusion about what the legislation does.\r\nSo I want to speak today about various ways that this legislation is good for hard-working Americans like the people in my home state of Wyoming.\r\nFirst, most people are going to pay lower tax rates.\r\nFor a couple who makes between $19,000 and $77,000 a year, their rates are going to drop from 15 percent to 12 percent.\r\nSo a family might see their tax bill drop by more than a thousand dollars  just from this one part of the Republican tax relief plan alone.\r\nThe second thing I want to point out is that this legislation roughly doubles the standard deduction.\r\nIt goes up to $12,000 for a single person who files and $24,000 for a married couple.\r\nPeople wont have to pay federal income tax on all of that money.\r\nIf we combine that with the lower rates, thats even more money people are going to be able to keep of their own money instead of having Washington spend it.\r\nNot only that, their taxes might be a lot simpler to figure come April 15th.\r\nA lot of people are looking around trying to find deductions that they can take and save a little money on their taxes.\r\nThey gather up receipts, fill out extra forms.\r\nUnder this tax relief plan, they can choose to just take this much higher standard deduction and make tax filing a whole lot simpler for lots and lots of Americans.\r\nToday about 70 percent of people who fill out their tax form choose the standard deduction.\r\nUnder this plan, we expect maybe even more that nine out of ten Americans are going to be able to use this simplifying filling out the tax forms.\r\nTheyre going to see its a really good deal for them.\r\nMillions of people are going to save money and have an easier time filling out their tax return.\r\nThey wont have to save receipts, and fill out extra forms, and they dont have to worry that theyre going to be audited by the IRS for trying to keep more of their hard-earned money.\r\nTheyll be able to keep more of their money and use their time doing something else that they actually enjoy doing.\r\nThats another way Democrats are trying to confuse people.\r\nThey want people to think that tax relief is somehow taking away options.\r\nIts expanding the standard deduction that a lot of people already use, and many more people will be able to use it under the Republican plan.\r\nThat brings me to another important point I want to make about this tax relief plan.\r\nWe did work hard to keep a lot of the deductions that are important to some Americans. In some cases, we even made them better.\r\nFor people who still come out ahead by itemizing their deductions, theres another way they can keep more of their money.\r\nPeople who still take a deduction if they donate to charity.\r\nPeople can still save money on their retirement savings through an IRA or through their retirement plan at work.\r\nIf someone has children, we actually double the tax credit they get to $2,000 per child.\r\nThey dont even have to itemize their taxes to get that $2,000 per child tax credit  its just a straight tax cut on top of the other cuts that they get under this Republican plan.\r\nThey still get to set up an account to save for their childrens education if they like.\r\nFor people who have high medical expenses, this tax relief plan actually saves them even more money on their taxes than the old way.\r\nRepublicans understand that medical costs have gotten out of control in this country.\r\nThere were a lot of policies that the Democrats and President Obama put in place that raised the cost of medical care for people all across the country.\r\nRepublicans are working hard at getting rid of those policies and bringing down the cost of care across the country.\r\nUntil we get that completely done, this tax relief plan makes it easier for people to deduct their higher medical costs.\r\nToday, someone can get tax relief if their medical expenses are more than 10 percent of their income, under the old law.\r\nWe drop that threshold to 7.5 percent  so more people will qualify.\r\nThat gives people additional relief while we keep working on ways to reduce the cost of care.\r\nThat brings me to another way that this tax relief legislation is going to save a lot of people money.\r\nThe Republican plan effectively repeals, eliminates, the Obamacare individual mandate tax.\r\nThis was the outrageous tax penalty that made Obamacare a mandatory program by sending the IRS after someone if they didnt have Washington-approved health insurance.\r\nWere eliminating that tax completely.\r\nIn my home state of Wyoming, over 16,000 people ended up being hit with that fine, hit with that tax. Over $6 million collected from the fine people of my state who couldnt afford Obamacare insurance.\r\nOn average, this Obamacare mandate tax is about $700.\r\nOur legislation says that the tax will in the future be zero.\r\nIt takes Obamacare from being a mandatory program and turning it into a voluntary program.\r\nMore than six million people paid that tax in the United States this past year.\r\nThese people will now get a tax break under the Republicans plan.\r\nIt doesnt take away anyones insurance as Democrats have claimed.\r\nIt just says that nobody should have to pay an extra tax just because they decide that overpriced Obamacare insurance isnt right for them.\r\nSo those are just some of the ways that this Republican tax plan legislation is good for Americans.\r\nIt saves people money, it saves them time, it gives them more freedom.\r\nAll together, its about $1.5 trillion in tax savings over the next 10 years.\r\nThats money that families, and small businesses, and large employers wont have to send to Washington.\r\nThey can use that money any way they want.\r\nLast week Nancy Pelosi was talking about this Republican tax relief plan.\r\nShe said: This is who they are. This is what they came here to do.\r\nShe probably meant it as an insult  but she stumbled upon the real difference between Republicans and Democrats like herself.\r\nRepublicans believe in cutting peoples taxes, letting people keep more of their hard-earned money because we believe that hard-working Americans should be able to make the decisions about what money they save, spend or invest.\r\nIts their money. Its not the governments money, which is the way Nancy Pelosi looks at all of this in terms of ways that she can grow the government.\r\nRepublicans look at this and say, how can we give people more freedom?\r\nThats what this legislation does  its very simple.\r\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.barrasso.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news-releases?ContentRecord_id=852CB1CC-D8C0-4244-8ABF-7C6FCE3D279A"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.7738959975540638, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}