{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.carper.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-newsletter?ContentRecord_id=84D53359-255E-4051-8FBF-F8A144975FE7", "In the eleventh hour, a secret tax bill", "2017-12-04", "2017", "2017-12", "Democrat", "House", "DE", "Thomas Carper", "C000174", "www.carper.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "For each of the nine years that I\u2019ve served on the Senate Finance Committee, I\u2019ve looked forward to working on tax reform. Many years ago, I had the privilege of working on tax reform legislation as a member of the House of Representatives. In 1986, with President Reagan in the White House, accomplishing tax reform in Congress took years of public hearings, meetings and bipartisan negotiations. That open process and fastidious work reaped bipartisan agreement and long-lasting policy.\r\n\r\nIt stands in stark contrast to what we witnessed on the Senate floor early Saturday morning. In the eleventh hour\u2014with no public hearings, no bipartisan negotiations and not even a semblance of regular order\u2014Republicans garnered the votes needed to pass a bill at any cost.\u00a0The idea that a permanent and enduring tax reform plan\u00a0has somehow come to fruition in mere hours\u00a0makes a mockery of our legislative process.\u00a0\r\nPresident Trump promised Americans an overhaul of our tax system, but he promised us one that would create a simpler tax code, put money back into the pockets of hardworking Americans and ensure the wealthiest among us pay their fair share. Sadly, the Senate Republican tax reform bill does nothing to keep those promises.\r\n\r\nLate last week, our Republican colleagues approved a bill that will blow a hole of nearly $1.5 trillion in our federal deficit in order to provide permanent tax cuts to corporations and millions of dollars in tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), this plan will actually increase taxes on millions of Americans beginning next year. By 2019, the CBO found that Americans earning less than $30,000 a year will be worse off. By 2027, most Americans earning less than $75,000 a year will be worse off.\r\n\r\nWithin ten years, more than three-quarters of the tax cuts in this bill would go to the wealthiest five percent of Americans\u2014nearly two-thirds of the tax breaks would go to the wealthiest one percent. To add insult to injury, it also begins repealing the Affordable Care Act, causing premiums to skyrocket and 13 million Americans to lose their health insurance over the next decade.\r\nIt doesn\u2019t have to be this way. As I\u2019ve reminded my Republican friends time and time again, there are many areas where Democrats and Republicans could work together to lift families up, keep our businesses competitive and simplify the tax code\u2014from strengthening the child tax credit, to lowering the corporate rate,\u00a0to doubling the standard deduction.\r\nAs the Senate heads to conference with the House of Representatives on\u00a0this proposal, I urge my Republican colleagues to abandon partisanship and work with Democrats to transform this bill into one that is truly fair, fosters broad-based economic growth, simplifies the tax code and doesn\u2019t blow a hole in the deficit.", 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.carper.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-newsletter?ContentRecord_id=84D53359-255E-4051-8FBF-F8A144975FE7"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.5158969908952713, "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"}