{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.carper.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ContentRecord_id=1B653A30-5404-4142-A6E5-EC298FC93559", "Carper Statement on GOP Tax Bill", "2017-12-02", "2017", "2017-12", "Democrat", "House", "DE", "Thomas Carper", "C000174", "www.carper.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "WASHINGTON \u2013\u00a0Today, U.S. Senator Tom Carper (D-Del.), a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee, released the following statement after Republicans approved a partisan and reckless tax bill that blows a $1.5 trillion hole in our federal deficit over the next 10 years, provides only temporary relief to individual Americans and begins to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.\r\n\u201cFor 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.\u00a0\r\n\u201cIt stands in stark contrast to what we\u2019ve witnessed today. 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.\u00a0What\u2019s been approved in the Senate today\u00a0is a wildly partisan and poorly designed bill that is not only riddled with inadvertent errors, but it will also send shockwaves through our entire economy. It\u2019s no surprise that this\u00a0deeply\u00a0flawed process has created an equally\u00a0flawed product.\r\n\u201cPresident 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\u201cToday, 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. Within 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. That is shameful.\u00a0\r\n\u201cTo add insult to injury, it also begins the repealing the Affordable Care Act, causing premiums to skyrocket and 13 million Americans to lose their health insurance over the next decade.\r\n\u201cWe can\u2014and, more important, we should\u2014do better than this.\r\n\u201cIt doesn\u2019t have to be this way. 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. As the Senate heads to conference with the House of Representatives on\u00a0this so-called\u00a0tax reform plan, I urge Republicans to abandon their 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.\u201d\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.carper.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ContentRecord_id=1B653A30-5404-4142-A6E5-EC298FC93559"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8472860790789127, "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"}