{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.portman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=0020D63B-FDBA-47AF-B967-F1252B05DE08", "On CNBC, Portman Discusses Tax Negotiations, How Tax Reform Will Boost Middle Class, Jobs & Wages", "2017-12-06", "2017", "2017-12", "Republican", "House", "OH", "Rob Portman", "P000449", "www.portman.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "During an interview on CNBC\u2019s Squawk Box, Senator Portman discussed how the Senate-passed Tax Cuts & Jobs Act will help boost the middle class, create more and better jobs, and raise wages. Portman also discussed the path forward and his hopes that the Senate and House can come together quickly to send this bill to the president that will save the typical Ohio family $2,375 annually on their tax bill and help middle-class Ohioans keep more of their paycheck. Portman, who has held six tax reform roundtables in Ohio with local business leaders in recent months, has been vocal on the national stage calling for tax reform, including during recent interviews on CBS This Morning, Fox News, CNN, CNBC, Fox Business, Bloomberg TV, and NBC\u2019s Meet The Press twice, as well as recently in op-eds in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Cincinnati Enquirer.\r\nExcerpts can be found below and a video can be found here.\r\nPORTMAN ON GETTING THE TAX CUTS & JOBS ACT PASSED IN THE SENATE\r\n\u201cIt\u2019s a good bill. It\u2019s good in substance\u00a0and also in process.\u00a0We went through the committee\u00a0structure.\u00a0We had about 70 hearings in the\u00a0Finance Committee.\u00a0We had the bipartisan working\u00a0groups a couple of years ago in\u00a0every aspect of the tax code, so in my view we did\u00a0this right and better than we\u00a0did on health care, frankly, to\u00a0bring in everybody and get their\u00a0input and I think that\u2019s why we\u00a0were successful.\u201d\r\nPORTMAN ON ECONOMIC GROWTH\r\n\u201cI hope we don\u2019t make big changes in terms of the economic growth structure, which includes having our tax rate be slightly below the average of the industrialized countries, which is 20 percent. The average is about 22.3 percent. I don\u2019t want to go much above that because you end up having the United States, again, not being competitive. Already the U. K., as an example, is going below 20 percent\u2014they\u2019re above it now\u2014just in the next year or so. My prediction is that that 20 percent is important and a couple of years from now we\u2019ll find out that we\u2019re at or above the average of the tax rate around the world. If we don\u2019t keep it at 20 percent, we could find ourselves above the average in a matter of months. I hope we won\u2019t change the basic structure of this too much because I think it has about the right balance.\u201d\r\nPORTMAN ON HOW TAX REFORM WILL HELP AMERICAN WORKERS COMPETE\r\n\u201cI do think there are some things that are good in the House bill that we ought to be taking a look at. We\u2019ve had good conversations already with the House. We\u2019re meeting again today on an informal basis to just talk about where we can find common ground and, as I said to Joe, I think the structure is really similar. When you look at the big picture here, this is about true middle-class tax relief. It is about helping the pass-throughs, the smaller businesses, to be able to be competitive with the C Corporations who in turn have a lower rate\u2014and a territorial system to be able to be globally competitive. That\u2019s something we\u2019ve all talked about for years in fact, for a decade now we\u2019ve been talking about the fact that American companies, American workers can\u2019t compete. Last year, three times as many American companies were taken over by foreign companies as U.S. companies purchasing foreign entities. That\u2019s because of our tax code\u2014we\u2019ve lost a lot of businesses, a lot of jobs, a lot of investments. We have to do that, and both bills do it. We just need to be sure that we can come together, as you say, under the rules we\u2019ve got in the Senate and get this passed and get it to the president\u2019s desk for signature.\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.portman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=0020D63B-FDBA-47AF-B967-F1252B05DE08"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.940083060413599, "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"}