John Thune Makes Epic Final Pitch To Pass Big Beautiful Bill In The Senate

Forbes Breaking News

On the Senate floor, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) promoted the Big Beautiful Bill.

Transcript

00:00Conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming of a senator.

00:11President.

00:13Recognize the majority leader.

00:14Thank you, Mr. President.

00:15Mr. President, we're going to vote here real soon on a bill that's been worked on for many, many months.

00:20And I want to start by thanking the staff on the committees, the relevant committees, the floor staff,

00:27everybody that's been around that has to put in the hours and get us to where we are today.

00:32They are extraordinary people who are very dedicated to their jobs and to public service, and we're grateful for that.

00:38And I will say, too, because we went through the reading of the bill,

00:42which the Democrat leader just pointed out was important for people to hear.

00:46Through the middle of the night, and I don't think there was a big American audience for that,

00:53I think a lot of people were at their jobs, working their shifts.

00:55People like nurses and firefighters who are going to benefit under this bill.

00:59To think that they were sitting there, in their jobs, watching the bill be read on the floor for endless hours in the middle of the night.

01:09I'm not sure what that achieved, but I'll tell you what the senator said, the Democrat leader, back in 2021,

01:15when a Republican senator required that to be done.

01:18He said this, and I quote,

01:20it will accomplish little more than a few sore throats for the Senate clerks who work very hard day in, day out,

01:27to help the Senate function, end quote.

01:31And those clerks are here today, and one of the reasons that we tried to give them a break last night

01:35is because they had to stay here the night before to read through the bill.

01:39So, in the dead of the night, nobody watching, but they did it.

01:46So, hopefully they got a little bit of rest last night so we can start this off.

01:49Ms. President, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was one of the most successful economic policy pieces of legislation in history.

01:58And the data bears it out.

02:01You look at what happened after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed.

02:04Unemployment hit a 50-year low.

02:07Poverty levels at record-level lows.

02:11And incomes grew.

02:13Incomes and wages increased most among lower-income Americans.

02:18We started to narrow the wage gap as a result of the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

02:23So, what is this about?

02:25This is about extending that tax relief so the same people that benefited from it back in 2017 and for the last eight years

02:33don't end up having a colossal, massive tax increase hitting them in the face come January 1.

02:40Now, who are those people, Mr. President?

02:43It's people.

02:44It's families making less than $400,000 a year on whom the bulk of this would fall.

02:49$2.6 trillion of this tax hike that they're supporting would hit families making less than $400,000 a year.

03:00It would hit small businesses to the tune of $600 billion in tax increases.

03:07These are pass-through businesses.

03:09The businesses who are out there creating the jobs every day.

03:12If we don't do this, they're going to face a $600 billion tax increase.

03:18That's what we're talking about.

03:20And if you want to put it in plain terms, if you're one of those families making less than $400,000 a year,

03:25the child tax credit would be cut in half.

03:29The standard deduction would be cut in half.

03:31And you wouldn't get the benefit that many taxpayers are going to get under the legislation that we're going to be debating today,

03:38which would allow tips to go untaxed, allow overtime to go untaxed.

03:43So those nurses and those firefighters that are working the long shifts,

03:46not watching the bill be read here on the Senate floor,

03:50actually get something out of this that makes their families more able to cope with the challenges that they face every day.

03:56So the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was a massive, by any stretch of the imagination, success.

04:04And probably no better evidence of that than the fact that the Congressional Budget Office,

04:10which has been quoted a lot here in the last few hours,

04:13actually underestimated the amount of revenue that would come into the federal government by $1.5 trillion.

04:19Estimated the amount of growth, underestimated, I should, the amount of growth in the economy by 5.4%.

04:24Dramatically underestimated.

04:25What would generate in terms of revenue and what it would generate in terms of growth.

04:33So let's just say what this is.

04:37And by the way, billionaires next year will pay the same tax rate they're paying this year.

04:43The people who are going to get hit with a tax increase if we don't do something are those families making less than $400,000 a year.

04:49We're going to see their child tax credit cut in half, their standard deduction cut in half,

04:54their rates go back up to what they were in 2017.

04:58And in my state of South Dakota, the average family is going to pay $2,500 more

05:02if we don't do something to extend the tax relief that was passed in 2017.

05:08Now, the other thing that the Democrat leader got and talked about is, oh, they're going to be cutting Medicaid.

05:18Mr. President, there are a lot of government programs that haven't been looked at in a long time.

05:25We all acknowledge that 75% now of federal spending is what we call mandatory spending.

05:30Entitlement programs, things that Congress doesn't annually appropriate for.

05:35And it continues to grow at an uncontrollable rate.

05:38In fact, the growth and the rate of Medicaid spending in the last five years have been 50%.

05:43That's not sustainable.

05:45We know that's not sustainable.

05:46And in the time I've been here, we have never, ever done anything to reform and improve

05:55and strengthen these programs that are growing at an unsustainable rate

05:59that will wreck our economy and wreck our country if we don't start making some changes.

06:03And so, yes, there are some improvements and reforms to Medicaid to make it more efficient,

06:11to make sure that the people who are supposed to benefit from Medicaid do,

06:14and that it doesn't go to people who shouldn't benefit from Medicaid.

06:17Now, most of the increase in spending in Medicaid has been in what we call the expansion population.

06:23And that's the number of people out there for whom states get a 90% reimbursement from the federal government.

06:29And so that has grown dramatically.

06:31And what does that represent?

06:33It's a lot of able-bodied adults, people who should be working,

06:38people who perhaps don't need to be getting the assistance that's designed

06:44for people who are disabled and low-income elderly and pregnant moms.

06:48That's what Medicaid was about.

06:50And states have, with the federal government, a partnership shared for the years at a traditional rate.

06:56The expansion population is 90% paid for by the federal taxpayers.

07:00And so what do states do?

07:02They game the system.

07:03They get more federal money.

07:04They add more people to the rolls.

07:06And so you have people on the rolls today who are here illegally,

07:08you have people on the rolls here today who are not eligible for this program,

07:12and you have people here today in that program for whom there's no work requirement.

07:17And so what this does, it makes some reforms, one of which includes work requirements.

07:25I don't think that's a novel concept.

07:28It certainly isn't a concept that I think most Americans would disagree with.

07:31In fact, it was a Democrat president.

07:36Back in the 1990s, there was something called welfare reform.

07:40Bill Clinton, a Democrat president, proposed work requirements for welfare recipients.

07:47And you want to know something?

07:48The work requirements in the welfare reform act passed back in 1996 and signed into law by Democrat president Bill Clinton

07:57had stronger work requirements that are included in this bill.

08:03Stronger work requirements in a bill passed, signed into law by a Democrat president, than what's in this bill.

08:11And proposed, I might add, by a Democrat president.

08:13So that's one of the reforms that we're making.

08:17And these are reforms, Mr. President, are going to make this program stronger, more effective, more efficient,

08:23improve it in a way that it gets the assistance to the people for whom it was intended,

08:28and not to people who are gaming the system.

08:31And yes, we address the issue of provider taxes, which has been abused.

08:35No question about it.

08:36It's another way to leverage federal money, get more federal money into the state coffers.

08:41And the states have used it for things not just to cover people, but also for other reasons.

08:45And you like states like New York and California who have gamed the system.

08:49So the whole issue of what we're doing with the Medicaid program is to get rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse,

08:55make it work in the way in which it was intended, to cover the people for whom it was intended,

08:59and to make sure that we have work requirements included there.

09:02To the current policy baseline.

09:05Everybody got up last night, and they were clamoring and yelling, very animated speeches about how the Republicans are,

09:10they're using a current policy baseline.

09:12How could they ever do that?

09:14Well, you know what?

09:16Back in 2012,

09:18President Obama and one of the people who was working for him at the time, called, named Jeff Zients,

09:26used the current policy baseline to make permanent the Bush tax cuts.

09:33And the way he described it, Jeff Zients described it at the time,

09:37he called it the alternative fiscal scenario.

09:41That's how they explained to the American people.

09:43And then he translated it and said, what it is, it's a current policy baseline.

09:49So the Democrats have used this before.

09:53In fact, they kind of, you could argue, pioneered it.

09:55But current policy baseline is something that's been used by both sides.

09:58So it's a little, you know, spare me the hypocrisy and the noise about current policy baseline.

10:06Alternative fiscal scenario, he called it.

10:08And then he went on to explain current policy baseline.

10:10Finally, with regard to the issue of the deficits,

10:15it is rich to hear Democrats all of a sudden concerned about debt and deficits.

10:23Really?

10:25I mean, I've been here a long time.

10:28And I've not been involved in a single spending debate and fight

10:32in which Republicans were trying to spend less and Democrats were trying to spend more.

10:38With one exception.

10:40With one exception.

10:41And that's national security.

10:44Democrats are always willing to cut defense.

10:47But never want to cut anywhere else.

10:49That's my experience.

10:51And I think it was borne out a couple years ago when Democrats had now, had then, what we have now,

10:56which is unified control of the government.

10:57They had House, Senate, and White House.

10:59And so they had an opportunity to use reconciliation, which they did twice.

11:05One of the bills cost $2 trillion.

11:06The other bill cost $1 trillion.

11:10And it was all spending.

11:13And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a fundamental difference between us here.

11:17And I understand that.

11:18We have different views about the role of government.

11:22Democrats like government.

11:24And one of the things we know about government is when you send money to Washington, money is power.

11:29And when you send money to Washington from the American taxpayers, that means Washington has more power.

11:35It has more control.

11:37And Republicans fundamentally have believed that it's better if you allow the American people to keep their own money,

11:42that you distribute power out of Washington, D.C., back to state and local governments who are closer to the people

11:47and can make better decisions that are more informed by what's actually happened in their individual states.

11:53And so when we use reconciliation to keep taxes low,

11:57and by the way, that's all we are doing here is extending current tax policy.

12:02We are preventing over a $4 trillion tax increase on the American people.

12:09And when you vote against us, that's what you'd be voting for.

12:12Now, a good example of this spending issue was the 2011 Budget Control Act,

12:17in which, authored by a number of people, including Senator McConnell,

12:21they created a super committee, equally represented on both sides of the aisle.

12:26And they met for a long time to try and come up with some ways that we could come up with ways to reform entitlement programs.

12:33And, of course, what happened?

12:35They deadlocked.

12:36Because every Democrat voted against it.

12:39Every Republican voted for it.

12:41And it even included some revenue increases, which is something Democrats are always for.

12:45So, getting up and talking about deficits all of a sudden, honestly, is kind of mind-blowing, coming from this side of the aisle.

12:56What we are doing here is extending existing tax policy,

13:00using a current policy baseline, which was used by the Democrats, President Obama, Jeff Zients,

13:06Jeff Zients, no less than a little more than 10 years ago.

13:13So, Mr. President, it's time to vote.

13:15And Democrats will get a chance.

13:16They'll offer all their amendments, and they'll attack this thing as cutting taxes for billionaires.

13:22What we are doing here is extending tax relief for the American people, keeping their rates low,

13:27making sure they don't have their child tax credit cut in half, their standard deduction cut in half,

13:34including new provisions that provide more relief for working Americans,

13:39which is what President Trump campaigned on.

13:42No tax on tips, no tax on overtime, lower taxes for seniors, for Social Security recipients.

13:49These are all targeted at working Americans, working families.

13:54That is, first and foremost, about what this is about.

13:56Now, this, Mr. President, will make this country safer, stronger, and more prosperous.

14:04It addresses military modernization.

14:06It addresses securing our border.

14:08It addresses restoring energy dominance.

14:11It extends tax relief for the American people so they can avoid a $4 trillion tax increase at the end of the year.

14:16And, yes, it includes some savings associated with reforms that are made

14:21in a way that targets assistance from federal programs to where it was intended to go.

14:27And, yes, we have work requirements.

14:29Work requirements that were initiated by Bill Clinton and the Clinton administration

14:34during welfare reform back in the 1990s.

14:38Only, I would say again, they're not as strong.

14:42The work requirements included in that legislation back in the 1990s.

14:46What we have in this bill, the work requirements here, are not as strong.

14:51Mr. President, let's vote.

14:53This is good for America.

14:54This is good for the American people.

14:55It's good for working families.

14:57And it's been a long debate.

14:59I know people are weary.

15:00But at the end of the day, we want to get this done so that this country is safer and stronger

15:06and more prosperous, not only for today, but for future generations of Americans.

15:11That there be two minutes equally divided prior to all.

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