At a town hall on Tuesday, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) was asked about the Senate budget reconciliation.
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00:00Anybody interested in a tax?
00:04Well, here, I'm going to call on everybody,
00:07but I'm going to go through this list of people
00:10that were complaining to me in Hampton,
00:14you didn't discuss any of these things.
00:17Anything interested in a tax bill?
00:21Yes, a tax bill.
00:22You're talking about the Senate budget resolution
00:25and reconciliation, is that you're referring to?
00:28But before you ask your question,
00:30let me explain that the budget just passed last week,
00:34and then the budget does not go to the president.
00:38That's just an internal congressional document
00:41that sets the stage for what you're going to ask me about.
00:44Right.
00:45I mean, it sets amounts that each committee is supposed to cut or budget.
00:51Am I correct?
00:52Now, if you're like a House member and you look at the Senate
00:55and we only have $1 billion for each committee,
01:00that doesn't mean we aren't going to cut more than $1 billion,
01:04but we just want to leave maximum leeway to the committee
01:08to decide how they're going to spend it.
01:10So go ahead with your question.
01:12The resolution that you supported extends and expands the tax cuts
01:18for the 2017 tax bill.
01:20And to extend those cuts, which largely go to the top 5% or so of people,
01:26they get something like 50% of the benefits from that tax bill.
01:31The resolution allows deficits to increase by $1.5 trillion
01:34under the Finance Committee's calculations,
01:36but that doesn't account for $4 trillion in costs of extending the tax cuts,
01:42bringing the actual cost around $5.3 trillion over 10 years.
01:50And this is from the bipartisan policy center.
01:53And meanwhile, like the House resolution,
01:55the Senate resolution calls for $880 billion in cuts over 10 years
01:59from the Energy and Commerce Committee,
02:01which includes Medicare and Medicaid.
02:03And it also orders the Agriculture Committee to cut $230 billion
02:07among cuts from other committees while increasing funds for defense in other areas.
02:12And yet, after all those cuts, we still end up with trillions of deficits.
02:18How is this fiscally responsible, Senator,
02:20to extend these tax cuts when they're raising deficits
02:25and resulting in cuts to services that people need
02:28and giving benefits to the top 5% or so tax payers?
02:34Okay.
02:35Well, first of all, the last two items you mentioned
02:39are in the House part of it, not the Senate part of it.
02:43So you'll have to talk to your Congress people about that.
02:48But I can answer the tax part of it very easily
02:52because the way the 2017 tax bill was passed,
03:02it was passed under this process of reconciliation,
03:05and you can't pass a tax bill, either increase or decrease,
03:13for more than 10 years unless you get 60 votes to do it.
03:19So we only had 51 or 52 votes in 2017.
03:24So it sunsets.
03:27It could go for two more years,
03:29but we sunset at December 31, 2025.
03:33So here's what's going to happen
03:35if we don't continue that tax policy into the future.
03:40You're going to have the biggest tax increase
03:42in the history of the country
03:44without even a vote of Congress
03:47because it sunsets,
03:49and so you just automatically go back
03:51to the tax levels prior to 2017.
03:55We can't let that happen
03:56because it would be the biggest tax increase
03:59on the middle class in the history of America.
04:03And it wouldn't give any more benefits to anybody
04:07than what they had in the 2017 tax bill.
04:11So it's very important
04:13that we keep the tax level where it is,
04:17which has been historically
04:19about 17% of all the gross national product
04:25of this country
04:26coming to the Congress of the United States
04:29at about 17% to 18%
04:31of all the economic activity in this country.
04:38So it keeps the tax policy
04:40that we've had in place for decades.
04:44Okay?
04:45Now, the next one would be...
04:47What do you mean?
04:49The next one would be...
04:49The next one would be...
04:50The next one would be border security.
04:53He asked a question.
04:56Can I ask you a quick question?
04:59I understand holding that tax
05:02at what you're saying,
05:04but why aren't we doing more
05:06to make the billionaires pay more?
05:07It might surprise you this.
05:20It might surprise you
05:22that the list of possibilities
05:28we have on our working sheet
05:31that the members of the finance committee,
05:33and I'm a member of that committee,
05:35are going to discuss,
05:38is raising from 37 to 39.6
05:42on the very group of people you talk about.
05:44Now, that doesn't make...
05:45That doesn't mean it's going to happen,
05:47but that means...
05:48You're damn right!
05:48That means it's...
05:50And the rationale for it is
05:53that we can take that money
05:57and use it for child...
05:59Increase in child tax credit.
06:01Well, you've got to take care
06:03of the tax loops, too.
06:05Now, anybody in...