Wyden Blasts Republican Tax Agenda as Budget Debate Begins
As Prepared for Delivery
Watch a video of Wyden deliver his remarks here
I want to thank my colleagues for their words on the tax debate that’s coming in the days and weeks ahead. I’m very happy to be working with them in this fight. They’ve raised a lot of important issues I also want to address. But I want to start out with the big picture of what’s going on in America as the Senate careens toward a budget showdown.
Donald Trump thinks he’s royalty. Elon Musk seems to believe he calls the shots. They’re trampling all over our Constitution and violating laws as they rip apart much of what makes this country great. They’re clearing the way for financial predators and Wall Street scammers to steal from innocent Americans. They’re gutting medical research -- cancer, Alzheimer’s, you name it. Days after the deadliest airplane crash on American soil in decades -- and when more plane crashes seem to be happening by the hour -- they fired hundreds of people who work on airline safety. They’re slashing our university system, which is the envy of the world and a huge source of economic growth and opportunity in America. They fired hundreds of people who manage our nuclear arsenal because whoever at DOGE ordered those firings didn’t have any idea what the Department of Energy does. National parks are closing because they don’t have enough staff, which will be a disaster for rural communities who depend on tourism. Farmers are missing payments they’re owed. Nobody voted for this chaos.
I heard firsthand from Oregonians this past weekend at town halls back home. Thousands of people in attendance. They shared their real fears and legitimate concerns about how this slash-and-burn approach we’re seeing from Trump and Musk is a recipe for a lower quality of life in America. And people will lose their lives as a result of these attacks on health care and medical research.
There’s barely a peep about any of this from Republicans. In fact I’ve heard more support for Trump than criticism of this lawlessness from the other side. And it’s business as usual here in the Senate. What’s so important to my colleagues on the other side that they’re letting Trump and Musk get away with all this destruction?
It’s another round of tax handouts to billionaires and corporations. That’s the Republican prize at the end of this process. That’s Trump's plan to pay back the donors who bought the election for him.
Let’s talk about specifics.
The centerpiece of this plan is extending his 2017 tax law at a cost of more than $4 trillion. Ultra-wealthy individuals who rake in millions each year would get tax breaks of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Families who live paycheck to paycheck would be lucky to get enough to cover groceries for a week. That’s the kind of outrageous imbalance that we’re talking about. Trump and Republicans want typical Americans to be satisfied with peanuts compared to the growing fortunes of Elon Musk and Trump’s other billionaire donors. And it’s not just a bunch of extensions. Trump wants even more breaks for big, profitable corporations. Senate Republicans want new giveaways to the ultra-wealthy.
How do they plan to pay for it? By booting tens of millions off their health insurance, increasing child hunger, laying off hundreds of thousands of manufacturing workers, and raising the cost of living in America.
The Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee had a whole list of destructive proposals a few weeks ago. Dozens of pages long, item after item. It looked like the kind of plan you’d design if your goal was to wipe out the middle class in America and push tens of millions of families into poverty. But this was a real document from a Republican committee chairman.
A couple low-lights that stuck out to us on the Senate Finance Committee. Trump and Republicans want to take a wrecking ball to the Medicaid program. It’s a devastating prospect for tens of millions of Americans. Medicaid pays for two out of three nursing home beds in America. Where do American families turn when nursing homes no longer accept Medicaid due to these Republican cuts? Who will take care of our parents and our grandparents? Medicaid covers 30 million kids in America. That includes half of all American kids with special health care needs. Cuts to Medicaid will set those kids back for the rest of their lives. Hospitals, nursing homes and other providers in rural communities all over the country are barely hanging on, and they depend on Medicaid. If these Republican cuts go through, rural America will become a health care desert.
The clean energy cuts are another disaster in the making. Republicans are looking at wiping out a host of tax cuts for clean energy to pay for a big chunk of their handouts to the top. Nobody is rooting harder for Republicans to succeed on this than the Chinese government. That’s because if Republicans follow through and gut the clean energy credits Democrats passed in 2022, it will be a total surrender to China on clean energy. Hundreds of thousands of American jobs could be destroyed. Energy prices will jump, which will hurt working families and small businesses. The jobs and investment that we’ve attracted to the U.S. over the last few years -- that’s going to go to China and to other countries that win the clean energy arms race at our expense. You look at that document from the House Budget Committee chairman and it’s one item after another that would clobber typical families and communities. They’re looking at a tax increase on single moms. They’re considering a tax increase that will raise the cost of owning a home. They’re considering cuts to infrastructure that would hurt local economies. They’re even considering taxing scholarships for kids looking to go to college. The only people who won’t feel the pain of all that hardship are the ultra-wealthy like Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
There’s a game of hide the ball happening here in the Senate, with this first resolution that hides all the unpopular plans in the second bill that’s coming down the pike.
Over in the House of Representatives they’re trying to cram it all into one bill. In the end, the process here in Congress won’t really matter to the people whose lives are made worse by the painful cuts Republicans are preparing to inflict on the country.
The reality is, this agenda goes hand in hand with the lawlessness we’re seeing from Trump and Musk. They are pillaging the government. They’re breaking vital programs and agencies, and there’s no sign they care at all about the people they’re hurting along the way. Trump even admits out in the open that it’s causing pain.
And here in the Senate, Republicans are getting ready to add to those cuts. And they’re getting ready to give even more tax handouts to Donald Trump and Elon Musk and the billionaire donors who supported them.
Democrats are going to shine a light on this destructive agenda as this debate continues. The American people do not support what’s happening here in the Senate or what Trump and Musk are doing to their government. So we’re going to do everything we can to stop it.
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