During remarks on the Senate floor, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) spoke in support of a massive bipartisan tax plan.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Mr. President, thank you, and I particularly appreciate the moral leadership of Senator
00:08Casey.
00:09As Senator Wyden just said, his first question is how does this affect family, how does this
00:13affect children?
00:14He knows it from his experience, and he knows it as he travels the state of Pennsylvania
00:21from Philadelphia to the Ohio border.
00:24He talks to a lot of families and children and sees what this means.
00:28So Senator Casey, thank you.
00:31It seems like listening to my colleagues, Senator Cantwell and Senator Casey and Chairman
00:35Wyden, that everybody not in D.C. is for this bill.
00:39It's just, it's a bunch of insiders here in this city.
00:44It's people who, it's interest groups that are always looking for a handout.
00:49As Senator Casey said, so many of these interest groups get great tax advantages for themselves
00:54and maybe a few crumbs for others.
00:58And the interest groups that are always looking for tax cuts for the rich and for their large
01:03corporate interests, frankly, have too much influence in this body.
01:08And fortunately in the House of Representatives, they overcame that and they passed this bill
01:12with 357 votes.
01:14But this ought to pass close to unanimously here because it really is helpful.
01:17It helps business, it helps families, but it's still a struggle and it should be easy.
01:24I remember, I remember sitting on the floor March 6th, 2021, and I remember voting on
01:34this bill and it was on the, it was on a bigger bill, but it had the child tax credit that
01:38Senator Wyden and others had helped to write.
01:41And Senator Bennett played a big role, a couple of newcomers.
01:45Senator Warnock played a role.
01:46Senator Booker also played a role, was not a newcomer.
01:49Senator Warnock had just been sworn in a couple months earlier.
01:52And I just remember, I said to Senator Casey, who sits next to me, as he just said, I remember
01:56saying to him, this is the, this is the best day of my career because we were about to
02:00pass the expanded child tax credit.
02:02And I knew what it meant.
02:04Most of us knew what it meant.
02:05It passed 51 to 50, unfortunately, for reasons I still don't entirely understand, it was
02:10a partisan vote.
02:11The, the presiding others, the vice president came in and broke the tie.
02:15Passed 51 to 50.
02:16So immediately after this passed, I, the president signed it soon after.
02:21I called Secretary Yellen, the Secretary of the Treasury, I said, we've got to get
02:24this up and running.
02:26By July, checks went out to the families of 2 million children in Ohio.
02:33Checks went out to the families of 60 million children around the country.
02:37And as Senator Casey said, the child poverty rate dropped almost in half by September.
02:42Think about that.
02:43But then that tax break expired for reasons I won't go into here.
02:47But it, it tells you, but, you know, I hear these numbers.
02:49I hear people say, you know, the child poverty tax rate dropped by 50%.
02:53I hear people say that, as Senator Casey said, that it means, you know, it means people can
02:58afford school fees for their kids.
03:00It means daycare is more available, good quality daycare.
03:05It's a lot of statistics, and that's really important, these 60 million children and 2
03:09million in my state.
03:10But it's the individual stories we hear from families where, you know, we, we got, after
03:14we passed this, people saw what it meant.
03:17We got letters, I got letters from Ashtabula, to Cincinnati, to Toledo, to Gallup Police,
03:23to Athens, to Lima, Ohio, about what it meant to their individual families.
03:27From mothers, probably more mothers than fathers, but mothers and fathers, what it meant to
03:32these families.
03:33How they could, they just had a, a burden lift.
03:35And it wasn't just the lowest income families.
03:37It was families that are, you know, that are solidly middle class, even that are upper
03:41middle class, that could just do a few more things for their children.
03:44So the question is, how, how do you put a price on this, as Senator Casey said?
03:49How do you put a price on doing this, when it made such a difference?
03:53So let me talk a little more about the bill, if I could.
03:58We had something called the look back provision, allowing parents to use the previous year's
04:02income to make sure they get the maximum possible tax cut.
04:06Senator Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana, and I worked from Louisiana, and I worked
04:11together on this.
04:12It's the same options, interestingly, it's the same options that corporations have in
04:16the tax code, that they're allowed to look back to reduce their taxes, but we weren't
04:20going to do that for families.
04:21I mean, that's, that's the illness in this place.
04:23That's the sickness of Washington.
04:25It's why, you know, it's why people, frankly, why they hate Washington.
04:29It's that we, we treat these big corporate interests not even the same as we, you know,
04:34we're really asking, maybe we ought to treat kids the same as we treat corporate interests.
04:39Because we treat corporate interests with kid gloves, and giving them always too much,
04:44and kids don't get enough, families don't get enough.
04:47So it's important that, that we pass this, it's going to matter.
04:52We come back next year, and we do it in a bigger way, the way we did last year.
04:58It's also got some provisions that are a major priority for American companies.
05:02And I want to, I want to encourage companies that, that are, you know, that, that will
05:06produce in the United States, that will do their research and development here, that
05:10will keep the intellectual property in the United States.
05:12I mean, I, I had a, I had a meeting once at the White House.
05:16Senator Wyden was there.
05:17It was soon after, I think probably Senator Bennett was there at this meeting.
05:21It happened when President Trump was considering what we were going to do with the major tax
05:27bill.
05:28And we had a bill called the Ameri, the Patriot Corporation Act.
05:32It said simply this.
05:33And we, I, I had the bill in my hand.
05:35It simply said, if an American company pays good wages, and provides good health care,
05:43and pays, and, and provides a retirement, that they would get a lower tax rate.
05:49But if this company didn't pay good wages, so workers got food stamps, and workers got
05:54Medicaid, and workers got housing tax breaks, housing breaks.
05:59If workers had, if, if the company wasn't paying good enough wages, the taxpayers had
06:04to step up.
06:05They paid a lower rate.
06:06In other words, if companies do the right thing, we ought to give them tax breaks.
06:09If companies treat their employees and undermine the dignity of work, we shouldn't.
06:13I mean, it's really pretty simple.
06:15This bill does it right.
06:16It's a, it's a bill with good bipartisan support in the House.
06:20Passed with 357 votes, thanks to the very adept negotiating skills of both Chairman
06:26Wyden, the Finance Committee in the Senate, Chairman Smith, the Ways and Means Committee
06:30in the House, one Republican, one Democrat.
06:33We got 169 Republicans, 100 Democrats, and 188 Democrats.
06:38It's our work, and this shouldn't be about politics, it should be about the people whom
06:41we serve.
06:42You fight for the, when you, you, you, you fight for people in this country who make
06:46this company work, who make this country work.
06:49We should come together and cut taxes for working families.
06:52We should cut taxes for companies that want to do production and intellectual property
06:57in this country.
06:58I yield the floor.