Sen. Coons on the tax bill: "This is a huge giveaway to the very wealthiest Americans and the most profitable corporations"

Statement

U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) yesterday joined CNN's Wolf Blitzer to discuss the GOP tax bill.

"The problem with that is, who's going to end up paying for these tax cuts? The way it's structured, taxes will go up on many of the middle class…and more importantly, right up-front, Republicans said, it was their intention to cut Medicare and Medicaid in order to pay for these tax cuts."

"My hope is that corporations will use those newfound profits or repatriated profits to invest in hiring people and in capital equipment, but there's no indication that they will. Most will, instead, do stock buybacks or provide dividends or boosts to their senior management. I do think we could have structured this build differently, so that some of the new corporate revenue would end up being invested in infrastructure or being spent more likely on hiring people and on capital. But this is just a straight corporate rate cut and corporate leaders and corporate shareholders will do with it what they will."

Full audio and video available here.

Excerpts from the interview:

Senator Coons on the House revote: Well, I expect every Democrat in the Senate will vote against this tax package. Both because of the process that got us here and because of the result and the likely impact on the American people. This did not have to be a one-party-only bill. I worked hard across the aisle to propose alternative paths that would have led us to a significant middle-class tax cut, the sort of thing the president ran on, but that is not what this bill is. This is a huge giveaway to the very wealthiest Americans and the most profitable corporations. I think there's no doubt that it specifically benefits real estate investors and those who earn their income from real estate. And in many cases, the modest tax cuts for the middle class are temporary and the big tax cuts for shareholders of corporations and for the wealthiest families, those will go on long-term.

More on the tax bill: And, as I've said both at home and here, the problem with that is, who's going to end up paying for these tax cuts? The way it's structured, taxes will go up on many of the middle class after five years and more importantly, right up-front, Republicans said, it was their intention to cut Medicare and Medicaid in order to pay for these tax cuts. We've already got House Republican leadership talking about entitlement cuts in the coming year, in order to be sort of their next step towards fiscal sanity. I did work hard with Republicans, those who were concerned about the debt and deficit to propose an alternative path that wouldn't have cost $1.5 trillion. But ultimately, this turned into a straight party line vote.

Senator Coons on the impact on Delaware corporations: Well, my hope is that corporations will use those newfound profits or repatriated profits to invest in hiring people and in capital equipment, but there's no indication that they will. Most will, instead, do stock buybacks or provide dividends or boosts to their senior management. I do think we could have structured this build differently, so that some of the new corporate revenue would end up being invested in infrastructure or being spent more likely on hiring people and on capital. But this is just a straight corporate rate cut and corporate leaders and corporate shareholders will do with it what they will.

More on the tax bill: That's right, there will be more money flooding into corporations and into the wealthiest families in the United States. And I can only hope that they will make up some of the projected drop in charitable giving and some of the projected needs that we have in terms of increasing skills, investment in infrastructure, and investment in capital equipment. That would be a good outcome. And frankly, I don't hope that this fails. I hope that this succeeds. And that surprisingly, we'll see 4.5% growth in the next couple of years. But as you said in the opening to this section, most Americans who have been polled on this bill oppose it and most economists who have studied it think it will simply add to the deficit and debt.

Senator Coons on the impact on his constituents: Well, it is true that those who have 401(k)s have already benefited from the rise in the stock market. It is unusual to do a tax cut of this size and this breadth at a time of near full employment and record corporate profits. Typically, a big tax cut like this is done in order to strengthen economy that is failing, not to add on top of it. But if that's what happens, that the total capital markets, the equity markets go up, then it should benefit those who have got 401(k)s, that's right.

Senator Coons on the impact of the bill on 2018 elections: Well, it depends how the average American feels about this bill once they really learn all the details and all the different provisions. It was rushed through in a process that made it hard to really follow what was ultimately in the bill, once voted on by the Senate, and what was in the bill when it came back from conference. Most surveys that I've seen nationally, suggest that a majority of Americans dislike this bill, and they believe that it is designed to benefit the wealthiest. That it will benefit Donald Trump, President Trump, personally. And that it will benefit corporations, but not the middle class, which is what President Trump campaigned on. We'll have to see. We'll see the actual impacts and then the American people will judge for themselves.

Senator Coons on President Trump: I don't know. I hope that he will. President Trump, when he announced that he was going to end the DACA -- the deferred program, said that he wanted to see some bipartisan legislation to address it. And there have been diligent efforts by a bipartisan group of senators to try to come to a consensus bill that would put in statute, in law, the protection that the DACA beneficiaries, about 800,000 of them, previously enjoyed. We've got a lot of other end-of-year issues here that haven't yet been resolved. We have about 9 million children who benefit from the Children's Health Insurance Program. That ran out three months ago and states are going to have to begin shut down health care benefits through that program. Community Health Center funding has run out. That's also something that needs to be extended. And there's a program that helps our intelligence community, the FISA program, that also runs out at the end of this calendar year. There's a lot on our agenda here, wolf, that hasn't been dealt with, and as we get to the end of this calendar year, there is a risk that a miscalculation or a failure to negotiate in good faith between the parties could lead to a government shutdown, which I think would be a big mistake.

Senator Coons on whether this will all be passed between now and the end of the year: What I'm expecting is that we will, instead, have a clean extension of the current spending bill until January. And by the end of January, that whole package we just talked through will get taken up, negotiated and passed.

Senator Coons on President Trump's national security strategy: That's the real challenge of the president's remarks yesterday. There was a real tension between the national security strategy document that was released, which I have not read in full. I've only gotten an executive summary of it, and the remarks that President Trump made in releasing it. He made remarks that were very -- much more campaign-like, more typical of his nationalistic and isolationist stance during the campaign. But it's really at difference and variants with what was released in print. The national security strategy in print recognizes that Russia is an adversary, an aggressive form power, and has interfered in a number of elections across democracies, including our own. President Trump has not said that. That is not something he has said as a major challenge in the US/Russia relationship. The national security strategy also, for example, talks about China as a revisionist power that is seeking to grow its influence in the indo pacific at our expense. Yet one of Trump's first steps was to withdraw from the transpacific partnership, which was principally designed in order to strengthen the United States' role in the pacific and to diminish China's future opportunities for trade. So, there's a number of ways in which the rhetoric doesn't meet the reality. It is my hope that the printed security strategy reflects the direction that the Trump administration will go.

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