Chairman Neal Statements on President Trump's Payroll Tax and Unemployment Memoranda

Statement

Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-MA) made the following comments after President Trump signed memoranda regarding unemployment benefits and the suspension of payroll taxes:

Regarding the Payroll Tax Memorandum:

"President Trump is brazenly circumventing Congress to institute tax policy that destabilizes Social Security. Beyond the attack on crucial earned benefits, this action does nothing to help unemployed and retired Americans survive this unprecedented crisis. Instead, the President is focused on undermining their financial security, and even threatened to permanently end this crucial source of funding for Medicare and Social Security. This decree is a poorly disguised first step in an effort to fully dismantle these vital programs by executive fiat."

Regarding the Unemployment Compensation Memorandum:

"For nearly three months, the President has leisurely putzed around his golf courses as American families hoped and prayed for a continuation of their $600 emergency unemployment benefits. Because of Republican inaction, that assistance lapsed, leading to preventable evictions, skipped meals, and forgone medications. What the President outlines is likely legally and logistically impossible to execute in nearly every state, not to mention that the proposed funding falls far short of what would be required. This memo is the administration's attempt to shift blame to governors and away from Senate Republicans who are actually at fault for the lapse in benefits and American families' pain. Democrats will keep pushing to restore and extend the original $600 payments that enable 30 million Americans to make ends meet while the Trump Administration fails to contain the virus and conditions remain too unsafe for many to return to work."

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