Following the dismal third quarter GDP report showing that the economic growth for the last quarter was effectively non-existent, top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) appeared before a rushed Rules Committee hearing on Democrats’ crippling multi-trillion tax hike and spending spree. 

Rep. Brady’s full remarks as prepared for delivery appear below.

Good afternoon, Chairman McGovern, Ranking Member Cole and members of the Rules Committee. 

 

Respectfully, I think we all know this is not a discussion, this is a circus. Evidence of that is that in the 1700 pages, missing pieces are huge. Whole subtitles left blank. 

 

My guess is that all this is for show, so that later today the Speaker and Democrats in Congress will again kick this infrastructure bill to the curb along with moderates who are fighting to pass it.

 

Usually when I’m sitting next to my friend Chairman Neal, it’s because we’ve achieved a big bipartisan win on behalf of the American people. We like bringing our Committee members together for big wins.

 

Regrettably, that’s not the case today. 

 

We meet in the shadow of today’s gloomy economic news – an awful report that shows America’s economy effectively stopped growing last quarter. President Biden is zero-for-three in meeting economic projections and he’s now nearly a million jobs short of his promises from the last $2 trillion stimulus.

 

This is more proof that President Biden is bungling the recovery – and leaves many Americans questioning his competence to heal the economy. Given all that you’d think the President and Congressional Democrats would avoid sabotaging America’s economy further. But that’s exactly what this proposal does. 

 

This is an economic sabotage. Crippling tax hikes will kill American jobs, drive many of them overseas, hammer small businesses as they struggle to recover, worsen the labor shortage and drive inflation even higher.

 

Never has Washington spent so much to kill so many American jobs, force prices even higher, and hook a whole new generation of the poor on government dependency. 

 

This framework imposes over $400 billion in taxes on America’s small business. It couldn’t come at a worse time.

 

There are $800 billion in tax increases on American businesses who compete both here and around the world. This constitutes an economic surrender to China, Russia, Japan and Europe – driving American jobs, investment, and manufacturing,overseas. The new corporate minimum tax is really a Made in America tax.

 

Hitting American manufacturing, energy, and technology businesses the hardest, along with American consumers. Why do Democrats insist on making it better to be a foreign company or consumer than an American one. 

 

Is it any wonder our foreign competitors are happy to embrace a small global minimum tax – they’re getting our jobs, they’re getting a big bite of our taxes, and they don’t even have to act for years while America surrenders first.  

 

Who pays for all this? It’s the workers, the low-income and middle-class who always bear the brunt of these taxes with tax increases, stagnant wages, higher inflation, and the threat of their job moving overseas.   

 

There’s also a troubling new tax on retirement plans that hurts workers and our seniors the most by punishing businesses that invest in their own stock. 

 

All this while the federal government enjoys record high levels of tax revenue from corporations, small business and high-income earners under the Republican tax cuts in 2017. Reforms have lifted millions of Americans out of poverty, brought jobs back to America, and began to shrink income inequality for the first time in half a century. 

 

This bill will drive prices up even higher on families, and make the damaging labor shortage even worse.

 

For example, Republicans in Congress created the Child Tax Credit in 1997 and more recently doubled it and expanded it to tens of thousands of more families. Every Democrat opposed that expansion. Yet today, as businesses from Main Street to manufacturing struggle to find workers to stay open, man the production lines, or deliver products, unbelievably Democrats’ changes to the Child Tax Credit no longer require Americans to earn or work to qualify for monthly checks. 

 

Experts predict this, along with lavish Covid-era Affordable Care Act subsidies will cause 2 million more Americans to exit the workforce.

 

Don’t Democrats understand this drives inflation higher and slows the economic recovery

 

One of the missing pieces we know will be filled. Democrats will create a huge tax windfall and a tax haven for millionaires and billionaires by repealing the reasonable SALT deduction – occupants of the penthouse are cheering you, while the building janitor gets nothing. 

 

It gets worse. Democrats are giving away $550 billion in green welfare subsidies for the wealthy and the world’s biggest corporations – literally sending government checks to the wealthy one-percent. Why are you sending a well-to-do family making $800,000 a year a government check of up to $12,500 to buy a luxury electric vehicle?

 

Of course, labor unions get a huge haul, including forcing the 90% of Americans who don’t join a union to subsidize the few who do. 

 

And there are budget gimmicks galore. “It costs zero” will go down in history alongside “If you like your health plan you can keep it” as one of the biggest whoppers Joe Biden has ever told. 

 

I’ll finish with this: Why are you punishing working families by making inflation worse? Prices have grown faster than paychecks almost every month since President Biden took office. It’s killing families, forcing them to effectively pay a second utility, cell phone or cable bill a month. Inflation is a tax, and you’re raising it. 

 

My request today: stop this economic sabotage. Our nation can’t take much more. I yield back.

CLICK HERE to watch Rep. Brady deliver his remarks.

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READ: Third Quarter GDP: Awful Report is More Proof that Biden is Bungling the Recovery