At Hearing, Warren Sounds Alarm for Potential Impact of More Trump Tax Cuts for Billionaires, Paid for by American Families

November 20, 2024

At Hearing, Warren Sounds Alarm for Potential Impact of More Trump Tax Cuts for Billionaires, Paid for by American Families

Warren: "Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans have made perfectly clear that they are planning another huge tax giveaway to billionaires and billionaire corporations."

Opening Remarks (YouTube) | Hearing Livestream

Washington, D.C. - At a hearing of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on Economic Policy, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) delivered opening remarks focused on the impact of potential tax policies in a Republican-controlled Congress. Senator Warren is chair of the Economic Policy subcommittee and will become the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee in the next Congress.

Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on Economic Policy
Hearing on the Tax Policy in 2025, Focusing on Implications for the American Economy.
November 20, 2024
As Delivered

Senator Elizabeth Warren: This hearing will come to order.

Good afternoon. I want to thank Ranking Member Kennedy, our other colleagues, and our witnesses for joining us for today's hearing.

In a little over six weeks, a new, Republican-controlled Congress will be sworn in. And exactly two months from today, Donald Trump will be sworn in as president again.

One of the first policy issues that the new Congress will face is taxes, which is the topic for today's hearing: "Tax Policy in 2025: Implications for the U.S. Economy and American Workers." Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans have made perfectly clear that they are planning another huge tax giveaway to billionaires and billionaire corporations. Donald Trump said it out loud on the campaign trail: big tax cuts will be a payoff for his "rich as hell donors."

This isn't our first time around on tax giveaways to the wealthy. In 2017, Donald Trump had only one major legislative achievement: the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. This $2 trillion tax scam gave away trillions in tax cuts to billionaires and billionaire corporations. The law literally gave away money that otherwise would have come into to keep our country running.

The impact was huge. That Trump tax cut for billionaires and billionaire corporations alone would have been big enough to build 3 million new homes and lower rents by 10% nationwide, to cut child care costs for most families to $10 a day, and invest in paid leave for all American workers. All of those. Instead, the money went to billionaires and billionaire corporations.

In fact, the Trump tax cut for billionaires was so gigantic that Republicans used a bunch of accounting gimmicks to try to hide the full cost, but those gimmicks-and some of those tax cuts as a result will expire at the end of 2025.

This is the reason that Republicans are pushing for a new tax law. Without a change in the tax laws, many of those Trump giveaways to billionaires and billionaire corporations will simply disappear. So Trump and his allies are riding to the rescue. According to an estimate from the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation, Republican plans to extend their tax giveaways to the rich will cost a whopping $4.5 trillion - and that's before Trump added in a few trillion more in extra goodies. $4.5 trillion-and counting. The number is huge, but because tax cuts for rich people are actually unpopular in this country, Republicans hope to do this very quietly so that no one but their billionaire friends will notice what's going on.

This will be a challenge. The last time that Trump and the Congressional Republicans cut taxes, Americans did notice. They noticed, and they hated Trump's billionaire tax cuts. His billionaire tax cuts were more unpopular than any tax reform bill since Ronald Reagan. Trump's billionaire tax cuts were even more unpopular than the tax increases under Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. When Trump's billionaire tax cuts passed, his approval rating dropped like a rock.

The reason Trump's billionaire tax cuts is so unpopular is that voters want billionaires and big businesses to pay their fair share toward making our country run. Republicans thought they could cover up their giveaways to billionaires and billionaire corporations by adding a few dollars in tax cuts to working families. But that is the wrong approach. Tax cuts for working families are a good idea, but tax cuts for working people are not tied to tax cuts for billionaires. We can have one without the other. We should say it loud and clear: billionaires don't need handouts from the federal government-period.

Which brings us back to the tax fight barreling towards us. President-elect Trump has proposed making every single 2017 tax cut for the wealthy permanent. In fact, he plans to go further by cutting the corporate tax rate even more, so that giant corporations making record profits off struggling Americans can shovel even more cash to their rich executives and shareholders.

Make no mistake, hardworking Americans will foot the bill for tax cuts for Trump's wealthy donors. A recent analysis of President-elect Trump's tax proposals by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that the top 1 percent would get an average tax cut of over $36,000, while the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers would see a tax increase.

Both Project 2025 and Trump himself have laid out Republican plans to pay for their next tax giveaway to billionaires. They are planning for higher taxes on everyday items that families buy-like groceries, and gas, and clothing, and so on. They also plan to pay for the tax cuts for billionaires by cutting programs like Social Security and Head Start. They also plan to cut investments that grow our economy and support good jobs, like roads, and bridges, and medical research.

Those aren't tax changes that will help working families. Americans across the country, of course, are from every political party, and they are demanding a tax code that works for them. People want Congress to raise taxes on giant corporations that are raking in record profits. People want Congress to close the loopholes that let billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk pay zero in taxes. And people want Congress to fully fund the IRS so that it has the resources to catch wealthy tax cheats and make them pay what they owe.

The tax fight is starting now, and every person in the United States- every person in the Senate needs to show the American people what side we stand on. Will we sign our names to more giveaways to President-elect Trump's billionaire buddies, or will we fight for tax fairness for the American people?

So, I appreciate our panelists joining us today to share their expertise. The upcoming tax decisions are critically important to the financial security of working people, and we appreciate your being with us to highlight the impact of those decisions.

So I'm going to introduce the witnesses we have today, and then we'll go to our witness statements.

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