WASHINGTON, DC –U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) delivered remarks on the floor of the U.S. Senate this afternoon to speak out against President Trump and Congressional Republicans’ unfair and disastrous tax proposal, which will raise taxes for millions of middle-class Americans. The tax plan is set to be voted on as soon as tonight in the Senate.

“The tax plan that seems to be moving to the floor today, it will not help restore that American bargain…it won't help American workers. It will actually make things worse over the long term. We can debate philosophies about tax codes all we want, but we cannot debate facts. And the fact of the matter is this plan is not pro-growth. It's anti-middle class. It is not pro-worker. It is an even more severe violation of that bargain between American workers and this nation that created our modern economy. It's an affront to the idea of hard work earning a living wage in America.  This plan is not investing in the success of American workers. It's not a plan to give hard workers a break or boost. It isn't going to make our economy more fair. The bill is poorly designed and devised by the president of the United States and by Republicans in Congress to give a tax cut to those who need it least on the backs of those Americans who need it and deserve it most,” Booker said during his remarks.

Video of Booker’s remarks are available here.

Below is a rush transcript of Senator Booker’s remarks:

Thank you very much, Mr. President. If you look at the United States of America today compared to, say, when my dad grew up, we see very disturbing trends in our economy. In fact, we do not have the same economy, the same bargain that we had in my parents' generation that we have right now.

You see, even if you were someone that had a minimum-wage job back in the 1950's and 1960's -- or the 1960's, if you worked that -- that minimum-wage job, you were taking over $20. The bargain was in the United States of America, if you were willing to work hard, if you were willing to sweat and struggle and sacrifice, you could make ends meet. You could make it work.

What we've seen and disturbingly over the last few decades is that economy twist and contort. We see massive disparities in income come about in our nation with the wealthy getting wealthier and the wealthy doing better and better, compounding, doubling down on their privilege. But you see the middle class shrinking in the united states of America and the poverty trap where people are playing by the rules, where people are working hard, they've seen their wages stag -- stagnate and everything going up. Prescription drugs, cost of food, cost of child care, the cost of college. The bargain in our country is not working now, and we need to do something to change this.

At a time that American families are feeling the burn and the challenge of high taxes, low income, high costs, we could be targeting middle-class Americans. We could be targeting low-income earners in a bipartisan tax bill that would not only help those who are struggling in America but when you give a break, a tax break to those folks, that money gets reinvested in our economy because people spend that money. And you literally have a turbo charge, a boost to our overall economy.

But that's not what we're seeing right now. We are on the verge tonight as the republicans scramble for their votes, we're on the verge tonight of doing something completely counter to what evidence, facts, and logic would tell you to do if you were going to devise a tax plan to truly help the middle class, to truly help working Americans, to truly help those struggling wondering why they're not doing as well as their parents do.

Understand this, if you are a baby boomer in America, 90% of baby boomers in America, by the time they were 30 were doing better than their parents economically. Well, that has now been cut in half in the United States of America. If you're a millennial born in the 1980's, it's now half of that rate are doing better than their parents because of the challenges I’m describing, because of the economic hardship, because the bargain isn't working. Everything is going up but wages are stagnant. We know factually for the past 40 years while workers' wages have failed to rise alongside increased productivity, workers are getting more and more productive, but for 40 years now workers' wages have failed to rise alongside of that increase in productivity. What we have seen is that corporations, their profits have reached a 60-year high. The facts in our country are disturbing when we see indices of social mobility -- the ability of someone born poor to make it out of poverty. We see other nations, from Canada to England, doing better and increasing social mobility better than we are. We see other countries out-American-ing us, taking the idea of the American dream that every generation should do better than the one before and showing more progress toward that dream than we are. Social mobility, integral to our country, disappearing. Wages stagnating. Corporate profits, all-time high. Costs skyrocketing. Everyone here knows it.

I live in the central ward of Newark, New Jersey. I see it in the faces of families in grocery stores, working full-time jobs, sometimes dual earners finding it hard to make their money stretch to meet their needs, finding more month at the end of their money, than money tend of their month. Families sitting at kitchen tables finding it hard to balance their budgets, find trying to figure out how they're going to go to college.

The bargain is not working and we should be working in this body to figure out way to empower the overall economy and empower middle-class workers. We're not doing enough to help American workers' incomes grow. We're not doing now make the bargain work. We're not doing enough.

But I’ll tell you this. The tax plan that seems to be moving to the floor today, it will not help restore that American bargain. It will not help restate the American progress. It will not get us back to those days. And it won't help American workers. It will actually make things worse over the long term.

We can debate philosophies about tax codes all we want, but we cannot debate facts. And the fact of the matter is the, this plan is not pro-growth. It's anti-middle class. It is not pro-worker. It is an even more severe violation of that bargain between American workers and this nation that created the -- our modern economy. It's an affront to the idea of hard work earning a living wage in America. This plan is not investing in the success of American workers. It's not a plan to give hard workers a break or boost. It isn't going to make our economy more favor fair. The bill is poorly designed and devised by the president of the United States and by republicans in congress to give a tax cut to those who need it least on the backs of those Americans who need it and deserve it most.

Now again, this is not partisan rhetoric. A recent nonpartisan report from the nonpartisan joint committee on taxation found that, on average, Americans earning less than $75,000 will face a tax increase over the next ten years under this plan. And, remember, adding insult to that injury, the corporate tax provisions of this plan are permanent but the individual tax provisions are not. In other words, this plan actively targets the folks who are struggling the most. It targets them with a tax increase and a sunsetting of the provisions that were intended to help them. Meanwhile, on the other hand, the biggest corporations and the wealthiest individuals will receive a massive tax cut, and they'll receive that tax cut -- this is not free money. This is borrowed money, $1.5 trillion added to our deficit, borrowed money that we will have to pay for over the long term. It is a massive giveaway to the wealthiest of people in our country and corporations, all under the theory that somehow this is going to benefit the average American worker, blowing up the deficit and pumping more money to the wealthiest in our country at a time that wealth disparities are already greater than they've been in a century.

Now some of my colleagues are going to argue that this bill, giving $1 trillion to corporations, will somehow result in a trickling down of things like raises for workers and somehow creating new jobs. But, to me, this is a fantasy. I'm a believer that you look at facts, you look at history, and we don't have to look that far. This fantasy has been disproven, this idea of giving it to the wealthiest to show trickle down, of giving it to corporations, somehow trickling down to job creation, this has been disproven time and time again by economic data, historical data, by the words of corporate leaders themselves.

Listen to the facts. A new survey found that the majority of small business owners -- these are the people that are the backbone of our economy and creating jobs. They open the plan. Six in ten think the benefits are going to wealthy corporations the most. Well, that's not just them thinking that. That is actually the facts of this plan. Take the word much leading economists, the University of Chicago’s I.G.M. forum, a collection of many of the top economists from this country, from a range and spectrum of political philosophies. They've recently surveyed these economists asking, and I quote -- they asked, “if we pass a bill similar to the one being considered by congress, will the U.S. GDP substantially be higher for the decade from now than it is currently under the status quo? Will this bill help our economy grow?” Of the 42 respondents, 41 said, no, it will not. There's only one dissenter. There are some of the world's -- these are some of the world's preeminent economists. We didn't invite them to the United States Senate to hear their opinions. We didn't have hearings. We didn't have an open process where we brought in the best economic minds from both sides of the political aisle, from both sides of the political spectrum. We did not have a process that brought in the best and the brightest to inform the investments we're making, $1.5 trillion. And what they're saying now is this will not do what republican leaders will say it will do.

Senate republicans wrote a budget to free up $1.5 trillion. That's what this will do to our deficit. To create these tax cuts, they could distribute this -- these resources any way they see fit and somehow they've managed to create a tax bill, astonishingly a tax bill that will increase taxes on low-income and middle-income people, especially in states like new jersey, by getting rid of the state and local taxes provision, this is why republican congress "people" in my state are -- why Republican congress people in my state are against this. This doubles down on stated like mine. They have created a bill that small businesses don't like because they know that the benefits are largely going to the wealthiest and the biggest corporations and the kicker is that economists say that it won't even spur economic growth.

And then when major corporations see their earnings go higher or get an influx of capital, that's going to happen? It's far more like think that their executives and shareholders, not their frontline workers, will benefit I don't take my word for it. Look at what's happened over the last decade. We have seen record corporate profits and what is happening with those profits? 80%, 90% of those profits are not being invested in hiring more people or increasing pay. The overwhelming majority of profits are going to paying dividends and doing stock buybacks. That's the fact of what happens when corporations are getting more resources.

And don't take my word for it. Look at what corporate leaders themselves are saying. They've made it clear time and time again that increases in profits will not trickle down to workers. Major American companies have said, point-blank, that they will not use their huge tax windfalls to raise wages for workers. Companies from cisco to Pfizer to Coca-Cola, companies like van guard have said that their tax breaks will go to dividends for shareholders, not for wages for workers. According to Bloomberg, one C.E.O. said on an earnings call in reference to the tax plan, and I quote, “we'll be able to get much more aggressive on the share buyback.” That's where corporate profits have been going for a decade or more, creating more wealth for the wealthiest and not for the average American worker who has seen decade after decade of stagnant wages.

This shouldn't be surprising. Corporate profits -- record high right now -- and we see wages at a record low. That is a fact. And to double down on what we know is not factual, that we know is not happening now, is just a fantasy. Corporations are making more money today than they have in over 80 years, but the average worker's wages are at their lowest point in six being -- in six decades, but this plan gives more relief to corporations and less to middle-class workers and low-income workers.

We could have gotten rid of carried interest, something even the president of the United States talked about on the campaign trail and targeted the child tax credit or the earned income tax credit, but that is not what this plan does. This tax plan is a fundamental and costly misdiagnose of the problems facing American workers across the country, and the right way to go about addressing them is not being done.

So here's an idea. Instead of giving massive tax breaks to corporations and hoping it somehow gets to workers, let's just give the money directly to workers by giving the lion's share of this to middle-class and low-wage earnings. We don't need some fancy system of hoping things will trickle down. Let's cut out the corporate middle man. That's a bill i would support. We should have been discussing here in a bipartisan meeting in hearings, discussing how we can empower American workers and the middle class because the problem with the economy today is not that the rich are not getting richer. It is that middle-class workers are not seeing their wages grow. We should be discussing what we can do to break up this culture amongst financial institutions and across the country that prioritize short-term returns over long-term worker investments, that's making C.E.O. after C.E.O. focus on stock buybacks that manipulate their stock prices up and increase their incentive pay but are doing more for the corporation's long-term strength or the workers on the frontlines doing the work and earning the profits.

Right now despite profits, investing in the long-term success of their employees through things like pay raises, pathways to the promotion, innovation that has become the exception in American society and not the rule. We have a problem and this tax bill doesn't address it. It will make it worse.

There is no evidence to suggest that the Senate tax plan, which hands 80% of that $1.5 trillion borrowed from the Chinese and other countries that are controlling -- that are owning our treasury bonds, that $1.5 trillion, 80% of it, it's going to corporations and business owners and the top .1% of wealthiest estates. This is insanity. This is folly. This is fiction being foisted upon the American people. Too many employers are failing to hold up their end of the bargain when this comes to fair wages, safe workplaces, workforce investments. And now republicans in congress want to reward them with $1 trillion and more.

This is bad policy. This is unfair. This is bad faith. This is going to worsen the erosion of the American dream and the American bargain that people who play by the rules, who work hard, who sacrifice for their families can get ahead. It's not going to stop the trend of stagnating wages. It's not going to stop the trends of everything going up but our salaries. It's not going to change -- be the change that we need. Trickle-down economics, no matter how it's disguised, doesn't work, and republicans' attempts to camouflage it as tax reform is offensive and won't work for American workers.

We've proven that we're a country and a society that can create wealth. We've got that covered. We've proven. What we haven't proven and what this tax bill fails to do is to show that we can be a society that can create great wealth and great opportunity for all. We've gotten off the tracks from where we've been generations before. We've got to get this train back moving in a direction that takes all of its cars, all of the American people to the Promised Land that this country needs to be, must be, and was designed to be. This is the challenge before us right now, to stop a tax bill that will make our problems and the disturbing trends worse, and design one that's directly targeting middle-class Americans, working-class Americans with enlightened policy that will help our nation be one that fulfills its promise and its dream. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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