Press Releases

Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA), who serves on the House Committee on Ways and Means and as the Senior Democrat on Congress’ Joint Economic Committee, voted against legislation offered by Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee that would cut taxes for the wealthy while doing little for regular people, and even raising taxes for many working Americans.

Beyer said:

“Democrats relentlessly fought for over 17 hours to protect Americans’ health care, lower costs, and support working people, while Republicans just as relentlessly fought to protect the wealthy.

“At every turn, Republicans voted down amendments designed to prevent the majority of benefits of their tax bill from flowing to rich people. They defeated amendments to close the carried interest loophole, and to resume pre-Trump tax rates for the highest income bracket. They voted to protect an expansion of the estate tax, a tax cut that only benefits a small number of estates worth over $25 million, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars. Republicans even rejected an amendment that would simply have blocked their tax cuts from benefitting billionaires.

“At the same time, Republicans rejected Democratic amendments to protect Americans’ health care. As new, nonpartisan estimates show nearly 14 millions at risk of losing coverage from this legislation, Republicans voted against amendments to prevent these life-threatening cuts. They also rejected our amendments to stop Trump’s trade war and stop attacks on American energy, effectively voting to sustain higher prices, destroy the American clean energy industry, and raise everyone’s electric bill in the process.

“The biggest surprise of the markup came when JCT distribution tables, delayed by Republicans’ massive last-minute changes to the bill, revealed that tens of millions of working Americans will actually see a tax increase the year Trump leaves office under Republicans’ bill. This is largely because they made provisions like addressing taxes on tips and overtime pay temporary, as opposed to the cuts for the richest 1%, which they made permanent. The unavoidable truth is that Republicans’ core priority with this legislation was to benefit the wealthy at the expense of everyone else, and that is exactly what their bill does.”

Beyer spoke in opposition to the bill at the outset of the markup, and offered amendments to bar people who earn over $100 million per year from benefitting from Republican tax cuts, and to close the carried interest loophole, both of which were defeated with all Republicans voting against. At the end of the 17-hour markup, Republicans advanced the bill on a party-line vote.

Distribution tables produced after the beginning of the marathon markup session by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), Congress’ designated scorekeeper on taxation and spending, showed that the most benefits of Republicans’ tax bill would flow to the wealthiest people in the country, while the lowest quintile of the population would see a tax increase beginning in 2029.