WASHINGTON, D.C.— House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) joined Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends this morning ahead of the House’s vote this week on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and announced we will whip the bill on Monday night.
On the House’s plans to vote on the bill this week:
“This is a really exciting week for the House and for the country. We passed our bill out of committee on Thursday, so Chairman Kevin Brady in the Ways and Means Committee did a great job of bringing a bill out of committee that will cut taxes in every different income sector. What we’re doing is focusing on getting the economy moving again, making our country competitive. Look, we’ve seen so many jobs, tens of thousands of jobs leave America because we have the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world. We’re reducing all those taxes so that we can bring those jobs back and rebuild our middle-class.”
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“The main things that we’ve been working with President Trump on is a tax cut plan that actually helps rebuild our middle-class, bring jobs back, make us competitive – all of the things that we did in our House bill, and frankly a lot of those components are in the Senate bill as well. They’ve got a few differences, but in the end, I think what you’re going to see is the House pass a bill, we’re going to whip that bill Monday night so we’ll know where all of our House Republicans are, and work to make sure that we bring everybody on board so that we can pass the bill hopefully by the end of the week and then let the Senate go do their job. They’ve got to produce a bill as well, and if there are differences, which I’m sure there are, we’re going to work those out. But again, you’ve got to make sure that the middle-class is going to benefit dramatically from this tax cut, which our bill does, and that we make our country competitive again to bring those tens of thousands of good, high-paying jobs back. And oh, by the way, we simplify the code so much in our bill that over 90% of Americans can actually do their taxes on a postcard. Just think about how simple that’s going to be for most families in this country.”
On working with President Trump to pass the bill:
“President Trump has been incredibly helpful from the very beginning, and look, he is passionate about getting the economy moving again and rebuilding the middle-class, really pushing those tax cuts to middle and lower income families and that’s what we did in our bill working closely with the White House. So I think you’ll see the President very engaged and he understands that the best thing we can do to get our economy moving again is to pass this tax cut and jobs bill. So he’s been really involved in it because he knows how it’s going to help the economy. It’s going to create jobs and it’s going to help all those families who have been struggling for the last eight years who want to see wage growth; that’s going to happen under our bill.”
On why Democrats should stop playing politics and support a tax cut for hardworking Americans:
“You know Democrats should vote for this bill because it cuts taxes across the board. It helps rebuild the middle-class. Unfortunately, you see them opposing these tax cuts because really, all they’re for is for more taxes and growing the federal government, but it’s crushed our economy. Let’s go a different route, let’s actually create jobs.”
On the wide support the bill has across our conference:
“We’ve been working really well with them, and I talk to Mark Meadows on a regular basis, and most of the members of the Freedom Caucus that we talk to, they are really supportive of this bill, as are most members of our conference. Obviously there’s going to be some folks we’re going to talk to this week that aren’t yet there but are going to get there.”
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