WASHINGTON, D.C.— House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) joined Fox News Channel’s Special Report with Bret Baier this evening to discuss tomorrow’s vote on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
On tomorrow’s vote to pass historic tax reform:
“I feel good about where we are. I think we’re going to see real a strong vote tomorrow because our Members are focused on passing this bill because it cuts taxes, it’ll get our economy moving again, [and] it creates jobs. President Trump has been working incredibly close with us to get this done because he wants it on his desk by the end of the year so we can see that economic growth.”
On putting more money in the pockets of families:
“First, what’s fiscally conservative is that you are putting more money back in the pockets of families. I feel more confident with what they will do with it than Washington. If you look, they’re still going to be paying payroll taxes, social security taxes. on the income tax side on the corporate tax side it’s time for relief. When you look at the last eight years, families haven’t seen economic growth, they haven’t seen their wages increased on average. This helps put an infusion of cash, putting, on average, about $1,200 back in the pockets of families.
“On the corporate side, what this is going to do is truly grow the economy and make America competitive again. We are sick and tired of seeing these big companies move jobs overseas because it’s better to do business in Ireland or Canada. We have lost too many jobs. Our bill lets us bring those jobs back, and those are good middle-class jobs that we’ve lost. Let’s bring them back and rebuild our middle class. That’s the kind of economic growth that we’ve been needing for a long time. This bill does that.”
On closing special interest loopholes:
“In our bill, we do close a number of special interest loopholes. In fact, that’s one of the reasons we are able to lower rates across the board. It’s one of the reasons were able to get a corporate rate that’s going to be the envy of the world, because we close a lot of those loopholes. There is a lot of time to have more discussions about other things to include in this bill, but there’s some really important reforms being made. What we’re doing on simplifying the code, under our bill, over 90% of Americans will be able to do their taxes on a postcard. That’s even more money in their pockets if they are paying someone else to do their taxes.”
On working with the Senate to pass the bill in both chambers:
“We want more simplification, we want to reduce the brackets, and we do that in our bill. Look, I’m encouraging the Senate to go and pass a bill. I think it’s important that they’re moving through right now in committee and ultimately getting on the Senate floor after Thanksgiving. Hopefully, they get their bill out not long after Thanksgiving so that we can actually go to a conference committee and resolve the differences between the House and Senate and get a bill on President Trump’s desk by the end of this year that lowers taxes and creates jobs and gets our economy moving.”
On Democrats opposing tax cuts for the middle-class:
“The bottom line is this bill cuts taxes across the board and the middle-class is getting the biggest bulk of those tax cuts. Why Democrats would be opposed to tax relief for hardworking families is beside me. They’re going to have to answer for that. But if you look at the biggest winners here in this bill are hardworking families across America who have been wanting this kind of tax relief for a long time, and they want our country to be competitive. They know everybody has seen jobs move overseas and they know why: we have the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world. We finally do something about that so we can bring those good, high-paying jobs back to our country.”
On the individual mandate:
“We have passed bills to repeal the individual mandate in a number of different ways, whether it was full repeal, repeal and replace – the Houses has proven that we can pass that. The Senate was not able to pass the repeal and replace bill a few months ago. I’m hopeful they could put a vote up on the Senate floor that gets that done, and if they do, that’s definitely going to be one of the items we look at in conference committee. So, there are a lot of things being looked at in conference committee, and if it can make the bill even better, let’s go do it.”
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