Blue Dog Leadership Responds to the House Republican Tax Reform 2.0 Framework

Today, the co-chairs of the fiscally-responsible, Democratic Blue Dog Coalition—Reps. Jim Costa (D-CA), Henry Cuellar (D-TX), and Daniel Lipinski (D-IL)—released the following statement in response the release of Rep. Kevin Brady’s (R-TX) listening session framework, “Tax Reform 2.0”:

“Under a Republican-led Congress and White House, we’ve seen the national debt surpass $21 trillion for the first time in U.S. history and the largest budget deficits in years. This tax plan continues the disturbing, unsustainable trend of the government spending more money than it receives in revenue, which jeopardizes our country’s economy, undermines our promise to future generations, and harms our national security.  But contrary to what some would say, this isn’t a spending problem, it’s a budgeting problem—where we are not matching our spending and revenue to avoid further deficits.

“For a Republican framework, there isn’t anything conservative about ‘Tax Reform 2.0’—particularly because it will pass on an even higher amount of debt to our children and grandchildren than we have ever seen as a nation. It’s simply immoral to do this to our future generations. Republicans know this because they campaigned on it for eight years, starting the day President Obama was sworn into office. So we must ask our Republican colleagues: What happened to the self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives? Where are the fiscal hawks?

“Let’s be honest with the American people: The tax debate did not have to be this way. Since day one, the Blue Dogs have reached across the aisle so that Congress could produce real, bipartisan tax reform. We released our principles on tax reform to provide a roadmap that shows how Republicans and Democrats could come together to produce bipartisan, revenue-neutral tax reform to stimulate economic growth. Those principles revealed that there was some overlap between our priorities. Yet, our calls for an open, bipartisan process fell on deaf ears.

“Republicans and Democrats must put partisan politics aside and address the national debt in a balanced, bipartisan way. As Blue Dogs, we’ll continue to fight for this, because the American people simply deserve better.”

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