2025 Greatest Tax Increase in Modern History; Plus Health Care Control

2025 Greatest Tax Increase in Modern History; Plus Health Care Control

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Mr. President, thank you. You know, President Trump has single-handedly raised taxes more than any president in my lifetime. He has, without any consultation or approval from Congress, imposed billions of dollars in new tariffs.

These are taxes. They’re paid for by the American people. They hurt small business owners who need raw materials that just aren’t available here in the United States.
They cut off crucial export markets for our farmers when other nations inevitably retaliate. And they are sending prices soaring across the board, from big things like cars to everyday essentials like groceries. Trump’s tariffs have already raised retail prices for families by 5 percent.

5 percent. And this year alone, his tariffs are expected to cost American households an average of $1,800. That is staggering.

Still, nearly every single Senate Republican has refused to vote with us to end this chaos. I will say it another way. Republicans are refusing to stop President Trump from raising taxes on working families.

Now, we all saw Republicans move heaven and earth this year to shovel more tax breaks at billionaires. But you know, when it comes to taxes on working families, well, they’re downright eager to force families to pay more every time they go to the supermarket. I’m not going to let this get swept under the rug, especially not when Trump shows us every day that his tariffs are not about any sort of economic strategy or any real emergency.

Trump’s tariff policy is as strategic as a toddler who plays with a light switch. Last week we saw Trump raise taxes on Americans. Why? Because he was mad that Canada ran an ad quoting Ronald Reagan.

That’s about as ridiculous as it gets. My state shares a border with Canada. There are countless families and businesses that span our northern border.

People who have built businesses that rely on strong trade relationships, from farmers who send their crops north, to shops that bring in products, to towns that serve tourists and visitors that come down from our neighbors. And these Washington business owners are all having their livelihoods completely turned upside down on a whim by President Trump. And again, let’s be clear, all Canada did to unleash more blind fury and boneheaded tariffs from President Trump was quote President Ronald Reagan.

Now for all the policies I disagree with, Reagan at least had enough sense to understand that we, the American people, are the ones who pay those tariffs. For my colleagues, these are the words that Donald Trump does not want you to hear. This is what Reagan had to say about tariffs verbatim.

Quote, over the long run, such trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer. And quote, then the worst happens. Markets shrink and collapse.

Businesses and industries shut down. Millions of people lose their jobs. But you know what, if Republicans don’t want to listen to Reagan this time, well then how about they start listening to American families and farmers and small businesses back in their own home states.

Because as someone who has had countless discussions about tariffs with the people that I represent back home, I have no doubt Republicans’ own constituents will tell them firsthand just how painful Trump’s trade war has been for them. I have heard from businesses across my home state of Washington who are getting crushed by Trump’s tariffs. An Asian grocery store that sells goods you simply have to source from abroad.

Green tea. Coffee shops that are getting hit, as Senators talked about, since most of our country can’t grow coffee beans. Clothing stores that tell me they are struggling with higher prices for cotton canvas or zippers or threads or buckles.

And then there are farmers across my state and really across the country that are getting boxed out of key markets by these trade wars Trump is starting left and right for no reason. And there are the jobs at our ports that are threatened as every new chaotic tariff Trump decides to tweet out whittles away at imports and exports alike. And it grinds our really busy bustling ports to an absolute standstill.

And that puts thousands of jobs in jeopardy. Foreign imports are now down by a third at the Port of Seattle and Tacoma. A third.
The reality of Trump’s tariffs is painfully obvious to families and business owners who are bearing the brunt of this ham-fisted trade war. You can’t just make it in America when the it in question is fruits and vegetables we can’t grow at scale here in the United States. You can’t just make it in America when even making something here requires parts and raw materials from across the globe.

There are just higher prices for working families, tighter margins for our struggling businesses, and even more worry for our families and our businesses who are being pushed to the edge. Families are feeling those price hikes every single day. Small businesses in my state and across the country are facing very difficult decisions right now and trying to decide whether they can even keep their doors open right now.

People across America, across party lines, across economic backgrounds, and across nearly every divide imaginable are now speaking out. The time has come now for Republicans to actually listen. The time has come to hold President Trump accountable for raising prices on families across the board.

The time has come to end President Trump’s new taxes on everything. And the time has come for Congress, us, to start asserting our authority on tariffs instead of ceding every single part of our jobs to a president who is joking he is the Speaker of the House. Is he going to start calling himself a majority leader too? Mr. President, I urge all of my colleagues to join me in voting for this resolution so we can start rolling back Trump’s taxes on Americans and take some pressure off our families and small businesses in the states that we are all here to represent.

Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

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Is it right that those making under $184,500, their effective payroll tax rate is roughly 12.4%? That’s right.

The statutory rate is 6.2%, but consensus view is that the employee pays, basically the employer cost is passed on to the employee, and so the employee basically faces a rate of 12.4%. For anybody earning under $144,500, what is the effective payroll tax for someone making a million dollars a year? So they would pay the 12.4% on that first $185,000 roughly, and then would not pay additional tax on the unlabor income above that amount. And so that math would work out to about 2.2%. Okay, so 12.4% for someone under $184,500. A millionaire would be about 2.2%. What if you’re a billionaire, like Trump or Musk, your Social Security tax would be effectively, on my understanding? Very, very much smaller.

0.0002? Yes. That just doesn’t make sense to me. And when the richest people in the country have the smallest effective tax rate, that does not seem to me like a very fair system, especially when we are now six years away from retired workers facing this 24% cut in their Social Security benefits.

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Which of your companies own or control a health insurance division? Raise your hand. Please keep your hand up if you also employ health care providers or own clinics, specialty pharmacies, or any other kind of medical practice or pharmacy. Please keep your hand up if you also own or control a pharmacy benefit manager.

And please keep your hand up if you lead a publicly traded company at which you have a legal responsibility to maximize shareholder value. So we’ve established on the record that the largest health insurance companies are not just insurers. They are also medical providers and pharmacies, diagnosing and deciding treatment for patients.

They are also PBMs, another form of middlemen managing drug benefits. They are increasingly controlling every aspect of our health care system.