Promoting Global Competitiveness for American Workers and Businesses
2025-12-03
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Source: Congress.gov
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Call the committee to order. I first want to thank our witnesses for taking time out of their busy schedules to come before this committee. I didn't realize you all left, which you do every day, to come here. So I hope it's as pleasant as we think it should be. But again, I will just defer. We just came out of Thanksgiving, which is a great, great holiday and doesn't She brings family together, and then we're going into Christmas, which is a great holiday also. So if we can keep that in mind, this is a great month, Thanksgiving to Christmas, and then we'll go into a new year and hope that it gets even better than the last year was. So thank you all for being here. We really look forward to your testimony. In 2017, President Trump, Congress, and specifically Republican members of Ways and Means Committee passed the greatest tax reform seen in decades. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act made this nation the best place in the world to build, to invest in, and to create jobs. we ended the unstoppable trend of American companies shipping their money, jobs, and headquarters to foreign countries. In fact, and Mr. Hearn is very much aware, that we had zero inversions after Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Now, eight years later, as these pro-growth, pro-American tax policies were set to expire, ways and means Republicans came together to strengthen and make permanent our work in 2017. It took some late nights and countless hours of work, but on July 4th, 2025, President Trump signed his signature Working Families Tax Cuts Act into line. This new bill grew Americans' tax base, promoted long-term domestic investment, and secured good jobs for Americans far into the future. Now, ultimately, the Working Families Tax Cuts protects and creates over 7 million American jobs. While Republicans were working to strengthen our international tax policy, Democrats worked to undermine American businesses and taxpayers by entering us into pillar number Pillar one and pillar two of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, also known as OECD. We are just fascinated with acronyms.
I wish we could speak in real language. They say Army and manuals are written at a sixth grade level, and that's so people can actually understand them. There's an old saying, if you can't convince them, confuse them. I am absolutely astounded by the alphabet soup that we have to look at every time we look at something, and then codes that go with it. We're trying to stay away from that as much as we can. Now, according to analysis by the Joint Committee on Taxation, the United States was slated to lose over $120 billion in tax revenue over 10 years under the global minimum tax. President Biden and Secretary Yellen bypassed Congress on these negotiations because they knew just how bad these deals would diminish the economic security of our country. Now, thankfully, on his first day in office, President Trump immediately reversed these American last policies. Over the last year, Secretary Besant and Treasury Department have worked tirelessly to secure a strong international tax deal for the American taxpayer. I thank President Trump, Secretary Besant, and the administration for their great work. And I urge our European countries to come to the table. We will not go quietly into that dark night. We will work endlessly to provide a fair playing field for our country. It is, after all, America first.
I now yield to Ranking Member Thompson for his opening statement. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank all of the witnesses for being here and a very special welcome to Chairman Brady. It's always great to have a former committee member come back. And I've got to say, you look relaxed, you look younger, and you look wealthier. You know, if our Republican colleagues really wanted to seriously discuss global competitiveness, then we'd be talking about the elephant in the room.
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