A shouting match broke out Thursday night in a Senate committee considering how to move forward on a tax reform proposal, with one Republican yelling that a Democrat’s arguments were ‘bullcrap.’
Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, a Utah GOPer, sparred with Democrat Sherrod Brown of Ohio over whether the Republican Senate plan, similar to one passed Thuesday in the House, would give middle-class earners a tax cut.
The current draft slashes federal income taxes for Americans earning less than $75,000 per year but leaves it for Congress to renew the changes instead of making them permanent.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, blew up at Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown on Thursday night as the two sparred over whether a Republican tax cut plan is a giveaway to the rich
Brown argued that companies getting tax relief won’t pass it on to consumers in the form of jobs and wage hikes – an argument Hatch called ‘bullcrap’ in an open hearing
Meanwhile, the bill reduces corporate rates significantly, to 20 per cent – something Republicans argue will ultimately benefit workers in the form of bigger paychecks.
Brown, a liberal’s liberal who grew up on a farm but matriculated to Yale University, wasn’t buying it.
‘This tax cut really is not for the middle class. It’s for the rich. And that whole thing about higher wages? Well, it’s a good selling point but we know companies don’t just give away higher wages,’ he boomed.
‘Corporations are sitting on a lot of money now,’ Brown said. ‘They’re sitting on a lot of profits now. I don’t see wages going up. So just spare us the bank-shot. Spare us the sarcasm and the satire.’
The contentious tax hearing led Hatch to boom: ‘I come from the lower middle class originally. We didn’t have anything. So don’t spew that stuff on me. I get a little tired of that crap!’
Hatch, who grew up near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and worked with his father in steel mills there, jumped in, saying: ‘I come from the poor people. And I’ve been here working my whole stinking career for people who don’t have a chance.’
‘And I really resent anybody saying I’m just doing this for the rich. Give me a break! I think you guys overplay that all the time, and it gets old. And frankly you ought to quit it.’
Brown countered that ‘the public believes’ his argument, and that ‘the richest people in the country [are] getting richer and richer and richer.’
That’s when the usually reserved Hatch lost it.
‘Listen: I’ve honored you by allowing you to spout off here. But what you said was not right! That’s all I’m saying,’ he shouted.
‘Now I come from the lower middle class originally. We didn’t have anything. So don’t spew that stuff on me. I get a little tired of that crap!’
‘This bullcrap that you guys throw out here really gets old after a while. … It takes a lot to get me worked up like this,’ he said.
The two senators tweeted different accounts of the exchange on Friday.
‘I grew up in a shack with a Meadow Gold Dairy sign for a wall. I worked as a janitor to pay for law school. I believe in opportunity because I’ve lived it,’ Hatch wrote.
‘And that’s what we’re going to deliver with #TaxReform.’
Hatch and Brown tweeted different takes on their squabble after news of their clash spread
Brown stuck to his contention that easing tax burdens on companies won’t help middle-class Americans.
‘Instead of cutting taxes on corporations that send jobs overseas and pretending it will somehow end up in the pockets of workers, let’s cut out the middle man and give a direct tax cut to the middle class,’ he tweeted.
The Senate Finance Committee approved the tax relief bill along party lines. Republicans aim to hold a full Senate vote on the plan after their Thanksgiving recess.