Earlier today, Speaker Ryan appeared on CBS This Morning to discuss how tax reform will help bring relief to middle class families. Watch the full interview here and see excerpts below.
CBS This Morning: How are you going to make the case that this is not a tax cut for the wealthy?
Speaker Ryan: “This is about the people, about half of which in this country, are living paycheck to paycheck and giving them a break on their taxes, giving them some tax relief and closing loopholes and carve outs which disproportionately benefit the very high income people, the very well-connected businesses. By plugging those loopholes and lowering rates for everybody, you make it fair and simpler for everybody and we also think it's important for our businesses. Bring the money back from overseas. Make their tax rates competitive with the rest of the world so you have incentive to stay in America and make things in America. That's the focus of our tax reform.”
Speaker Ryan: “Here’s the deal, this is going to be designed to lower tax rates for people in the middle, not people on the high end. So let’s just take this in perspective, you double the standard deduction, that’s that many more people who don't even have to itemize their deduction. You lower people’s tax rates, that means less of their income is being taxed in the first place. You increase the per child tax credit, you get rid of the marriage tax penalty. All of those things benefit everybody in the middle class. . . . If this was a tax increase on middle income taxpayers, we wouldn't be doing this. This is about lowering people's taxes in the middle class, simplifying the tax system and growing this economy."
Speaker Ryan: “There's two things we're going to do here. Number one, when you take away a carve out and a loophole, that broadens the tax base, that means more income is subject to taxation. Guess who disproportionately and mostly benefits from carve outs and loopholes? Wealthy and well-connected. You get rid of those loopholes, you can lower the rates and it's fairer for everybody. Also what we’ve learned is when you lower tax rates, when you help people living paycheck to paycheck, when you put American businesses on a level playing field with foreign competition, you get faster economic growth, you get more jobs, you get more tax revenues, and those two things, get rid of loopholes, faster economic growth, gives us better revenue and more growth so that we don't have a deficit problem.”