Washington, D.C. - Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor on how Donald Trump and Senate Republicans are prioritizing tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy and corporations and turning their backs on workers and the middle class. Below are Senator Schumer's remarks, which can also be viewed here:

Today, President-elect Donald Trump comes to the Capitol to meet with Senate Republicans. We expect they will talk about their first order of business when they assume full control of government.

And what is the Republicans' first order of business going to be?

Will it be helping working people, as Donald Trump promised on the campaign trail?

Will it be increasing paychecks, or strengthening workers' rights, or making health care more affordable?

Will it be investing more in American manufacturing jobs, like Democrats did three years ago?

No, no, and again, no.

Donald Trump and Republicans promised to fight for working Americans, but their actions already tell a different story. Before even entering office, Donald Trump is working with Republicans to give very wealthy people and mega-corporations another round of trillion-dollar tax cuts.

At the same time that Americans are struggling with inadequate health care and the inability to buy a home, these Republicans are talking about helping the mega-corporations and wealthy people get tax cuts. And many of them are saying, let's cut Social Security, let's cut Medicare, let's cut health care, let's cut the ability of first-time homeowners to buy a home and pay for it.

So, instead of working in a bipartisan way to put the needs of working Americans first, Republicans are getting ready to use the reconciliation process to reward the richest Americans and give more tax breaks to America's biggest corporations.

It's obscene enough that Republicans want to make tax cuts for the ultra-rich their first agenda item - but it gets worse when you remember they already cut taxes for those same people just a few years ago, and we all saw what a disaster it was.

The last time Donald Trump and Republicans cut taxes for the rich, they claimed it would trickle down to the working people, to the middle class. It most certainly did not. Republicans promised the average household would see $4,000 extra per year, but in fact real median wages grew less than half of a half of a percent faster in the two years following these tax cuts.

Executive pay and bonuses, meanwhile, soared to record highs.

Stock buybacks, which only reward shareholders, hit a record in 2018.

After the Trump tax cuts went into effect, the highest income earners in America paid less, effectively, in taxes than the working class, for the first time ever. Imagine that: the highest income earners paid less, effectively, in taxes than the working class for the first time ever after the first Trump tax cuts. And Republicans want to repeat that performance?

According to one study by economists at the University of California, the richest 400 families paid a lower rate than the bottom half of U.S. households in 2018.

There is nothing - nothing - pro-worker about cutting taxes for the wealthiest people in America.

But that is precisely what Republicans are preparing to do, as one of their first orders of business. They're not debating whether they should do it, just what's the best way to do it, one bill, two bills. Choose your poison!

We already see a clear difference between the way Republicans are preparing to govern and how Democrats governed when we had the majority.

We put bipartisanship first, we never made party-line votes the only part of our main agenda, as Republicans seem prepared to do.

Let's not forget: in the first year of Democrats' majority, one of our signature bills was a bipartisan effort to rebuild America's roads and bridges and highways, to put people to work, and fix our infrastructure. That is putting workers first.

In 2022, Democrats led a bipartisan effort to bring manufacturing back to our shores, to make America the world leader in microchip production once again, to plant the seeds for good paying tech jobs, in America's heartland. That's putting workers first.

In 2023, we even led a bipartisan effort to fix our immigration system, with the strongest - the strongest - border security bill in over a decade. That was a bipartisan bill. We were hours away from voting on that bill here in the Senate before Donald Trump killed it, for no other reason than cynical political games.

So, it is troubling that so far we see little indication from the Republican majority that they are interested in continuing the bipartisan streak of the last four years, or that they're really interested in helping the working people of America in any way.

Instead, Republicans seem ready to use their new majority to go back to the same old GOP playbook: tax cuts for the ultra-rich, trickle-down fantasies, and turning their backs on working Americans, whom they promised to fight for.

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