Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The Republicans' Disastrous So-Called “Fair Tax Act” To Implement A 30% National Sales Tax

Washington, D.C. –  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor addressing the Republican “Fair Tax Act” which would mandate a 30% national sales tax on consumer goods and devastate American families. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

While Republicans refuse to show what they plan to do about the debt ceiling, they’ve spent a lot of time talking up one of the worst policy proposals in existence: a 30% national sales tax on all consumer goods.

House Republicans can’t seem to get out of their own way. House Republicans call it the “Fair Tax Act,” but let’s call it what it really is: a disaster for middle class families. There is nothing “fair” about a tax that punishes average families for buying essential goods while giving the rich another chance to lower their tax burden.

And that's what's behind most of these Republican plans, a desire to help the very wealthy. And if it comes out of the middle class and most Americans, they don't give a hoot. They don't give a hoot.

This “Fair Tax Act” is truly foul stuff:

The Republican tax plan would raise the cost of buying a house by $125,000.

It would raise the cost of buying a car by $10,000.

It would raise your average grocery bill by $3,500 a year at a time when people are already worried about the high price of groceries. How can they do this?

Things like eggs are already too expensive, but Republicans want to slap another $1.50 to that price.

The plan would make a gallon of milk cost another $1.70 more.

And the shockwaves go way beyond trips to the grocery store, as painful as those would be. The Republican tax would erode the value of retirement plans, social security, pensions, 401(k)s, by nearly a third, an insulting way – insulting – to treat people who have spent their entire lives saving up in order to retire with some degree of dignity.

In all my years in office, I have rarely seen such an extreme proposal be taken seriously by a governing majority. It is another reminder of how radical, how out-of-touch, how un-serious MAGA Republicans are about governing. All they want to do is help their very ultra-rich friends. And the fact that the House Leadership is catering to the delusional whims of MAGA extremism should send a shiver down everyone one of our spines.

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