Ways and Means Committee member David Schweikert (R-Arizona’s 6th District) addressed Americans for Tax Reform’s annual pre-Tax Day press conference, hosted by Grover Norquist.
Norquist introduced Schweikert as “one of the guys who made the magic happen on tax reform.”
Schweikert highlighted the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act’s positive effects on the economy.
“In many ways, if you take a look at what’s going on, it’s a miracle mathematically,” Schweikert said at the press conference. “And you’d think our friends on the other side would actually embrace the joy of what’s going on in our society, where populations that were functionally written off as to be the permanent underclass, are not.
“Their employment numbers…are the fastest quartile with income growth, and I will argue with you that it is substantially because of the things we did in tax reform that are moving investment into the parts of our economy that actually increase productivity. Because you can’t pay people more if you don’t have a society that is becoming more productive.”
Schweikert also took aim at tax-hiking Democrats that spread disinformation about the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
“And remember, to the reporters that are here. I would love you to go back to just before tax reform was passed, and go back and grab the quotes from what our brothers and sisters on the left were saying was going to happen over the first 12 months in revenues,” Schweikert said.
“Go back and pull up the first five months in comparison [for FY 2018 and 2019], and you’ll see revenues are functionally identical. We did not hit Armageddon.”
Schweikert ended his remarks with a challenge to Congress and the press to put partisanship aside and look at the data.
“There’s good things happening out there, and it breaks my heart that in this hyper-partisan environment that we exist in, that there seems to be this inability in this body or even our press to take one step backwards and take a look at the baseline data and what’s going on and the really good things that are happening out there,” Schweikert said.
Americans for Tax Reform has catalogued a list of good news arising from the tax cuts for Schweikert’s home state of Arizona, which you can find here.
Click here to watch Congressman Schweikert’s remarks from today’s press conference.