WASHINGTON, DC – On the first day of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance’s consideration of historical tax reform legislation, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, U.S. Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said the bill is meaningful reform for middle income Americans and provides $2,500 in tax relief to Kansas families. Roberts is a senior member of the Finance Committee which has jurisdiction on taxes. For audio and video, go here.

“All of us on the Finance Committee understand the burdens, complexity, and lack of competitiveness associated with our antiquated tax system,” said Roberts. “It acts as a brake on our economy.”

“We have now before us a comprehensive plan to address these issues, cleaning up and modernizing the tax code to help generate more growth in the economy. The bill before us is meaningful tax relief for families, and small businesses. We have done a good job pushing these rate reductions down to lower and middle-income families, providing a net tax cut for families in Kansas of about $2,500.”

The Senate Finance Committee will “mark-up” the bill this week, considering bipartisan amendments before reporting out the bill to the full Senate for debate and a vote. The House of Representatives considers its own version of a tax reform bill this week.

The following are Senator Roberts’ remarks as prepared for delivery:

Mr. Chairman, I want to think you for your leadership in laying down this mark.

We all understand how critical tax reform is. All of us on the Finance Committee in particular, understand the burdens, complexity, and lack of competitiveness associated with our current tax system.

It is abundantly clear that this complexity and our antiquated corporate tax system act as a brake on our economy.

We have now before us a comprehensive plan to address these issues, cleaning up and modernizing the tax code, to help generate more growth in the economy.

The bill before us does exactly that, providing meaningful tax relief for families, and small businesses. I am especially pleased with the rates and bracket structure the legislation would put into place on the individual side.

We have done a good job pushing these rate reductions down to lower and middle-income families. This would provide a net tax cut for families in Kansas of about $2,500.

We accomplish this by simplifying and reducing the individual tax brackets, raising the standard deduction, and increasing the child credits in the tax code.

It is important to point and that these are consensus, bipartisan ideas, and are in fact proposals that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have regularly proposed and supported.

Turning to agriculture, I am pleased that the Chairman’s Mark reflects the importance of production agriculture to our economy.

The agriculture industry has a number of provisions in the tax code that recognize the uncertain and volatile nature of the income and expense associated with agricultural operations.

Farmer and ranchers have no control over the weather, and face highly unpredictable markets that increase risks and lead to difficult planning decisions.

I am happy to say that this Chairman’s mark keeps those provisions, but will also help our farmers by creating a much more pro-growth tax system, lowering their tax burden and simplifying the tax provisions relating to the Agriculture sector.

The legislation includes robust cuts and simplification changes for businesses, large and small.

For the average farmer in Kansas, the rate reductions, more robust depreciation rules, and the new structure for passthrough entities, would put thousands more dollars in their bank accounts, money which they can use to build their business – which is a very simple business – feeding the world.

The legislation also transitions our current international tax system to a territorial system, which is an idea endorsed recently by our Minority Leader, Senator Schumer, and other members of this Committee on the other side of the dais.

This is a particularly important step, because it will address concerns I have long had with the international competitiveness of our corporate tax reform.

I have real concerns that the current archaic international system has made our home grown companies targets for takeovers by foreign competitors, leading to job loss and a drain in our federal treasury.

Now is this a perfect bill? By no means. But it is a very good bill – it will give our economy a very nice jolt and I firmly believe will lead to more robust economic growth.

Mr. Chairman, through the process you have laid out we can improve this very good bill to make it the very best possible bill.