By Greg Bishop/Illinois Radio Network
SPRINGFIELD – The dust has all but settled for the tax-and-spend battles in Washington this year, and while a central Illinois congressman is taking a victory lap on federal tax cuts, he’s defending a massive spending bill.
Touring an AT&T call center in Springfield Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis met with several employees while they worked in cubicles taking customer calls.
Julie Bergheger, a 40-year employee with the telecommunications giant, was one of the AT&T employees who got a $1,000 bonus in January, after the federal income tax cuts.
“How many times had you gotten the company to offer $1,000 bonuses,” asked Davis, R-Taylorville.
“I can’t really remember any bonuses,” Bergheger said.
“Really,” Davis said. “I’m sorry it took so long.”
“Yeah, that was nice,” Bergheger said.
Bergheger said she used the $1,000 bonus on her household spending. Another employee told Davis she spent her bonus on an upcoming family vacation.
Altogether, House Republicans say 4 million workers and counting are benefiting from the tax cuts as businesses across the country have paid out $4 billion in bonuses.
The tax reform permanently lowered the federal corporate tax rates from 35 percent, highest among industrialized nations, to 21 percent, about the middle of the pack. The individual rates were cut a few percentage points across the board, but those rates are set to expire after 2025.
Davis said he’s now pushing for the individual tax cuts to be permanent.
“We’re going to be able to pass my bill that will make the individual tax rates permanent and we’ll see if senators like Bernie Sanders, who have said they’re supportive of making those individual rates permanent, we’ll see if their rhetoric matches their vote,” Davis said.
While the tax-cut battle took up much of the energy last year in Washington, the first few months of this year has been focused on spending taxpayers’ money. After one stopgap budget, and a looming government shutdown deadline, the House and Senate passed an omnibus spending package on to President Donald Trump last week.
After a morning tweet saying he was thinking of vetoing the 2,232 page, $1.3 trillion spending bill, Trump signed it Friday.
“But I say to Congress, I will never sign another bill like this again,” Trump said. “I’m not going to do it again.”
Davis didn’t like Trump’s take.
“The president probably disappointed me more in the last week than he has in a long time,” Davis said. “The president and his administration actually were negotiating this bill.”
Trump criticized the spending package for not addressing Dreamers – undocumented immigrants who were brought the U.S. as children – and not authorizing full funding for a southern border wall.
Davis said Trump should have highlighted the good things, like opioid overdose prevention money.
U.S. Rep. Bill Foster, D-Naperville, supported the spending bill while taking the president to task.
“I supported this omnibus bill, which represents a clear and final rejection of President Trump’s flawed budget,” Foster said in a statement. “I am especially pleased that this legislation would give the Centers for Disease Control the authority to conduct research on the causes of gun violence.”
Davis urged the administration to start spending the money they did approve for border security instead of complaining there’s not enough. Foster said the border wall spending is a “waste of resources we could allot elsewhere.”
“Despite these shortcomings, this bill is a step in the right direction,” Foster said.
