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Colorado's Senators Share Mixed Reactions To Senate Tax Plan Vote

(CBS4) - Colorado's two U.S. senators are reacting very differently to the Senate's passage of the Republican tax plan early Wednesday morning.

Senators Cory Gardner and Michael Bennet
Sens. Cory Gardner, left, and Michael Bennet, right (credit: CBS)

Sen. Cory Gardner, a Republican and Colorado's junior senator, said the plan changes an "Atari-era tax code" he says is outdated and overly complicated.

"At the beginning of this process my goal was to bring relief to hard working Coloradans throughout the four corners of our great state, and I'm proud that after months of work, we've achieved this goal," Gardner said.

Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat and Colorado's senior senator, said the plan could leave young people with trillions of dollars worth of debt.

"Tax reform should have addressed the real challenges in our economy by helping a middle-class family in Colorado afford housing, health care, child care, and higher education, while saving enough for a secure retirement," he wrote in a statement.

The authors of the bill believe giving massive tax breaks to corporations will trickle down to workers, but critics say some corporations are more likely to buy back their own stock and drive up the price.

Studies on the bill show most individuals will save anywhere from $60 to $51,000 next year. Republicans say that those savings, paired with corporate tax cuts, would drive incomes up and stimulate the economy.

"I think that this tax cut will generate economic growth, wage growth, investments in our economy that will far outweigh any concerns that people may have about the deficit," Gardner said.

Republicans say the bill pays for itself, though it adds more than $1 trillion to the national debt, something the GOP was hawkish over during President Barack Obama's presidency.

"There's nothing in the logic in this plan that says it will pay for itself. There's almost no economist that says it will pay for itself. There are politicians in Washington DC who say it will pay for itself. What I'd say to the American people is, let's look and see what happened in 2001 and 2003," Bennet said on Tuesday.

Under President George Bush, two tax cuts drove the debt up, which contributed to 2008's Great Recession.

In the new plan, the corporate tax cuts would be permanent but for individuals the cut expires in seven years.

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