Legislative Session
Mr. President, now, it may have taken all weekend, but the Senate is now finally on the precipice of passing major bipartisan infrastructure legislation. Last night, an overwhelming bipartisan majority of Senators voted to surmount the…
Mr. President, now, it may have taken all weekend, but the Senate is now finally on the precipice of passing major bipartisan infrastructure legislation.
Last night, an overwhelming bipartisan majority of Senators voted to surmount the final few procedural hurdles and put the bill on a glidepath for passage tomorrow morning. The bill will represent a substantial downpayment toward the level of infrastructure investment our country needs, and for the first time, the Senate has come together around such a package in decades. I will have more to say about it before final passage.
Budget Reconcilation
Now, Mr. President, all summer, I have spoken about how the Senate would proceed along two tracks when it came to infrastructure: the bipartisan bill we will vote on tomorrow as well as the budget reconciliation bill that will allow Democrats to make historic investments in American jobs, American families, and efforts to reverse climate change.
In order to achieve such an ambitious legislative effort, I laid out two clear goals for this summer work period: pass the bipartisan bill and a budget resolution to set up the second track of our process before we leave for August recess.
Many folks called that two-track process unrealistic. Many others said it
is unachievable on such a short timeline and in such a slow-moving Chamber. But we have managed to steer two trains at the same time. There have been some bumps. There have been some delays. But the Senate is on track to finish both tracks.
Earlier this summer, I suggested the two-track strategy to President Biden and Speaker Pelosi. We all agreed it was the best way to move forward, and we are working in concert to make it happen.
This morning, Senate Democrats unveiled our budget resolution with reconciliation instructions, which is the first step in unlocking the legislative process for a budget reconciliation bill later this year.
Several Members--many Members--had a hand in crafting this package. We worked closely with our committee chairs, but I want to especially thank the chair of the Budget Committee, Senator Sanders. He kept his nose to the grindstone and led our caucus on the budget. He always kept the thoughts and needs of American workers and families at the top of his mind. As a result, the Democratic budget will be the most significant legislation for American families since the era of the New Deal and the Great Society. It is big, bold change--the kind of change America thirsts for.
I want to thank other members of the Budget Committee, like Senator Warner, who worked closely with the White House and Chairman Sanders to develop a framework, and Senators Murray and Wyden and Stabenow and Whitehouse and Merkley and Kaine and Van Hollen and Lujan and Padilla, all of whom came together, even though each had different views on different issues, to produce this result, and a great result it is.
I want American families to understand what this legislation will mean for them--four simple things to keep in mind. I am borrowing Senator Stabenow's chart for this. It will lower costs for Americans, it will cut taxes for American families, it will create millions of jobs while tackling the climate crisis, and it will be paid for by the wealthy paying their fair share. These are four goals. The American people support every one of them overwhelmingly.
In all phases, we will concentrate on communities that have been too often neglected, including communities of color and Native Americans, by making education, childcare, healthcare, and housing more affordable. We can give tens of millions of families a leg up by making sure that we can get our children out of poverty, and I thank the Presiding Officer for his leadership on that issue. We can provide ladders to families who haven't had them before and help them climb into the middle class.
Many of the policies we are proposing were in President Biden's American Jobs and Family Plan, but some go beyond, like expanding Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing benefits--something that was left out of Medicare at the beginning. It never should have been, and we can rectify it now.
By cutting taxes for tens of millions of American families, we can expand opportunity and make it easier for parents to pass on a better life to their children and their grandchildren. By making further investments in infrastructure, we can create tens of thousands-- hundreds of thousands--of good-paying jobs. By finally tackling climate change, we can spare our country and our planet the most devastating effects of global warming.
Just this morning, a major new report from climate scientists at the United Nations concluded that the nations of the world have only a small window to ``prevent the most harrowing future''--``prevent the most harrowing future''--in the words of the New York Times.
Without immediate and bold action, we are staring down ever worsening floods and heat waves, droughts and sea level rise. The future of our planet looks bleak until we do something right now. The budget reconciliation bill will do more to combat climate change than any legislation ever--ever--in the history of the Senate. That is a promise.
While my Republican colleagues regurgitate the same tired talking points about a Democratic spending spree, let me remind America that we plan to pay for this package by making the wealthy pay their fair share
When our Republican friends held the majority in this Chamber, they chose to use the same process Democrats are using now--budget reconciliation--to give corporations and the wealthy a massive tax break. At a time of egregious income inequality, the former Republican majority rammed through a bill where 83 percent of the benefits went to the top 1 percent--83 percent of the benefits.
I have nothing against the wealthy. God bless them--they are doing fine already--but it is time to cut taxes for American families, middle-class families, not multinational corporations. To make our Tax Code more progressive and more fair, that is what Democrats are going to do. Under this plan, there will be no tax increases on small business or American families making under $400,000.
We are going to help small businesses create many, many, many jobs.
We are going to give American families a fair shot. We are going to tell middle-class families we are going to make it easier for you to stay there with your increasing costs of things like childcare and school and college and so much else. We are going to tell poorer families we are going to make it easier for you to climb into the middle class with things like the child tax credit and better healthcare and so much more.
We are going to confront the generational challenge of climate change head on. We are not flinching; we are not wincing; we are going right at it. As bad as COVID was this year, and it was horrible, 5 or 10 years from now--every year--climate change will make things worse and worse and worse, even worse than it was this year in COVID, because when climate changes, it is such an overwhelming force that, unless we do something now, we may not be able to stop it down the road.
So, taking a step back, at its core, the Democratic budget is about restoring the middle class in the 21st century and giving more Americans the opportunity to get there. Unfortunately, the past 20 years in America have been a story of middle-class decline.
We have all watched as globalization and technology transformed the way our economy works. Industrial manufacturing jobs were shipped overseas. A global financial crisis cost Americans their homes and their wealth. Giant conglomerates wiped out Main Street businesses from Arizona to Arkansas, from Michigan to Maine. The cost of raising a family--everything from childcare to college tuition--has become exorbitant, almost unaffordable, even for those solidly in the middle class.
Now, after the worst pandemic in a hundred years, American families are just starting to climb out of the rubble and look toward the future. We want them to look toward that future with hope and with optimism, not with the sourness and anger that we have seen throughout the land--exacerbated, played upon by the previous President.
What the future looks like, in large part, depends on what we do here now. These next few months are crucial for the future of our country, even for our democracy.
What we need to do in Congress is to give our workers, our businesses, our families a chance to prosper in a rapidly changing world, a chance to have hope, a chance to restore that American dream, which simply says, if I work hard, I will be doing better 10 years from now than I am doing today, and my kids will be doing still better than me. When Americans lose that faith, lose that hope, that sunny American optimism that has been part of our character for centuries, bad things happen. Bad things happen to our democracy, to our relationships with one another, to just about everything.
The social contract in America relies on the fundamental promise of economic opportunity, the chance, through hard work, to do better for yourself and then give your children and grandchildren a better life than you have. That is what America is all about. That is what we are trying to restore and revivify here.
When that promise is broken, when that American dream is no longer shining brightly in the sky, when faith in economic opportunity evaporates, we are not the America we were meant to be. We are not optimistic and entrepreneurial and forward-looking. Instead,
we are bitter and angry and backward-looking and, as a result, much more prone to the sway of demagogues like Donald Trump. The divisions in our country and our politics today have their roots in the decline of economic mobility.
Now, the American people don't expect one piece of legislation to solve all our Nation's ills--no single law can do that--but we have to start in a bold, strong way rebuilding the basic social contract for middle-class American families and for everyone struggling to get there: a promise of equal opportunity and equality; helping middle- class Americans stay in the middle class; building ladders to help others climb into that middle class. At its core, that is what this budget is all about, and we are going to take the first steps toward passing it very, very soon.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
Well, it has taken quite a while. There have been a lot of bumps in the road. But in a few minutes, I will announce that we have come to an agreement for final passage of the bipartisan infrastructure proposal.
Let me say this: It has taken quite a long time, and there have been detours and everything else, but this will do a whole lot of good for America, and the Senate can be proud it has passed this.
As we move forward, we are proceeding on both tracks, the track of the bipartisan infrastructure proposal and the track of the budget resolution with reconciliation instructions. On our side of the aisle, we know we need both tracks--one dealing with traditional infrastructure and one dealing with climate and the problems American families face as they move into the new, global, transformational 21st century.
So this is a very good day. We have come to an agreement after all the long, hard negotiating, the stops and starts. We are here, and it is a good thing--a very good thing--for America.