Floor Statements

Mr. President, a little over 25 years ago, a Democrat President and a Republican Congress came together, to quote former President Clinton, ``end welfare as we know it.''

On a bipartisan basis, Congress passed, and President Clinton signed into law, a bill called the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. Amongst other things, this landmark law established the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families--what we go by here in Washington, called the TANF Program. That program was replacing the previous family assistance program.

TANF was specifically designed to promote work and to help struggling parents back onto their own two feet. It was very successful--about 40 percent less people on welfare than before 1996.

The new program did this by creating work requirements and promoting skill development through education and job training. While critics at the time contended dire consequences would result--particularly for single mothers--in the end, all these critics were proven fantastically wrong. Welfare reform immediately led to a precipitous decline in welfare caseloads and usage. At the same time, the single mother labor force participation rate rose, and their incomes climbed--a step toward getting out of poverty.

A recent research shows the gains were not only short term but led to an improvement in the material well-being of single mothers throughout the following decades. Additional studies show welfare reform has contributed to higher education attainment and improved food security for the following generation.

The 1996 welfare reforms helped families to enjoy the dignity of self-sufficiency. It helped end the cycle of poverty. It gave parents the hope of seeing their children grow up to be better off than they had been--exactly what every parent dreams of for their family, particularly for their children.

This was achieved thanks to a Democrat President and a Republican Congress working together for the benefit of those that were elected to serve.

Now, President Biden and Senate Democrats want to effectively end welfare reform as we know it and reconstitute failed policies of the past--in other words, end helping people in poverty by helping them get out of poverty--guaranteeing a life in poverty, rejecting a successful reform, signed by Democratic President Clinton.

So you can understand why they don't want to tell the American people that is what they are doing. They know that trying to sell their proposal as the largest expansion of welfare history isn't going to fly with the American people who know how well the 1996 reform has worked up to and including now.

As an end-run around welfare reform--and in an attempt to garner broad public support--they want to co-opt a popular tax program for their own political ends or what they ideologically believe in; that the government ought to assume a more prominent role in people's lives and in the economy.

That program that they are co-opting is the child tax credit. This credit was established on a bipartisan basis in 1997 as a complement to welfare reform, with the idea of assisting parents as they left the welfare rolls to go to productive employment.

Since then, Republicans have taken the lead in improving the credit as an anti-poverty tool that partially offset the burden of payroll taxes on the working poor. And remember, payroll taxes on the working poor is a regressive tax.

In 2001, as then-chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, I worked with

fellow Republicans to increase the credit that was set in 1997 at $500 to move it to $1,000. Moreover, the credit was made partially refundable for the very first time.

This made low-income working families eligible to receive a tax refund, even if they had paid no income tax--though they paid the payroll tax. And, obviously, the child tax credit helped offset the regressive impact on the working--low-income working people.

Then, in 2017, Republicans went even further in improving this credit because we doubled the credit, and we increased the amount that those who pay no Federal income tax can receive a tax refund. But a key feature of the child tax credit through these 25 years has always been that it is a work incentive.

In order to benefit them, the tax filer must have at least a minimal amount of earned income, which basically means wages from employment. As you earn more, a larger share of the credit becomes refundable, partially offsetting the payroll taxes.

So, now, this is what the Democrats have in mind: They want to turn this broadly popular, this bipartisan, this pro-work tax incentive into a government assistance program akin to the old, pre-Clinton welfare program.

What Democrats propose can no longer be considered a tax credit in any traditional sense of the word. The benefit is entirely divorced from the tax system in every way except how the tax system is going to give out the benefits.

To qualify, no one in the household needs to work, needs to have income, or needs to pay any sort of Federal tax at all. Now, even more alarming, there are no job search requirements, no job skill development assistance, and no educational assistance--the foundation of the welfare reform of 1996, when the whole idea was to help people help themselves by either schooling or productive employment.

All the requirements then that apply to those receiving TANF under the 1996 welfare reforms would be gone. In other words, their proposal provides no help to getting struggling parents back on their feet or to tackle the root causes of generational poverty.

The bipartisan 1996 reform bill--everything I just said they propose is contrary to that basic Federal reform of 1996. In other words, this is a big step back to encouraging people into a lifetime in poverty. I fear the Democrats' proposal will be a poverty trap for far too many needy families.

We would be reversing the gains made since we had this bipartisan welfare reform of 1996 signed by a Democratic President. That is exactly what a recent University of Chicago analysis of the Democrats' proposal suggests will occur.

According to this study, the Democrats' child tax credit proposal would result in 1.5 million parents leaving the workforce at a time when everybody is crying that we need to get people back into the workforce if you want to keep inflation under control, if you want to keep the supply chain moving smoothly.

This analysis directly contradicts Democrats' claims that their proposal will cut poverty in half. In fact, according to the University of Chicago authors, ``deep child poverty would not fall at all.'' I will bet the Democrats are trying to sell this on the proposition that it is going to reduce child poverty, but not according to the University of Chicago scholars. In fact, it might even make things worse.

That is exactly why Democrats and Republicans came together to reform welfare in 1996, because it became self-evident that child poverty could not be solved simply through money alone.

If money alone is a solution, why are my Democratic colleagues willing to settle for only reducing child poverty by half?

Why don't they simply dedicate more of their foreign $4.2 trillion tax-and-spending spree to completely end child poverty?

Is it that they believe subsidizing individuals to buy electric vehicles, as their bill would do, is more important than eradicating child poverty?

I fully support lending a hand to families in need of support, but our policies must be focused on providing a hand up, not a handout. Providing assistance untethered from any work or job promotion requirement or education or work training requirement is not a compassionate approach to helping people. You want to help people get in the world of work because only in the world of work can you work yourself up the ladder and get out of poverty. But being on government programs is a certainty of a lifetime of poverty.

No, it is not compassionate. It is just the opposite. It sets up a generation of Americans being trapped in soul-crushing government dependencies.

I urge my colleagues to abandon their ill-conceived, ``no strings attached'' child tax credit proposal. They would get a lot of Republican support--bipartisan support--for improving the child tax credit, but not this way. Do not yank away the ladder of opportunity from struggling Americans. Take a page out of former President Clinton's playbook. Work with Republicans to find a bipartisan solution that will actually help low-income families together.

Thank you, Senator Crapo, for leading this effort to point out what is wrong with this $4.2-trillion reckless tax-and- spending spree. It is a massive government intrusion into the daily lives of American families.

Under their vision for America, there isn't any aspect of life in which the government shouldn't perform a leading role. From cradle to grave, childcare to healthcare, college to career, the Federal Government will be

there in your lives, shaping your every decision.

Their plans go well beyond shoring up the social safety net to prevent those in need from falling through the cracks. And everybody agrees that people that have needs, there is a role for government. But that doesn't include 320 million Americans.

No longer, then, will the Federal Government's primary role be about lending a helping hand so individuals can get back on their own feet. Instead, government would be the ultimate helicopter parent, constantly hovering, regardless of need.

Even wealthy households would be in line for generous handouts to procure Federal Government-approved childcare, send their kids to a Federal Government-structured preschool, purchase Federal Government- approved health insurance on the individual market, and obtain Federal Government-provided paid family leave.

Isn't that a staggering list of things that the Democrats are proposing in this 4.2 tax-and-spending spree they are pushing?

On the one hand, my Democratic colleagues rail against the wealthy paying too little tax. On the other hand, they want to shower the wealthy with government benefits, not to mention hand the wealthy, for instance, $12,500 to purchase a luxury electric car and make Federal taxpayers subsidize the State tax bills of millionaires.

Can you believe the inconsistency of their arguments?

Tax the wealthy; give to the wealthy. At the same time, Democrats have decided that the best way to crack down on billionaires evading taxes is to snoop on the middle class. You just heard Senator Crapo speak at length about that. Under their proposal, every American's bank account with $600, or even if it is $10,000, of annual taxations would be subject to the peering eyes of the IRS.

Democrats are betting the promise of free gifts will be too enticing for Americans to resist. However, Americans understand anything advertised as free comes with strings. Particularly, if it is free from the government, there is going to be strings attached. Those strings include higher taxes today and in the future and any loss of control over intimate family decisions.

Liberal Democrats, in their progressive bubble, are under the mistaken impression the general public is clamoring for evermore government programs. Now, in reality, Americans have long held a healthy skepticism of Big Government. A recent Gallup poll shows this continues to be true to this very day. According to Gallup--I think it was a weekend poll--nearly 80 percent of Americans say that they prefer lower taxes and less government, or would like to see no change in either. Only 19 percent said they wanted more taxes and more government.

President Clinton--up until 21 years ago, the President of the United States--understood this well when, in 1996, he declared in a State of Union message, ``the era of big government is over,'' and then worked with Republicans on comprehensive welfare reform.

Why can't those things go on today?

Hopefully, President Biden and Senate Democrats come to their senses and realize this before taking our Nation down the path of fiscal ruin. And I would define ``fiscal ruin'' by a Democrat by the name of Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration--and I think he also had some posts in the Obama administration--anyway, he told us in January, he told us in April, he told us in August, and I saw it again on television just last week: Spending all this money is feeding the fires of inflation like gasoline on that fire, and we ought to learn not to go through what we did in the seventies and eighties with inflation out of control.

Listen to that, fellow Democrats, today.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I hear about rising costs of prescription drugs at nearly every one of my townhall meetings.

Three years ago, I began a bipartisan effort to lower prescription drug costs. Following our Finance Committee hearings at that time, we had a markup, and we had bipartisan negotiations. Senator Wyden, now chairman of the Finance Committee, and I introduced, at that time, the Prescription Drug Pricing Reduction Act.

The bill caps yearly out-of-pocket drug costs for seniors at $3,100. It prevents drug costs from growing faster than the consumer price index on a yearly basis. It ends uncapped taxpayer-funded subsidies to Big Pharma. It creates more sunshine, more competition, and it even has oversight into the world of drug pricing. It brings meaningful reform while driving down costs. It has $72 billion in savings for seniors-- that is out-of-pocket costs to them--and $95 billion savings of taxpayers' money through Medicare.

An important goal that we accomplish in our bill is lowering drug costs without hurting innovation. We did this by keeping government out of the business of setting prices and indirectly keep the government out of your medicine cabinet.

Democrats have proposed the irresponsible idea of government dictating drug prices. They would do this by getting rid of the noninterference clause in the Part D part of Medicare. It is better known as so-called drug price negotiations, but it is not negotiation; it is dictating prices.

Eighteen years ago, I was the principle architect of the Medicare Part D Program. Adding a prescription drug benefit for seniors was the right thing to do then, and it is still the right thing to do, but it needed to be done in the right way, and that right way is for the patients.

In creating Part D, we enacted a very key policy: keeping the government out of the business of dictating drug prices. Governments don't negotiate; they dictate. Competition is the only thing that drives innovation, curbs costs, expands coverage, and improves outcomes.

The Congressional Budget Office has consistently stated that government negotiations of drug prices would not achieve greater savings than the current market-based system, unless you restrict the formulary or dictate the price through reference pricing based upon what socialist healthcare systems pay in other countries. That is the outcome. The government gets between you and your doctors prescribing.

Democrats propose so-called drug price negotiations in their reckless tax-and-spending spree to save hundreds of billions of dollars. Who is hurt by this policy? Of course, patients are.

The Democrats would have government dictate drug pricing based upon an international reference pricing index. Study after study has shown so-called drug pricing negotiations will reduce the number of new drugs produced. What your doctor wants to prescribe for you might not be on that formulary.

This policy would be devastating if one of those drugs was the cure for Alzheimer's or diabetes or cancer. I don't believe that is what Americans want.

While Democrats attempt to advance their partisan drug pricing scheme, I hope common sense will prevail, and we pass a bipartisan prescription drug bill. I have engaged with colleagues on both sides of the aisle and in a bicameral way. I did this so common sense would prevail, if we ever get to the point of Democrats realizing that the government dictating prices on an international basis of what the prices are in other countries will never get 60 votes here in the U.S. Senate.

All of the Republicans and Democrats I have contacted have expressed eagerness to find a solution to meaningfully lower prescription drug costs. Holding Big Pharma accountable has historically been a bipartisan effort.

Delivering new reforms to fight price hikes should be no different. Democrats should stop pursuing their reckless tax-and-spending spree that will hurt innovation and produce less cures. Instead, we should act by passing my bipartisan prescription drug bill.

I think maybe there is an inkling of good news coming from the Speaker of the House--and I have had a chance to visit with her at least three times in the last 2 years on this very subject about my bill--when she said that she didn't think--I don't know whether she referred to the number H.R. 3, but that is the bill that has their main effort on reducing prescription drugs--when she said that she didn't think that that would have the votes to get passed.

I hope there is some awakening to the fact that we need to do something and that this bipartisan approach is the answer.

Trump Investigation

Mr. President, today I would like to discuss the media's complete misrepresentation of the Republican report on Senator Durbin's Trump investigation, in which my staff participated according to Committee rules.

I gave an October 7 speech on this subject, and you wouldn't know that anybody read my speech based upon what has been reported on TV. But as I noted in that October 7 speech, Senator Durbin publicly released a Democratic staff report on his investigation. We Republicans did the same thing that very same day.

I came to the floor that same day to describe the Republican report. In so doing, I laid out what the available facts and evidence showed within the scope of the inquiry. That scope was from December 14, 2020, to January 3, 2021. But TV seemed to think we were talking about what happened on Capitol Hill on January 6.

The Durbin investigation ended on January 3--or events leading up to January 3. I say that date range yet again because many reporters have wrongly conflated this investigation with the January 6, 2021, events here on Capitol Hill. We know all the damage that was done to the Capitol that day.

So I want to repeat: The scope of the investigation stopped on January 3, not January 6, but you wouldn't know it from the TV reports.

I am not going to rehash my entire speech. I have incorporated it here by reference. However, I will note, yet again for the media, several key facts. This is not analysis, as I think TV was trying to do, just the facts.

Fact 1. Records indicate that President Trump's focus was on ``legitimate complaints and reports of crimes.'' And those words come from the transcript.

Fact 2. Witnesses testified that President Trump's main focus was making the Justice Department aware of the potential criminal allegations and to

ensure the Department did its job. Trump's focus then wasn't to direct or order specific investigative steps. And to that point, witnesses said that Trump's focus was on the American people--not himself or his campaign--being harmed by what he believed to be widespread election fraud.

Fact 3, these witnesses testified under 18 U.S.C. 1001, which makes it a crime to give false statements, that it was not unreasonable for President Trump to question what the Justice Department was doing to investigate election fraud and crime allegations.

In fact, one witness testified under 1001 that Trump had ``no impact''--those two words--on the Department's actions to investigate election allegations.

I would be remiss if I didn't also note that one witness testified under 1001 that the Justice Department was ``dragging their feet and maybe more to keep these investigations from going forward.''

Fact 4, my staff read former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, BJ Pak, a press release from the Biden administration where Biden set policy for the Justice Department by prohibiting it from using subpoenas for records of reporters in criminal leak investigations.

My staff then asked if any President has similar authority to set the Department's policy with respect to investigating and reviewing voter fraud and election crime allegations. This witness stated, ``I would agree that the President has that duty.''

And the last fact, 5, President Trump twice rejected firing Acting Attorney General Rosen, and twice rejected the notion of sending what is called the ``draft Clark letter.''

Now, after giving you those facts, accordingly, on the basis of this foundational evidence, with respect to the scope of this investigation from December 14, 2020, to January 3, 2021, President Trump sought and followed the advice and also the recommendations of his senior advisers. I note with specific emphasis the fact that he followed their advice and recommendations. This is a crucial fact.

The report is entitled ``In Their Own Words.'' It is based on actual witness evidence, not CNN-style partisan analysis. I encourage everyone to read the report and the transcripts and draw your own conclusions. That is how I always approached my investigations in the years that I have been in the U.S. Senate.

Now let's go to how my speech was reported on TV. Some on CNN have said that I showed ``fealty'' to Trump by stating the facts. They called these facts that I just recited ``delusional.'' I have never had a problem following the facts wherever they lead, no matter who is in power.

So I am going to refer to an investigation I did in the Trump administration, and it involved some people in the Trump--and close to President Trump.

I ran a transcribed interview on Donald Trump, Jr., during the Trump administration. That was done as part of my Trump-Russia investigation when I was chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which focused on the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting.

I also subpoenaed Paul Manafort to appear at a hearing and provide testimony. Instead of publicly testifying, Manafort voluntarily agreed to an interview with my and then-Ranking Member Feinstein's staff. But as the ranking member's staff then refused to interview him and objected to my staff doing so without them there, that didn't move forward.

Notably, the committee never received any--when I was chairman during this investigation I am talking about, the committee never received any emails from the Democratic National Committee or the Clinton campaign, even though we repeatedly asked for them. Of course, the Democrats wouldn't support subpoenaing them, and you didn't hear a lot about that from the media--the double standard media. The Trump campaign produced records.

Just like there is a coverage vacuum, particularly by CNN, of Hunter Biden and James Biden and their connection with the communist Chinese Government, my and Senator Johnson's September 20 report on those financial connections and their potential criminality was attacked as Russian disinformation. Later on, Hunter Biden publicly admitted that he was under criminal investigation for financial matters. I don't hear much about that on CNN.

In my and Johnson's report, we made clear that based upon deep financial connections between the Biden family and foreign governments, Hunter Biden is a counterintelligence and extortion concern.

On that note, recently released emails have opened up the possibility that Joe Biden mixed bank accounts and funds with Hunter Biden. Other emails show that Joe Biden shared office space with individuals connected to the communist Chinese regime.

Of course, my and Senator Johnson's report was the first to prove that Hunter Biden, James Biden, and other family members had extensive financial and business relationships with individuals not just connected to the communist Chinese regime, but its intelligence and military services.

About that Grassley and Johnson report, POLITICO ran the off-base headline: ``GOP Senators' anti-Biden report repackages old claims.''

In contrast, one of their own reporters just very recently confirmed the authenticity of some of Hunter Biden's emails for a book that he was writing.

One Washington Post columnist said: ``Even after accepting disinformation from Russian agents, Johnson and Grassley couldn't come up with anything new or interesting on Hunter Biden.''

And NPR said about the New York Post Hunter Biden stories: ``We don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don't want to waste the listeners' and readers' time on stories that are just pure distractions.''

Now, compare what I have said--how different Democrats and Republicans are treated; how investigations are done differently by Republicans and by Democrats--and then look at the state of journalism today. What I just said is so much for investigative journalism. Investigative journalism died without so much as a whimper.

The media's attack against the Republican Trump report is essentially an attack on witness testimony received by the committee. Time and again, many in the media have failed to meet the facts head-on in order to fit their own biased story line.

So I say to everybody, including journalists that don't want to do hard work: Read the testimony of those people that were taken on what went on between December 14 and January 3. Read what I say about it. Read what Senator Durbin says about it. But at least read the testimony if you are going to make comments distorting what I said on October 7. In other words, stop screwing up.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, earlier this month, Attorney General Garland released a memo instructing Department of Justice employees to respond to increasingly passionate school board meetings across the country. That memo talks about working to stop the violence and the threats of violence. That part of it is very fine, but unfortunately the memo makes it sound like the Department of Justice might want to go after much more than just violence.

Over the last year, school board meetings have turned from relatively calm, local affairs to often boisterous meetings that are seen across the country. This began with parents who were upset after schools were being closed last year well after we learned that they could safely reopen in spite of COVID-19. Then these meetings grew to include pushback against mask mandates for students and against school districts adopting a curriculum known as critical race theory.

There are many parents across the country who are upset about these things, and that is their right, to be upset about them and to talk about them all they want to--after all, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly.

So here is the issue. The Attorney General's memo spoke of violence and threats of violence. Make no mistake about it--violence should never be used to get what you want in politics. It is illegal for a good reason, and making real, true threats is illegal as well. They scare people, and that is not right. No one should ever threaten someone with violence just because they are angry about some school policy.

Unfortunately, however, the Department of Justice memo goes further than that. A person reading it might think that a parent can't speak-- really speak his or her mind at a school board meeting; that spirited debate is not welcome; that very pointed and direct questions from educators to school board members aren't welcome; that deep disagreements are not welcome. Parents coming and speaking to their local school boards is what our democracy is all about--the essence of our representative system of government. Whether it is Congress, State legislatures, city hall, or school boards, we ought to be able to have civil discussion, and nobody ought to question that civil discussion.

Of course, democracy also includes very passionate disagreements. If an elected official can't handle a passionate disagreement, then he or she shouldn't go into politics in the first place. That goes for the President; that goes for this Senator; and that goes for every member on every school board in the country.

Elected officials don't go crying to the FBI when constituents tell them something--how they are really feeling on an issue--regardless of how strong that feeling might be.

If a parent is passionately advocating for her child at a school board meeting and school officials tell her she is out of line, the parent should not have to worry that the FBI is going to pay her a visit in her home after that meeting.

She should not have to wonder whether the PATRIOT Act is going to be used to investigate her. It should never even cross that person's mind. If

it does, then she might just stop talking altogether at a meeting, and there would be a chilling effect on democracy.

That chilling effect is a very bad thing for democracies. In other words, it should never happen in the first place. So it is critically important for the Attorney General to make very clear to everybody that, short of violence and making true threats of violence, the Federal Government will have nothing to do with the crowds and the comments that people make at a school board meeting.

All of my Republican colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee and I sent a letter to the Attorney General telling him just that. He should make clear to all Americans that, unless there is physical violence or a threat of physical violence, Federal law enforcement has nothing to do with local school board meetings; and he ought to take into consideration the capability of local law enforcement to take care of it in the first place.

Mr. President, I would like to address the Senate Judiciary majority's Trump investigation examining the period from December 14, 2020 through January 3, 2021.

The majority released their report this morning; the minority released our report this morning.

This truncated investigation doesn't support the long-running Democratic narrative that Trump used the Justice Department to try to overturn the 2020 election. And it is truncated because we don't have all the records and this committee only interviewed three witnesses.

The available evidence shows that President Trump didn't use the Department of Justice to subvert the 2020 election. For example, one witness testified that President Trump had no impact--I repeat, no impact; and the words ``no impact'' come from that witness--on what the Department did to investigate election allegations.

In fact, the evidence shows that President Trump listened to his advisers and to their recommendations, and that he followed those recommendations.

The witnesses also testified that President Trump didn't fire anyone at the Justice Department relating to the election.

Records from this investigation indicate that President Trump's focus was on ``legitimate complaints and reports of crimes.''

Witnesses testified that President Trump's main focus was on making the Department aware of the potential criminal allegations and to ensure that the Department did its job. It wasn't President Trump directing or ordering specific investigative steps. Witnesses also testified that it wasn't unreasonable for President Trump to ask the Department what it was doing to investigate election fraud and crime allegations.

Now, with respect to the other core issues in the Democratic narrative, the available evidence shows three facts.

Fact No. 1: President Trump rejected sending the letter drafted and advocated by Assistant Attorney General Clark to various States to contest the election.

Fact No. 2: President Trump rejected firing Attorney General Rosen. Indeed, after Bill Barr submitted his resignation as Attorney General, President Trump apparently considered Richard Donoghue as a replacement, showing his displeasure with Rosen.

Third and final fact: President Trump accepted Acting Attorney General Rosen's position that the Department not file a lawsuit against the States with reported voter issues.

The Democrats' report makes much of the efforts by individual lawyers to push the Department to take these steps, but the fact is, none of these steps were taken because President Trump made the ultimate decision not to take those steps. At each of these critical decision points, the President asked his advisers for their candid views and their candid recommendations, and the President followed them.

Now, ask yourself this: Where would we be now if President Biden followed the advice and recommendations of his advisers regarding Afghanistan? And we know what that advice was because we heard it last week before the committees in the House and Senate by the generals who were testifying.

Again, I am not sure why the committee is releasing transcripts and an investigative report when the investigation doesn't seem to be complete yet. I, as chairman of a committee, run investigations differently. I collect records and run all the necessary interviews. I gather the full set of facts.

Then and only then, I release the material publicly.

So far, the narrative the majority has been spinning here just isn't borne out by the facts. So this advice from me: Don't take this Senator's word for it; do as we have done on the Republican side. Read the transcripts. I think you will come to the very same conclusions that I have just stated.

Tribute to Professor Lisa Schulte Moore

Mr. President, on a second point and a much shorter point, I would like to recognize an outstanding professor at Iowa State University. Professor Lisa Schulte Moore of Iowa State University is doing important work on behalf of farmers and rural communities, and eventually it affects all Americans.

Dr. Schulte Moore is a landscape ecologist and professor of natural resource ecology and management. Additionally, she serves as associate director of the Bioeconomy Institute at Iowa State University.

Dr. Schulte Moore was recently recognized as the 2021 MacArthur Foundation Award recipient and the first-ever Iowa State MacArthur Fellow. This award is known as the Genius Grant and is given to individuals who have shown a dedication to their field through creativity and originality.

Dr. Schulte Moore is a founder of the Prairie STRIPS conservation program. Established in 2003 at the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge in Prairie City, IA, this program studied the effects of planting prairie strips on farmland.

Before I continue, I just used the name Neal Smith--former Congressman Neal Smith of Iowa, 36 years a Member of the House of Representatives. He has been retired quite a while now. He just celebrated, I think, his 100th birthday and is still active in the Des Moines community.

Participants found that prairie strips can protect the quality of our soil and water by reducing farm field soil loss by 95 percent. They also reduce nitrogen and phosphorus runoff by up to 80 percent. Because of the professor's work, prairie strips are used in 14 States on over 115,000 acres of cropland.

In addition to the $625,000 received through the MacArthur Foundation, Dr. Schulte Moore was recently awarded a $10 million Federal grant to turn biomass and manure into fuel. With this research, the professor is looking for additional ways that farm waste can be turned into renewable fuel and consequently not contribute to the degradation of the environment.

Whether it is researching the next generation of biofuels or helping farmers understand what conservation practices work best at their farms, I am grateful that the MacArthur Foundation recognized Dr. Schulte Moore. Her dedication and innovation encourage young people at Iowa State University and beyond to become involved in agriculture.

The fact is, the United States has the safest and most abundant food supply in the world thanks to the American farmer and through research at institutions like Iowa State University.

Congratulations, Dr. Schulte Moore. Iowa State University and the State of Iowa are lucky to have a professor like you.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, more than 3 months ago, ProPublica began publishing a series of stories. These stories were based on what they have described as ``a vast trove of Internal

Revenue Service data on the tax returns of thousands of the nation's wealthiest people, covering over 15 years.''

I have spoken about this apparent leak or hack on IRS data before. During the August recess, POLITICO Pro's Morning Tax, writing about ProPublica, noted that ``it's been almost two-and-a-half months since it ran its first story on that leaked tax data and, though the leak is perhaps the worst in the IRS's history, the government has yet . . . to say anything publicly about how it happened.''

As absurd as that statement is, it is also accurate, and I will speak about the accuracy of that. The Biden administration has not said what happened regarding perhaps the worst leak or hack in the history of the

Mr. President, I call on Attorney General Garland, FBI Director Wray, and Commissioner Rettig to take the apparent leak or hack of taxpayers' information very seriously and cooperate with our constitutionally mandated responsibility to conduct oversight to see that the laws are faithfully executed.

The protection of taxpayers' information provided to the IRS is of critical importance to the basic functioning of government. Determining the source of the information published by ProPublica should be a top priority for our Nation's tax enforcement Agency and, allegedly, premier law enforcement entity. I intend to continue working with Ranking Member Crapo of the Finance Committee and anybody else to continue looking into this matter. I hope that we are able to resolve how any confidential taxpayer information was obtained from the IRS and those responsible are held accountable.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, in recent days, much has been said about Afghanistan. I spoke about it last time on September 15, and most of my colleagues have spoken on the very same subject. I come to speak more about it. Today, I will look at it from a very different angle. I am going to look at it from the angle that you see through the Inspector General lens.

The sudden collapse of the Afghan Government and the Afghan Army threw me right back to years of oversight work and audits conducted by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. Now, the terminology ``Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction'' goes by the acronym SIGAR. That person goes by the name of his real name, Mr. John Sopko.

SIGAR, in its reports, pulled no punches. Report after report over the years exposed and documented grim allegations of weak security, systemic

corruption, and waste--waste of taxpayers' dollars. Those core problems were brushed aside and allowed to eat away at the foundation of our commitment. In other words, our leaders were not heeding the warnings from the Inspector General, Mr. John Sopko.

An inability to solve these problems prompted SIGAR to send warning signals. Those warning signals said our mission in Afghanistan was failing. And that is not a recent conclusion; that is things he stated over and over, over the years. This was all to the detriment of U.S. foreign policy and our national security--the fact that most of SIGAR's advice fell on deaf ears. SIGAR was like a lone wolf, howling out there in the wilderness.

As the final scene of the Afghan tragedy unfolded, as we all saw on television at the Kabul Airport, in those circumstances, President Biden cut and run. He assigned blame squarely on the Afghans' shoulders, but that is not the whole truth. Just pick up any SIGAR report; it is plain to see in those reports that something was wrong. We were the chief architect and financier for the lion's share of the construction in Afghanistan that collapsed. If we are to learn from this experience, we need to begin by looking in the mirror.

SIGAR's ``lessons learned reports'' clearly indicate that security against the Taliban threat was a top priority. According to SIGAR, security was never achieved. Based on repeated assessments of the army's readiness, SIGAR concluded that the Afghan Army lacked the capability to independently defend the country against internal and external threats, contrary to President Biden's hailing the capability of the Afghan military to preserve the country and defend it from the Taliban.

And without security, nation building was a nonstarter. Now we question whether or not nation building ought to be part of the policy, but it seemed to be too often.

When coupled with the systemic corruption I just mentioned--and SIGAR characterized that as an ``existential threat . . . that eroded army readiness''--prospects for survival of the government and the army of Afghans doing their job were very dim.

Against advice that I have given previous administrations, the President announced the date certain for pulling out the U.S. military. And, by the way, that wasn't wise because you never tell your enemies what your plans are.

So within days, the Taliban eliminated the Afghan Army with hardly a struggle. The Taliban then seized U.S. military assets.

The Biden administration left Americans and Afghan allies behind enemy lines. Adding tragedy to the deeply flawed military exit, a U.S. drone strike killed 10 civilians.

There is clear and present urgency for accountability. Do my fellow Senators pay appropriate attention to the work of the IGs throughout government? Maybe not often enough, but surely listening to SIGAR, not enough of us listened to him.

Afghanistan's collapse underscores the merits of SIGAR's work out of three dozen confirmed IGs. IGs do important work, and their work should be considered greatly. And the fact that we ignored SIGAR's work in Afghanistan is a tragedy, particularly when the people in the executive branch of government ignored it.

SIGAR was created to watchdog the huge sums of money pouring into Afghanistan. Mr. Sopko, the IG, did his job well. He issued aggressive, hard-hitting reports, documenting egregious waste and blatant corruption on both sides--our side and the Afghan side. Large sums of money simply disappeared.

In a recent report, SIGAR served up a classic case of waste and corruption, and he did it on a silver platter. It is symptomatic of the rot that derailed our efforts in Afghanistan.

One example involved the purchase of 20 refurbished Italian G222 medium-lift aircraft for the Afghan Air Force. They added $549 million to the taxpayers' tab. These aircraft were needed but unsupportable and inoperable.

The squandering on this project was matched by others exposed by SIGAR, like the 64,000 square-foot surge command center that was built for $34 million but never needed and never occupied.

The G222 aircraft was just another notch in Uncle Sam's belt of wasteful spending. Those planes were thrown in the junk heap because of crooked mismanagement--and that was on our side.

The Air Force general who led the program while on Active Duty, and then as vice president for the company selling the Italian aircraft, allegedly violated criminal conflict-of-interest statutes.

SIGAR wanted to pursue criminal charges, but the Department of Justice refused to prosecute. The Department of Justice turned a blind eye to the general's alleged misconduct. Let that sink in.

A half-billion taxpayer dollars went up in smoke, and no one was held to account. At a minimum, this reckless spending demanded disciplinary action. With little or no accountability, it was easy for crooks to line their pockets with schemes like the G222 aircraft.

Now, SIGAR exposed that. It wasn't prosecuted, but SIGAR nailed quite a few. Investigations resulted in 160 criminal convictions. Corruption was found on both sides.

The convicted included 42 Afghanis, 58 U.S. military personnel, 49 U.S. contractors, and 11 U.S. Government personnel and citizens.

Some money was recovered, but obviously you don't recover all of it. However, in such a target-rich environment, I suspect that SIGAR's investigators barely scratched the surface.

Unfortunately, while SIGAR's finger was stuck in the dike, Uncle Sam kept spending money--kept the spigot wide open. Some estimate that over $2 trillion flowed through the pipe to a government and an army known by SIGAR to be riddled with systemic corruption. We tolerated it, and the money kept flowing.

What happened in Afghanistan boils down to the fundamental principle of good government. Oversight is critical to accountability. SIGAR has more work to do. SIGAR will need to provide a full accounting for all the captured and abandoned weapons and equipment.

You see a figure of $85 billion of that stuff left over there for the Taliban to use for whatever they want to use it for--hopefully, never against the United States.

The IG will need to track down unexpended dollars in the pipeline, estimated at $6\1/2\ billion or more, so those tax dollars can be returned to the Treasury or allocated for other legitimate and needed purposes.

The IG will need to investigate allegations that high officials fled with hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars in cash. And we are told that one of those was the former President. The most recent President of Afghanistan got away with millions and millions of dollars.

Now, if true, this would be more proof of systemic corruption that was the country's undoing. Stolen tax dollars should be recovered.

The House Defense authorization bill already instructs SIGAR to address these and other issues. I call on the Senate Armed Services Committee to adopt those same measures and authorize funding needed to finish the job by SIGAR.

Congress needs to know why SIGAR's alarm bells on poor security, corruption, and waste were largely ignored. They were unmistakable indicators of the impending collapse that we now know has happened to the country of Afghanistan--to the Taliban.

Once the decision was made to pull out U.S. troops in early 2020, preparations for evacuations were mandatory. So then why did our President make such a panicked and haphazard exit? Did no one see the warnings coming and the signs that showed what would happen? Did the military fail to develop an orderly exit strategy and evacuation plan, as alleged by Secretary Blinken?

If true, who is responsible for that blunder? A congressional autopsy might help us avoid the same mistakes in the future. It might help us put forward a better foot to strengthen strategic alliances.

As painful as it may be, we must never give up trying to learn from our past mistakes. We still face threats from terrorist groups with the same ideology as the 9/11 attackers have. And you know where they got their training--in Afghanistan.

We still have troops in many countries combating terrorism in partnership with local forces. We can't afford

to sweep mistakes under the rug and just move on and forget about it.

Without some soul searching, America risks further humiliation like we have just witnessed, which will only embolden our would-be adversaries.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, with North Korea test firing ballistic missiles last week, you might ask: Where is the United Nations?

There are a series of international sanctions aimed at North Korea's nuclear program. These sanctions are in accordance with the U.N. Security Council's regulations passed in the wake of previous North Korea nuclear tests and ballistic missile tests. There is a U.N. Security Council Sanctions Committee on North Korea that is charged with monitoring these sanctions on North Korea.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that an expert panel working on a report for this U.N. committee has faced roadblocks from Chinese representatives, supported by Russia in some circumstances.

China and Russia supported these sanctions, but now they appear to be running interference for North Korea so North Korea can continue to violate the reason these sanctions were put on.

The expert panel is supposed to report the facts. And then by reporting the facts, they aren't representing national governments and shouldn't be representing national governments.

It is blatantly clear that the Chinese representative is doing the bidding for the Chinese Communist Party. The footnotes with dissenting comments are anonymous, but there is no doubt where they came from. In other words, China.

In one case, it is as petty as insisting that a reference to a company with ``Taiwan'' in its name should include an assertion that Taiwan is a province of China. That is something you hear from China all the time. Everyone knows China is obsessed with making others pretend that Taiwan is not an independent country.

That leaves no doubt where these objections are coming from. You can draw a very straight line back to General Secretary Xi. The bigger problem is that other objections seem designed to minimize and paper over the violations of these sanctions by North Korea. That is as good as confirmed by suspicions that China has been helping North Korea evade the sanctions that China supported in the first place and still claims to support.

General Secretary Xi probably thinks that letting North Korea run wild with its nuclear weapons program would cause problems for the West. And we all know that the West is very concerned about North Korea's developing of nuclear weapons and the ability to deliver.

General Secretary Xi is very shortsighted when he takes that view that he wants to cause problems for the West by helping North Korea, because it can't be in China's interest to have a nuclear-armed and unstable regime as a next-door neighbor, which North Korea is a nuclear-armed and a nonstable regime.

General Secretary Xi's strategy of sowing chaos is playing with fire. That is why all of this activity going on in the U.N. and China trying to cover up the violations of the sanctions is dangerous not just for the U.S. interests, but it is very dangerous for China and the world.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, last week, Special Counsel Durham indicted Michael Sussman, an attorney for the Hillary Clinton Presidential campaign. He was indicted for lying to the FBI.

The indictment gives example after example of the Democratic Party's bag of dirty tricks.

In September 2016, Sussman met with the FBI's general counsel, James Baker. At that meeting he provided information and data files that allegedly contained evidence of a secret communication between the Trump organization and the Russian bank Alfa Bank.

The evidence, however, was fabricated. The allegations about the Trump organization being linked with a Russian bank--these were false. The email server at issue was neither owned nor operated by the Trump organization.

But the lie in the indictment occurred when Sussmann allegedly told the FBI general counsel that he wasn't providing the information on any client's behalf. He repeated the same to another government agency. Those assertions were apparently false. He was working for the Hillary Clinton Presidential campaign.

Now, interestingly, the indictment states that although Baker was allegedly unaware of the political affiliation of the information starting in April 2016, Sussmann represented the Democratic National Committee and regularly met with the FBI. According to the indictment, the FBI failed to connect the dots. What Special Counsel Durham's indictment shows in significant detail, by the way, are the steps that the Clinton campaign and her Democratic allies took to dirty up Trump-- and did so--with known false information.

Time and again, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have cast false information against Trump to tie him to a foolish conspiracy that he is an agent of the Russian Government. Time and again, when the evidence is made public, the Democratic Party is shown to be the master of the disinformation universe, and much of the so-called mainstream press fell for and peddled the falsehoods.

What's wrong with our journalists being journalists and investigating everything to the bottom rather than trying to not do their work and letting people get away with this sort of action?

Now I am going to take a few examples from the indictment. Notably, Sussmann was working with an unnamed executive at a technology firm that had been offered a position in the Clinton administration, should she have won that election in 2016.

The information compiled and analyzed the false Alfa Bank information and, according to the indictment, ``exploited access to non-public data at multiple internet companies to conduct opposition research concerning Trump.''

To accomplish those ends, the executive enlisted ``the assistance of researchers at a U.S.-based university who were receiving and analyzing Internet data in connection with a pending federal government cybersecurity research contract.''

Now, amazingly, the indictment later says that the university accessed data of an unnamed executive branch agency through an unnamed internet company. That unnamed internet company possessed that data because it was a subcontract ``in a sensitive relationship between the U.S. government and another company.''

Apparently, taxpayers unwittingly assisted the false-information campaign used against Trump by the Democrats.

I'd like to say that you can't make this stuff up, but that is exactly what they did. A researcher that worked to falsely connect Trump to Alfa Bank said, ``We cannot technically make any claims that would fly public scrutiny.''

They also discussed faking email addresses to try and beef up some bogus false connection between Trump and Alfa Bank. Even the unnamed tech executive essentially said the Alfa Bank data was a ``red herring.''

One email in the indictment even says in part:

The only thing that drives us at this point is that we just

do not like [Trump]. This will not fly in the eyes of public

scrutiny. Folks, I am afraid that we have tunnel vision.

They recognized that what they were doing lacked any factual support, yet Sussmann, the Democrats, and the Clinton campaign proceeded ahead anyway.

Even more than that, Christopher Steele reportedly got his information about Alfa Bank from Sussmann and included it in the Steele dossier. The indictment clearly shows the depth to which the Clinton campaign went to smear Trump--smear--with false evidence and plant it with the liberal media, who then willingly ran with it--and probably smiled as they ran with it. And here we are, years later, with a country that has been almost torn apart because of the Democratic Party's fake evidence against Trump.

Special Counsel Durham stated on December 9, 2019, in part, relating to the Justice Department inspector general's report on Crossfire Hurricane, ``last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report's conclusions as to the predication and how the FBI case was opened.''

Special Counsel Durham has had several years to investigate and bring a case forward. We have seen two instances where folks have been charged with a crime, one already pleading guilty.

One must not forget the Obama-Biden Justice Department's and the FBI's blatant misrepresentations to the FISA court during the Crossfire Hurricane and other serious wrongdoing, much of which was uncovered by Congress and the inspector general.

On June 29 of this year, Senator Johnson and I asked Attorney General Garland if he agrees with then-Attorney General Barr's statement that any Durham report be submitted in the form that will permit public dissemination. On July 13 of this year, Attorney General Garland said that he agrees.

Special Counsel Durham, let's see what you have got, and we will be able to see it when the report comes out.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, paraphrasing a philosopher of his era, Winston Churchill once said: Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

And I doubt that Churchill was the only one that said that. I think we quote other people saying similar things.

Now, Churchill was himself a devoted student to history. The research for his multivolume biography of his ancestor, John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough, likely informed his strategic military thinking as Prime Minister during World War II.

Churchill was also a fierce critic of socialism in his time, and that is the main point of my remarks today--talking about socialism.

Socialism, as we know it today, is based on a different view of history than what Churchill had, a history that says we are headed in a particular direction, and you just need to see where it is heading to ``be on the right side of history.''

Socialism was thought to be the wave of the future in Churchill's time, just as it was the wave of the future when Karl Marx was writing about it in the mid-1800s. In fact, a wave is an apt analogy for socialism. Enthusiasm for socialism has crested and then crashed down many, many times in the last couple of centuries.

Today, some enthusiasts are again riding high on this socialism wave. Some of them are too young to know better, while others simply refuse to learn the lessons from the previous crashes that socialism has shown us.

Given previous spectacular failures of full-fledged socialism in Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa, usually, as we learn, resulting in violence, in poverty, and, most importantly, suppression of individual rights that we value here in the United States, but also advocates of socialism find themselves on the defensive once again.

When asked why we should try a system that has repeatedly and spectacularly failed, a common fallback is to cite Sweden and other Nordic countries as examples that we should learn from.

It may surprise some of my colleagues here in the Senate that this is one point where I agree with the socialists. We should examine and learn from Sweden's experience. In fact, an excellent summary of Sweden's experience from the 1950s to this very day has been compiled by the Swedish economist Johan Norberg. His video, which goes by the title ``Sweden: Lessons for America,'' is available on YouTube as part of the Free to Choose Network. A short paper similarly titled, ``Sweden's Lesson for America,'' has been published by the Cato Institute.

So I would recommend to all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle paying attention to either that video or that publication by Cato because we can learn a lot from Sweden, and it is not what people will be espousing here in the U.S. Senate based upon a lot of political speeches from those on the left.

As Norberg points out, by about 1950, Sweden was the fourth richest country in the world and had the fifth freest economy. In other words, Sweden became wealthy through economic freedom, like we have here in America. And then, you know what, Sweden started to adopt socialist policies.

At first, it was just a few welfare programs. But between 1960 and 1980, government spending in Sweden doubled from 31 percent of gross domestic product to 60 percent of gross domestic product, and, of course, that meant for all the people in Sweden to pay sky-high taxes.

This is the time period that older socialists remember so fondly and we see espoused here on the Senate floor. Sweden was surfing on top of the socialist wave and seemed to have it all: prosperity, massive government spending, and a highly regulated economy. However, even the best surfers cannot ride a wave forever. All waves eventually come crashing down. Sweden's socialist policies started to kill off the wealth creation that had made its economy the fourth richest in the world. That wealth economy was needed to fund all that government spending.

Norberg points out that Sweden was 10 percent richer than the G7 countries on a per-capita basis in 1970. But 25 years later, 1995, it was more than 10 percent poorer than those same G7 countries. During that time, not a single job was created in Sweden's private sector, and, more importantly, inflation took away almost all of the value

of any wage increases during that period of time in Sweden--just as we see since the first of the year, inflation eating away so the workers today in America do not have a real wage increase.

As Margaret Thatcher famously said, ``The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.''

One of the most iconic Swedish companies is Ikea. Its stores all around the world are painted the color of the Swedish flag. During Sweden's experiment with socialism, Ikea moved to the Netherlands and is still headquartered there today. Things in Sweden had to change. And you know what? By the 1990s, Sweden realized its mistakes going the Big Government direction that they went and they reversed course.

Yes, it did elect a center-right government in the 1990s. But even more importantly, the leftwing Swedish socialist democrats also recognized their mistake.

Norberg quotes a Social Democrat Minister of Finance:

That whole thing with democratic socialism was absolutely

impossible. It just didn't work. There was no . . . way to go

than market reform.

So, yes, let us learn from Sweden here in the U.S. Senate, as we are considering a $4.2 trillion reconciliation package that builds more government programs and entitlement programs, that once you start them they never end--because we don't have to go down the socialism road. That road is a dead end.

Yes, Sweden still has much higher government spending and a more extensive welfare state than we have in the United States, but in order to generate the wealth to pay for it, Sweden now has very pro-growth economic policies. Sweden doesn't pretend that they can finance all that spending by taxing the rich, like you have constantly heard from the Democrat majority in both Houses of this Congress. In fact, Sweden's tax code is much less progressive than the Federal Government's Tax Code here in the United States. Most Swedish tax revenue comes from an income tax system flatter than ours and also from a consumption tax.

Norberg points out that the top 10 percent in Sweden pay less than 27 percent of the taxes; whereas, in the United States, the top 10 percent pay 45 percent of all the income in the Federal Government, and we are still hearing that they aren't paying enough. And yet, from the other side, I never hear how much more than that 45 percent that segment of our economy should pay because maybe there are some people who believe it ought to be 100 percent.

Moreover, taxes on employers and capital are modest in Sweden to attract investment and remain competitive on our global stage. The Trump tax cuts finally made our corporate income tax competitive with Sweden's. Now they want to make the American corporate tax rate yet the highest in the world, where it was for a long period of time until 4 years ago.

That is right; the Trump tax cuts made corporate tax more like Sweden, but now the Democrats want to make it less competitive once again. That is right. I am talking about today's Democrats and the Biden proposals. By doing so, they are making the mistake that Sweden made decades ago that they are now attempting to correct and has done so by restoring pro-growth policies.

As Norberg said, ``You can have a big government, or you can make the rich pay for it all. You can't have both.''

Everybody in Sweden--rich, middle class, and even lower income--pays high taxes. That is the deal the Swedes have made. If that is the deal Democrats are offering Americans, they should be honest instead of pretending it is possible to fund Swedish-style government here in the United States by spending through soaking the rich. They should explain that hard-working Americans will have to fork over close to half of their income to the government in return for the cradle-to-grave welfare state benefits. But I think they know that would be very, very unpopular here if that is where it ends up, like it did in Sweden between 1970 and 1995.

Now, the United States is not Sweden. Americans, who declared independence and fought our Revolutionary War over taxes, are, on the whole, much less tolerant of giving over their hard-earned dollars to the government to spend.

I would urge my colleagues across the aisle to learn the lessons from Sweden, including their counterparts on the center left in Sweden. Do not kill job creation. Do not kill wealth creation. Do not let soaring inflation steal the wages of American workers.

And if you want to look to Sweden, look to the Sweden of today, not the Sweden of 1980. Better yet, if you want a model in the region, look to Sweden's dynamic neighbor across the Black Sea, Estonia. Its history has led it to be even more resistant to the failed, outdated ideology of socialism. Estonia has the most competitive tax code in the OECD and a fast-growing economy. No wonder it is pushing back on Biden's administrative proposal for a global minimum tax. Our actions now will determine what kind of life our kids and grandkids will have in the future.

We ought to learn from history so we can shape a brighter future. History is clear that economic freedom is the ticket to broad prosperity and not socialism.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, in 2017, Republicans reformed the Tax Code in a traditional sense. We broadened the tax base by reducing tax preferences for special interests in favor of lower overall tax rates.

We also had several other goals, including maintaining the progressivity of the Tax Code, cutting taxes across all income groups-- predominantly for the middle class--and making our business tax system globally competitive. We were able to accomplish each of these goals in that 2017 tax bill.

On average, taxpayers across all levels saw a tax cut. Middle-income taxpayers saw the largest percentage decrease in their tax bills. Also, we not only maintained the progressivity of our Tax Code, we made it more progressive.

Moreover, the bill brought our business tax system and rates in line with the rest of the world. You just heard Senator Sasse speak brilliantly about that point. It put an end to the practice of corporations moving headquarters offshore to avoid paying the highest tax rate in the developed world.

In the process, it incentivized American businesses to invest here at home and made America a more attractive place for foreign companies to locate.

Now, prepandemic, these reforms resulted in the highest economic growth,

the lowest unemployment, and the biggest wage gains that we had seen in decades. So when you talk about what the Democrats are proposing through reconciliation, it is kind of like they are ready to kill the goose that laid the golden egg.

Now we are post-COVID. Democrats assert a massive expansion of government is necessary to, in their words, build back better. But that is exactly backwards. America will build back better post-pandemic, but it won't be because of the government. In fact, it is already happening due to the perseverance of the American people and the ingenuity of the American entrepreneurs and job creators.

Unfortunately, the tax bill unveiled by Ways and Means last week will only hinder our path back to the prosperity that we had prior to February 2020. Their bill is the exact opposite of tax reform. It would raise marginal tax rates on individuals and small businesses to a level not seen since before the 1986 tax act.

Moreover, our corporate tax rate would once again be the highest among our major trading partners. These tax hikes will slow our recovery from the pandemic, and it will reduce capital investment; and it takes capital investment to create jobs. So it will result in fewer jobs, and it is also going to result in reduced wages beyond the reduced wages that is already happening because inflation is heating up. It will reinvigorate corporate inversions with major companies fleeing overseas.

In conjunction with raising tax rates, they narrow the tax rate base in favor of social and corporate welfare handouts. Now, I say handouts because the majority of their bill's $1.2 trillion in tax cuts aren't reductions but turn out to be pure spending.

According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, $689 billion--or 57 percent--of their so-called tax cuts are actually outlays. That is a fancy way of saying Treasury is going to write the individual or businesses a check that may exceed their taxes that they had otherwise paid.

This is turning our tax laws and the mission of the Internal Revenue Service on its head. No longer would the Tax Code primarily be raising revenue necessary to fund essential governments. In fact, it would be about doling out cash to those that Democrats consider worthy.

Given their rhetoric, you might think that these types of cash payments would be reserved for low- to moderate-income individuals and families. But, even very wealthy individuals buying electric cars, millionaires investing in green energy projects, and multibillion- dollar corporations will be in line for Federal checks.

This is astonishing coming from a party claiming to be outraged by wealthy individuals and profitable corporations paying zero tax. As recently as March of this year, President Biden castigated Amazon for not paying ``a single solitary penny in federal income tax[es].'' If he finds that unacceptable, then he should be beside himself about this Democrat tax proposal.

Under their tax bills, a company such as Amazon would have an effective tax rate of not just zero, but negative. In other words, favored companies could receive a check from the government in excess of any income taxes owed. Meanwhile, disfavored groups would be left to pick up the tab. This includes Iowa family farmers, who could see their years of hard work taxed away as a result of the death tax exemption being slashed in half.

What I have outlined here is a small sample of concerns that I have with the House proposal. Their bill is so chock-full of tax giveaways, counterproductive tax policies, and punitive tax hikes that one former Democrat Senate staffer is quoted in the publication of POLITICO calling the House approach--in that person's words--``laughable.''

I hope my Senate colleagues do better. It will be hard for them to do any worse.

I yield the floor.