Floor Statements

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Johnson) and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be able to complete my remarks prior to the vote.

Mr. President, last week, President Biden's Chief of Staff retweeted a tweet from Harvard economist Jason Furman describing our current economic challenges--notably, the growing inflation crisis and supply chain issues--as ``high class problems.''

``High class problems.''

Well, I guess working Americans struggling to stretch their paychecks to cover increases in the price of everything from groceries to gas can comfort themselves with the knowledge that they are experiencing ``high class problems.''

The White House Chief of Staff's tone-deaf tweet was, unfortunately, pretty typical of a White House that seems eager to minimize or disclaim responsibility for most of the problems occurring on its watch, whether it is the flood of illegal immigration across our southern border or the high prices Americans are currently facing.

But as the White House Chief of Staff and the President should know, inflation has become a serious problem for working Americans. Inflation, of course, hits middle- and low-income families hard.

If you are wealthy, price increases may be an annoyance, but they are not likely to break the budget. If you are living paycheck to paycheck, on the other hand, price increases may mean the difference between making it to the next paycheck or running out of money mid-month.

Currently, inflation is costing a typical household $175 a month, and that is according to Moody's Analytics. That may not sound like much to a wealthy Democratic politician, but for an ordinary American family, it is a lot of money.

That $175 a month may be the difference between whether or not parents can afford to get braces for their daughter. It may be the difference between going to visit family for Christmas or staying home and not seeing them. It may be the difference between having money for the extras, like family dinners at a restaurant or little league fees or ballet lessons or just being able to cover the bare necessities.

For families making less than the median U.S. income, $100 or more a month can be the difference between making it to the next paycheck or running out of money. It can mean the difference between paying the heating bill or going cold during the winter.

Americans have seen increases in food prices and the price of bacon or beef or poultry, pork, peanut butter, fruits and vegetables, eggs, and the list goes on. The price of children's shoes is up. So is the price of furniture and gas and electricity and rent.

A recent AP article entitled ``Winter heating bills set to jump as inflation hits home'' noted ``the U.S. Government said . . . it expects households to see their heating bills jump as much as 54 percent compared to last winter.''

Fifty-four percent.

Show me the working family that can easily absorb that increase. Inflation happens when you have too much money, too many dollars chasing too few of goods.

Democrats helped trigger our inflation situation earlier this year when they decided to pour a lot of unnecessary government money into the economy, despite being warned their partisan $1.9 trillion spending bill could stoke inflation.

Now, with inflation clearly becoming a long-term problem, Democrats are preparing to double down on the government spending with a massive $3.5 trillion tax-and-spending bill filled with priorities like $200 million for a park in Speaker Pelosi's district--a park that features luxury housing and a golf course--and billions of dollars for a Civilian Climate Corps to provide government jobs for climate activists.

The massive government spending this bill--the biggest expansion of government, for sure, in decades, maybe in history--would authorize would pretty much guarantee that our country would be left with an even more persistent and widespread inflation problem.

Flooding the economy with government dollars isn't even the only way that the bill will contribute to inflation. The bill also contains big tax hikes on businesses, which are already raising prices thanks to the higher cost of shipping and materials and the challenges of hiring an adequate workforce. Raising taxes on those businesses could result in even higher consumer prices and/or reductions in the quality of services provided to consumers.

Government revenue for fiscal year 2021 saw a huge increase, driven in large part by tax receipts from corporations and well-off Americans. Those are the same companies and individuals the Democrats like to accuse of not paying their fair share.

But since Democrats' appetite for government spending is apparently insatiable, record-high government revenues don't look likely to stop them from passing their huge tax increases and driving up prices for consumers further.

Along with the flood of government spending Democrats passed in the spring, another major contributor to our inflation crisis has been supply chain bottlenecks. The White House has largely failed to do anything to address the problem.

The President finally took one step forward when he announced the other day that the Port of Los Angeles will join the Port of Long Beach in operating 24/7.

Well, it is about time. Major ports around the globe already operate around the clock, but here in the United States, unions have largely stood in the way of round-the-clock operations. And even now, the Port of Los Angeles/Long Beach will not be fully 24/7 for a while. Only one of the container terminals is currently open around the clock, and then only for part of the week. The others are only slowly moving toward 24- hour operations with no deadline in sight.

Other than moving toward 24/7 operations in Los Angeles, however, the President is doing almost nothing to address the supply chain bottleneck. Infrastructure upgrades for ports, trucking, and rail are stuck in limbo while Democrats debate their $3.5 trillion tax-and- spending spree.

And, while the President's Transportation Secretary has talked about loosening trucking regulations, his Department is actually pursuing an aggressive regulatory agenda that is likely to make transporting goods around this country more, not less, difficult.

And I don't even want to think about the transportation challenges that are likely to result from the government mandates and regulations that will emerge from the Democrats' $3.5 trillion tax-and-spending spree.

It is unfortunate that Democrat elites cannot seem to grasp that inflation is a serious problem for working families and that the solution to our inflation problem is not to flood our economy with even more government money. If Democrats succeed in passing their reckless tax-and-spending spree, high inflation may be the order of the day for many, many days to come.

Let's hope that Democrats think better of their spending plans before American families end up paying the price.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, as I begin this morning, let me just start by reacting to a couple of things that have been said here on the floor this morning already by my Democrat colleagues.

You know, the leader, Republican leader, when he was down here earlier, talked about the impact of inflation on the economy, and I have to tell you, that is very real. The inflationary impact is being felt all across this country. Energy costs are up, gasoline costs are up by huge amounts. Food costs are up in this country. Housing costs are up.

There isn't hardly any area of our economy where people aren't being impacted by inflation, meaning that the dollars that they earn are stretching less all the time. That is not a fake thing; it is not a temporary thing; it is a real thing. People are experiencing it in their economic lives on a daily basis, and to hear the Democratic leader say, well, you know, all the spending they are going to do is not going to cost anything, that it is going to be covered by tax increases and those tax increases are just going to hit people in the higher income categories, also is something that just isn't accurate.

Now let me just for a minute suggest something that I think is sort of fundamental when it comes to economics, and that is, when you have too many dollars chasing too few goods, you get inflation. The demand for a product goes up, and when the demand goes up, the price usually follows along with it.

Well, we have right now a lot of government dollars that have been swirling around the economy for some time, which is why I think in many respects we are seeing this inflation--the highest inflation that we have seen literally in 30 years in this country, affecting, as I said earlier, kind of all sectors of the economy and things that people have to purchase in their daily lives.

If you put more dollars out there, which is what is being talked about by our Democratic colleagues--another $3.5 trillion that would flood the economy--I think the expectation is a very real one that you are going to see that inflationary pressure accelerate, intensify, because when you have that much money, that many dollars chasing too few goods, inflation is an inevitable result. The idea that we need to spend another $3.5 trillion and that somehow that is going to be a solution right now also is not consistent at all with the facts and the data.

We saw here just recently the Congressional Budget Office come out with a report that suggested that government revenues are at the highest level--biggest increase, I should say, year over year since 1977. We are now over $4 trillion this last year in revenues--$4 trillion. It has never happened before in this country. It is the biggest 1-year increase in revenues since 1977, paid for largely by corporate tax receipts, which were up 75 percent year over year, and also by individual income tax receipts, much of which was coming from high-income earners. A lot of that increase that we have seen in income tax receipts in this country in government revenues comes from those people who are high-income earners.

All that to say, if you have that much revenue coming in to the government in this country, why, then, would you need to go out and raise taxes even more and spend even more when you have an economy that is in the process of recovering and people concerned about inflation? And the Democrats' solution to that is to spend more, put more money out there, and raise taxes even higher at a time when you have historic revenue coming in to the Federal Government. It is the first time ever--ever--in our Nation's history that we have had over $4 trillion in revenue come in.

The other thing that was mentioned by my colleague from Illinois just a minute ago is that the issue of the tax gap, which was alluded to earlier this morning on the floor by, again, the Republican leader--the Democratic solution is to go after people, essentially shake them down, and get them to pay more in taxes.

I am not suggesting for a minute that there aren't people out there who aren't paying the taxes that they should under the law and that the law needs to be enforced. What I am suggesting is that in the effort to close that so-called tax gap, there are huge differences of opinion about what effect that would have, how much could be generated, and who is ultimately going to pay for that.

Well, now there is additional research out coming from the Joint Committee on Taxation that, in fact, the Democratic efforts to close the tax gap will hit lower income taxpayers the most.

To say that none of the tax increases or none of the tax policies that are being proposed by the Democrats in their $3.5 trillion tax- and-spending spree proposal won't harm people who are making less than $400,000 a year is laughable under any--any--plausible review of these tax policies and proposals, but this one in particular hits hardest at low-income taxpayers.

According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, people making less than $50,000 a year will pay anywhere from 40 to 57 percent off all the revenue that is generated off of that one proposal. People making less than $100,000 a year will pay somewhere between 65 and 78 percent of all the taxes that are generated under that particular proposal in the Democratic plan. People making less than $200,000 a year would pay up to 90 percent of the amount generated under that particular proposal in the Democrats' plan. So people making less than $200,000 a year are going to be paying tens of billions of dollars more in taxes just on that one proposal which is out there, allowing the IRS essentially to snoop into people's personal transactions up to the $600 level. I don't think there is any way you can get around the fact that under that scenario, people in the lower income categories are going to end up paying the lion's share of the cost of that.

So this isn't going to be without cost. This isn't going to be without consequence. This is not going to be without impact on lower income taxpayers in this country. They are going to get hit and they are going to get hit hard under this Democratic proposal.

So when we talk about it, we are talking about real impacts, real economic impacts on the American people's lives. And we are going to continue to do everything we can to fight against really bad tax policies being put in place to finance massive amounts of spending, expansion, and growth of government at a time when government revenues just hit a historic high; never seen before; biggest year-over-year increase in revenue since 1977. And Democrats want to raise taxes-- taxes--on everybody, including those in the lower income categories.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Blunt), the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Rounds), and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Blunt), the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Rounds), and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Blunt).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Blunt), the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Rounds), the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio), the Senator from Nebraska (Mr. Sasse), and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).

Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio) would have voted ``aye.''

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr).

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr), the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Cotton), the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty), the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Johnson), and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Marshall).

Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Marshall) would have voted ``nay''.

(Mr. OSSOFF assumed the Chair.)

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, on September 25, President Biden tweeted:

My Build Back Better Agenda costs zero dollars.

That is right. According to the President, a series of new, permanent entitlements and a massive expansion of government, the biggest expansion of government, at least, since the New Deal, is going to cost zero dollars--that from the President of the United States.

And the President has now been doubling down on that claim. On Monday, he once again tweeted:

The fact of the matter is my Build Back Better agenda costs

zero dollars.

Well, no, Mr. President, the fact of the matter is your Build Back Better agenda costs $3.5 trillion, at least. That is the minimum number. The Committee for Responsible Federal Budget, where the President's Treasury Secretary served on the board before joining the administration, estimates the cost at $5 trillion or more.

Leaving that aside, even if the President has been merely trying to claim that his plan is fully paid for by tax hikes and other measures, to say that it would cost zero dollars is beyond ridiculous.

I mean, think about it. Let's say your college education was completely paid for by your parents. Did it then cost zero dollars? Of course not. It costs a lot of money--money that your parents likely were able to pay only because of a lot of hard work and sacrifices.

What if you saved up for a couple of years for your dream vacation, and now you have all the money that you need, down to the cost of your Ubers and your hotel breakfasts, does that mean that your vacation is going to cost zero dollars? Of course, it doesn't.

The same thing applies when it comes to the Democrats' legislation. Even if Democrats add all the money they need to pay for every dollar of their massive spending spree, the pricetag still wouldn't be zero dollars. I mean, it just absolutely doesn't pass the sanity test for Americans.

The pricetag for this proposal is, at least minimum, $3.5 trillion and likely much, much more. Presumably, what the President has been referring to when he makes the absurd claim that his spending bill will cost zero dollars is his assertion the bill won't add to the debt.

The problem is that isn't true either. Because the pay-fors in the Democrats' bill won't actually pay for the bill in its entirety. The tax hikes in the Democrats' legislation will actually only pay for about two-thirds of the bill's ostensible $3.5 trillion pricetag.

The other revenue-raising components in the bill won't make up the difference. What are those other revenue-raising components? Well, a substantial part is increased IRS enforcement. Democrats claim they can get $700 billion in more revenue by closing the tax gap, the difference between taxes owed and taxes paid.

There is no question that individuals shouldn't get away with cheating on their taxes. And there are, undoubtedly, reasonable measures we can take to strengthen enforcement and narrow the gap. Unfortunately, Democrats haven't proposed any reasonable measures.

Instead, the Democrats are proposing to, A, double the size of the IRS and, B, have the IRS snoop on Americans' bank accounts. That is right. Democrats want to double the size of the IRS and force banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions to provide details of individuals' spending to the Federal Government. Under the administration's proposal, once your withdrawals or deposits for the year exceed a certain amount--and that amount, by the way, if the President has his way, is $600--your bank or credit union would be forced to report the details of your activity to the Federal Government.

So the Federal Government could end up with a record of every time you eat dinner out or pay your rent or buy a new jacket or a toaster oven. The invasion of privacy being talked about here is absolutely staggering.

We already have a mechanism in place to allow the IRS to view large transactions that might indicate potential criminal activity. We do not need the Federal Government monitoring every purchase that law-abiding Americans make from the App Store or how many times Americans buy a cup of coffee, not to mention the incredible demands this reporting requirement would place on community banks and credit unions. Banks and credit unions around the country are worried about how they would manage to comply with the bill's reporting requirements.

Let's not forget that the Agency that would be receiving all of this information has a reputation for mishandling private data. In fact, the IRS was subject to a massive leak, or hack, of private taxpayer information mere months ago--information that somehow ended up in the hands of advocates at ProPublica--and neither Treasury nor the IRS has provided meaningful followup about that data breach, much less any accountability. Giving an already troubled Agency access to reams of additional private taxpayer information is a very bad idea.

Even if we granted that this massive invasion of privacy were worth it, the truth is that all of this additional enforcement still wouldn't provide the money that Democrats are claiming it would provide. Democrats claim that they can get $700 billion from the bill's increased tax enforcement measures. The reality is more likely to be about $200 billion lower, according to an analysis from the Wharton School of business. So Democrats would be doubling the size of an Agency with clear management issues and implementing a staggering invasion of taxpayer privacy to pay for a tiny fraction of their spending spree.

As I said, no taxpayer at any income level should be able to avoid paying the taxes he or she owes. I have actually signed on to cosponsor legislation that would look at responsible ways to strengthen IRS enforcement efforts. But Democrats' proposal to double the size of the IRS and track taxpayer spending should never--never--have seen the light of day. Even former IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, who served under Presidents Obama and Trump, said he thought that $80 billion for the Agency was too much.

Taken together, the IRS enforcement on steroids and Democrats' massive tax hikes will still not be enough to pay for their multitrillion-dollar legislation, partly because the tax hikes may not bring in as much as the Democrats claim but also because Democrats have used a lot of budget gimmickry to disguise the true costs of their bill.

The standard method for analyzing the cost of a bill is a 10-year-- 10-year--budget window. So you look at what your bill would cost over 10 years, and that is how you get the cost of your bill. That is normally the way that it works around here.

Well, that is not exactly what the Democrats are doing. That child allowance in the Democrats' bill? Democrats have only counted the cost of that allowance through the year 2025. That allows Democrats to claim that the cost of that provision is around $500 billion instead of the $1.1 trillion the measure would actually cost over a decade.

All of those tax hikes are, of course, just for covering the costs of the bill over a 10-year or shorter window, but in reality, the new government benefits the Democrats are putting in place are not going to expire in 10 years. This bill is effectively instituting multiple permanent--permanent--entitlement programs. The long-term cost of those programs is not going to be covered by the tax hikes Democrats are currently proposing, as massive as those tax hikes are.

I have talked a lot about the dollar costs of this bill, which are massive--the biggest expanse of government in, literally, my generation in history. I could spend just as long talking about the bill's other costs, like the fact that the bill is likely to cost workers jobs and opportunities by increasing the tax burden on American businesses and depressing economic growth, or the cost to American families, who are going to be facing higher energy bills and higher prices as a result of this legislation, but I am going to stop here for today.

One thing is for sure: Democrats' massive spending spree is going to cost a lot more than zero dollars. And American taxpayers? Well, the American taxpayers are going to be paying a heavy price for this legislation for a very long time to come.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be able to complete my remarks and that Senator Burr also be able to complete his remarks before the vote starts.