Madam President, yesterday marked the deadline for filing personal income taxes in America. I am sure many people spent the past weekend surrounded by 1099 forms and shoe boxes full of receipts, hoping to claim a well-deserved tax refund…
Madam President, yesterday marked the deadline for filing personal income taxes in America. I am sure many people spent the past weekend surrounded by 1099 forms and shoe boxes full of receipts, hoping to claim a well-deserved tax refund after a year of financial stress due to the pandemic.
That is another reason why the American Rescue Plan that Congress passed earlier this year was such a major accomplishment. It included, that plan, included the largest, single-year tax cut for middle- and low-income earners in the history of the Nation. Let me repeat that. This year's American Rescue Plan included the largest, single-year tax cut for middle- and low-income earners in America's history.
But for a privileged few, those tax cuts are pennies compared to the deductions they enjoy every year because of Republican tax proposals, proposals like the Trump tax plan that Republicans signed into law in 2017, just 4 years ago. Over the next few years, it is estimated that more than 80 percent of the benefits from this Trump tax plan will go exclusively to the top 1 percent of American earners--the top 1 percent. It is nothing more than welfare for the wealthiest.
Perhaps the most egregious aspect of the Trump tax plan is the billions of taxpayer dollars it will give to the world's wealthiest individuals and corporations over the next decade. We are already feeling the devastating impact this corporate giveaway has had on America's economy.
Listen to this now, if you just turned in your taxes. Last year, 55 of the largest companies in America paid zero--zero dollars in Federal taxes despite making more than $40 billion in profits. Forty billion dollars in profits; zero taxes. It is a glaring example of the imbalance in our tax system.
I don't think there is any rational explanation for having schoolteachers and janitors pay more in taxes than the largest corporations, but it seems the folks on the other side of the aisle disagree.
When Senator McConnell met with President Biden last week, he said that raising taxes on corporations--the same corporations that paid zero last year in taxes--is a ``red line'' when it comes to funding the President's infrastructure package. That means Senator McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, would rather cut taxes for the ultrawealthy than repair America's crumbling roads and bridges.
Did you see that picture in the news? Of the bridge? I think it was in Tennessee, on one of the interstates. It cracked so badly, they had to close it, close an interstate bridge. We remember just a few years ago in Minnesota, an interstate highway collapsed, taking American lives. It can happen and will continue to happen unless we do our part. That is not just bad policy; it is dangerous.
I guess this is the picture that I brought to show what was happening with this bridge in Tennessee. You can see the crack in the steel girders there and the reason they closed the bridge. God forbid some other bridge is in that same shape and we haven't discovered it or we won't discover it soon enough.
We need to put some money in our infrastructure. We count on it every day. People rely on the safety of these bridges and other facilities, and it is our job to make sure they are kept up.
That is not just bad policy, saying no tax increases for corporations if it means paying for infrastructure that way; it is dangerous.
Take a look at what happens when we fail to adequately invest in our infrastructure. That photo tells it all. A ``structural crack'' they called it. That was found in a bridge in Memphis, TN, last week. Tens of thousands of vehicles drive over that bridge every day. It connects commuters and commercial traffic between Arkansas and Tennessee. If not for a scrupulous engineer who caught the crack, local authorities
said it would have led to a ``catastrophic'' result. Luckily, the catastrophe was averted.
But now the people of Memphis and across America have a different problem. Repairs take time. That means the economic damage caused by the bridge's closure is going to last for months. And it means that shipping and transportation networks will have to reroute for the foreseeable future. So it has a national impact on the economy, one bridge.
Is this what we have come to in terms of infrastructure in America? Are we supposed to accept bridges hanging by a thread?
This closure happened the same week that cyber criminals shut down one of the largest petroleum pipelines in the United States. Did you see the newscast? Did you see the lines of people and their panicked buying? They didn't know if there would be enough gas to get to work, to get the kids to school, or in emergencies, so they went and filled their tanks, and we had a real mess on our hands. We saw the chaos that was created by that ransomware attack: cars lining up in every direction; people actually filling--and this is dangerous--plastic bags with gasoline.
While it may have been a bridge in Memphis or a pipeline on the east coast last week, what is next?
According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, 43 percent of our public roadways are in poor or mediocre condition. Maybe that just means potholes and banging up your car or slowing down the traffic, but it could be worse.
All of these signs point to the same conclusion: We are living on borrowed funds from a previous generation. We are using the infrastructure that they paid for because we don't want to create our own infrastructure.
Cutting corners is simply not an option. That is exactly where we are going to end up if Senator McConnell's redline becomes the standard for deciding if we have infrastructure. And it is predicated on a failed economic theory.
The Republican approach--the so-called aptly named Laffer curve-- believes if you just cut taxes on the wealthiest people, that will take care of the whole economy. Everybody is going to get well if the wealthiest have more money. I don't buy it.
It is time to wake up from the trickle-down fever dream. Look at where 50 years of cutting taxes on the extra-wealthy has brought us: bridges on the verge of collapse; pipelines held for ransom; the most unequal economy since the Gilded Age in American history.
The economic consensus is clear: Tax cuts on the wealthy have never created jobs. They have never boosted economic growth. They just boost the banks accounts of the people who already have it. The benefits rise all the way to the top of the economic ladder and stay there.
If we want to rebuild America, we need to invest in America. To do that, we need the wealthiest Americans and massive corporations to step up and pay their fair share.
If you think you paid your fair share or more yesterday, how about the corporations that paid zero on $40 billion of profit?
President Biden understands this. Tha is why he has proposed the American Jobs Plan. It is going to grow our economy by putting millions of people to work rebuilding roads and bridges, like the Hernando de Soto Bridge. And it would make our crucial infrastructure more resilient to 21st-century threats like ransomware and cyber criminals.
President Biden also has a plan to pay for these investments, unlike the Trump tax plan. To start, the President's plan would raise hundreds of billions of dollars by holding tax cheats accountable and rolls back the tax breaks that encourage corporations to ship jobs overseas.
This is something that boils my blood. Here is a corporation--and many of them have been located in my State--doing well, making a handsome profit, and expanding their business. They sit down with their counsel, lawyers, and come up with a brandnew idea: Well, let's just move our headquarters out of the United States, out of the State of Illinois, and put it in some foreign country. Think of how much we will save by not paying our fair share of taxes in the United States. We get all the benefits in this country. We use its infrastructure. We locate here. We actually live here. But we take a post office box in some faraway place and skip paying taxes to America.
What a grand idea that is for some. For me, it is just deception and fraud.
The only people who would see their taxes increase under President Biden's proposals are those making over $400,000 a year. Now, if you are making over that amount of money and don't want to announce it publicly, but you are sick and tired of Durbin's speech, get up and leave at this point. But if you are making under $400,000 a year, stick around because President Biden has made sure these tax increases will not affect you.
Let me put it another way. We can fund President Biden's infrastructure plan without raising a single tax on actual working families in America. How about that? Frankly, it is about time we balance the scales of our tax system.
During the pandemic, how did the richest 1 percent of Americans do? What was their struggle during this crisis? They saw, the 1 percent, saw their net worth increase by $4 trillion--not a bad year.
If we want to get serious about creating jobs in America, everybody has to do their part. And this isn't just about rebuilding our country. It is the next century of global leadership at stake.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
Madam President, very shortly, we will be voting on the Kristen Clarke nomination to the Department of Justice. This week is an apt time to start the discussion about her nomination because it marks the anniversary of two of the most important Supreme Court decisions in the history of America. The first is the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896, wherein the Supreme Court established a standard of separate but equal. That was the standard that was used to justify-- legally justify--racial discrimination throughout America. Sixty years later, in the landmark decision of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court unanimously--unanimously--rejected that shameful document and blazed a trail for the modern civil rights movement.
This year, 2021, the Senate has a chance to continue America's long march toward equality and racial justice by confirming principled, experienced leaders to the Department of Justice. The Senate should work expeditiously to consider and confirm these nominees. We have already confirmed Attorney General Merrick Garland, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta. The next one in the order of the administration's priority on hiring in the Department of Justice is Kristen Clarke. President Biden has nominated her to lead the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.
Ms. Clarke is the right person to restore credibility to the Civil Rights Division. Under the previous President, the former Attorneys General Sessions and Barr, that Division was warped into a target and a tool to discriminate against marginalized Americans. During that previous administration, the Division rescinded guidance that strengthened protections for transgender students. They prohibited the use of consent decrees with local police departments that engaged in systemic misconduct. And they abandoned the longstanding principle of defending Americans' right to vote. Now we have an opportunity for a course correction in the Civil Rights Division by confirming a proven civil rights leader to head that Division.
As a former trial attorney in the Division's Voting Section and as a prosecutor in its Criminal Section, Ms. Clarke has clearly played in the big leagues. She personally understands the role that the Division's line attorneys play on a day-to-day basis. Ms. Clarke knows that these career attorneys must be independent from political pressure in order to carry out the mission to defend the civil rights of all Americans, and her diverse background as a legal expert will serve her well.
As the former codirector of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund's voting rights group, Clarke confronted assaults on voting rights and ballot access, like those we are seeing in State legislatures across America today. As the former chief of the New York Attorney General's Civil Rights Bureau, she helped establish the Office of Religious Rights Initiative, defending the First Amendment rights of workers throughout the State.
You would find it hard to believe about Ms. Clarke and the issue of freedom of religion, based on some of the earlier statements made on the floor, and to then learn that she established the office's Religious Rights Initiative in New York. Today, as the president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Ms. Clarke has spearheaded new initiatives to address civil rights issues created by new technologies.
She is singularly qualified to head the Civil Rights Division at this moment. She brings with her a wealth of expertise and experience needed to lead this Division at this moment in history.
She also boasts broad, enthusiastic support from the law enforcement community. If you were on the floor and heard the statement previously made by the senior Senator from Utah, you would find it hard to believe that law enforcement would support this woman. Some of the things they say about her in criticizing her record suggest that those in the law enforcement community are her natural enemies. The opposite is true.
Throughout her decades of civil rights work--20 years of working in civil rights that included several years as a prosecutor--she has partnered closely with law enforcement. Many of them have publicly endorsed her, and I will get to that in a moment. Yet, if you were to listen to the arguments from the other side of the aisle--and we heard them in committee--you would think this amazing woman must be so gifted that she can engage in the practice of law for 20 years in the same theater, including with law enforcement leaders from all over America, and somehow they never caught on to the fact, according to them, that she was virulently against law enforcement. In fact, they came out and said the opposite. She was fair. She was objective. She was a good partner in trying to resolve difficult issues.
They would have us believe that she has this mystical power to take people in law enforcement and delude them because secretly she is a radical, a Socialist radical. Not true. The partnership she has had with law enforcement began when she prosecuted hate crimes in the Civil Rights Division, and it continues to this day through her work on the Lawyers' Committee James Byrd Jr. Center to Stop Hate. This center provides community resources, training, and support for law enforcement to better identify, investigate, prosecute, and report hate crimes.
In each of these roles throughout her history as a professional prosecutor at the highest levels in the United States of America, Ms. Clarke has earned the respect and trust of members of law enforcement, reflected in their strong support for her nomination.
Listen to some of the groups that openly support her and then reflect on some of the charges that were just made against her on the floor by the Senator from Utah.
She has support from the Major Cities Police Chiefs Association. She has the support of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives. She has the support of Women in Federal Law Enforcement; the Hispanic American Police Command Officers Association; over 40 prominent police chiefs and sheriffs; and Sheriff David Mahoney, who just this month stepped down as president of the National Sheriffs' Association.
Ms. Clarke's critics would come to the floor and have you believe she has deluded all of them. She has deceived all of them. Despite the work they have done with her, she secretly can't stand them.
Well, it is not true. And it is not true, and they know it. I think the Senators on the other side of the aisle should know it as well.
Ms. Clarke has the support of a bipartisan group of former Justice Department officials who wrote to the committee and said: ``Ms. Clarke's experience, in addition to her high character, make her a superior choice to lead'' the Civil Rights Division. People who worked with her have endorsed her for promotion.
Although Ms. Clarke's record demonstrates that she has devoted her life to advancing the civil rights of all Americans, in recent weeks, she has been the target of an incredible amount of baseless, vitriolic attacks.
I don't understand what is going on around here sometimes when I look at these nominations and wonder how people like her--Kristen Clarke, Vanita Gupta, and others--really enrage people on the other side of the aisle, to the point where organizations are making concerted efforts to really twist and distort their life's work, their values, and the talents that they bring.
Listen to one of these attacks that was just made again on the floor of the Senate. The attack is that she personally defended Mumia Abu- Jamal, who was convicted in 1982 of the murder of a Philadelphia police officer named David Faulkner.
The attack is missing one key point. Ms. Clarke never--never--worked on the Abu-Jamal case. You wouldn't know that from the charges made.
But perhaps the most vicious attack against her is the false accusation of anti-Semitism.
Now, I am not Jewish, and the Senator who suggested that she was anti-Semitic in some of the things that she had said and done is not Jewish either, but those who are of the Jewish faith have considered the charges made against her. Let me tell you what they found.
They found these accusations couldn't be further from the truth. Ms. Clarke has spent much of her career defending the rights of Jewish Americans.
At the New York State attorney general's office, she repeatedly defended Jewish employees' right to observe the Sabbath in the workplace.
Does that sound like someone who is negative on the issue of freedom of religion or anti-Semitic?
She has also been at the forefront of confronting the growth of anti- Semitic hate and harassment online through her work with the Lawyers' Committee. For instance, she helped shut down a virulent White Supremacist and anti-Semitic website called Stormfront.
Several Jewish groups have emphatically denounced the baseless attacks, which continue to be made, even to this day, against this woman.
Notably, the Union for Reform Judaism, the Nation's largest Jewish denomination, wrote to the Judiciary Committee to voice unwavering support for Ms. Clarke's nomination.
Let me tell you what they said. ``We've heard the voices who have hurled accusations of antisemitism at Ms. Clarke, and we reject them. They do not comport with the career and record of the colleague we have worked with throughout her career.''
These attempts to smear Ms. Clarke's record are a last-ditch effort to discredit a nominee with exemplary qualifications.
The bottom line is this: Ms. Clarke is the right person to lead the Civil Rights Division. It is a difficult assignment. At any time in our history, it is difficult, probably more so today than ever. She is the person for the job.
At this moment in history, our country needs her combination of expertise, experience, skills, and thoughtfulness to ensure the Civil Rights Division will again work for all Americans.
If she is confirmed to be part of Merrick Garland's team at the Department of Justice, Ms. Clarke would certainly make history, being the first Black woman confirmed by the Senate to lead the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division--the first.
I look forward to supporting her nomination on the floor, as we continue this process, and I urge all of my colleagues to vote to discharge her nomination from committee and ultimately confirm her to this critical position at the Justice Department.
My assignment on the Senate Judiciary Committee is a challenging one. The committee is evenly divided 11 to 11. There are some of the fiercest and strongest partisans from the other side of the aisle as part of this committee structure.
I marvel sometimes at things that are said in the committee. When I look at the evidence--certainly when it comes to Ms. Clarke, her actual life, her career, her experience, and what she has done--it belies some of the baseless criticism that is made.
I just wonder, What is it about this woman that drives some Members into a rage? I have met her. I have heard her questioned in the committee. I believe she has proven throughout her life that she is the right person to move up into this critical position at this moment in history.
I yield the floor.