Floor Statements

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Ohio, and I am on the floor today to talk about a major public health crisis facing our country, one that is resulting in thousands of people losing their lives, causing the death of over 100,000 Americans a year, and has negatively impacted so many millions more in my home State of Ohio and all around the country.

And, no, I am not talking about COVID-19. I am talking about an epidemic within the pandemic. I am talking about the surging epidemic of drug use and addiction that has fueled a record number of overdose deaths and threatens to get even worse.

In the past 19 months or so, our attention has, understandably, been directed toward the COVID-19 crisis. And, once again, we see with Omicron the possibility of another variant coming, and those public health challenges are real.

But I have to tell you that it has led us to ignore another crisis. The Centers for Disease Control, the CDC, recently issued a report which was shocking and should serve as a wake-up call to all of us.

It said that between April of 2020 and April of 2021, the most recent year for which we have data, we had over 100,000 individuals lose their lives to drug overdose deaths in this country. That is the highest ever. It is a record.

By the way, 100,000 deaths per year is more than the deaths from gunshot wounds and the deaths from car accidents combined. It is truly the epidemic within the pandemic.

Away from the headlines, we have this other tragic healthcare crisis that has left no part of the country unaffected. Forty-six States and the District of Columbia have seen their overdose rates go up in the last year, with a 26-percent increase in my home State of Ohio. In some States, there are now as many drug overdose deaths as there are COVID deaths.

Like many of you, I have seen firsthand the damage drugs like crystal meth or cocaine or heroin or now the synthetic opioids are causing to the families we represent, to people who have gotten caught in that spiral of drug abuse and addiction.

I have also seen the heroic efforts of first responders who have saved people's lives by administering naloxone, which some call Narcan, its brand name. It is a miracle drug that literally saves lives by being able to reverse the effects of an overdose.

And I have ridden with law enforcement and treatment providers on rapid response teams in various places in Ohio that follow up with those who have overdosed. Literally, somebody overdoses, and then this rapid response team--usually made up of law enforcement but also treatment providers, social workers--goes to people's homes, and it is amazing what you will find out.

I was, frankly, a little surprised during my first visit--then, I got more used to it--which is that people respond very favorably. Most people who are approached by these rapid response teams agree to get into treatment. And isn't that the key? Using Narcan again and again and again to save someone's life is not the answer. The answer is to get that person into treatment so that that person can get back to his or her family, his or her work, and to a normal life and to be more productive in life.

I have also met with families and loved ones affected, hearing their stories about how losing a family member to addiction has had such a negative impact, often tearing those families apart.

And, of course, I have talked to a lot of people in recovery who have told me about the grip of addiction on their lives and how they got help and what worked and what didn't work.

Unfortunately, a lot of people get help, get into treatment, and it doesn't work for them. They have to do it again and again. But, ultimately, for those who can stay in recovery and are able to stay sober and clean, they have the most amazing stories. And so many of them are coming back and contributing in big ways to our communities-- many helping others. Their recovery, basically, is reaching out to others and helping them along the way. Some are called recovery coaches, which is a more formal title, but so many of them are, in effect, recovery coaches helping others who are struggling.

There are so many lives that have been touched by this crisis-- 100,000-plus deaths, but so many others affected. And I have made it a goal of mine to make sure Congress is playing its role in addressing this effort that must be at the community level, at the State level, but also at the national level to respond to what is a true national crisis.

What makes it especially heartbreaking to me is that, only a few years ago, we had finally begun to make progress on this. We were beginning to turn the corner. We were seeing lower addiction rates. We were seeing lower overdose deaths for the first time in decades.

How did we do it? Well, we redoubled our efforts on prevention, on getting people into treatment, on getting people into longer term recovery, making more naloxone available.

Thanks to the bipartisan leadership here in Congress, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, or CARA, which I coauthored with my colleague Sheldon Whitehouse, and the 21st Century CURES Act were both signed into law in 2016, helping to pave the way for several billion dollars in new Federal funding to strengthen State, local, and nonprofit efforts to combat addiction.

Our CARA legislation and the follow-up CARA.2 legislation that we passed a few years ago took a comprehensive approach based on best practices. We actually had seminars here in Washington. We brought people from all over the country here. We had four different conferences where we got information as to what was working and not working in our communities, and things that were working we funded.

We directed resources toward more treatment and recovery services for individuals and more focus on prevention.

I can't overstate how critical these kinds of proven services are for people on the path to recovery. Congress had never, before this legislation, ever funded recovery services.

I have visited a number of inpatient and outpatient centers for addiction in Ohio to talk with those working to overcome their addiction. They have told me time and again how these recovery services gave them the structure, the support, and, most importantly, the hope they needed to be able to overcome this disease.

And we actually started to see that hope translate into real success on the ground, real numbers and real people's lives.

In 2017, Ohio's overdose death rate had increased for 30-plus straight years, and Ohio's death per capita that year, 2017, was almost three times that of the national average.

But that next year, in 2018, as these two signature laws, CARA and CURES, were fully implemented, Ohio began to turn the tide with a 22- percent reduction in overdose deaths in 1 year.

Again, after more than 30 years of increases in overdose deaths every single year, a 22-percent decrease. Nationally, overdose deaths declined that year about 4 percent, again, after a year after year of increases. In 2019, we had a slight decrease also. These were promising developments.

But since then, there has been a lethal convergence on both the supply side of this issue and the demand side of this issue. Sam Quinones, the author of ``Dreamland,'' which I think is the seminal book on the rise of opioids in this country, recently put it well. He said in an interview that before COVID hit, Mexican cartels had achieved their goal, finally, of covering our country with ``the most . . . mind-mangling drugs we've ever seen. . . . It just so happened that we went into isolation at the very moment when these drugs hit their apex.''

A terrible coincidence that as the supply increased because of the greed of traffickers, the demand increased because of COVID. These two things came together, and that has caused this huge increase in overdoses, addiction, and overdose deaths.

Let's look at the supply side of this crisis first. The record number of deadly narcotics and other drugs that are taking the lives of moms, dads, children, and loved ones all across the country are coming into our country in record numbers. As many are aware, for much of the past few decades, the most common cause of overdose deaths were prescription opioids like OxyContin or Percocet. Often people who suffered a serious injury or accident needed pain relief, and often, unfortunately, doctors and dentists overprescribed opioids. People developed an addiction that led to accidental overdoses, often from cheaper and more available heroin when the prescription drugs ran out.

Now we are dealing with a class of drugs that are tens if not hundreds of times deadlier than those prescription drugs, the so-called synthetic opioids. The most well known of these is fentanyl, which, as you can see by this chart of drug overdoses, has become the drug most responsible for overdose deaths.

The red here is overdose deaths overall, and the blue is overdose deaths that are attributed to fentanyl. You can see what has happened. Fentanyl was about half of overdose deaths in 2018. Half of all overdose deaths was one drug, fentanyl. In 2019, it was more than half and, in 2020, way more than half of all the overdose deaths caused by one drug, a synthetic opioid called fentanyl. It is the deadliest one.

Incredibly, 80 percent of drug overdoses in Ohio and overdose deaths in Ohio can now be attributed to this deadly substance, based on what the experts tell me--80 percent. It is not surprising that the amount of fentanyl seized on the streets of Ohio cities like Dayton, OH, recently has nearly doubled compared to last year. And it is not only the amount of fentanyl that is flooding our country.

Evil traffickers have increasingly disguised it by mixing it with other drugs or pressing it into fake pills to look like common pharmaceuticals. This concerted effort to expand the reach of fentanyl addiction started before the pandemic, but it is only accelerating.

It is a profitable business for drug dealers. Compared to heroin, fentanyl is less expensive to manufacture and, pound-for-pound, far more potent. A few flakes can kill you. Traffickers make a bigger profit, and people are trapped into addiction more easily.

Traffickers increasingly lace fentanyl with other drugs--cocaine, crystal meth, heroin, and even marijuana in some cases. They do it as a way to boost its effects and cut down on its costs. In Mexico, they use cheap pill presses to mold fentanyl doses into the shape of prescription drugs--everyday pills that people take for a variety of reasons. What that means is that many of the individuals who now lose their lives to a fentanyl overdose don't even know they are taking fentanyl until it is too late.

Recently, I participated in a roundtable discussion on the border crisis and how it has impacted the addiction crisis. We heard from an Ohio mother, Virginia Krieger, who lost her daughter Tiffany to an accidental fentanyl death. Virginia told us about how Tiffany had been unable to get the care she wanted from her physician. That led her to buying pills on the street--pills she was told were Percocet, and it looked like Percocet. That is what was stamped on it. But in reality, it was laced with lethal doses of heroin and fentanyl. When Tiffany took these pills for her pain, she was poisoned by the fentanyl, and the life of a young 26-year-old woman was snuffed out far too soon.

We are hearing this across the State. Recently, in Cleveland, OH, Xanax pills, an antianxiety medication--fake pills pressed by Mexican traffickers contained fentanyl and caused overdoses and overdose deaths.

My heart goes out to these families. My heart goes out to Virginia, who, by the way, has channeled her grief into something positive, and that is going to schools and explaining to young people how dangerous this is. Her view is that no one should ever take a pill unless they know it comes from a pharmacy.

She is right. People across the country need to know that pills of all shapes and sizes can contain fentanyl even though they might say something else. No street drug is safe right now from the threat of fentanyl poisoning, and too many kids and adults who weren't addicted to opioids are unknowingly ingesting these substances and putting themselves at risk. We need to be on high alert. Parents and kids need to know that right now no drug you get on the street can be safe.

Our communities are saturated with fentanyl and other synthetic opioids right now. Among other things, of course, this drives the price of the drugs down. So, yes, the most important thing is to reduce the demand for drugs, but with its overwhelming supply, the price of the drug goes down and there is higher use and higher demand.

A conversation about how we can cut down on the supply side of course has to start with our strategy on our southern border. For years, fentanyl and other synthetic opioids were overwhelmingly illegally manufactured in China. As then-chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, I led a bipartisan investigation back in 2017 which showed that fentanyl was coming into our country from China primarily through our own lax Postal Service. Our own Postal Service was the conduit. That is why I worked in a bipartisan manner to write and pass what is called the STOP Act, which required the Postal Service, for the first time, to crack down on fentanyl through the mail.

We required the Postal Service to get advanced tracking data on international shipments coming to the United States, showing the package's origin, contents, and destination. This allowed law enforcement to spot potentially dangerous packages ahead of time and make it much more difficult to move fentanyl into the United States in this manner. Other carriers were already doing it--FedEx, private carriers, DHL, but the post office was not.

The good news is that the STOP Act has been effective, and also, after persistent engagement and pressure from the United States, China scheduled fentanyl, meaning made it illegal, and its analogues as a class of illegal drugs. We believe these changes have helped to dramatically reduce the flow of fentanyl directly from China into the United States.

But, obviously, it hasn't solved the problem because Mexican transnational criminal organizations know a great business opportunity when they see one, and they moved in to take over the fentanyl market in the United States. Now Mexican transnational criminal organizations work with criminal gangs in China to import into Mexico the ingredients used to make fentanyl, where the final product is made in so-called superlabs.

We have a record amount of the substance pouring in, both at our ports of entry and through other gaps in our southern border security by car, by truck, by courier. This is a problem that continues to get worse as this shocking chart shows us.

Look at the dramatic increases in fentanyl that was seized along the U.S. border. This past fiscal year, Customs and Border Protection seized 11,201 pounds of fentanyl, enough to kill every man, woman, and child in America--more than double the amount from the previous year and four times the amount from fiscal year 2019. Just a few weeks ago in Southern California, border officials discovered 8\1/2\ tons of meth in a single truck along with 400 pounds of fentanyl. Remember, it only takes a few flakes of fentanyl to kill you. This 400 pounds could kill millions.

Their smuggling operations are complex and sophisticated, and Customs and Border Protection have their hands full. According to the most recent statistics, last month, seizures of fentanyl increased 42 percent. That is 42 percent in 1 month. This is only how much we know was discovered, was apprehended. We don't know how much more made it over the border undetected.

When I have asked Customs and Border Protection and DHS, our homeland security officials, in public hearings, as I did the week before last, they don't

answer the question because they don't know. But in private conversations with Border Patrol agents, they tell me that they believe the vast majority of drugs are coming in undetected. So this is just the seizures, not the amount of drugs that are streaming across the border.

I take no pleasure in saying this, but the failure of the Biden administration to control the southern border has resulted in record levels of deadly fentanyl coming in to our country and contributes to the growing strength of the Mexican transnational criminal organizations. Part of the problem is that the Biden administration's own policies have encouraged an unprecedented surge of unlawful migrants at the border, diverting our Customs and Border Protection officers and Border Patrol agents away from interdicting drugs. I have seen that on the southern border as has anyone else who has visited.

These law enforcement officers who should be on the line stopping the criminals carrying drugs are instead processing a record number of migrants. This massive influx of unlawful migrants began when President Biden was inaugurated and made specific policy changes, and it has only continued to worsen ever since. We had all hoped that during the summer months, when normally unlawful migration slows down because of the heat, that we would have a lessening of this issue, but it didn't happen. In fact, last month was a record month for October for Border Patrol apprehensions.

As the border crisis created by the Biden administration policy changes continues, the administration has failed to give Customs and Border Protection the resources they need: additional personnel, better technology, infrastructure, and more, to enable them to better protect our Nation along the nearly 2,000-mile border with Mexico. On an average day in 2020, Customs and Border Protection processed 650,000- plus passengers and pedestrians, 187,000 incoming privately owned vehicles, and 77,900 truck, rail, and sea containers. The amount of traffic at the border is going up now that there is less concern about the pandemic.

However, only 2 percent of those privately owned vehicles are physically searched at the border, and less than 20 percent of all those commercial vehicles are scanned for drugs before they cross into the United States.

Let me repeat that: 2 percent. So if you are a smuggler driving a sedan with multiple pounds of fentanyl concealed in hidden compartments, right now you have a very good chance of getting across the border without a search. That is not a gap in our security, that is a gaping hole.

We have known this is a problem. Congress, last January, almost a year ago, passed and President Trump signed into law a requirement that the Department of Homeland Security give Congress a plan and a strategy on using technology and making policy and resources changes to be able to scan all vehicles.

Unfortunately, the Biden administration is late delivering this report. It was due over 4 months ago, and we still don't have it. In conversations with administration officials the week before last, I got assurances that it is coming soon. I hope so. We need it. It would be extremely helpful to have this information as we finalize the spending bills over the next month or so.

I am proud that the recently enacted Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act invested billions of dollars in upgrading and modernizing our ports of entry, including ports of entry on the southern border. Our ports are aging, some of them badly. This funding would allow Customs and Border Protection officers to have adequate space to do more screening of vehicles.

However, we cannot and should not build a brandnew port of entry and then just install the old legacy technology for scanning and detection of deadly narcotics. We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to dramatically upgrade seaports of entry with modern, state-of-the-art detection technology that can help our officers catch more of these drugs before they enter our communities.

In May, I introduced bipartisan legislation with Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona to establish a $1 billion irregular migration border response fund so that the Department of Homeland Security is not forced to transfer resources away from drug interdiction priorities to fund processing of individuals, food, clothing, blankets, and transportation when there is an influx of migrants, as has happened periodically. These contingency resources would be available immediately when there is a surge to quickly respond to increased migration at the border.

Considering the crisis at our border and the record amounts of fentanyl coming in, it was not surprising to me in September when the Drug Enforcement Agency, DEA, issued its first public safety alert in more than 6 years after it seized more than 9.5 million fake pills this year, more than the last 2 years combined. As I said, we all need to be on high alert.

We hear a lot these days about problems with the supply chain, with delayed shipments and cancelled orders. I will tell you the Mexican transnational criminal organizations don't have that problem. They are moving more fentanyl than ever into our communities, and once that fentanyl is here, what a waste. Sadly, more people are caught in the grip of addiction.

This brings us to the demand side of the equation. Again, most important to me is reducing the demand for these drugs, but both the demand and the supply side are related.

As we discussed, the supply of deadly fentanyl was already increasing when COVID-19 hit us almost 2 years ago. Clearly, this pandemic has led to more isolation, anxiety for some, depression for others. Millions of Americans lost their jobs through no fault of their own. Millions have lost loved ones to COVID-19. Some in recovery have not been able to be with their treatment providers or with their recovery coaches, as we talked about earlier. Millions have had their lives turned upside down, and some have turned to drugs as a coping mechanism. Others, who were on the path to recovery, have suffered setbacks--relapsing into drug use again.

Last month, I visited with Erin Helms, who runs recovery homes for women in northeast Ohio that I have had the chance to visit. Erin told me about the challenges during COVID to connect people with treatment and recovery support services when they overdose or when they are being released out of the criminal justice system. When we were in the most restrictive time of the pandemic, those people fell through the cracks, and we are seeing the results of that today. These overdose deaths are happening away from the national headlines, but they are taking a toll all the same.

As I said, this is truly a nationwide crisis. It will take all of us here in Congress coming together to work on a bipartisan basis to find solutions to turn the tide again, reduce overdose deaths, and put more affected individuals on the path to recovery.

So what can we do here in Congress in moving forward? What are the answers?

First, we have got to be able to address both the supply side and the demand side. This chart lays out some of the ways we can help with both, all of which I have talked about tonight. This means we need to complete the installation of enhanced border security technology, which has already been appropriated by Congress, so that the Border Patrol has the tools it needs to complete its national security mission--so enhanced border security.

In March, I visited El Paso and saw fully funded construction materials laying on the ground, at the border, at the place where there was a gap in the wall. I heard directly from Border Patrol officers about the importance of enhancing border security to give them the opportunity to complete their national security mission and help them to stop the drugs.

That is why, at his nomination hearing in October, I pressed Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus, the nominee to be Commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, on the need to install the enhanced border technology and complete the funded sections of the wall.

Not only are there physical gaps in the wall right now that we have already paid for, but there is technology, which, to me, is the most important part of the wall. So you need the barrier, but, also, you need the technology to be able to monitor it, and it is only about 10 percent completed in that El Paso sector. That is outrageous.

Everybody--Republicans and Democrats alike--likes to say they are for technology. We should complete the technology along the border and help the Border Patrol be able to do their important job, including keeping these deadly narcotics out of our communities.

We also must pass the bipartisan Border Response Resilience Act, which I talked about, that I introduced with Senator Kelly. It would provide an additional billion dollars to the Border Patrol and U.S. Customs and Border Protection folks during a surge in unlawful migration, like the one we are in right now.

Due to limited resources, Border Patrol agents are pulled off the border to care for migrants, and drug cartels are taking advantage of these open gaps in our Nation's security. Even some of the checkpoints had to be closed down when there was a recent surge on the border near Del Rio, TX. Drug interdiction checkpoints here in the United States are left unmanned so offices can process more migrant families.

But the supply chain doesn't start and end on the U.S. border. Criminals understand the opportunities of the globalized world, and they pose a dynamic threat to the United States. They are smart and adaptable and can take advantage of the complexity and volume of international trade and travel patterns, and they do that. They also understand how to exploit openings in law enforcement and regulatory approaches.

Many of the ingredients used to make fentanyl continue to come from China, and Chinese money laundering networks have emerged as key enablers in the business model of Mexican transnational criminal organizations. This must stop. While we have a complex and difficult agenda with China, this issue needs to remain at the top of our list. I urge the Biden administration to push the Chinese Government to be our partner in cracking down on these international crime rings rather than a tacit enabler. It is in both of our countries' interests.

Likewise, the issue should be front and center in our relationship with Mexico. Both of our countries lose when the traffickers are successful. Our country is inundated with lethal substances, and the cartels gain money and sometimes American-made firearms that allow them to better wage war on the government in Mexico City. For both of our countries' sakes, we need to partner more effectively with Mexico-- international cooperation.

We should also recognize that these adaptable drug traffickers will have other options as we go after this current supply chain. We saw this after the STOP Act started to be implemented and traffickers from China shifted to Mexico. There is a risk that it becomes a game of whack-a-mole--when you stop it in one place and it crops up somewhere else. As an example, as we work to stop the flow of fentanyl ingredients from China, other countries, like India, could prove to be good alternative sources. We need to be prepared to partner with India and other potential new sources in this lethal supply chain to ensure we continue to improve our security.

We also need to continue to enforce the provisions in the STOP Act to ensure that our postal service does not, once again, become the viable option for traffickers moving fentanyl into the United States. After missing the initial October 2019 deadline for full implementation of the STOP Act regulations, in March, Customs and Border Patrol finally began demanding 100 percent of advanced tracking data on shipments entering the country. That is good. I am glad we got there. That means that, for every package coming into the United States that originates from a country like India or China, we have a sense of what the package contains, where it is from, and where it is going, or else it doesn't come in.

However, a number of waivers remain in place for these regulations for low-risk, low-volume, and less-developed countries. These waivers allow some countries to continue to skirt these reporting requirements, including, if you can believe it, Russia. It should not be in that category. This means criminals in Russia can continue to send potentially illegal packages into the United States without our knowing in advance what they may contain, posing a significant security risk, and undercutting the goals of the STOP Act.

Frankly, I think it is an unacceptable oversight in enforcement, and I believe there is bipartisan agreement that that is the case. That is why I am urging DHS Secretary Mayorkas and the Biden administration to narrow down the STOP Act waivers and ensure that high-risk countries, like Russia, have to comply with these critical advanced tracking data requirements.

In addition to this added security at the border, closer cooperation with the international community, and better STOP Act enforcement, we need to take the unexpected but important step to make sure that these deadly synthetic opioids actually remain illegal so that our law enforcement can take the proper steps to crack down on them. In order to avoid prosecution, prior to 2018, evil scientists in China and drug traffickers started making slight modifications to fentanyl, sometimes adjusting a single molecule and creating what are essentially fentanyl copycats to get around the law.

While these fentanyl-related substances have the same narcotic properties as fentanyl, their tiny variations allow them to evade prosecution. Oftentimes, actually, these simpler substances than fentanyl were even more deadly. Carfentanil is actually more deadly than fentanyl, and that was one of the substances that was being made. Just this past week, we have learned that a fentanyl-related substance called para-fluorofentanyl has been discovered laced into drugs in my home State of Ohio, as an example.

To address all of this, the Drug Enforcement Administration, in 2018, used its authority to temporarily classify all fentanyl-related drugs as schedule I substances, which allows law enforcement to aggressively intercept and destroy them. Unfortunately, this designation was only temporary. We have successfully extended the designation a few times, but it will expire in about 2 months, at the end of January.

Until we make these fentanyl-related drugs--these are fentanyl copycat drugs, some more dangerous than fentanyl--law enforcement will not have the certainty they need to go after criminals moving these deadly substances, and lives will be lost.

Fortunately, we have legislation, already, to address this. Our bipartisan FIGHT Fentanyl Act, which I introduced with Senator Joe Manchin, would fix this problem by permanently classifying fentanyl- related drugs as schedule I. It is about time. That would give our law enforcement the certainty to go after synthetic opioids in all of its forms and show we are committed to addressing the threat posed by this dangerous class of drugs. The FIGHT Fentanyl Act would increase the costs of fentanyl on the street and would be an important step toward rededicating our efforts to stopping these drugs from stealing thousands of lives and causing so much pain.

I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to come together and support this legislation to help us reduce the supply of dangerous synthetic opioids on our streets.

So, again, on the supply side, let's pass legislation to be sure we are making fentanyl permanently illegal.

Let's look at what we can do on the demand side to reduce this demand--insatiable sometimes in our country--for these illegal drugs: more effective prevention and education and ensuring individuals struggling with addiction get the support they need to overcome the disease and no longer feel the need to turn to these dangerous substances. That is all part of it.

The first step, to me, is to continue to build on what we know has worked. Remember, back in 2018, we actually had the first year-over- year decrease in overdose deaths in the country in about three decades--a 22-percent decrease in my home State of Ohio in 1 year. Building on that success starts with building on our CARA legislation we talked about earlier.

Before CARA, the Federal Government provided no funding of any kind for recovery support services, which are so essential to so many in overcoming their addictions. There was also no Federal funding for naloxone, also known as Narcan, which is so effective because it is a miracle drug that allows first responders to reverse the effects of an overdose and save lives and get people into treatment.

CARA also lifted the cap on the number of patients a doctor could treat

with a medication assisted treatment called Suboxone, while also allowing nurse practitioners and physician assistants to prescribe this medication. All of these provisions expanded access to treatment, and that was incredibly important.

I remember a father who came to me from Ohio and talked about his daughter. His daughter had an accident, an injury. She took pain medication. She became addicted to opioids. She then shifted to heroin because it was more available and less expensive. She was in and out of treatment and never took it seriously. One day, she went to her father and said, ``I am ready. I am ready to go into treatment. I am ready to turn my life around.'' He was convinced it was true until he went out to find a treatment provider for her, and as continues to be the case in some communities--and at that time, before 2018, it was the case in many communities--there were no beds available. There was no treatment option. She had to go on a waiting list. While she was on the waiting list, she overdosed on heroin and died in her own bedroom, and her father found her there.

So all of these provisions we put in place expanded access to treatment to be able to ensure that those stories are not repeated.

In the 5 years since our CARA legislation has become law, I have visited with hundreds of recovering addicts at treatment centers; I have visited with experts on local addiction and mental health boards; and I have been to recovery homes and other nonprofits across Ohio. We have talked about what we can do now to build on the successes we were having back in the 2018-2019 period, as well as what we did with regard to CARA 2.0, which is the bill that passed in 2018.

The result of those discussions is CARA 3.0--the third CARA legislation. I introduced that with Senator Whitehouse earlier this year, and it builds on the existing CARA framework and expands its scope to ensure all Americans who are fighting addiction have the chance to overcome this disease. It does so by addressing three important areas: one, research, education, prevention; two, treatment and recovery; and, three, criminal justice reform.

CARA 3.0 will bolster our work to prevent drug abuse--before it even happens--through better research and better education and prevention.

I believe effective prevention is done when it is at the community level, which is where it is most effective, and engages a wide variety of stakeholders--youth, parents, faith leaders, educators--all with a focus on showing the risks of drug abuse and addiction.

There are now about 2,000 community coalitions around the country that do this, and God bless them for the work they do. They benefit from our legislation called the Drug-Free Communities Act, which is also something that is important with regard to CARA 3.0.

Over 25 years ago, I found in my own community an antidrug coalition. It is now called PreventionFIRST! It is still in existence, doing a great job. In fact, I had a Zoom call with the leaders of PreventionFIRST! last week to learn about some of the new innovations they are coming up with to reach more people. They do a drug survey every 2 years--they are in the middle of fielding that right now--where they get the best information. It is almost like a census, not a survey, from high schoolers all over the greater Cincinnati area to find out what drugs are being used, what people's attitudes are about drugs. They take that and use that to try to promote the prevention message in a way that is effective.

I appreciate what they do, again, and that is part of what we need to do in this new legislation, is to redouble our efforts on prevention, to keep people out of the funnel of addiction in the first place. It is obviously the most effective way to address this issue.

In our legislation we call for a massive new national drug awareness campaign as part of this. I believe that ought to be done with help from the private sector, by the way. There are plenty of people in the private sector who have concerns about this issue and should. It affects their workforce.

Certainly, with regard to companies that are in the pharmaceutical business, they should have a strong interest in this. We could leverage funding--taxpayer funding--in ways that could create, for the first time in a couple of decades, a very effective national media campaign to get the word out there.

We know that a number of Federal Agencies have smaller efforts on this front, but we need more coordination and a united message coming from the Federal Government and from the private sector.

Our bill also includes more for research and development of alternative pain treatment methods that don't lead to addiction. To me, it is unbelievable that we are still relying on these opioid pain medications that were developed a couple of decades ago. And although some have worked on this issue--and I appreciate those researchers--we need to put more money and focus on this to find ways to treat pain without the addictive properties of the opioids.

And CARA 3.0 will also take the important step of addressing the disproportionate effect the addiction crisis has had on certain vulnerable communities.

Second, our bill will build on what has worked with regard to treatment and recovery. So the first step is more research, education and prevention. The second one is with regard to treatment and recovery. It will double down on proven evidence-based addiction treatment methods while expanding treatment options for groups particularly vulnerable to addiction, including young people, new and expecting mothers, rural communities, and communities of color.

Third, our bill will build on what works and how we treat addiction. It will double down on these treatment methods. It will, importantly, make permanent the current expanded telehealth options for addiction treatment that were temporarily created in response to the social distancing required by the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is important. Telehealth was something that was a necessity during COVID. People couldn't come to the doctor for visits. They couldn't be at their treatment providers in person. And we wondered whether telehealth would be effective. I believe that for mental health treatment and for addiction services, behavioral health, that it has been incredibly important. And although addictions have gone up during this period, obviously, and the overdose rates are at record highs, my belief--and from talking to experts I have come to this belief--it would be even worse if we had not had the telehealth options.

So in the dark cloud of the pandemic, the silver lining may be that we learned how to use telehealth better. And our legislation allows that to continue to be used with reimbursement; as an example, Medicaid reimbursement or Medicare reimbursement.

CARA 3.0 will also bolster the recovery options for individuals working to put addiction behind them through funding to support the recovery support services and networks. It eliminates the waiver required of physicians who want to provide medication-assisted treatments to their patients and changes the law to allow those drugs to be prescribed via telehealth for greater ease of access.

The bill will also help to destigmatize addiction recovery in the workplace by ensuring that one of these medications to treat addiction does not count as a drug-free workplace violation.

Finally, CARA 3.0 reforms our criminal justice system to ensure that those struggling with addiction, including our veterans, are treated with fairness and common sense, putting them on a path to recovery rather than a downward spiral of abuse.

Importantly, CARA 3.0 funds a Department of Justice grant program to help incarcerated individuals struggling with addiction to receive medication-assisted treatment while they are still in the criminal justice system. This means that when they are released, they have a much higher chance of success.

If someone is addicted, and you don't treat it, and you let them out of the system, they are very likely to go back to a life of addiction. But if we allow medication-assisted treatment in the criminal justice system, we will reduce recidivism or repeated offenses. I think that makes sense for the person addicted, for the community, and certainly for the taxpayer.

CARA and CARA 2.0 have given States and local communities new resources and authorities to make a real

difference. CARA 3.0 renews and strengthens these programs. And given the recent spike in addiction, it provides a boost in funding as well. When added with the existing CARA programs that are authorized through 2023, we would be investing over $1 billion per year to address this longstanding epidemic, putting us on the path toward a brighter future free from addiction.

The addiction epidemic has proven to be resilient. It is a disease that knows no ZIP Code, and one that is always ready to come roaring back should we not stay vigilant.

Columnist Peggy Noonan was exactly right when she wrote a couple of weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal that:

We have a deep and profound addiction crisis in our country

and we've had it so long we forget to see it . . . and

nobody's talking about it because nobody has a plan.

She is exactly right. We need a plan right now to tackle this crisis that continues to devastate our country. I have laid out one tonight that can give us some understanding of the magnitude of the problem, the nature of the challenge, but also have the Federal Government take concrete steps to turn the tide once again. Again, we have done it before. Let's do it again.

Washington can and should be a partner to the State and local groups on the ground every day working to combat this crisis. We should be a better partner. We have got to all work together to find constructive solutions to the addiction epidemic and ensure more Americans don't suffer in silence, that we don't lose more lives to these deadly drugs but instead ensure that more Americans can achieve their God-given potential in life.

I yield back my time.

Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to Dr. Kristina M. Johnson and celebrate her investiture as the 16th president of the Ohio State University.

Dr. Johnson brings more than 30 years of experience and leadership in the academic, business, and public policy sectors to Ohio State, along with some very ambitious goals she has for the university.

Although the formal investiture was postponed until this Friday, November 19, due to COVID, Dr. Johnson actually assumed the presidency in August of last year, and her leadership has already helped the university community to come together during the past year of the pandemic. Ohio State is in full swing--classes, research, and other activities. They have a darn good football team under her leadership as well--currently No. 4 in the country and on its way up. Go, Bucks.

The Ohio State University was founded in 1870 as a land grant university--the first of its kind in Ohio. Over the years, the university has grown into one of the largest and best respected institutions in the country.

Dr. Johnson actually has close family ties to Ohio State. Family lore has it that Dr. Johnson's grandfather, who graduated from Ohio State in 1896, met Dr. Johnson's grandmother on the Columbus campus. We like to think those close ties to OSU and deep family roots in Ohio have made her a Buckeye in spirit all along.

Dr. Johnson comes to the Ohio State University after a long career in academic and business leadership. She previously served as the chancellor of the State University of New York system and has founded and served as CEO of several successful science and technology companies, served as the Under Secretary of Energy at the Department of Energy, and held academic leadership positions in institutions such as Johns Hopkins University, Duke University, and the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her breadth of experience from academic leadership, business, and public policy gives her the important tools to successfully lead the Ohio State University.

I have enjoyed getting to know Dr. Johnson over the past year and a half, and I have been impressed with how the students have embraced her. It is a great student body. I have seen that firsthand at Ohio State, having taught four courses at the Glenn School of Public Affairs--now the Glenn College of Public Affairs--before being elected to the U.S. Senate, and I am proud to have been a member of the advisory board of the exciting Glenn College for the past 12 years.

I believe the students and the faculty and the alumni and the friends who make up the Ohio State University community are very fortunate to have Dr. Johnson at the helm during this time. I wish her the very best as she continues to guide Ohio State into the future while focusing on academic excellence and building a strong and passionate community of Buckeyes. I look forward to continuing to work with Dr. Johnson to ensure her success and the success of the great institution, the Ohio State University.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, for many years now, there is a joke that Presidents have what is called infrastructure week, where they talk about infrastructure and the need for us to move our country forward and fix our outdated system of roads and bridges, freight lines, our ports.

We are, as a country, behind others countries in terms of investing in infrastructure, yet infrastructure week comes and goes without any progress.

Well, today, we had a true infrastructure week because the President of the United States signed legislation that came out of this body--it was bipartisan--that helps to repair our infrastructure in ways that is historic in the sense that it is a broader infrastructure bill than we have passed around here in decades.

It is a big day for infrastructure and, therefore, a good day for my constituents in Ohio and people all around the country--people who are stuck in a traffic jam or maybe people who are worried about the bridge they are going over, whether it is safe or not, which is the case of a big bridge in my community; or whether it is people who don't have access to high-speed internet and, therefore, can't do their school work or can't start a business or be able to get their telehealth. If you are a veteran in Ohio and you want to access telehealth, it is tough to do it in about one-third of our State because you don't have high-speed internet.

So there are a lot of different things that are in this legislation that will help the people who I represent. We have a lot of aging infrastructure in Ohio on the water side, so our water infrastructure includes a lot of lead pipes still, as an example, and, therefore, drinking water issues.

But we also have a lot of edicts that have come down from the Federal Government that say you have to stop the combined sewer overflow. Our municipalities can't pay for the changes. This will help them as well.

In Cleveland, OH, we have a two-decade-old--I think it is a 47-year- old transit system. The cars, frankly, are being taken off track because they have gotten to a point where they can't be used any more, and yet it is way too expensive. The funding for transit will be very helpful in Cleveland, OH.

In my own community, we have a bridge people have been talking about fixing for, literally, 25 years, because I have been involved in that discussion when I was in the House and now in the Senate. The problem is the bridge was constructed assuming a certain amount of traffic, and yet the amount of traffic has more than doubled. As a result, they have taken the shoulders off the bridge in order to create more room for another lane. As a result, when you have a flat tire or an accident, God forbid, on the bridge--which, unfortunately, happens too often-- there is no place to go and, therefore, causes even more safety hazards. The bridge is a bottleneck every single day, not just in rush hour. I can go there in the afternoon--you know, 2, 3 in the afternoon and people are backed up on this bridge.

A lot of the people who are backed up, by the way, are people who are in business. Eighteen-wheelers are trying to get through because it is the confluence of I-71 and I-75, two major interstates. So it is a big economic issue with all that lost time in commuting every day across that bridge, and all the lost time in terms of the freight has a big economic impact--billions of dollars, they say. Three percent of America's commerce goes across that bridge every day, so it is a real problem.

We have never been able to figure out how to fix it because we can't accumulate enough money locally--the State, Federal--to be able to make the big change that has to occur, which is building another bridge, expanding and fixing up the current one. It has been frustrating.

This legislation signed today will finally provide the tools to do that. They have to apply like any other project around the country. It is a grant that is based on merit, but the grant is specifically focused on major bridges, like ours, where you have this economic impact that are so-called functionally obsolete, meaning they are carrying more traffic than they should be. Ours is carrying twice as much.

It should fit very well, but they are going to have to come up with a local match as well. I am confident that it can be found--a local match, which is less than we did before when we had a tough time finding that local match and were not able to move forward.

People in my community, they are ready for this bridge to be fixed. I mean, the Brent Spence Bridge is something I have heard about, again, during my entire career.

I got a little bit of funding here and there to do the environmental impact statement or do the engineering, but to actually get in there and do it is going to be extremely expensive. You are not going to find 2, 3-plus billion dollars without this kind of a Federal commitment. That is in this legislation, as an example.

It is also helpful that this legislation deals with our ports because one of the issues right now we have with the supply chain crisis is things are just not moving through our ports as quickly as they should, in part because our ports have fallen behind.

I mentioned other countries who spend more infrastructure. Countries like China spend a lot on their ports. China spends more than we do, as do other countries, because they know if you spend money on infrastructure, you get a more efficient economy that leads to higher productivity, and that, in turn, leads to economic growth and more tax revenue coming in, frankly. These are all factors that should be considered in looking at an infrastructure bill.

It is not like normal spending that might be stimulative spending that goes out the door right away. This spending will happen over 2, 3, 5, 10, even 15 years for these major projects. And then these assets that you are investing in--let's say it is a port, let's say it is freight rail, or let's say it is the bridge in Cincinnati or the infrastructure that is a water infrastructure issue in northeast Ohio because of lead pipes--what is fixed will last for a long time, so it is an investment in a long-term asset.

Right now, our country is facing historically high levels of inflation--the highest inflation we have had in more than 30 years. It is a big problem. Everything has gone up.

Gas--I heard yesterday now gas has gone up 50 percent this year. Two weeks ago, it was 42 percent. But all I know is it has gone up about a buck a gallon. When I fill up my pickup truck, I am spending $100 now. That is tough for people, particularly people who have to commute for their work.

For lower middle-income families in Ohio, this inflation is really devastating. You go to the grocery--I just had somebody show me a photograph recently that someone took with an iPhone of three rib eye steaks for $100 at Costco. Everything is going up, and that is really devastating.

You wouldn't want this infrastructure bill to add to that inflationary pressure. The good news is, as economists look at this, they say that it goes into the economy in ways that

should actually be counterinflationary over time.

What does that mean?

Well, inflation is where you have too much demand and not enough supply, right?

You have, coming off the pandemic, more people getting out and buying stuff, yet the supply wasn't there. That causes inflation.

Here in the Congress, we passed legislation that aggravated that-- made it worse--because we passed $1.9 trillion spending in March, much of which went into people's pockets. Think of the stimulus checks, $600 more on unemployment insurance, and some of the tax provisions. And, in effect, it created more demand out there and the supply wasn't there, which raises inflation.

This spending is different. Again, this is not stimulus spending. This is long-term spending for capital assets.

What these economists say, including some conservatives, like Michael Strain at AEI and Doug Holtz-Eakin at American Action Forum, they say this is actually going to lead to less inflation because you are adding to the supply side.

So by building that bridge, that is part of the supply side of the economy rather than the demand side of the economy. I am pleased with that too. What we want right now is to push back against this inflation, not do something that creates more demand and more inflation.

One of my concerns about the other legislation that is being talked about is not the infrastructure bill, but it is called the reconciliation bill. The Democrats, I heard today, are calling it Build Back Better more often, but others call it the tax-and-spend bill. That is about more stimulative spending.

I have very serious concerns about that adding to the inflationary pressures we already have, which are so serious. And unlike what the administration said previously, it is not transitory. It is going to be around for a while. Every economist I talk to says expect it to be around for a year or two, best-case scenario.

Again, what we signed today, the infrastructure bill, should, over time, actually have a counterinflationary effect. Most of the money, again, is not going to be spent in the near term. Most will be spent over time. But when it is spent, it is spent on the supply side of the economy rather than the demand side of the economy.

I am really pleased that we were able to pass this legislation. I hope that it is not just going to provide a model for what we ought to do in terms of substance--you know, helping make our economy more efficient, more productive; doing things that make sense for the people we represent in terms of reducing their commute or making their bridges safer, as I said; or dealing with the online issue--not having access to high-speed internet; being sure that people will have safe drinking water. But, also, it is important, I think, that this bill be looked at as a model of bipartisanship.

What do I mean by that?

Well, typically, around here, you kind of have a Republican or Democratic approach to something, and we kind of fight over it and there is not much space in the middle. The reconciliation bill that is being talked about right now, as an example, is all Democrats. There are no Republicans supporting it.

The question is, how do you tough it out through the process?

And because reconciliation can be done with just 50 votes, not 60 votes, the notion is you get every Democrat, and the Vice President will break the tie.

It is much better, I think, if you do something on a bipartisan basis because you get more buy-in from the country. You pass better legislation. It makes more sense for our country, like this infrastructure bill.

And the model that was used here was that some Republicans and some Democrats got together and said: Let's come up with a bipartisan approach to infrastructure, working from the middle out, not taking our directions from leadership on the right or on the left--Democrat, Republican or the White House. Let's come up with something ourselves that makes sense.

This was in the context of an early Biden administration proposal on infrastructure. Again, it is confusing because there are so many different bills out there, but this one sort of combined the infrastructure bill that was passed today and the so-called Build Back Better legislation they are now trying to pass. It had high tax increases--significant tax increases, mostly on the corporate side, but would affect working families. In my view and a lot of people's views on my side of the aisle, everybody was against the tax increases.

Plus it had a lot of what the Biden administration called human infrastructure. It wasn't just talking about core infrastructure, as we talked about today, the roads and the bridges and the rail and the waterways and other things that you would normally think of when you think of infrastructure: transportation infrastructure, airports, the ports.

Instead it also included a lot of support for soft infrastructure, as they called it, or human infrastructure, which in that case was healthcare, taking care of Medicare changes; some changes, I believe, in terms of childcare in the current Build Back Better.

What we said as a group--five Democrats, five Republicans--was we want to do infrastructure. This is something that has been talked about, again, forever. Every President in modern times, every Congress in modern times, has promoted the idea of a significant investment in infrastructure because America is falling behind.

What we said is: Let's make that promise we have given to the American people, something that we can actually follow through on this time, by having a bipartisan bill that has the support of both sides.

So we basically took the bigger bill the Biden administration proposed, pulled out the taxes--so no tax hikes--but also pulled out the so-called human infrastructure or soft infrastructure and focused just on core infrastructure. That was the principle basis upon which we went forward.

The other thing that we decided was that not only are we going to keep taxes out and focus on core infrastructure, but we were going to make it truly bipartisan, meaning we are going to come up with a negotiated settlement and we are going to make concessions on both sides to find that common ground and get this thing done. We are going to do it.

Sure enough, we did it. It took us 4 or 5 months. We started 8 months ago and passed it here about 5 months ago, but we had setbacks because there were tough issues we had to grapple with: how much money to put into the way you expand broadband, as an example, and how should it be done through the States or through the Fed?

We came up with ways we thought made the most sense, but also could pass muster up here in terms of bipartisanship. In the end, as a rule-- not in all cases, but it is a rule--if it has to be bipartisan, if you make that your commitment, you are going to get better legislation because you are listening to everybody, including to the Governors in the case of broadband, including to the companies that provide the broadband, but also including the families and the parents who are driving to the McDonald's to get internet access for their kid to be able to do her homework, and listening to the small business entrepreneurs who are saying, We need this level of high-speed internet to be able to start a successful company in a rural area--say my home State of Ohio--and also listening to those who are interested in having enough access to internet to be able to get their medicine online, basically, to telehealth--to do actual discussions with medical professionals online rather than having to drive to the hospital, say, from a rural area.

That was all part of what we intended to do, was to not just have a good bill substantively, but to show you can do this in a bipartisan way. That group of 10--5 Democrats and 5 Republicans--then became 11 Democrats and 11 Republicans. We kind of grew out from there. By the end of the process, we had Democrats and Republicans supporting the final product, including the majority leader Chuck Schumer and the Republican leader Mitch McConnell. They both supported it.

And Senator McConnell, in particular, because I am on the Republican side, gave us the space to be able

to work this out. He didn't agree with everything that we were doing all the time. He let his views be known, of course, but he knew that, you know, we had in our intentions to come up with something that was truly bipartisan and good for the country and that infrastructure was an area where we typically had had bipartisan support, but we just couldn't get it over the line because of the partisan gridlock around here to do anything.

And in this case, he gave us that space. We came up with a good bill, and he supported it, and Mitch McConnell's support was helpful. In the end, 19 Republicans supported the legislation in the House.

Unfortunately, it went over there a few months ago and sat and sat and sat, and that concerned some of us because we could just see it becoming more political, more partisan.

And we had a commitment from President Biden and a commitment among ourselves--not only no taxes, being sure that it focused on core infrastructure, but also that we would ensure that it was delinked from anything else, particularly the larger reconciliation bill that is now being discussed, the so-called Build Back Better bill, but this was separate. We wanted our bill to be addressed on its merits, which is what our constituents expect. The American people don't want us to do Christmas trees up here, where you are trading things off. They want to know that if you have a good bill, you should be able to get it to the floor and get it passed, which we did here in the Senate, and I appreciate that.

But in the House, it got all entangled with this legislation that was partisan that no Republican supported.

Again, this is the large taxes, large spending bill that is called Build Back Better, probably $2 trillion of spending. I saw some analysis today that if you don't sunset all the spending provisions, it is more like $4.7 trillion, and there is about $1.8 trillion in tax increases to pay for that.

So we will see what happens. I think there is going to be a gap in their revenue and their spending based on the analysis I have seen, and I just think it is the wrong time in the economy, as I said earlier, to even think about this sort of thing. One, to raise taxes on the economy right now, that is, I think, exactly the wrong thing to do. We should be helping to encourage those businesses that are finally coming out of this pandemic and have been struggling, don't have enough workers, to be sure that they can get back on their feet, not taxing them, and same with families, same with the so-called--the passthrough companies, the smaller companies that would be hurt.

And then we have got to be sure that as we move forward, we are not increasing inflation again and not--this stimulus to spending that goes to the demand side that puts more money in people's pockets, it is part of the reason we have this high inflation.

So I really hope that that legislation, the Build Back Better legislation, does not move forward.

But my point is, the infrastructure bill needed to be dealt with on its own and it got tangled up with that and that is too bad. But at the end, there was a vote permitted finally in the House of Representatives. After several pledges to have votes that did not happen, finally, it was voted on about 10 days ago now. And when that vote occurred, there was enough bipartisan support--not as much as I would have liked to have seen on the Republican side, frankly, because I think it is a good bill that Republicans should support, but there was support on the Republican side and the Democratic side, and it was passed into law and sent to President Biden, and he signed it today. So that is the good news, that we were able to get this done, and I hope, again, provide, at least in terms of what we did here in the Senate, a model going forward of finding out where can you find consensus between Republicans and Democrats on big issues that the American people care about.

I mean, we have got plenty of them. I would put an issue like immigration, what is happening at the border; I would put an issue like what is going on with our financial situation, with this huge new debt we have and the deficit spending every year. But there are so many issues: healthcare issues, issues that have to do with, you know, how you deal not just with the immigration on the border but people who are here. Shouldn't we be able to find some bipartisan consensus on these things, and isn't that what the American people expect us to do, where you have got big challenges, whether they are domestic or international, shouldn't we figure out a way, even though we have differences of opinion, to find that common ground and to move forward rather than to be stuck in a partisan gridlock situation?

Today, at the signing ceremony, the President spoke a little about that and said that he supported bipartisan efforts to move the country forward.

But by the same token, he also was saying he supports this reconciliation process that is strictly partisan and would be jamming our Congress, again, without a single Republican supporting it and doing policy that we think is wrongheaded, given where we are with our economy, particularly with regard to inflation and the need to come out of this pandemic with a stronger economy, more people working, and concern that tax increases will make that difficult.

So, again, I would like to congratulate everyone who was involved in this infrastructure process. It was a big group up here in the Senate, but the group of five and five--the five Democrats and five Republicans--who kind of led the negotiation, included my colleague Kyrsten Sinema, who led the Democratic side. She did a terrific job. She was very persistent. For those of you who know her and have watched her, that won't surprise you. But she ensured that we kept on track, and sometimes you get off track because we had a lot of different issues we had to deal with. And it took us, again, a few months to get there, but she was very helpful in terms of moving us forward and getting to a resolution.

Ultimately, all 10 Members agreed: We are going to resolve this thing. We are going to come to a solution, even if it means not getting everything we want. And nobody gets everything they want in life, right? In your family, in your business, and in Congress, it is pretty much the same thing, and it is pretty simple, which is you can't get everything you want, but you can get most of what you want, and in this case, you can do something great for the American people.

The other eight of those colleagues were Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, Bill Cassidy, Joe Manchin, Jeanne Shaheen, Mark Warner, Jon Tester, and so many others who were also involved and helpful. But those were some of the colleagues who were part of this G-10 process.

A couple Members that I would like to mention tonight and thank them are, again, Senator McConnell for his help giving us the space to be able to work this out and then ultimately supporting it and lending his critical support to something that is good for the country, good for Kentucky.

Also, Kevin Cramer, on our side of the aisle, was very helpful to us in bringing together our group of 22 Republicans and Democrats and then Shelley Moore Capito. Shelley Moore Capito is the top Republican on the committee that deals with a lot of these issues, including the surface transportation legislation, and she was very helpful, along with the chair of that group, Tom Carper, to get us where we are. They actually met with the White House, Shelley Moore Capito and a group of her members, and that gave us a foundation for some of the ideas that we had but also the committee work we respected.

One of the things that I have seen time and time again in the last couple weeks is that it is a $1.2 trillion bill on infrastructure. In a way, it is and in a way it isn't. So just to explain that, briefly, Congress, you know, every year has a process where we appropriate funding. We also every 5 years, typically, do a transportation bill, the Surface Transportation Act. That 1.2 includes that. So the amount on top of what Congress would have otherwise spent, based on what the committees had done on a bipartisan basis, is roughly $542 billion. So it is really a $542 billion bill of new spending, not 1.2 trillion.

That may make some of my Republican colleagues feel a little better about supporting it because they are concerned about our debt and deficit, as am I.

By the way, we came up with ways to pay for that, including actually repurposing some of the funding that had gone out to COVID that had not been used, but it is really more of a $542 billion in new spending-- still historic levels and, again, provides enough funding to do all the wonderful things I talked about in terms of making our infrastructure work better for all of us.

Second is, I have heard a lot over the last couple weeks particularly about President Biden's signing his bill, the Biden infrastructure bill. He negotiated with us, and I appreciate that. His legislation, as I said, was very different. It had the tax increases. It had spending on a lot of human infrastructure, and I appreciate that he was willing to say to the Democratic side of the aisle: OK. That is what I want, but I am willing to work with you guys on a bipartisan basis. So he did do that, but he also, again, gave us space to work that out here in the Senate between ourselves, and that is the reality.

And so when we came together with legislation, we were sitting down with his people, including a guy named Steve Ricchetti, his Deputy Chief of Staff, and the National Economic Council head, a guy named Brian Deese, and we negotiated with them on some of the issues.

But this really came out of, again, a true bipartisan process. It is not really anybody's bill. It is America's bill because representatives from every part of the country were involved, and those elected representatives made decisions that were in the interest of their constituents but also our entire country. That is why, in the end, I think this legislation represents not just a victory for the American people, which it does, but in a way, a victory for common sense and bipartisanship that this place badly needed.

I hope it is a template for things to come, and I hope that when someone goes out on a limb and says: I am going to support this legislation because it is in the interest of the American people, that that person is rewarded rather than attacked.

And in the House I have seen some of this with some of my Republican colleagues who supported it; that people are upset on a partisan basis because they think it somehow gives too much credit to Democrats if this were to pass.

I mean, I suppose if you took that attitude, nothing would pass because it is either a Democratic or Republican bill, and this other side would block it. We need to get into a different mindset, where we are thinking, ``What is good for the country?''

And, interestingly, when you look at what the polling data is saying about this bill, it is very popular. Initially, the numbers were, you know, 87 percent approval rating, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, everyone. One I saw yesterday was 65 percent because it has gotten, again, some--it has gotten into more of the partisan back-and-forth, with Republicans saying that somehow because President Biden is in the Presidency, and he was involved with this, it is his bill. It is not his bill. It is all of ours--the bill--but, still, 65 percent approval rating is pretty rare for any major piece of legislation.

And so the American people get it. They want us to move forward. There are partisans on both sides, of course, who would prefer only that it moves forward if it is their way; in other words, we should block everything. But the vast majority of the American people understand that we have got to more forward and ensuring that you have adequate infrastructure to compete with countries like China, infrastructure changes that will improve our economy's efficiency, therefore, our productivity; therefore, increased economic growth; therefore, bringing more revenue in. Who could be against that?

There are differences of opinion on how exactly you ought to spend the money. I get that, but I do think this is going to be over time--5 years, 10 years, 15 years from now--something people will look back and say: Aha. This project which could never have been done, now has been accomplished and makes my life easier, makes my community work better. That is what this bill is going to be about.

And my hope is that, again, it will be a template for other projects in the future, where we say: Let's figure out a way--despite our differences--to figure out some common ground and move forward on these challenges that our country faces and on issues that people really care about to be able to make their lives better. Ultimately, that should be our job.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I rise today to speak about an issue that is very concerning and has to do with our national security and our homeland security.

I am the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and in my role on that committee, we have done a lot of investigation into what happened in Afghanistan in terms of the rushed and chaotic evacuation.

Unfortunately, I am here today to talk about a new threat to our homeland security due to the Biden administration's failure to adequately vet the Afghan evacuees who came through this chaotic process.

Like many of my colleagues here on the floor--I think I can speak for them--I support the resettlement of those who stood with us and our allies who stood with us in battle, in particular, over the past two decades in Afghanistan. That is important. Yet everybody recognizes that the rushed nature of the evacuation resulted in some of the wrong people coming out and many of the right people not being rescued from Afghanistan.

Too many people were left behind. There is no question about that. There were American citizens left behind and permanent residents left behind, and many of the Afghans who had worked with us and with our allies as interpreters, as drivers, who worked at NATO, or who worked at the United Nations were left behind--so were a lot of people who were actually in the process of getting what is called a special immigrant visa, an SIV. Those would be our allies in Afghanistan, the Afghans who, again, stood with us as drivers or interpreters and so on.

Getting information has been really hard from the administration, and it is very frustrating to me, also to every one of my colleagues, and to the American people. In fact, in the recent continuing resolution, we actually got language included that requires, by November 30, for the administration to tell us exactly how many SIV holders--special immigrant visa holders--were left behind, how many citizens were left behind, and how many people, who were employees of a U.S.- or a U.N.- funded partner organization, were left behind. We still haven't heard, so we don't know the information.

What we do know is that very few of the evacuees who came out were either American citizens, permanent residents, SIV applicants, or, certainly, SIV holders. In fact, we know from the Defense Department that there were only about 700 holders of SIVs who came out of the, roughly, 78,000 people who were evacuated to the United States.

Let me say that again. Only about 700 of those people were SIV holders. That is out of thousands of SIV holders and applicants who were left behind in Afghanistan. There were 78,000 people who got out, but the vast majority of them--again, I am not represented by any of these groups that we would have thought would have been brought out.

It is also clear that, in the rush and chaos at the Karzai Airport, the majority of those who were evacuated were neither American citizens, green card holders, Afghans, nor special immigrant visa holders, as we talked about.

So, just as we have an obligation to help resettle those who stood with us, we also have an obligation to ensure that our communities are safe and that we know who is being released into our communities. This means not releasing people who have not been fully vetted. We want to know who these people are. They might possibly have records--criminal records. They might have terrorist affiliations. That is why you need to do the proper screening and vetting.

Secretary Mayorkas testified in September before the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, where, again, I serve as the top Republican. The testimony was about the vetting procedures of the Afghan evacuees.

He said: ``There is a robust screening and vetting process in addition to expertise both in the transit countries and here domestically.''

``There is a robust screening and vetting process both in the transit countries and here domestically.'' I wish that were true, but, unfortunately, it is not.

An unclassified briefing last week with Federal officials from all of the relevant national security Agencies confirmed what our committee staff had already discovered through our in-person oversight of the vetting operations. They toured operations here in the States. They also toured operations overseas at what are called the lily pads, where people are brought from Afghanistan to a foreign destination and then brought to the United States.

What they found and what was confirmed at that meeting last week is that there is not a robust screening and vetting process for all Afghan evacuees. It is true that there is a screening process. This is what it consists of: providing fingerprints and your name and, many times, a facial image--so your face, your fingerprints, and your name--to a Federal database at the overseas lily pads. But unless the evacuee was a known terrorist, a terrorist affiliate, or a criminal whose name, face, or fingerprints were stored on the system, there was no vetting; there were no interviews--nothing else--for Afghans who have been paroled into the United States.

Now, here is the problem with that: Our database is not complete. Despite repeated attempts to obtain the information, by the way, we don't know how many Afghans were successful in getting past the database screening I just talked about, but we are told by those on the ground that it was the vast majority.

In other words, very few people were picked up through this database we talked about, which is DHS, the State Department, and intelligence services. Relying on hits on this database--this biographic and biometric database that we have--is not adequate because the databases do not have information on all Afghans. Certainly, they don't have information on all Afghans who may be terrorists or who may be terrorist sympathizers or who may have criminal records. We didn't have a database like that, so we are pinging it against a database that was incomplete.

Those Afghans with no information in the systems at all are not a known risk--I acknowledge that; and most of them are good people--but this does not mean that admitting them with no additional scrutiny is an acceptable risk.

The best way to know something more about someone who is in the process of being paroled into the United States is through intensive in-person interviews. That is how it is traditionally done.

Interviews allow Federal officials to dig deeper into an evacuee's background and learn more about their affiliations, as well as their beliefs about the United States and the Western world.

In fact, we learned in the 9/11 Commission report effective in-person interviews by U.S. government officials prevented at least three individuals who were intending to join the 2001 terror plot and attacks--it kept them from entering the country and contributing to that tragedy on September 11.

One of the major lessons from the 9/11 Commission was that if the U.S. Government had conducted face-to-face interviews of all 19 of the 9/11 hijackers, the attacks may have been prevented altogether.

How soon we forget.

The requirement of an in-person interview is a standard process that normally applies to all refugees. It would have been appropriate to consider most of these Afghans to be refugees, who would have been subject to persecution from the Taliban due to their status as a person who worked with us or because they were part of a vulnerable group, including a lot of women and girls.

Interestingly, the Biden administration wants to treat the Afghan evacuees as refugees when it comes to their benefits, but they are not following the necessary refugee security procedures to vet those individuals.

Our oversight identified many other issues and concerns with the vetting process. For example, if an Afghan did have identification, such as an Afghan national ID card or passport, the screening process did not include validation of the documents beyond a visual inspection; no follow-up.

The officials working at the military bases in Europe said they did not have any specific training or expertise in identifying a fraudulent Afghan ID card.

So, again, our folks went over to these foreign locations, these so- called lily pads, talked to the people who were doing this screening process, and said: When you get an Afghan ID card, what do you do?

They said: We don't have the expertise to identify a fraudulent Afghan ID card, so we assume that it is accurate, and their identities are logged into a national security database, a U.S. national security base--database, in some cases, of course, then, based on what could be a fake ID.

If the evacuees did not have any identification documents, which apparently was the case with a substantial number, no ID at all, Federal officials simply logged them into our databases based on what they said was their name and their date of birth. So they created a national security database from what these individuals volunteered.

We are told it is not unusual for Afghans not to know their actual birth date. It is just not always part of the culture to record or have that information. That is understood. But this has resulted in a number of the databases, including information about birth dates, being January 1 of a particular year. So there are some people logged in to say January 1, 1990.

The problem here is that our systems rely heavily on an individual's birthday as a key biographic identifier.

You get asked your birthday all the time, I am sure, whether it is getting healthcare, whether it is at a security checkpoint.

And now we have entered information into our systems that we cannot rely on to be accurate; in some cases, could be false identities.

Based on our oversight--again, trips to these sites with Democratic staff members, Republican staff members--talking with those coordinating the Afghan resettlement here in the United States, it appears that each side of the ocean--folks overseas and folks here in America--thought the other side was doing more vetting than was actually occurring.

The official overseeing the screening of an evacuee at a lily pad overseas told us he thought the vetting was being done when evacuees arrived on U.S. soil. When asked if he felt the screening and vetting being done at the military bases in Europe were sufficient to be confident in America's security--since evacuees can and have left the bases in the United States--he said they were not.

But that is exactly what is happening.

A senior official at a base in the United States confirmed that there are no in-person vetting interviews at any of the seven domestic military bases that are now housing evacuees, and that all vetting interviews were done overseas at the lily pads. So it is a little bit of one pointing to the other.

Officials also confirmed that when an evacuee arrived in the United States, the only screening that was conducted was the standard Customs screening that all international visitors and tourists go through at the airport.

Specifically, evacuees provided their information, if they had it, at the Customs booth, and if there were no flags, they were immediately paroled into the United States for 2 years. Customs would check their information against the records created at the lily pads, effectively creating a feedback loop. So information that might not be accurate or might not be fulsome, might not be appropriate is then added to other information and one checked against the other.

Once here, the Afghan evacuees are not detained. According to the administration, more than 2,000 of these individuals have now left the military bases where they are being housed and are freely moving about our communities.

Again, my view is most of these people are good people. Some of them did help us. As I said, it is a relatively small number. Somewhere around 75 percent are not SIV holders or applicants or citizens or permanent residents. But we don't know who a lot of these folks are. And, again, people think that they are at the military bases because that is where they have to be until we do fuller, further vetting. That is not true. There are no interviews being done here, and they are free to walk off the military bases, and a couple thousand have.

The only conditions of parole that must be met prior to leaving the military base is to receive vaccinations for measles and COVID-19, and agreeing to update DHS with any change of address within 10 days. That is it.

I led an amendment with some of my colleagues to the recent continuing resolution to ensure that not all of the Afghan evacuees are automatically eligible for what is called a REAL ID.

If you have been to an airport recently, you know you are going to need a REAL ID to get on a plane. A REAL ID is supposed to be issued only to individuals with a valid Social Security Number; proof of identity, which is shown through a birth certificate; and two proofs of residency, like a bank statement, lease, or utility bill, that show that you permanently live in the United States. There is a process to get a REAL ID.

It was a 9/11 Commission recommendation, by the way, that we have a REAL ID procedure.

But while we U.S. citizens have to abide by all these requirements to get a license or an ID, Congress waived one requirement for Afghan evacuees: the requirement to provide proof of lawful residence.

This undermines the REAL ID system, and it should not happen.

The amendment I offered with colleagues would have required the Afghan evacuees to follow the normal process to require a REAL ID. It would be to apply for asylum and then receive a REAL ID. Until their asylum application is approved, they would be able to fly on an airplane with that asylum application or their work authorization, which many of them have received.

Unfortunately, this body rejected that amendment with a narrow vote.

Due to the reckless policies of the Biden administration, we have the situation where an Afghan evacuee with no presence in our databases, no documents establishing identity, can have a cover identity created by the U.S. Government at, for example, Ramstein Air Base, where we went and talked to individuals, based on a stated name, volunteered, a stated birth date, and then can receive a REAL ID when they come to the United States.

Doesn't seem right to people when I explain that, and it is not, but that is the system.

I have come down here a number of times to talk about what is going on on the southern border. Again, in my role as the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, we do a lot of work in that area.

Unfortunately, it is getting worse, not better, in terms of number of people coming across, the number of drugs coming across, and the amount of human trafficking.

What is astounding is that, as open as our southern border is under this administration, if an Afghan tried to cross our southern border, they would be interviewed by a Federal law enforcement official.

Under this Afghan resettlement operation, though, the Biden administration has lowered the bar for security even below that of our southern border.

We already know from the administration there are Afghan evacuees who pose dangerous national security threats, who were able to pass the screening process we talked about at the lily pads overseas and to arrive on U.S. soil.

We still don't know how they were apprehended, but we do know from media reporting that there are at least 10 evacuees who have made it past all this screening into the United States prior to the national security concerns being raised, and causing them currently to be detained in Federal facilities as a national security threat. That is 10. We don't know how many more there are.

The lack of appropriate screening and vetting of Afghan evacuees by this administration is reminiscent of a pre-9/11 security mindset.

Remember, we were at war in Afghanistan for 20 years. We know that ISIS-K and al-Qaida are operating in Afghanistan. These dynamics in Afghanistan should be reflected by ensuring that normal national security vetting processes are applied to all evacuees. I don't think that is too much to ask.

I stand ready to work with the administration and all of my colleagues in the Senate, both sides of the aisle, to address and mitigate this vulnerability to U.S. homeland security. I hope it is not too late.

I believe we have got to address the REAL ID eligibility of Afghan evacuees and require in-person vetting prior to distributing any new REAL IDs to those Afghan refugees who have

reached our shores. For future Afghan arrivals, it is clear that the vetting and interview process must be strengthened and enforced. And, again, in talking to the Federal officials on the ground overseas, they would agree.

It is not too much to ask that Afghan refugees be treated the same as all refugees when it comes to security vetting. We can't continue to allow a lack of effective screening of Afghan evacuees to endanger our communities.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, since the Democratic leadership and the Biden administration first proposed the massive tax-and-spend legislation called reconciliation 7 weeks ago, I have come to the floor every week to explain what is in this massive tax-and-spend proposal and why I believe it is wrong for the economy at a time of high inflation, low economic growth, and record levels of debt.

Before I talk about that, though, I think it is important to consider where we have been, how things could be better. Before the pandemic began, back in February of 2020--largely thanks to commonsense, pro- growth tax reform that was passed in 2017 by Republicans here in the Congress and the Trump administration--we had one of the strongest economies we had ever seen. We had 19 straight months, in February of 2020, of wage growth over 3 percent on an annual basis--19 straight months of wage growth, real wage growth, above inflation--by the way, most of it benefiting lower and middle-income Americans.

We had the lowest poverty rate in the history of our country since we started keeping track of it back in the 1950s. Blacks and Hispanics had the lowest unemployment rate ever. Overall, we had the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years. It was an opportunity economy. We need to get back to that.

Then, of course, as everyone remembers, we had to deal with the effects of COVID-19, including shutting down much of the economy. Luckily, we now have vaccines that are making it possible for us to return to a relatively normal lifestyle.

But there is one big problem. While the pandemic is finally starting to fade, the economy is being seriously challenged by extremely high inflation.

Don't take my word for it. Here is what the data says. The latest Consumer Price Index jumped to one of the largest increases in 13 years, to 5.4 percent. That means people are paying more for everything. The latest Producer Price Index went up too. That means the folks who produce the goods are paying more to put them on the shelf.

Real wages are actually down because, adjusted for inflation, wages are down by an average of 1.7 percent during the Biden administration. So people back home tell me: I got a wage gain, Rob, but I am not feeling it because inflation is eating up all the gain I got.

Wage increases may be out there, but they are not above inflation. The response by Washington has been unprecedented, what is called stimulus spending. It is like adding fuel to the fire. Stimulus spending at a time when demand was already increasing and the economy was already rebounding has been a recipe for inflation, and that is exactly what has happened.

Unfortunately, contrary to what the White House has said--which is that this is going to be transitory, in other words, temporary--it looks like it is here to stay for a while. And middle-class families, of course, are feeling the squeeze.

We are paying 42 percent more at the pump--42 percent higher this year than last year. It now costs almost a hundred bucks to fill up a pickup truck. I know that because I filled up mine in Ohio recently-- $85.

I just can't believe that, here in Congress, we are thinking about passing additional legislation to make inflation even worse. Everything is up. Natural gas is expected to rise in that 40 percent range, just as the winter heating season kicks into high gear. And it is not just fuel costs. It is groceries. It is furniture. It is everything.

Thanksgiving is just around the corner. Here is the report from the New York Times. And I read their lead: ``Thanksgiving 2021 could be the most expensive meal in the history of the holiday.''

They are saying that because everything has gone up. The cost of turkeys has gone up double digits, the cost of pumpkin pie, the cost of everything that people are having to buy for Thanksgiving.

Unfortunately, the actions of this Democratic Congress are a big part, again, of why this inflation is so high. Back at the beginning of the year, Democrats passed a $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill that mostly did not deal with COVID, but it did provide the most stimulus spending to our economy ever in the history of the Congress. This stimulus spending essentially primed the pump on an economy that was already recovering nicely.

Multiple nonpartisan groups, including the Congressional Budget Office here on Capitol Hill, told us that the economy was improving already. In fact, CBO said that the economy was recovering and it would recover to its prepandemic levels by midyear. That was by June 30 of this year. Many of us tried to warn that if we overheated the economy, spent more money to prime that pump, that it would result in more inflation.

And it wasn't just Republicans. Larry Summers, who served as Treasury Secretary under President Clinton and served as National Economic Adviser for President Obama, basically said that. He warned that injecting so much money into the economy would lead to inflation. And, of course, it is lower income and middle-income Americans who get hurt the worst.

It is basically a hidden tax. As I mentioned earlier, the annual inflation rate last month was 5.4 percent, but everything I am seeing is double-digit inflation this year compared to last year. But if your wage rate is below that, if your wage increase is below that--maybe you received a 3-percent wage increase--it is actually going to be harder for you to be able to afford what you need for you and your family.

In other words, not too long after we enjoyed a record stretch of wage growth, prepandemic, that primarily benefited lower and middle- income workers, we are now seeing just the opposite: a pay cut for everyday Americans.

What do we need to do to address this? Well, stop the stimulus spending because that is helping to fuel this inflation.

There are two major bills that Congress is considering right now. One would help, and one would make matters worse.

What are they?

Well, the first is the bipartisan infrastructure bill. It passed the Senate in early August with significant bipartisan support. That is unusual around here, particularly for a bill as significant as this, but we worked to ensure that the bill was one that both sides could support.

And it makes too much sense for it not to become law. It will help fix our Nation's crumbling infrastructure. It will fix our roads, our bridges, our rail systems, and our ports, which are particularly important right now given the supply chain issues that our country is experiencing.

It will also help upgrade our digital infrastructure. High-sped internet will now be available to kids so they can learn, so people can get their healthcare online, so people who want to start a business can do so. It will boost our Nation's ability to provide that kind of high- speed broadband, particularly in our rural areas.

Importantly, thoughtful, conservative economists like Michael Strain at the American Enterprise Institute and Douglas Holtz-Eakin at the American Action Forum will tell you that this bipartisan infrastructure bill is counterinflationary; in other words, it will push back against inflation. Why? Because it adds to the supply side of our economy, as they will say. It contributes to our Nation's long-term growth because it makes long-term investment in hard assets. Think of that bridge in your State or your community that needs to be fixed. That spending won't happen in the next year, but it will happen over 5, 10, maybe 15 years, and it will lead to a more efficient and productive economy.

It also will make us more competitive against countries like China, which currently spends more than four times as much as we do on infrastructure as a percent of their GDP. Why? Because they want to get ahead.

The bipartisan infrastructure bill also has no tax increases. Let me repeat that. Unlike the second bill we are going to talk about, the bipartisan infrastructure bill has no tax increases on the economy.

It is no surprise that polling data from CBS News, CNBC, and others shows that the vast majority of Americans--in this case, 87 percent in these two polls--support investing in and improving our infrastructure.

For these reasons, the House of Representatives needs to pass this bill without delay and help us achieve this win for the American people. It has been almost 3 months since the legislation passed here in the U.S. Senate--almost 3 months. It passed by a vote of 69 to 30.

It is now being held up by progressives in the House of Representatives who want the second bill--the massive tax-and-spend bill, the reconciliation bill--more than they want the infrastructure bill. So they are holding the infrastructure bill hostage, thinking that somehow that will enable them to get more moderate Democrats to support the massive tax-and-spend bill. I don't think that is going to happen, but, meanwhile, they are hurting the American people by holding it hostage.

The second bill that Democrats are contemplating, which is the reconciliation bill, a massive tax-and-spend bill, would inject at least $2 trillion more in largely stimulus funding into an already overheated economy. In order to try to pay for it, it also includes significant tax increases that will hurt economic growth and jobs.

Democrats claim they are taxing the rich and corporations to pay for it, but we shouldn't be fooled. The middle class will bear the brunt of what they are proposing, as they always do.

As an example, the proposed Medicare surcharge on active investment income will hit the millions of small businesses that structured themselves as pass-through entities, as the vast majority do, with an across-the-board 3.8-percent increase on all income.

Proposed corporate tax increases will hit American workers, based on the analyses of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. It is very simple. When you tax a company, the workers end up taking the brunt of it. About 70 percent of the benefit of the tax cuts and about 70 percent of the detriment of the tax increases goes to worker wages and benefits. Costs will be passed down to working families in the form of even lower wages and even more inflation, which means higher prices for everything.

That is bad for the families that I represent. Any objective analysis will show that this massive tax-and-spend bill will actually cost a lot more than advertised.

Why do I say that? Because it uses some budget gimmicks to be able to make the cost of the bill look like less.

Based on a new study that just came out by the Penn Wharton folks, if benefit programs put in place by the bill--let's say the child tax credit--increase and are not sunset in the 10-year window, then the cost goes from $1.75 trillion to $3.98 trillion. In other words, if you just assume that we are not going to sunset things like the child tax credit, the cost goes to almost $4 trillion.

Democrats are proposing to end these new benefits partway through their 10-year window to help keep the costs down, knowing full well that, historically, benefit programs like this are not ended but always extended.

So, taking away the budget gimmicks, the cost of this massive tax- and-spend bill gets it closer to $4 trillion. By the way, that is more than twice as much as Congress has ever spent on a spending bill in the history of our country.

I strongly urge President Biden and Democrats in Congress to slow down this process at a time of high inflation, record debt, and consider the devastating economic consequences of what they are proposing. This increased spending, combined with job-killing tax increases, could lead to the kind of stagflation, as they called it, that we had back in the 1970s: low growth, high interest rates, high inflation. We never want to go back there. Yet, if we don't change course, we could be heading in that direction.

Here is a better solution. Just pass the right bill: the bipartisan, pro-growth infrastructure bill that has been stuck in the House of Representatives for almost 3 months. President Biden has said he will sign it into law. It would be a victory for the American people.

Stop holding it hostage. Instead of holding it hostage, do something good for our infrastructure, which everyone relies on--good for our economy, good for American families, and good for the country right now.

As we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, it would be a needed bipartisan victory for which all of us--Republican and Democrat alike-- could give thanks.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, well, first, I just got to hear the story of Jim Schmidt of Alaska--what an amazing American hero. I thank the Senator from Alaska, Senator Sullivan, for sharing that with all of us.

Mr. President, I am here on the floor tonight to talk about the growing epidemic of drug addiction and the issue that is occurring in my home State of Ohio and, really, all the States represented here in this Chamber and how we need to redouble our efforts.

It is a heartbreaking story because we were making so much progress prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, but, now, underneath the pandemic, we have this epidemic that is growing.

But before I get into that, I must talk first about what is going on this evening in the U.S. House of Representatives. Almost 3 months ago, at the beginning of August, we passed in this Chamber bipartisan legislation to finally address our infrastructure shortfalls in this country. Presidents of both parties had been proposing it for many years. Congress had talked about it a lot, but we had never been able to figure out a way forward.

So a group of 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats got together and said: We are going to grow this from the middle out and figure out how to address our infrastructure challenges and do so in a bipartisan way.

We did that. The President of the United States, President Biden, supported our effort, and we were able to get that legislation across the floor here in the U.S. Senate--not without some challenges and some changes and modifications. But we were able to do it because it was great for America, great for every State represented here, because it was repairing roads and bridges but also our ports, our waterways, our water infrastructure, our infrastructure that is considered digital, which would be high-speed internet, to make sure it is available to all of our citizens.

So there are a lot of things that people had talked about for a long time and said they were for, but finally we were able to actually put it into writing and get it done. And it passed this Chamber with a big vote: 69 votes. Rarely does something so significant pass this Chamber with that kind of bipartisan support.

Unfortunately, it has languished in the House of Representatives for almost 3 months, since early August. And the reason it has languished over there isn't because it doesn't have the votes. It is really more because people would like to use it as a hostage for something they want even more, and that is just wrong.

So, tonight, I urge my House colleagues, Democrat and Republican alike, to put aside the partisanship and focus on the substance of the bill and pass it. It has been held political hostage to something that House Democrats, particularly progressives in the House, want even more. It is not that they are opposed to infrastructure. They know this is needed. They know it is good for their constituents and it is good for our country. It is because they want even more to pass a massive, new spending bill called sometimes the Build Back Better bill, sometimes the reconciliation bill, sometimes the $3.5 trillion tax-and- spend bill. That is totally separate from infrastructure, but that is really what they want to pass.

So they know that a lot of moderate Democrats support the infrastructure bill. They need those moderate Democrats to support the massive tax-and-spend bill. So, in effect, they have held it hostage. They have not allowed the infrastructure bill to move unless they get commitments on the bill they really want, which is the tax-and-spend bill. I think that is just wrong.

So I urge the Speaker of the House and my colleagues in the House to go ahead and vote on that legislation this evening. I know there has been back-and-forth all day about what will happen. All I can say is it is the right thing to do for our country.

When you think about it, the infrastructure bill is exactly what we need right now. Not only do we have a long-term challenge that everybody knows about and that we have been talking about for literally decades, but for the problems we face right now in our economy, it is very effective.

Inflation: Everybody is concerned about it, and they should be. The cost of gasoline at the pump is up about 42 percent this year compared to last year. It is really tough on middle-class families because, although paychecks may have gone up a little bit, inflation has gone up higher. So it is essentially a tax on so many of our working families in this country. But everything is up: food, clothing, furniture, everything.

So inflation is driven, in part, by the stimulus spending. You remember that, back in March, there was a big bill, $1.9 trillion. And many of us said, including some Democrats and including, famously, Larry Summers, who is the former Democratic Secretary of the Treasury for President Obama and in the Clinton administration: If you do this massive amount of spending, an unprecedented amount of stimulus spending, you will drive up inflation because you are putting many more dollars into people's pockets, into the economy, at a time when the economy

is already beginning to improve, and it will be chasing fewer and fewer goods, and that will raise inflation.

And that is exactly what has happened, which is bad for everybody, particularly, again, lower and middle-income families who are seeing this hidden tax, really, on everything they buy and, again, taking away the power of their slight increase in wages that we have seen. In fact, when you look at the data, it looks like wages have actually gone down in the past year. They have gone down because, after inflation, wages are worth less.

So that is where we are right now. And the infrastructure bill is actually counterinflationary. Why do I say that? Because it doesn't invest in the way that the tax-and-spend bill invests. It is not about stimulus. It is about longer term investments in hard capital assets.

So the economists look at that--including conservative economists at the American Enterprise Institute, including Doug Holtz-Eakin, who is a former CBO Director here and a more conservative economist--and they say: Now, this actually will be counterinflationary because you are investing long term in these capital assets, creating jobs, making our economy more efficient, making it more productive; and, therefore, in this instance now where we have this high inflation, it is a good thing to do.

No. 2, we have had a lot of natural disasters in this country, particularly in the last year. About one out of every three Americans, apparently, lives in an area that has been subject to one of these natural disasters. It is the hurricanes. It is the floods. It is the wildfires. It is something that is affecting our country in a major way right now, and we hear about it virtually every week.

This legislation, the infrastructure bill, actually has provisions for resiliency to mitigate the damage from these natural disasters. So it is a well-timed bill in that sense as well.

There is an historic commitment to ensuring that we are not just talking about climate change and natural disasters but actually putting in place things that will protect communities from these natural disasters--whether it is forest fires, whether it is hurricanes, whether it is tornadoes, or other natural disasters. That is in this legislation, the infrastructure bill.

And, finally, what is one of the biggest issues we face right now in terms of our economy? The supply chain crisis. Go to a store in your community, as many of you have, and you will see that the shelves are a lot more bare than they used to be. And there is not much on the shelves because we have this supply chain problem, kind of a bottleneck.

Well, this legislation helps in that regard because it provides funding for infrastructure, including our ports: our ports of entry, our land ports, but also our seaports that are now in a situation where they are jammed with more and more container ships, and, yet, they can't process them quickly enough.

So what the experts tell me is that the $2 billion in the infrastructure bill will help to improve those facilities, improve their operation, improve the intermodal connections--in other words, the truck connections, the train connections--to our ports and help move along this supply chain issue that we are currently facing.

The legislation helps with regard to freight, rail. It helps with regard to our waterways, which carry a lot of freight in our country.

So it is something that would be helpful in all three of these areas: inflation, natural disasters, and also our supply chain issues.

At the same time, again, it is just needed because our infrastructure has fallen behind, particularly fallen behind other countries. And, therefore, making our economy more efficient and more productive is a good thing. Again, that is why it got 69 votes here in the U.S. Senate and why we need to pass it.

It is totally different from the tax-and-spend reconciliation bill, which, again, is massive new spending, massive tax increases, which will add to inflation; and at a time when we have such high debts and deficits, it will add to our record level of debt and deficit. Its large tax increases will hurt our economy at a time when we cannot afford it.

We just got the numbers in from the economic growth in the last quarter. They just came in today: 0.5-percent growth. Very disappointing. Well below expectations.

So we know economic growth is slowing. We know inflation is rising. We know that this is not the time for us to put forward this kind of legislation because it will aggravate the inflationary pressures, but it also causes us, at a time of debt and deficits, to see big increases in spending.

And, finally, again, at a time when our economy is, unfortunately, not performing the way we would like to see it--it is slowing down; it has been the worst economic quarter we have seen since 2000--we need to make sure we were not adding new taxes to our economy at this time. So the timing is bad.

By the way, the infrastructure bill has no new tax increases. The infrastructure bill is not about immediate spending. It is about long- term spending over 5, 10, 15 years for capital assets--again, counterinflationary.

So they are very different proposals, aren't they?

I call on my colleagues in the House tonight to pass this legislation, get the infrastructure bill done. Don't hold it hostage with something else. That is not how we operate. Do the right thing for your constituents and for our country.

The other focus that I had tonight was on our opioid and, more broadly, drug addiction crisis we face in this country and, unfortunately, at a time with the pandemic, causing huge healthcare problems that has distracted a lot of our attention, understandably. But underneath that pandemic there has been this epidemic that has been growing, and that is, again, this addiction issue.

Back in 2018, we saw a reduction in addiction and, specifically, in the way it is typically measured, which is the number of overdose deaths that occur in our States. It was great news: a 22-percent decrease in overdose deaths in my home State of Ohio, after decades of increases every single year--22 percent in 1 year.

2019 was also a good year, where we saw significant success in getting people into treatment, getting people into recovery, reducing the use of drugs through prevention--all the things that we have been wanting to do.

So much of that came from work that was done in this Chamber because we did enact new legislation and provided billions of more dollars for prevention, for treatment, for recovery. And we had a lot of great activity going on at the State level, at our local levels as well, building on that.

We had more Narcan being provided to our communities, which is this miracle drug that reverses the effects of an overdose. We had very good success in getting more people not just into treatment but into longer- term recovery, where there is a greater chance of them succeeding and not relapsing.

We did that through some legislation called the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, bipartisan legislation passed here in this Chamber. Senator Whitehouse joined with me on that as a coauthor. And then we also passed additional legislation to get more money directly to the States. And we found that we were, again, making progress, and then the pandemic hit.

Unfortunately, we now know from the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control--the CDC--that under the cover of this pandemic, the drug epidemic has not only not gone away, it has actually gotten much worse.

Overdose deaths rose by nearly 30 percent between March 2020 and March 2021--the latest year for which we have data; 30-percent increase in overdose deaths.

This is very discouraging and heartbreaking really because that means much more devastation for our communities, families being broken apart, people not being able to achieve their God-given ability in life. Thousands more being lost--96,779 more individuals--moms and dads, sons and daughters, friends and loved ones--lost their lives to overdose deaths during that yearlong period, the most recent year that we have data for. It is the worst year we have had in the history of our country in terms of overdose deaths.

Again, we have been rightfully focused on COVID-19. But, particularly,

as the COVID pandemic is beginning to get better, the Delta variant finally beginning to affect our communities less, we have got to refocus ourselves on this addiction issue. If we don't do it, we are going to continue to see this tragic epidemic take away more lives.

In 47 States and the District of Columbia, the overdose rate went up during this last year, including a 26-percent increase in my home State of Ohio. In some States, by the way, the increase was as high as 85 percent. And I know the Members of the Senate who represent those States are well aware of that and would join me in saying we have to figure out a way; we have got to figure out a way.

So what is the way forward?

Well, part of it is to getting back to what we know works. The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act and the bill called the 21st Century Cures Act--both signed into law in 2016--again, provided billions of new dollars for prevention, for treatment, for longer-term recovery, for Narcan to help our first responders. And that worked, and we made progress. So let's get back to that and redouble our efforts there.

But we need to do more. And we have new legislation we have introduced we think will do that. It is called the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act 2.0--I am sorry, 3.0. We have already done the first bill and 2.0. Now, we are at 3.0. And it provides additional help but also has some new provisions in addition to funding those that we know work, and that is extremely important as well.

By the way, in these overdose deaths, we know that, increasingly, it is synthetic opioids that is causing the deadly outcome. Fentanyl, in particular, which is a synthetic form of heroin or other opioids that, for a long time, was being produced in China and then sent to our shores, and this poison was coming into our communities by our own U.S. Postal Service.

So several years ago, we wrote legislation to deal with that called the STOP Act, and it actually has been quite effective to keep these drugs from coming in through the United States mail system. At that time, our mail system didn't provide the kind of screening that the private carriers did, like FedEx or UPS or DHL, and so people who were traffickers chose to use our own Postal Service. Maddening. And they were doing it successfully.

But it is kind of like whack-a-mole. Once we dealt with the STOP Act and dealt with the fentanyl coming in from China directly through the mail system, it started to show up where?

Through our southern border.

So, today, what the experts will tell you is this deadly fentanyl is coming in primarily through the U.S.-Mexico border; it is cheaper than ever, very inexpensive. Sometimes it is produced in Mexico using precursors that come from China. It is being pressed into pills, often, so people don't know it is fentanyl. The pill may be Xanax. The pill may be Percocet. People think they are getting pain relief or anxiety relief when, in fact, they are getting fentanyl; and the tragic result of that is, again, more and more overdose deaths.

We had a roundtable discussion recently where we talked about the issue of the border and what was happening and the fact that so many people now are coming across the border, but also so much contraband, including these drugs. And we had a witness whose name was Virginia Krieger. This was last week: Virginia told us her very tragic story about her daughter, who thought she was taking a Percocet for pain because that is what the pill said. And she died of an overdose. And it was determined after the fact that, in fact, she had died of fentanyl because some evil scientist--perhaps in Mexico--had pressed these pills, made these pills, probably to try to get her addicted to this powerful drug fentanyl, and, in fact, she had ingested it, taken it, and it had caused her to overdose and die.

Virginia--God bless her--has taken the death of her daughter, Tiffany Leigh Robertson, and channeled that grief into something positive. She is going out to the schools now and talking to young people--I see our pages are here tonight--and saying: Every drug, every pill that is not from a pharmacy that you might find on the streets is potentially deadly. It can kill you. So be cautious. Don't ever take a pill if you don't know that it is coming from a pharmacy, that it is what it says it is.

My heart goes out to Virginia, her family, and all those who have lost loved ones to these deadly substances. We need to be sure that we reduce the supply of these drugs, and we also do much more in terms of the demand reduction.

One way we can start to address the supply of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids is to make sure that they are illegal. That might seem obvious to you, but we have had a hard time here in this country dealing with this issue because--think about it--if the synthetic form of an opioid, which can be changed by one of these evil scientists fairly easily--maybe just one molecule changes--and suddenly it is not on the list of controlled substances and not illegal.

So in order to avoid this problem and be sure that people are properly prosecuted for illegal drugs, we are putting together legislation and trying to pass it, that ensures that there is a permanent classification of these drugs as being illegal.

The Drug Enforcement Agency, back in 2018, used its authority to temporarily classify all fentanyl-related drugs--all of them--as schedule I substances, meaning illegal at the highest level, which allows law enforcement to aggressively intercept and destroy those substances. Unfortunately, that was only temporary. So that designation needs to be made permanent.

We have successfully extended the temporary extension a few times here, but it is going to expire again at the end of January. So in just a couple of months, once again, we will have an expiration of that designation.

Until we make these fentanyl-related drugs permanently illegal, law enforcement will not have the certainty they need to go after the criminals moving these deadly substances, and fewer lives will be lost.

The legislation is called the FIGHT Fentanyl Act. It is bipartisan. I introduced it with Senator Manchin. Again, it fixes this problem by permanently classifying these drugs that are fentanyl-related as schedule I. It also gives our law enforcement the certainty they need to go after synthetic opioids in all forms and show we are committed to addressing the threat posed by this particularly dangerous class of drugs.

So my hope is my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will work with us to get this done before the end of January. There is no reason we should do it at the last minute. We should provide that certainty and predictability.

At the same time, I continue to believe that the most progress can be made on the demand side. So, yes, we need to do a better job at the southern border. It is outrageous what is happening now. So many drugs are coming across at record levels. The apprehensions of fentanyl are at record levels. In fact, enough fentanyl has been apprehended this year alone to kill every man, woman, and child in America. That is how deadly the drug is.

But, ultimately, we have to deal with the demand for that drug in this country. As long as we have this insatiable demand, it is going to be difficult to stop it through the supply side or even making these drugs illegal.

So that is why I think we need new legislation to build on the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, to build on what we have done previously, and this CARA 3.0 that we have introduced with Senator Whitehouse can help on that. It does so by addressing three important areas: research and education, treatment and recovery, and criminal justice reform.

First, it will bolster our work to prevent drug abuse before it happens, through funding, through research and education. To me, it is time for a national awareness campaign. It would be money well spent. And I believe we could use the money that we would appropriate here to leverage a lot more private interest in this, to get the private companies--like the pharmaceutical companies--to step forward and to help us in a true national drug awareness campaign.

Second, research and development. We need to have better pain relief drugs in this country. We are still relying on things like Percocet, as I mentioned, and other opioids, prescription forms, that we have been relying on for decades. It is time to actually move

forward with the research and development of alternative pain treatments that don't lead to addiction as opioids do. There has been some progress there, but not nearly enough, and it needs more help.

Third, in terms of treating substance abuse, our bill builds on what works by doubling down on proven evidence-based addiction treatment methods while expanding treatment options for groups particularly vulnerable to addiction, including young people, new and expecting moms, rural communities, communities of color. And it will make permanent the expanded telehealth options for addiction treatment that were temporarily created in response to the social distancing required by COVID-19. This is an exciting opportunity because it turns out, during COVID-19, when we had to rely more on telehealth, there was actually a lot of success in getting people into treatment.

Now, it wasn't as good as having your recovery coach there with you and your, perhaps, other recovering addicts with you to give you the support you need, but for some people who couldn't travel because of the COVID-19 restrictions and, now, perhaps can't travel for other reasons, telehealth is something that was determined to be quite successful in many cases. We should continue that. We have to change laws to do that because it is about whether that would be reimbursed, particularly under Medicaid and Medicare.

CARA 3.0 will also bolster the recovery options for individuals working to put addiction behind them through funding to support recovery support networks. It will enable physicians to provide medication-assisted treatment, like Methadone, to a greater number of patients and change the law to allow those drugs to be prescribed via telehealth for greater use of access.

Part of the telehealth we are looking for is if you have a medication-assisted treatment plan, then you can use telehealth--in other words, over the internet--to be able to get your prescription. There needs to be safeguards in that. We need to be sure the first time a prescription is given, there is a face-to-face contact and make sure that it is not being abused, but this can be quite helpful.

Finally, CARA 3.0 reforms our criminal justice system to ensure that those struggling with addiction, including our veterans, are treated with fairness and compassion by the law, putting them on a path to recovery instead of a downward spiral of substance abuse.

When someone comes out of one of our prisons or jails and comes out as an addict and there is not treatment provided, way too often that person, of course, relapses and begins to use again, gets back into criminal activity, and gets right back in the criminal justice system. That doesn't help anybody. It certainly doesn't help the taxpayer because the cost is $30 to $35,000--probably more at the Federal level--to incarcerate someone.

And when they get out, they are just creating more crimes in the community. It is worth putting some emphasis on treatment while someone is in prison if they are suffering from addiction and, certainly, when they get out, getting them into treatment and recovery programs to get them back on their feet.

By the way, we need these people in our workforce right now. We have always needed them, but we particularly do now. This is a win-win for our economy and certainly for the addict.

CARA and CARA 2.0 have given States and local communities new resources and authorities to make a real difference in our States. CARA 3.0, this new bill, renews and strengthens those programs and, given the recent spike in addiction, provides a significant boost in funding as well.

When added with existing CARA programs authorized through 2023, we would be investing over $1 billion a year to address the epidemic, putting us on a path toward brighter future free from addiction. It is money well spent, in my view. It is necessary. Again, it is going to help to bring our families back together, get people back to work, and ensure that our communities are not being devastated by crime that is committed in relation to these drug issues.

I believe these two bills--the FIGHT Fentanyl Act we talked about and CARA 3.0--will make a difference in addressing this crisis of addiction our country now faces that has been made even worse during the time of the pandemic. A lot of our victims of this addiction crisis are suffering in silence.

I urge my colleagues: Let's act now. Let's bring this to the light. Let's allow mere people to get into treatment, longer-term recovery. Let's be sure we are making fentanyl illegal in all of its forms. Let's, without delay, go to work to once again do what we know works because we turned the tide on addiction.

We began to turn it in 2018, 2019. Let's get back to that. We will save lives and give so many more Americans the ability to achieve their God-given potential.

I yield the floor.

(Mr. KAINE assumed the Chair.)

Madam President, I am here on the floor again this evening to talk about the legislation that is before us.

One is the bipartisan infrastructure legislation that passed this Chamber with 69 votes. It is great for America. It addresses real problems we have in upgrading our infrastructure, but it also deals with competitiveness.

My colleague from Illinois just made a good point that we are in a global competition with other countries, including China. One reason we are not doing as well as we should is that the other countries are putting a lot more of their money into infrastructure--because it is good for their economies--and we are not.

As an example, China spends a lot more, as a percent of their GDP, on infrastructure than we do--much more. So bridges and roads and railways and ports--ports are a big problem right now--all of these would be improved and would make our economy, therefore, more efficient. As the economists say, that makes us more productive as a country and allows us to be able to compete globally.

Right now, with these supply chain issues, whether it is freight on the rail system or whether it is our highway system, or whether it is our port system or our waterway system, all of which need help, it would be easier for us to deal with this transition we are going through if we had better infrastructure.

This infrastructure bill, unfortunately, has gotten intertwined with another bill over in the House of Representatives. So, although it passed here on its own merits--standing alone as an infrastructure bill with no new tax increases, no tax increases--when it got to the House of Representatives, the Speaker of the House wanted to combine it with another bill, which is what has been called around here the reconciliation bill, which refers to a process here in the U.S. Senate--a rare process--where, instead of having the normal 60 votes--a supermajority for legislation--under reconciliation, a couple of times a year, you can have something that only needs to get 50 votes, assuming that you have the Presidency in your party because then the Vice President, as the President of the Senate, can come and break the tie to get to 51. So that is the reconciliation process that the Democrats want to use for this other bill.

What is the other bill?

It is a huge tax-and-spend bill.

Just as I believe infrastructure would be good for our country, it is actually counterinflationary based on the economists.

Why?

Because you are doing long-term investments in capital assets. That is good for pushing back against inflation. More spending on social programs, which is what is in the reconciliation bill, would add to inflation at a time when we already have a huge problem there.

Also, the huge amount of spending would be unprecedented. We will talk about that in a minute, depending on how much spending is in there.

So that is one bill, and the infrastructure bill is separate.

I, again, call on my colleagues in the House of Representatives--the leadership over there--to let the infrastructure bill go, allow it to be voted on on its merits. Don't tie it as a political hostage to this reconciliation bill, the tax-and-spend bill, that the Democrats have had a really hard time passing through the system. Infrastructure needs to stand on its own. The American people deserve that. It has been almost 3 months--almost 3 months--since the Senate passed it, and people are waiting, and they deserve the help.

By the way, it helps in a broad range, not just on the roads and bridges and the rail and the ports and the waterways I talked about; it helps with resilience to push back against an actual disaster-- something all of our States are experiencing.

It is something that helps with regard to our energy policy--it makes us more competitive--and, yes, it encourages us to use the resources we have but to do so through carbon capture. And it encourages us to move to more electric vehicles; it encourages us to be more competitive on that front as well.

Infrastructure means, also, digital infrastructure. It actually, for the first time ever, provides a huge boost to having high-speed broadband spread all around the country, particularly in our rural areas, like in Ohio, where we have some areas--about a third of our State--that do not have access to it. People can't do the appropriate telehealth that they want to do. They certainly can't do the telelearning they

want to do. It is difficult to even go to school these days and do your homework if you don't have access to the internet. Of course, it helps us back in Ohio, if we have the internet, to be able to start businesses in these rural areas of Ohio.

So this is all in the infrastructure bill. That is why, again, it got 69 votes here in the U.S. Senate. That is not usual around here. It is truly bipartisan. President Biden says he will sign it. Let's pass it. If we pass it in the House, it will be signed into law, and it will begin to help our country at a time when we need the help.

We also could use a little bipartisanship around here, don't you think?

This is one we can agree on.

Why should it be held political hostage to something that is strictly partisan and controversial and, in my view--in my view--would be dangerous to our economy right now?

Now, why do I say that?

Well, this new spending that would be in the bill would be the highest level of spending that we have ever seen in the U.S. Congress. Remember, originally it was $3.5 trillion because originally it was $6 trillion, and then $3.5 trillion. Now there is discussion--I just read a report this afternoon in one of the media sources--saying it may be as low as $2 trillion--$2 trillion. That is two thousand billion dollars in additional spending at a time of record deficits and debt.

Now, people say: Well, that is a lot less than 3.5.

Yes, but it would still be the largest bill ever passed by the U.S. Congress--ever. The $1.9 trillion that was passed in March--not that long ago--which was supposed to be for COVID but most of which is not going for COVID purposes, was the largest ever. This would be $2 trillion--a little larger than that--adding up together to almost $4 trillion of new spending.

Again, when the $1.9 trillion was passed, a lot of people said, including me: This is a risk to our economy right now. We are coming out of the pandemic with a growing economy. Why overheat the economy right now?

But we did, and it caused much of the inflation we are now experiencing.

The Secretary of the Treasury under the Obama administration and an economist in the Clinton administration, Larry Summers, a Democrat, said the same thing, and he continues to say it today because he believes that all of this new spending is going to add to more overheating of the economy and more inflation.

We don't need that right now. We have inflation that is not transitory. It, unfortunately, looks like it is very much permanent in terms of this year and next year, at least.

That is a huge problem because it is the lower-income and middle- income workers who are hurt the worst. It is a tax--a hidden tax. So, for the people who are seeing wage gains this year, those are being eaten up, for the most part, by inflation. The annual inflation right now, based on the last month, is 5.4 percent. So, unless your wage rate is above that, you are in trouble.

Plus, everything is just more expensive. So gasoline, if you go to the pump, is 42 percent higher this year as compared to last year--42 percent. Natural gas is expected to be in about that range, about 40 percent higher.

I did some research recently about pumpkins--you know, we are going into the holiday season this year--for Halloween.

What does a pumpkin cost?

Well, guess what. It costs, on average, 14.7 percent more this year as compared to last year. Groceries, clothes, your utility bills-- everything is going up. So it is not the time to pump a lot more stimulus spending into the economy, which, again, people say is going to lead to higher inflation on everything.

Remember, before the pandemic started, back in February of 2020, we had a strong economy. We had the 19th straight month then of wage gains of over 3 percent every month for 19 months. Exactly what we wanted-- right?--were wages going up. We had the lowest poverty rate in the history of our country since we started keeping track of it back in the 1950s. We had the lowest unemployment rate ever for certain groups in our economy--Hispanics, Blacks. We had the lowest unemployment ever, overall, for the last 50 years. So things were going pretty well.

Yet, now, when we look at what is happening, we are not seeing these wage increases. In fact, on average, when you take inflation into account, they say that during the Biden years, during the Biden administration over the last several months, wages have gone down an average of 1.9 percent largely because, again, of this inflation.

The legislation also includes big tax increases so it is not just about more spending; it is also about tax increases to pay for the spending. In recent days, it has come out that some of these tax hikes might not be supported by all Democrats, so they might not be able to include them all. I suppose, you know, that would be better for the economy, but as the economy is coming out of the pandemic and growing, the last thing we want to do is to raise taxes. Again, back in 2017, when tax reform occurred, it had a lot of good impacts, including, again, higher wages; we talked about the poverty rate; we talked about unemployment being low.

Another thing that it did on the global competitiveness side, on the international side, is that it actually changed the way our economy worked. Prior to that, you had a number of companies that literally were voting with their feet and leaving the United States of America because of the Tax Code. It drove all of us crazy--Democrats and Republicans alike--that you had companies that were inverting, as they say, and these inversions meant a company that was a U.S. company one day became a foreign company the next day.

This happened in Ohio. We had companies leaving Ohio to become Irish companies, as an example, because they had a lower tax rate, and we had the highest corporate tax rate of any of the developed countries, of the countries in the OECD.

That is a terrible thing. Of course, we wanted to stop that, so we put the reforms in place to say: We are going to lower our rates so our rate is competitive, and we are going to change the way we tax internationally.

And guess what. All of the inversions stopped--all of them.

And now, unbelievably, the administration and the Democratic leadership want to raise those taxes again--once again, to make us uncompetitive globally. And, again, you will see some companies say, when they look at the analysis from, you know, their tax experts: Why are we an American company?

You would hope no company would ever do that, but they were doing it before 2017. During the Obama administration, at the beginning of the Trump administration, they were leaving. So we don't want that to happen again.

In fact, we want our workers and our businesses to be competitive. I say ``workers'' because, when you raise the business taxes, guess who takes the hit. Ask the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, here. What CBO will tell you, which is a nonpartisan group here in the U.S. Congress, is that their analysis is that about 70 percent of the increase in corporate taxes is borne by workers; about 70 percent of the cut in taxes helps workers--higher wages, higher benefits. The Tax Foundation has the same analysis. The Joint Committee on Taxation, when they look at this legislation before us, the 3.5 trillion that was reported--that was introduced--they said it will raise taxes on middle- income workers, well below 400,000. A lot of that was because of this issue--because, again, the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation up here in Congress looked at it and said: Well, who is going to bear the brunt of this? It is going to be workers. So workers' wages are going to go down if you raise taxes on these individual companies that are global companies.

So that is what we are facing. Now, again, it looks like there are going to be some changes in the legislation. I mentioned that the amount may go down some. I mentioned $2 trillion, still the largest spending bill ever.

I, also, on the tax front, am told that some of the tax hikes may be taken out; some of them may be kept in. One that they are talking about keeping in--that the administration, in particular, seems adamant about keeping in--I just don't get because it, again, makes our companies less competitive globally.

It is a complicated provision in the international tax code. It is called the global intangible low-taxed income, also known as GILTI. What does GILTI say?

Well, when we changed our Tax Code back in 2017, we put in place, in effect, a minimum tax for our companies that do business overseas.

Our competitive countries--countries like ours, developed countries-- for the most part, almost all of them do not tax their companies for their foreign income. So if a company--I mentioned Ireland earlier-- from Ireland or Germany, whatever, does business over here, their government doesn't tax them on the income they get from the United States. It lets the United States handle that.

And we changed our Tax Code to say, well, we are not going to do that either, but we are going to add a minimum tax no matter what, and that was called the GILTI tax. It was put in place in 2017 as part of, again, a broad and successful group of tax reforms that took bold steps to reassert our competitiveness, and it worked.

They took our rate from 35 percent down to 21 percent, putting it at about the middle of the developed countries. Now it is actually above the middle because other countries have gone below us again.

We went to what is called a territorial-type system. So it all worked.

About over 1.5 trillion was reinvested in America, by the way, from overseas. So it worked in that sense too. We stopped the corporate inversions.

But this GILTI, or the minimum tax on foreign income, was put in place as a way to make sure that foreign income wouldn't be shifted to low-tax jurisdictions.

Right now, this GILTI rate stands at 13.125 percent. So it is 13 percent, roughly, for American companies. Again, most of our competitors don't have it at all, but it is 13 percent.

Treasury Secretary Yellen has now worked with countries around the world to say everybody ought to have a global minimum tax, and she has made progress on that. So some of these countries that have not had a minimum tax are now looking at one and to put one in place. The one that she wants for everybody is 15 percent.

So here we are, globally telling these other countries in the world: You have to have a global minimum tax of 15 percent. OK. So wouldn't you think, then, you would want America not to have a tax above that amount?

No, they want to change the GILTI amount from 13.125 percent to an effective rate of 17.4 percent. They started off at 21 percent in the original introduced bill. But even 17.4 percent--why would you want to put American companies above, again, this global average of 15 percent? If you are going to require companies to go to 15, why would you want the United States to be above that? But that is what is being proposed--believe it or not.

And, by the way, they are saying that we would go ahead and go to 17.4 percent before any other countries in the world would have to do it--2 years before they would have to do it. Whether they do it or not is a question.

Let's be honest. Some countries don't want to do it, and they may not do it. Their legislatures may not let them do it.

But let's assume that they do follow suit. We would be out there 2 years earlier with a higher tax rate on our workers. Remember who bears the brunt of this tax increase. Our companies would be noncompetitive. Our workers would be noncompetitive.

So I would hope that, as my colleagues are looking at this--I know it seems easy: Let's just tax the international companies--that they would look at what happened in 2017, the positive impacts of that and the negative if we reverse course and go back and raise our taxes above what other countries charge.

By the way, to do this would mean nullifying tax treaties that we have with other countries all around the world because it is a different way of approaching it. We do not have a minimum tax in place now. So the tax treaties would have to be amended. That means, obviously, to me, that you would have to have a tax treaty change here in America. In other words, you can't change tax treaties just on one side. It is bilateral. So we would have to change our tax treaties here.

Treaties have to go through the U.S. Senate. As you probably know, they have to go through the U.S. Senate, and it is a two-thirds vote to change a treaty. There is a reason for that. It is part of our checks and balances to be sure that treaties, which are a very serious undertaking, are something that you get a strong bipartisan support for.

And yet my understanding is that the Secretary of the Treasury and others in the administration are saying that they are not sure that we have to get this GILTI change or these treaty changes that we have with other countries through the U.S. Senate. We just might do it through some other way, administratively or through an Executive legislative action.

I sure hope they don't do that. That would set a terrible precedent. It would mean that this whole constitutionally based rule we have with regard to treaties would be very difficult to uphold in the future for anything.

Let me be clear. This is bad for workers as well as bad for companies. The National Association of Manufacturers just did a recent study, and they found that hiking the GILTI rate in a way we just talked about could cost up to 1 million U.S. jobs.

Again, CBO here in the Capitol, the Tax Foundation, the Joint Committee on Taxation--all of them believe this would saddle our workers with lower wages and lost jobs by making our businesses less competitive globally.

I am also concerned that the administration is talking about imposing a burdensome new information reporting requirement that would require far more information from taxpayers than is needed to enforce our tax laws. That represents an unprecedented invasion of taxpayer privacy.

You have probably heard about this because it is getting more and more attention--the so-called $600 limit. Now, this would mean that the IRS would receive a report from you every year for any expenditure. Think about an expense or a payment going in or out of your checking account of $600 or more.

Recently, again, based on a report I saw today, the administration and Democratic leadership here on Capitol Hill are talking about changing that $600 to $10,000. So it would be a higher threshold. Now, that higher threshold is something that most Americans would reach pretty quickly.

Think about it. Ten thousand dollars a year in total expenditures. Eight hundred thirty dollars per month is what that is.

So think about that: Do you spend 830 bucks a month on groceries, gas, clothes, essentials? If you do, then be prepared for the IRS to be able to look through your tax records in ways they never have before.

Don't get me wrong. I believe enforcing our tax laws is important, and I am actually one of the Republicans--there may not be many of us-- who believes that the IRS should have more resources for things like improving their computer system because it is so antiquated.

I spent 2 years of my life studying this. Several years ago I came up with some reforms out of a commission. We improved it. It needs to be improved again.

The computer systems they have, both the software and the hardware, and, frankly, their ability to use them, is way outdated, and it is not good for taxpayers. It is bad for small business, and it is bad for individuals because the right hand often doesn't know what the left hand is doing. So I am for that. I am for better taxpayer service and providing more funding for that.

But I am not for providing tons more data to the IRS that has nothing to do with income that is unprecedented that their systems cannot handle. There is no way that they would be able to handle these millions and millions of new data that they would be getting from all of us--hundreds of millions of accounts from financial institutions; e- payment apps, like Venmo; and cryptocurrency exchanges, like Coinbase, are going to be subjected to more paperwork and confusion if this happens.

If you have one of the 403 million active PayPal accounts, watch out. Your personal account information may be sent to the IRS. And, boy, that is going to result in some confusion at some point.

Again, if you are one of the vast majority of Americans who spend more than 830 bucks a month on anything,

then you are going to have to report that.

So there are some people who are pretty smart about this, who have looked at it and said: This doesn't make sense.

One of them is Steven Rosenthal. He is at the left-leaning Tax Policy Center. He stated that this would ``bury the agency in a sea of unproductive information.''

That is how I feel about it. Again, I would like to have the IRS be better in terms of what they could do with technology and be able to handle their job better to be able to ensure that every taxpayer gets a fair shake, because sometimes, right now, again, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing because their computer system is so antiquated--software, hardware, everything. But as he said, they can't handle the data they have.

Mark Everson, who is a former IRS Commissioner, wrote a really interesting op-ed that I read yesterday. He wrote that this proposal would ``prove all but impossible for the IRS to handle and engulf the service in a damaging political firestorm.'' That is from Mark Everson.

By the way, Mark Everson wants to give the IRS more money to improve their computer systems. He thinks there is not enough enforcement with regard to partnerships right now, as an example, or he thinks taxpayer service should be improved. So he is not someone who says we should starve the IRS, but he is saying: Don't do this. Don't do this, add this new information reporting that is not information about income and that the IRS is not going to be able to handle, and it is an intrusion into our lives that is unnecessary.

That is in the legislation.

So, again, I have come down to the floor here every week since the original introduction of this tax-and-spend legislation we have talked about today. This is the sixth straight week that I have come to the floor. When we are in session, every week, I am going to come--continue to come--as long as this bill is out there, because I want the American people and my colleagues to know what is in this legislation and why it would be so damaging to our country right now.

And, again, I distinguish the infrastructure bill--good for the economy, the right thing to do to counter inflation; something every President in modern times has tried to do, by the way, for good reason. Let it stand on its own. It should be voted on, on its own merits. Don't entangle it with this tax-and-spend legislation that is reckless, at a time of rising inflation and higher debts and deficits, at a time when our economy is finally getting on its feet. Let's not add job- killing tax hikes. Let's not add this massive new spending.

It is in our national interest to move forward with regard to the infrastructure bill, and it is in our national interest to stop the reckless tax-and-spend legislation.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to recognize the designation of South Lebanon as an Official City in Ohio. In accordance with section 703.06 of the Revised Code of the State of Ohio, a municipality that reaches 5,000 residents in the State of Ohio, automatically becomes a city. Since 2000, the municipality of South Lebanon has grown 151 percent and has reached a population of 6,384.

The growing population of South Lebanon also comes with a rich history. South Lebanon is the oldest town in Warren County, OH, and was also deemed one of the most important towns on the Little Miami River in the late 1700s. In its early days of settlement, it was a stopping place for many pioneers who were venturing across the country in search of a new life. Today, that same town that was a place of possibility and refuge to so many early pioneers has become a booming economic power, bringing new jobs, good schools, and a strong sense of community.

I am proud to see South Lebanon be recognized for its growth and perseverance as it continues to expand, making Ohio a great place to live and work.

Madam President, I am here on the floor this evening to talk about the troubling state of our economy today and what needs to be done to get it back on track. The Labor Department reported last week that the consumer price index, CPI, rose by 5.4 percent on an annualized basis. That accounts for the largest year-to-year inflationary increase in 13 years.

And we are feeling it. There is no question inflation is on the rise. We are paying more for everything--from groceries, to buying furniture, to cars, even pumpkins for Halloween. Yes, the U.S. Department of Agriculture just told us that pumpkins, year to year, are going to see an, on average, 15.7-percent increase in prices. So you might have to get a little smaller pumpkin this year.

And, of course, we are paying more at the pump, on average, a staggering 42-percent increase this year--42-percent increase. This is both because of increased demand but also because there is less supply as the new administration, the Biden administration, has put more regulations or handcuffs on American energy production.

And don't forget the higher heating bills, about 25 percent higher this year as compared to last year. Just as this cooler weather begins to come in, we are all going to be paying more on our utility bills, particularly for natural gas.

If all this isn't bad enough, workers' wages are not keeping up with these price spikes. I love to see wages going

up, but honestly, if you look at the data, it says that since President Biden took office, wages after inflation, adjusted for inflation, are down almost 2 percent--1.9 percent lower.

Remember, before the pandemic started, in February of 2020, we had the 19th straight month of wage increases of 3 percent or more on an annualized basis, well above inflation. Now, we are seeing just the opposite. This means a pay cut to the middle class.

The damaging effect of this hidden inflation is, in part, the result of actions that were taken by the Biden administration and by Democrats here in Congress to overheat the economy through unprecedented levels of government spending.

What do I mean by that? Well, you will recall that economist and former Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton and Obama administrations, Larry Summers, said earlier this year, as Democrats were talking about this huge new spending bill that they ended up passing without a single Republican input or vote in March, he said: If you do this, it is going to cause inflation. He warned about it because he had seen this movie before.

When you have got an economy that is already improving and you overheat it with massive amounts of stimulus--remember, the $1.9 trillion that was spent in March was the highest level ever spent. It was the biggest program ever passed by either House of Congress, $1.9 trillion. We forget how much money that is.

He recognized that this bill contained billions in stimulus money, social service spending, the stimulus checks. And those were going to fuel the demand side of the economy. And they did--not just the stimulus checks but other things as well: COVID funds to all kinds of institutions, a continuing generous unemployment supplement that paid 42 percent of American workers more to go on unemployment than to go back to work.

All of this added up to a huge influx of social spending, government spending--borrowed money but government spending--into the economy that everyone who was looking at it objectively, I believe, knew was going to be a problem.

Earlier this year, before the Democrats passed this $1.9 trillion spending bill, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office here on Capitol Hill told us that the economy was already recovering, and that is what outside economists were saying as well. Everybody was looking at the economy and saying, you know, in January, February, going into March, the economy was improving nicely. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office--again, nonpartisan group up here--said the economy is going to get back to its prepandemic level by midyear, by June 30. And it did.

The stimulus was really poorly timed. Instead of allowing the recovery to continue steadily, it effectively poured fuel on an already hot economy, which led to the surging inflation we are seeing now. The White House likes to say that the inflation we are experiencing is transitory. That is the word that they have been using; in other words, it will pass--as Congress passes more legislation to fix the economy, I suppose. Unfortunately, it has not been transitory.

And I haven't seen anybody who is looking at this objectively say that it will be transitory. In fact, I saw an analysis today from an outside group, a nonpartisan group, that said they are, unfortunately, convinced that this high inflation is going to continue next year as well. I hope that is not true, but that seems to be the consensus. Economists across the spectrum, even the International Monetary Fund, are now saying that rising inflation is dampening future economic growth.

You would think all of this would cause a policy shift by the administration, a pulling back on the stimulus, doing things to actually help on the supply side of the economy. But rather than changing course from the policies that contributed to this high inflation and this demand-side stimulus, Democrats want to double down with a $3.5-trillion-plus massive tax-and-spending spree that would spend trillions to fund social programs, expand government entitlements, and encourage more consumer demand, fueling more inflation.

What makes this proposal even more concerning is Democrats want to pay for it by hurting the economy more with big tax increases. Some say it is the biggest tax increase in 50 years. Some say it is the largest tax increase in history. It depends, I guess, where they end up. But we know it will increase taxes on pretty much everybody.

The Joint Committee on Taxation has done an analysis and said, yes, it is going to increase taxes on middle-income workers. Why? Because it increases taxes on businesses and they say that about 70 percent of that tax increase will be borne by workers. That is, again, the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. So it is taxes not just on businesses, large and small, but it is also on workers, on farmers, on manufacturers.

This increased spending, combined with job-killing tax increases, could lead to the kind of stagflation, low growth, high interest rates, high inflation that we had back in the 1970s. We hoped never to see that again; yet if we don't change course, we could be heading toward that direction. It is the last thing our economy needs right now.

But surging consumer demand is not the only factor driving our current inflation crisis. The other main culprit is that we are facing a shortage of goods due to a global supply chain crisis. Almost anyone you talk to will tell you they have had some kind of shipping delay due to these supply chain issues. There are contractors you probably know who can't get lumber, can't get steel to be able to finish a building, a home.

There are plenty of parents out there right now waiting to get their kid a gift for their birthday, only to find out that, no matter how much they pay, it is going to arrive not for the birthday but maybe 2 or 3 months later.

These issues are clearly visible if you look at our seaports, which are often the main connecter between our country and the main global supply chain, consisting of manufacturers often in Asia, sometimes in China. Just last week, there were about 60 or 70 ships in a holding pattern near the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, CA. Think about that: 60 or 70 huge container ships just in a holding pattern, not being able to get in.

And even when the shipping containers are taken on shore, by the way, there aren't enough trucks to pick them up. So the containers are staying at the port. There aren't enough truck drivers because of the labor shortage. By the way, that is driven in part by this increased demand but in part by some of the rules and regulations around those transportation logistics and truckers.

Between bottlenecks and backlogs at our ports and challenges in transporting freight, there is real trouble for our supply chains just as we come into the holiday season, which is typically, of course, when people do most of their shopping. One reason for this global supply chain crisis is the ripple effects of COVID-19. No question about that. When factories shut down their operations to stem the flow of COVID among their workers, assembly lines sometimes stopped working altogether and created the shortage of goods and materials.

The companies that work in the shipping industry also were hit hard by the pandemic and had some of their operations negatively impacted. But then the pent-up demand for goods and services kicked in, and, again, much more demand was created by the $1.9 trillion spending bill in March of this year than would have been normal.

So, yeah, you had some of these factories shutting down; you had essential workers still working; but you had less production and then all of a sudden this big surge and, therefore, the bottleneck.

Some in the Biden administration have said that this inflation and supply chain bottleneck is a problem for the rich. I don't see it that way. If they think that, they ought to talk to the factory workers I talked to in Ohio whose wages are being eaten up by inflation. I think they should say that to the mother or father who is having to ask their kid what gift they want for Christmas 2 or 3 months ahead of time. In fact, it is too late already to get some gifts for Christmas even now.

A recent college graduate who is trying to fill her car up with gas to get to work--tell it to her that this is a problem for the rich--a 42-percent increase in gas prices this year.

The supply chain is like any other chain. If you have one weak link, it is enough to cause the whole thing to fall apart, and that is exactly what has happened, and it is happening at the worst possible time. Part of the near-term solution is to stop any new stimulus spending. That is not what is needed right now in the economy. It is just terrible timing.

And stop the new tax increases because that is also what we don't need in our economy right now. We don't want to make America and American workers less competitive; we want to do just the opposite.

And part of the long-term solution to prevent a similar crisis from happening in the future is to shore up our supply chains. Instead of being so reliant on manufacturers from places like China, bring the manufacturing home; reshore it; invest more in production here in the United States. In the process, create more domestic manufacturing and transport jobs and greater supply chain security.

I think that is going to start happening. If you look at the cost to bring a product from Asia to the United States now, it has skyrocketed. That gives us a competitive advantage. The market is here. We ought to bring the manufacturing here as well.

Another solution is to improve our Nation's infrastructure. Targeted investments in increasing the capacity and operability of our ports, our waterways, fixing our roads and bridges, improving our railways, that all makes sense. For decades, we have neglected our infrastructure needs. Every President, by the way, in modern times has said that.

You know, the society of engineers who look at our infrastructure says that we have a grade of somewhere between D-plus and C-minus in this country. We are falling behind other countries. Other countries spend a lot more as a percent of their GDP on infrastructure. And it has been recognized.

Really, every President since from Bill Clinton to Donald Trump has said: Let's make a significant investment in infrastructure. Yet we didn't do it. We neglected our infrastructure. We have neglected our ports, and that is why they are so inefficient today in part and one reason we are having to pay the price.

The good news is that right now there is a bipartisan infrastructure package awaiting passage in the House of Representatives to address this and other problems. It is called the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. This is the bill that passed the U.S. Senate here in August with a 69-vote majority. That doesn't happen very often around here, particularly with big, important legislation like that.

It was bipartisan from the start. It was passed with the support of Republicans here in this Chamber, Democrats in this Chamber, and, most importantly, the American people who think it is a really good idea.

Economists think it is a good idea, too, because it improves the efficiency of our economy. Think about it. The bridge that is holding up traffic right now in my hometown of Cincinnati, OH, every day--a massive bridge where I-71 and 75 come together--it is a huge hit to our economy. It is also a huge safety problem. Fixing that bridge has been something people talked about for 30 years. It is time to do it, and we will do it if we can get this infrastructure bill passed.

It will also create hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs in industries ranging from construction and plumbing to electrical engineering and software development, with one recent study from the Association of Equipment Manufacturers finding that the legislation will create about a half a million jobs.

It will also help address issues at our ports by providing increased funding for the Port Infrastructure Development Program, investments in our freight system through rail and waterway and highway and air freight investments. So it actually addresses a real problem we have right now.

By the way, these investments are long-term investments. It won't be a lot of money spent in the next year or so; it will be a lot of money, though, spent over the next 5, 10, 15 years to improve this infrastructure. And they will be long-term assets that will last for decades. So it is a different kind of spending than the stimulus spending.

All of this will help improve the movement of goods throughout our country. That is why every business group in America is supporting this legislation, not just the chamber of commerce but every group out there--by the way, as well as all the agriculture groups. Over 30 ag groups, including the American Farm Bureau, are supporting this legislation. It is why a lot of the union members are supporting it too. In fact, the AFL-CIO Building Trades Council is strongly in support of this legislation because they know it is going to create good-paying jobs, good benefits, allowing people to get out there and build things.

Even more importantly, to me, given the recent economic news we have seen, this proposal will not cause inflation to increase. Why? Because it is spending on the supply side rather than the demand side of the economy, as economists would say. Conservative economist Doug Holtz- Eakin, who is the former Director of the Congressional Budget Office, now head of the American Action Forum, and Michael Strain, who is the director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, also a conservative scholar, have said that our bipartisan infrastructure package will slow down inflation. They said:

Improving roads, bridges, and ports would make it less

costly for businesses to operate, allowing them to increase

their output per hour and putting downward pressure on

consumer prices.

Again, this is long-term spending capital assets. It makes the economy more efficient; therefore, more productive. That is counterinflationary. So this is the right time to do this kind of project.

To me, this bill makes all the sense in the world, given the trouble and uncertain stage of our economy. It gets relief to our supply chains. It makes long-term investments in hard assets that do boost our productivity in this country. It has a counterinflationary effect on the economy. So why hasn't it passed? What is the problem? Again, it got 69 votes here in the U.S. Senate. Well, unfortunately, the answer is politics. Democrats in the House of Representatives want to do everything they can to tie their big $3.5 trillion-plus tax-and-spend bill we talked about earlier to the infrastructure investment because they know that is the only way their partisan bill is going to get the votes needed to pass. So they held it hostage.

Hard-core progressives don't like the bipartisan infrastructure bill because it doesn't have the tax increases; it doesn't haven't the Green New Deal policies; it doesn't have all the new social spending programs that are in this reconciliation bill that they really want.

But holding this investment in infrastructure hostage to this larger tax-and-spend bill is just wrong. It is playing politics. And it is playing politics with the American people.

It is also counter to the pledge that President Biden made to the bipartisan group that negotiated this agreement and made to the American people. President Biden supports this infrastructure legislation. He said he didn't get everything he wanted. Nobody did. But he supports it. He wants it to move forward. And he pledged to keep it separate--separate--from the $3.5 trillion tax-and-spend bill, and yet what you see in the House is just the opposite.

It is not fair to the American people. They deserve to have the opportunity to have the infrastructure bill be voted on its own merits. Let it rise or fall on its own merits. Don't tie it to something else.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised it would come to the House floor about 6 weeks ago. She promised that to the so-called Democrat moderates in the House, and it didn't come to the floor. Then she promised it would come to the floor 3 weeks ago. It didn't come to the floor for a vote. Now she said, on October 2, that October 31 is the date. That is Halloween. That is a Sunday. But that is fine. We can vote on Sundays, even on Halloween. It is so important, we ought to do it--and do it.

It is past time to take this bill to the floor of the House and let it be judged on its own merits. If passed, it will strengthen our economy over the long term and have a positive impact on the lives of every single American. It is counterinflationary. It makes our economy more efficient. It adds to,

again, the supply side, allowing us to see not just a short-term boost but a longer term boost to our economy.

And wouldn't it be nice to pass something that makes sense around here that is bipartisan? Instead of jamming Republicans and the country with another reckless spending bill and raising taxes on this uncertain economy, let's focus on the infrastructure bill that addresses real problems we face today. We could use a sensible, bipartisan success right now, all of us.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to conclude my remarks today.

Mr. President, I just listened to my colleague from Texas talk about what is going on at the border. I thought he made a lot of really good points, and I appreciate his willingness not just to talk about this issue and the crisis we have on our southern border but also to talk about solutions.

One of the solutions he talked about and I have heard about a lot recently--I am the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security Committee. In the last week, I have had the opportunity to speak with both the current Border Patrol Chief and also the recently retired Border Patrol Chief about what is happening on the border and the real- world problems that it is creating.

One thing they tell me is, just let us finish the small parts of the wall that haven't been completed because it is impossible for us to enforce the laws if you have these openings. Secondly, they said: Please let us complete the technology.

On both sides of this aisle, we have agreed, in the past, that, even if we disagree on having a fence along any parts of the border, including the urban areas, we will agree on the technology that ought to go with it.

They told me these stories that I had confirmed when I was down at the border earlier this year in that the technology that goes with it-- the remote sensing cameras, the remote sensors in the ground, and so on--were stopped as soon as the Biden administration came in even though they were already paid for. So it wasn't just stopping construction; it was, in effect, in my view, more important that they have actually stopped the technology that is needed to be able to protect the border.

Senator Cornyn talked about how he and Senator Sinema have worked on legislation to deal with some of these issues. I appreciate that because that is what is needed. We need to make some changes. We can't just continue to do what we are doing because we have over 200,000 people a month now coming over--unprecedented numbers. Usually, in the summer, those numbers go down a lot, but they have actually increased this summer.

We also need to fix a broken asylum system. This should not be a partisan issue.

It is obviously not working. People come to our border. They claim asylum. They are allowed to come into the United States. They are told, you know: Please go to an immigration office and check in, but 4 or 5 years until your immigration case is likely to be heard, sometimes longer.

Meanwhile, these folks are in the United States.

And then at the end of the process, even though those who end up going through the court system are self-selected because they are the folks who more likely--I think are more likely to have an asylum claim that is valid--but even when you go all the way through that process, guess what. Only 15 percent of those from countries like Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador--the so-called Northern Triangle countries--or other countries like Ecuador, only 15 percent are granted asylum by an immigration judge.

But, meanwhile, everybody is in the United States. And as I said earlier, the internal enforcement is not occurring, so people are literally not being told they have got to go back. And often, obviously, not identified because, after 4 or 5 years, many people are embedded in our community.

So the asylum system has become a pull factor, and we need to realize that.

I was in four countries in Latin America earlier this year--Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Ecuador--and I heard from every one of the Presidents in those countries, the same thing in different ways, but the same thing, which is: You guys are pulling our people to your southern border because the traffickers, the smugglers, the coyotes, who are making all this money, are coming to our families and saying: Hey, come to the border. Give me 10,000 bucks. I will take your kids there. I can get them into school in the interior of the United States, and they are right.

Their narrative might not be exactly right. I am sure they exaggerate. But as a whole, what they are saying is correct. In other words, our system is so broken that these people who are exploiting poor people all over Latin America and elsewhere now--all over the world they are starting to come through our border in bigger numbers-- are able to say: If you come with me, I will get you in.

That is because the asylum system is broken. So until we fix the asylum system, we can do everything else we are talking about--I don't think this is going to work.

And by the way, when I talk to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle about this, when I talk to Secretary Mayorkas about it, they acknowledge this is broken. I mean, you have to.

The 13,000 Haitians that just came into our country, that walked in, were given a bus ticket or a plane ride and told: Here is an immigration office. Please check in.

My understanding is the vast majority of those people had applied for asylum, and we said: Come on in.

And in 4 or 5 years, their case may be heard. And if they come to that trial, many of them will be deemed, just as the Central Americans are deemed, to be economic refugees.

Look, if you or I were in Central America and knew we could better ourselves and our family and take care of our kids by coming to the United States, wouldn't we make the same decision?

But don't we also in the United States have an obligation to have an orderly, legal way to do that?

And we have one. We are the most generous country in the world in terms of taking in immigrants. And I am a strong supporter of the legal immigration system. But we have got to have a proper way to do it. It has got to be legal. Otherwise, again, people are going to be exploited.

This trip north is not a safe trip. It is a dangerous trip, and people die in the desert. These kids are not treated well. Many are assaulted.

I did a study on this when I was head of the Permanent Subcommittee of Investigations. We did two reports. One

was on kids who were taken into HHS custody at the border, and then when they were sent out to their sponsors--because that is what happens. You go to the Border Patrol, then HHS, then you are sent out to sponsors.

You know who the sponsors were?

The very traffickers who had brought them up--in this case, from Guatemala--who were exploiting them.

And those same traffickers took those kids and took them to an egg farm, where they had to work 11, 12 hours a day, no school, paid little or nothing, living on bare mattresses underneath trailers.

Finally, luckily, a local law enforcement official figured out what was going on and was able to save these kids.

But that is not a system we should want in America. We should want a legal, orderly system that works for everybody. By the way, including the many, many people around the world who are waiting in line patiently to come to the United States through legal means.

So I hadn't meant to talk about this today, but I appreciate the fact that my colleague mentioned it. And I do think it is very important that, on a bipartisan basis, we put aside our political rhetoric on this and talk about solutions.

I think we should go back to a system where we are encouraging people to apply for asylum in their home country, and, second, to do it from third countries. If they are not comfortable doing it in their home country because they really are feeling persecuted for some reason, do it in a third country.

Those agreements were in place during the Trump administration. They were starting to work. They have now been ended. And then if you come to the border, have the adjudication be immediate. Let's spend the money to have the processing centers there at the border so people aren't waiting 4, 5, 6 years to go to their immigration hearing that they may or may not attend, as you can understand.

Instead say: You want to come as an asylee? Here is the system. Your adjudication is going to occur right now.

And for those who apply and are successful--which, again, is about 15 percent of people from the countries that are sending most of these migrants--then you would come in as an asylee and you would have the ability to be resettled legally and you would have the ability to work.

But if you are one of the 85 percent, you would be told: Sorry, you didn't make the standards. You have got to go back home, and you can apply legally, and here is the way you do it.

Wouldn't that make more sense for our country?

By the way, there is now a backlog of 1.3 million people waiting for these asylum hearings--1.3 million people. And it is growing every day.

Budget Reconciliation

Mr. President, I had planned today to talk about something else, which is the tax situation that we are facing with this new proposal from the Democrats.

You probably heard about the Build Back Better legislation, also sometimes called the reconciliation bill. It is in reconciliation because it wouldn't require any Republican votes, and Democrats are proposing to take this through Congress, much as they did in March with the $1.9 trillion legislation.

This is also called the $3.5 trillion bill, this Build Back Better. Actually, I would argue it is a lot more than 3.5 trillion when you look at the actual spending in it.

But let's focus on the tax side for a moment because that is how it is intended to be paid for.

The tax hikes, which would be the largest tax increases in America in at least 50 years, systematically dismantle a lot of the pro-growth and pro-job reforms that were put in place in 2017.

Why do I call them pro-growth and pro-jobs?

Because they worked. They helped Americans keep more of their hard- earned earnings. They helped businesses to be more successful, to hire more people and increase wages. And they are a big reason that, as of February of 2020--the month that we went into in this pandemic, as of February 2020--we had 19 straight months in this country of wage growth of over 3 percent per annum--19 straight months.

But what all of us should want--Republican, Democrat, all of us-- higher wages. And by the way, most of that wage growth went to lower- and middle-income Americans.

That is what we should want too, right?

That was happening. In fact, as of that point, we had the lowest poverty rate in the history of America. We started keeping track of it back in the fifties. It was the lowest poverty rate ever. This was just a year or so ago. This was before the pandemic hit.

We also had a 50-year low in unemployment--the lowest unemployment ever--for certain groups: Blacks, Hispanics, disabled, others.

So this is something that was an achievement, that met the standards that we talk about on both sides of the aisle--more economic opportunity, closing the wage gap, giving people a chance to come off the sidelines and get a job. Things were happening, and in large measure, because of these 2017 reforms.

And yet, in this proposal that is now being proposed, called the Build Back Better proposal, there are tax increases that dismantle much of the reform in 2017 that caused this economic growth.

U.S.-based corporations are going to have a really hard time competing now in the global economy again because it takes our tax rate back up to being the highest, depending on where they end up in terms of their rate--one of the highest or the highest rate in the entire world.

The average corporate tax rate under the Ways and Means proposal will be 32 percent again--back up into the thirties--instead of an average of 21 percent, plus about 5 points on the State average, which is about 26 percent.

So, again, it puts us in a position where we are not competitive with the rest of the world. That is why we changed it back in 2017. In fact, according to the International Tax Competitiveness Index, the Democrats' plan would cause the United States to drop steeply down the rankings from 21st in the world to 28th in the world among developing countries in terms of competitiveness of our Tax Code.

Once again, as happened too often before the 2017 reforms--and, by the way, has not happened since then--companies will choose to say: OK. I am out of here.

Because of the Tax Code and the tax changes that they want to make, companies will say, as they did before 2017, because of the tax laws: I can't be competitive as an American company. I am going to go be a company of some other country.

It is called inversions. Sounds bad, and it is. Nobody wanted inversions. Democrats, Republicans, we all hated them. Guess what. We stopped them. After the 2017 reforms, they stopped.

Miraculously, we had companies in Ohio that chose to do that. It was terrible. They chose to actually become foreign companies because our Tax Code was so uncompetitive. We can't let that happen again.

Small businesses, which make up about 99 percent of the business in America, and they account for about two-thirds of the jobs in America-- and, by the way, most of the job growth is in small businesses--are also hit hard by these tax increases.

The vast majority of small businesses are structured as what you call pass-throughs. In other words, they don't pay taxes at the company level; the individuals who own the company pay the taxes. That is the vast majority of companies in America.

So when you raise individual income taxes, guess what happens. You are socking it to not just the wealthy or whoever you are trying to sock it to; you are socking it to small business because that is, again, the vast majority of businesses in America, most of the employees. And that is how they are taxed, down to the individual level.

To make matters worse, the Biden administration seems intent on ending section 199A, which is a deduction we put in place on purpose to help small businesses kind of level the playing field between big businesses and small businesses. They are actually talking about getting rid of that deduction. So for small businesses listening today, be aware.

In all, the more successful pass-through companies should expect their Federal tax rate to rise from about 29.6 percent today to about 46.4 percent under the Democrats' new plan--46.4 percent taxation on small business.

How does that make sense?

So I think what is going to happen is you will see a lot of small businesses go out of business if this happens and certainly not be able to create new jobs and the opportunity that we saw during the 2018, 2019 time period.

But it is not just larger and small businesses that are going to feel the impact of these tax hikes. American workers and families will find themselves losing more of their hard-earned cash from all sides, thanks to the across-the-board tax increases, whether in estate taxes, capital gains taxes, retirement account taxes, the marriage tax, cigarette excise taxes--the list goes on and on.

It is no surprise, then, that contrary to what President Biden has repeatedly said, according to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation--they are the people up here on the Hill who tell us what the impact is of tax law changes. The Joint Committee on Taxation, analyzing this tax proposal that is out there already--this is the Democrat tax proposal of the Ways and Means Committee--they say a lot of taxpayers who make less than $400,000 a year are going to see higher taxes.

Some percentage of taxpayers in every bracket will see tax rates go up, even folks making between 40,000 and 50,000 a year, according to the distribution tables by the Joint Committee on Taxation.

More than one in three taxpayers making between $100,000 and $200,000 per year will be paying higher taxes in 2023--more than one in three. By 2031, more than three-quarters of those middle-class taxpayers will be paying higher taxes.

This is according to the Joint Committee. I encourage you to go on their website. Joint Committee on Taxation, JCT.org.

So even working-class families are going to end up paying some of the price of this spending spree in the form of higher taxes. But all of us have to pay an additional price in damage to our economy.

According to the Tax Foundation, the combined long-run effects of the tax hikes include a decline in our long-run gross domestic product of 0.98 percent. So about a 1-percent decline in our GDP--wow--a decline of the wage rate of about 0.68 percent, and a loss of 303,000 full-time jobs.

So this is the Tax Foundation analyzing what the effects of this would be in addition to what I have talked about in terms of the tax hikes.

The Joint Committee on Taxation has looked at this and said: Well, if you raise taxes on corporations, it is going to come primarily out of the pockets of the workers, and that is a lot of these middle-class families. But also it is going to reduce our economy. It is going to decline our wages. And it is going to result in a loss of over 300,000 full-time jobs.

That is the Tax Foundation.

So, to be honest, I am not exactly sure where the President got the notion he has been repeating lately that the price tag on this $3.5 trillion--maybe $5 trillion; I don't know; depending on how you look at the spending--is zero dollars. That is what he said. It is zero dollars.

Even by their own admission, the big tax hikes we are talking about here are not going to cover all the spending, No. 1. But more importantly, billions of dollars lost in economic growth, a significant decline in wages, and hundreds of thousands of jobs lost doesn't sound like zero to me; it sounds like a bad deal for the American people.

So, along with my Republican colleagues, we have to keep telling the American people what is in this tax proposal and urging people to learn more about how these new taxes are going to affect them, their businesses, and their communities, and weigh in with their representatives in Congress.

Why would the American people support tax hikes that are going to be bad for workers and bad for our businesses? We have a responsibility to our constituents to ensure that does not happen.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise in support of this amendment. I think it is important that we pass it, and I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle support it.

As we all know, as a result of the rushed and chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan, people were left behind, including some American citizens and a lot of Afghans who had helped us.

But because of the chaos, we also evacuated many Afghans who have no record of assisting us or our allies. In fact, we were told by the administration that the majority of the evacuees in the United States, called parolees, are neither U.S. citizens, green card holders, or SIV applicants who had helped us.

This is a commonsense amendment to simply make sure those parolees are properly vetted like any other group of parolees or refugees would be. Part of that vetting, of course, comes from individuals applying for what is known as the REAL ID, a system designed to make identity documents more consistent and secure.

Remember, the REAL ID law came out of the 9/11 Commission. It was a key recommendation of that Commission. We supported it here.

Our amendment does not stop Afghan parolees from getting driver's licenses or qualifying for REAL ID cards after appropriate screening. It simply requires the Afghan parolees to follow the same processes that other parolees must follow in order to be eligible.

Unfortunately, the CR before us makes an exception to that normal, commonsense security process.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I am here on the floor today to talk about the massive tax increases that are being proposed by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and by the Biden administration and by the Democrats in the House as a way to pay for this big, new spending package--$3.5 trillion is what it is advertised as, although some say that, if you do the full 10-year calculation, it is more like $5 trillion. But it is a lot of money, and the way it is paid for is by a huge increase in taxes. It is the biggest tax increase, actually, we are told, in over 50 years.

And I have been on the floor talking about this a few different times, and I talked about the impact on the economy, generally. I talked about the impact on our competitiveness internationally, which we finally fixed in 2017, which was really a bipartisan idea to go to a different kind of system, and it has worked so well.

But today I want to talk about another sector of our economy that is going to be hit really hard by these taxes, and that is small businesses, the backbone of our economy where most people work. Specifically, I want to focus on how these small businesses are going to be hurt by the specific tax issues that are being proposed.

Small businesses are generally defined as having 500 or fewer employees and make up about 99 percent of our companies in America. There are some really big companies, but when you look at the small businesses, they are, by far, the vast majority of our businesses-- about 32 million of them. They employ over half of the U.S. workforce, and they account for nearly two-thirds of all jobs created in the United States since 2000. Now, that is according to the Small Business Administration.

So more than half the employees are there, but they actually are responsible for creating more jobs than big businesses. Think about it. Small businesses are more agile. It tends to be the startup businesses. It tends to be businesses that are hiring more people. So small business is really important. It is the backbone to our economy.

I grew up in one of those small businesses. When I was a kid, my dad left his job as a salesman for a bigger company, where he had healthcare and the benefits that come with that. And he sort of put it all at risk to start his own business.

He started off with five employees. My mom was the bookkeeper. They lost money the first few years, like a lot of small businesses do, but he hung in there. And my brother worked there and my sister worked there and I worked there. I worked on the shop's floor. I did the maintenance.

It was a lift truck--forklift truck dealership, so we would grind down the lift trucks and paint them. And I learned how not just to work hard but learned how a small business can succeed. And it is not easy.

After losing money the first few years, my dad found his niche and became a successful small business. My brother later took the business to an even higher level, but it was still a small business that struggled depending on what was happening in the economy, external factors they couldn't control, like every small business.

It gave me a firsthand look as to how difficult it is and how important it is, both, to have small businesses out there. My dad was absolutely committed to ensuring the people who worked there felt like they were part of it, so he had a profit-sharing plan. It didn't work too well when there was no profit, but once there was profit, it worked pretty well. And there were guys who turned a wrench their whole career, lift truck technicians whom I have known my whole life, who are about my age, who are retiring today with a nice nest egg because of that profit-sharing plan and, then later, a 401(k). So I have seen what small businesses can do for their employees, for the local economy, for the broader community.

During COVID-19, small businesses have really struggled. It has been tough. They have been stretched really thin. As I am sure is the case with every single one of my colleagues here in the U.S. Senate, I have heard from a lot of small business owners across my home State of Ohio who have told me about the issues that they faced due to shutdowns, due to people being sick, due to the very difficult job right now of just getting workers to come to the business and to stay in the business. Workforce problems are the No. 1 issue I now hear about back home.

And due to the supply chain disruptions, taking longer and longer to get products and products having a higher and higher price due to the inflation that is reflected in that, it is tough right now. Despite these hardships, a lot of the small businesses I know have made it a real priority to ensure they are taking care of their people.

We helped them do that here through the PPP program, the Paycheck Protection Program. I strongly support it because I have seen it work. I have seen employees be able to stick around through the worst of COVID and now be able to come back to work.

We have got another surge going on right now in my home State and around the country with the Delta variant, but we are learning better how to keep people at work and how to ensure that folks are taken care of. Often these small business owners have done this out of their own pockets; in other words, they have lost money during the

COVID period in order to keep the business going. And if they can afford to do that, great; they can keep the doors open. Some have not been able to do that, and they have had to close their doors.

So this is a time when there is a lot of uncertainty out there in the economy. It is a time when businesses have kind of been through the roller coaster of COVID. It is not the time to raise taxes on small businesses.

Back in 2017, Congress had the value of these small businesses in mind when we wrote the historic Tax Cuts and Jobs Act reforms. Through provisions like lowering the individual rate of taxation and enacting what is called the section 199A deduction, we gave small businesses needed tax relief and encouraged them to invest in growing their operations, hiring more workers, lifting wages.

And it worked. The success of small businesses in 2018 and 2019, before COVID and after the 2017 bill was put into effect, was truly extraordinary. In February of 2020, just before COVID hit, we had the 19th straight month of wage increases of 3 percent or more on an annual basis. Nineteen straight months we had wages going up.

Isn't that what we all wanted? That was the whole idea, to have an opportunity economy where people can get ahead. And wages were going up faster than inflation, which, unfortunately, is not the case now. In many instances, even when people are getting some wage gains right now, with 5 percent-plus inflation, it is eating it up.

We also had a situation back then where we had not just wage growth but we had a reduction in poverty. We had the lowest poverty rate since we started keeping track of it back in the 1950s, prior to COVID. I think a lot of it was because those tax cuts actually worked. And, again, for a small business, it is really important because that is where most people are employed.

We also had the lowest unemployment in 50 years in this country and the lowest unemployment ever for certain groups, including Blacks, Hispanics, the disabled. So a lot of stuff was going right. Then COVID hit.

Now we are coming out of COVID. Again, the wrong time to raise taxes. That Tax Code we put in place in 2017 gave small business the chance to succeed and, therefore, gave a lot of individuals the chance to meet their American dream.

The overall economy has improved some since 2020, but a lot of small businesses have not seen that rebound yet. COVID, particularly, has hurt our hospitality sector. I am in that business. My family business is in that business as well. It is tough.

The travel business, entertainment business, and every small business, again, that I know has been hit with higher inflation for their input. So things are more expensive coming in, and yet it is hard to be able to raise your prices, so they are caught in a squeeze. Finding workers again has been a real change--the supply chain issues we have talked about.

So why would Democrats propose billions in tax hikes on small businesses right now?

We ought to be helping our small businesses instead, not making it harder to stay afloat. Remember, as I said, these are the biggest tax increases we have had in over 50 years.

Democrats claim they are just going after large corporations, but, unfortunately, that is not what is happening. A lot of small businesses are going to be caught in the crosshairs of the income tax hikes that Democrats are proposing. That is primarily because about 95 percent of small businesses operate as what is called pass-throughs.

The vast, vast majority of small businesses are partnerships, sole proprietorships, or companies that are limited liability companies with subchapter S companies. So the business doesn't pay the taxes directly. The tax is actually paid by the owners of the business, on their 1040-- individual tax return.

What that means is that success of pass-throughs, which combine to employ about 58 percent of the Nation's workforce, will be taxed in line with whatever the income tax level is. And there are many reasonably successful pass-throughs that will be lumped into the top bracket of the Tax Code, which starts at $400,000 in income.

These small businesses, through the owner, will end up paying a 39.6 percent increase tax, plus a 3.8 percent surtax on small business income. You add to that the average State income tax of about 5 percent, and that puts the figure for small businesses at about 48 percent on average--and well over 50 percent in some States--48 percent taxes. That is tough. And it is a big tax increase for a lot of those businesses. Again, they are pass-through businesses, so the owners are the ones who pay the taxes.

If they weren't paying the taxes, they wouldn't often get a dividend from the company to pay those taxes; they would be investing more in that business. So it hurts the businesses directly. But a pass-through doesn't even have to reach that level of success we talked about--the $400,000 income level--in order to be hit with tax increases. That is because, contrary to what has repeatedly been said by the Biden administration, according to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation analysis of the House Ways and Means, Democratic tax proposal, a lot of taxpayers making less than $400,000 are going to see higher taxes. Some percentage of taxpayers in every income bracket will see their rates go up, even folks making between 40,000 and 50,000 bucks per year. Check out the analysis yourself. You can go online, Joint Committee on Taxation, and look at it.

In fact, according to these distribution tables by the Joint Committee on Taxation, more than one in three taxpayers making between $100,000 and $200,000 per year will be paying higher taxes in 2023. By 2031, more than three-quarters of those middle-income taxpayers-- between 100- and 200,000 bucks a year--will be paying higher taxes.

Remember, again, this is not just a tax on individuals; it is a tax on small businesses that are taxed through individuals.

On top of that, Democrats want to cap the invaluable 20-percent deduction on qualified business income that was designed to help pass- throughs compete with larger C corporations.

Again, in 2017, not only lowered the rates to help small businesses, but we said: If you are a small business, you can get this deduction-- this 20 percent deduction--on qualified business income.

And for the small businesses listening this evening: Watch out. I know you have enjoyed that deduction and you have needed it to be able to stay afloat during COVID. That is now at risk.

And successful small businesses earning more than $5 million a year will be saddled with an additional 3-percent surcharge on top, resulting in over 50-percent average income tax. That means small businesses are going to have a harder time hiring workers or paying them competitive wages.

In all, the average pass-throughs should expect their Federal tax rate to rise from about 29.6 percent--about 30 percent now--to 46.4 percent under the Democrats' new plan.

Folks, that is not soaking the rich. That is slamming small business owners all across America, as well as their employees, many of whom are just trying to make ends meet.

But Democrats don't just want small businesses to give more of their money to the Federal Government; they want to make small businesses give more of their time as well in the form of burdensome new information requirements that would bury the IRS in a sea of useless information, largely, that would end up causing the most trouble for small businesses that don't have the lawyers or the accountants and other professionals to handle these burdensome new requirements.

Under this Biden administration bank reporting proposal, individual and businesses would be required to report to the IRS inflows and outflows of money out of an account--things like expenditures and payments. The Biden administration proposal starts this reporting as low as $600.

But even at that higher number that they are talking about now, what would be reportable would represent a radical shift in the information required to be given to the IRS, which normally just takes in information related to income. This wouldn't be about income. This would be about payments and expenditures.

So my hope is that these information reporting requirements, which is an additional burden on small businesses, is

something my colleagues look at and say: Let's not raise taxes on small businesses, but also let's not increase these burdens that will, again, fall mostly on the smaller businesses that don't have the ability to handle that kind of new information and bureaucracy.

The upshot is that the hundreds of millions of accounts with major financial institutions; e-payment apps, like Venmo; and cryptocurrency exchanges, like Coinbase, are going to be subject to more paperwork and confusion.

So as an example, if you have one of the 403 million active PayPal accounts, your personal account information will be sent to the IRS and likely result in confusion at some point. Imagine trying to prove that the money you are pooling together for a vacation for personal use or for your weekly pizza night with buddies aren't business income. You may have to prove that now.

These small business tax hikes and burdensome new reporting requirements are just one part of a set of tax overhauls that leave no stone unturned--from death taxes to marriage taxes, capital gains tax increases, retirement account tax increases, and many more.

It is no surprise that the president of the National Federation of Independent Businesses wrote last week that ``small businesses aren't just looking at one or two tax hikes under the proposed plan. They're looking at a slew of tax increases that would hit them from every angle.''

We all ought to be particularly concerned that Democrats want to overhaul so much of our Tax Code when these economic trends are so uncertain--high inflation, continuing COVID concerns, major supply chain disruptions.

By the way, it now takes 80 days--twice as long as it did before the pandemic--to move goods from Asia to North America. Once goods reach the west coast, the wait time for containers sitting at the docks waiting to be moved by train or truck is the longest it has been since last summer, in the middle of even worse COVID conditions. This is not the time to make things worse for small businesses.

And at a time when tax receipts are at or above the historical average, why do Democrats feel so strongly that America is undertaxed?

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office--or CBO--projects corporate tax receipts will climb to $379 billion in 2023, or 1.5 percent of our economy. According to the Tax Foundation, this would be ``a record high in nominal terms and nearly matching average corporate tax collections as a share of GDP'' prior to the 2017 tax reforms.

So payroll tax revenue has risen by 4 percent as well, suggesting that workers are taking home bigger paychecks than before. To say that we are undertaxed doesn't seem to be consistent with the data we are getting. Again, check it out. The Congressional Budget Office has its own website. You can learn about this. The Tax Foundation has its own website. You can learn about what is going on in terms of our tax collections.

As a share of the GDP, those tax collections will be back up right where they were before the 2017 tax bill, in a couple of years, if we simply continue as we are.

So the opportunity economy we talked about earlier, I think, in large part created by the 2017 tax reforms is on track to bring historically high tax revenues to the Federal Government as we get out of this COVID crisis.

Really, one of the biggest factors in holding back our economy at this point is surging inflation that is, unfortunately, wiping out a lot of the income gains that we have seen.

But inflation is driven largely by the trillions in unprecedented stimulus spending the Biden administration has pushed on the American people already.

Remember the $1.9 trillion back in March focused--so the Democrats said--on COVID; but, in fact, when you looked at it, most of it was not about the COVID crisis, but it was a lot of new stimulation to the economy--a lot of stimulus.

And at the time, people on both sides of the aisle--Republicans and Democrats--who were experts on the economy said this is going to be problematic; this is just a lot of new money to throw into the economy.

Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury under Democratic administrations and a Democratic economist, said this is going to lead to higher inflation. He was roundly criticized for that by many in the media and many on the other side of the aisle. Unfortunately, it turns out he was absolutely right. It has led to this high inflation that, as we learned this week from Chairman Powell of the Federal Reserve, is not transitory, as was said early on. Unfortunately, this current inflation is going to continue at least through this year and next year, we are told.

So this new $3.5 trillion in social spending is going to add to that--more stimulus. The economists call that adding to the demand side of the economy. So you are adding to the supply side of the economy; it would be counter-inflationary. But you are adding to the demand side, what people want to buy--you are adding to inflation. So more money out there to be buy the goods; fewer goods raises the cost of everything.

So my concern is we are going to drive inflation even higher if we go ahead with this $3.5 trillion social spending paid for, again, by these tax increases that are going to hurt small businesses.

I can't understand why Democrats are so insistent on jamming this partisan tax-and-spending bill through the U.S. Congress.

Why would you want to throw out the Tax Code that fueled that unprecedented opportunity economy we saw prior to the COVID pandemic?

I know none of my Republican colleagues are going to support these tax hikes because they believe they would be devastating to small businesses and to our economy at large. And I would urge any of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who care about our long-term economic health to take a long look at what this tax plan would actually do, what it would mean to our competitiveness, what it would mean to individuals and families, what it would mean to small businesses, and instead make the smart choice to reject these tax increases on the small businesses--the very small businesses that drive the economy in the United States of America.

I yield back my time.

Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from Montana who just talked about the impact of this tax-and-spend bill on his constituents in Montana. I will say the same is true in 49 other States, including my State of Ohio.

This is, we are told, the biggest tax increase on America in over 50 years. So this is a big deal. In terms of the spending we have been hearing today, it is the largest spending package ever. In inflation- adjusted terms, it is probably the largest social spending package since the New Deal. That is what we are talking about here. This would fundamentally change our country in so many ways.

It is good that Mike Crapo, who is the top Republican on the Finance Committee, asked us to come on the floor today just to kind of talk about it because our constituents need to know what is going on. They need to understand what the impact would be on them, their lives, their futures.

There are new taxes being proposed in this on pretty much everything--small businesses. That was just talked about. Most businesses in Ohio and around the country are not what they call C corporations. They are passthroughs, like subchapter S--sole proprietors, partnerships. That is about 80 percent, 90 percent of the businesses. It is the smaller businesses. They get hit.

There are actually taxes on marriage because of the marriage penalty.

There are taxes on death because of the increase in the estate and gift tax. There are taxes on capital gains, which that is the part of our Code where you try to give people a little lower rate on longer term investment, try to encourage risk-taking and investments so that you can grow the economy, create jobs.

There are also a bunch of other taxes in here.

But the one that I want to talk about today is the tax on corporations because it gets less attention. People think: Gosh, they are big corporations. They can handle more tax increases. Some of them aren't paying taxes.

Well, they use the Tax Code sometimes that we set up here to avoid paying the full amount of taxes, but they pay plenty of taxes. When you increase the taxes, everyone says the same thing--whether it is the Congressional Budget Office, which is the nonpartisan group up here in the U.S. Senate, or whether it is the Joint Committee on Taxation, which is a nonpartisan group up here in the U.S. Senate or House, or outside groups looking at it--you increase those taxes on these companies, who pays it? Workers, primarily, and, second, consumers.

We just talked about inflation. Think about it. All this new stimulus spending--because that is what it is--will add to inflation. But so will these higher taxes because part of what happens is, if you have a higher tax on you, and you are trying to sell something, you have the same costs--maybe even higher costs coming in--you are going to charge more. Therefore, when you go to the store to buy something, there is going to be more inflation.

All of this encourages more, not less, inflation at a time when inflation is already unacceptably high. I think everybody agrees with that.

When the Democrats did the $1.9 trillion package back in March--$1.9 trillion, that used to be a lot of money--we just sort of say ``$1.9 trillion.'' But when they did that, everybody said: Oh my gosh, that is too much stimulus spending. It is going to cause inflation. The promoters of that said: No, it won't. It won't do that because the economy is so weak. It will be good for the economy.

Well, it overheated the economy. And Larry Summers at the time, who was the former Secretary of the Treasury in a Democratic administration and economist on the other side of the aisle--he warned about it as did others. He said: Look, this is going to fuel inflation.

Boy, has it.

So, yes, people are getting some wage gains right now, higher pay. I like that a lot. I think it is great. Before 2019--before COVID hit-- thanks to the tax reforms of 2017, primarily, in my view, wages were going up. February of 2020 was the 19th straight month of wage gains over 3 percent annually. My gosh, that was great--mostly lower and middle-income earners, by the way.

Some of that is happening now, but it is all being eaten up. If you have a 5-percent pay wage raise this year, you probably got nothing because you are going to have about 5 percent inflation. Your dollar is not going as far. So these are all issues that we have got to make sure the American people understand.

In terms of the corporations and what the problem is there, remember that before the tax reform in 2017, we had a lot of companies that were leaving our shores--literally. They were saying: Do you know what? Our Tax Code is so bad in America that we are going to invert--that is the name the economists gave it--literally move their headquarters overseas to escape our uncompetitive Tax Code.

I hated that, and I hope all Americans did. I hope all Members of the Senate did. I think they did. They said: Why would we want to encourage companies to go overseas? That way, their investments and their jobs are tending to go overseas as well.

But it wasn't just that. We had a lot of companies in the United States being bought by foreign companies. If you think about it, that made all the sense in the world. The foreign governments had a much better Tax Code for them, so they could buy a U.S. company and make more money on it than a U.S. company could under our Tax Code. Again, it is not what we wanted.

We had a situation where the companies were going overseas in every sector of our economy. I am a beer drinker, so I was particularly concerned about the beer companies, and every single one of them went foreign. They were big. The largest U.S. beer company was Sam Adams, which had about a 1.4-percent market share. The rest of them all went overseas. So that is what was happening.

There is some new data out showing that since the 2017 tax reforms were put in place, there was a 50-percent increase in American companies buying foreign companies and a 25-percent decrease in foreign companies buying our companies. That was good. That was good. But now we are talking about going right back to the bad old days.

One significant factor in companies going overseas and U.S. companies getting bought out by foreigners was our high tax rate of 35 percent-- the highest in the developed world. Everyone heard about that. But, also, there was a lack of enticements to keep valuable intellectual property here in the United States; whereas, other countries provided that. Also, unlike other countries, we were in what was called a worldwide tax system, where we were requiring U.S. companies to pay taxes on their foreign earnings at the high U.S. rate, the 35-percent rate. Almost all of our competitors don't do that. They use the so- called territorial system, where you only tax in the foreign jurisdiction where you did the business. You are not taxed twice. That is

one reason we were losing, so we changed that.

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act took bold steps to reassert our competitiveness as a country. We lowered the corporate tax rate to 21 percent. We went to a territorial-type system--not entirely territorial, as we still had a minimum tax, but we created an incentive to stay here. We created jobs and investments here. We lowered the corporate rate, but we also had other incentives to create more intellectual property here in America.

As a result, by the way, the corporate inversions stopped. They stopped. Instead of losing companies overseas, again, we started to buy more companies overseas and bring that investment to America.

The foreign-derived intangible income provision, which provided a reduced tax rate for U.S.-based businesses on high-return foreign market income served by U.S. operations, resulted in companies like Cisco, Qualcomm, Synopsys, Google, Facebook, and others bringing back intellectual property that was overseas. So it actually worked in the way we had hoped it would. It brought IP back here. That means jobs. That means research. Others retained their intellectual property here in the United States, like Intel and Disney and General Mills and others, because of these tax laws, because they were coming to us and saying: Why are we here in America, doing this? We should do it overseas based on what Congress has provided as a tax environment for us.

The largest U.S. companies during that time period increased their domestic research and development spending by 25 percent, to $707 billion. They increased their capital expenditures by 20 percent, to $1.4 trillion. That is all good. Again, workers saw real benefits: a 50-year low in unemployment; strong wage growth, particularly for low- and middle-income workers; the lowest poverty rate in the history of the country. We started to keep track of it back in the fifties. This follows an earlier study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, that found that 70 percent of the tax cuts ended up going into workers' wages and benefits. So workers and businesses both benefited in this opportunity economy. It was driving a lot of promising growth in the United States.

The Democrats' tax plan would systematically dismantle so many of these pro-growth tax cuts and reforms that Congress put in place in 2017. Under this new proposal, the corporate rate would be raised from 21 percent to about 28 percent. When combined with the average State and local corporate taxes in America, U.S. businesses will be on the hook for an average tax rate of about 32 percent--once again giving us the highest rate of taxation in the developed world.

The Democrats would also increase the global intangible low-taxed income rate, called GILTI, and the base erosion and anti-abuse tax rate, called the BEAT, which would punish U.S. companies that work to serve foreign markets. We should like that. We want U.S. companies to create jobs here to support their international sales. The proposal would modify this GILTI calculation to a country-by-country basis, making it even more difficult to compute and track U.S. tax liabilities for companies operating overseas--again, a disincentive that discourages investment in new and emerging markets. Why would we want to do that?

Through these policies, Democrats would be creating a tax environment hostile to businesses and harmful to workers. According to the International Tax Competitiveness Index, the Democrats' plan would cause the United States to drop steeply down the rankings from 21st to 28th in the world among developed countries. It is the same ranking we had, by the way, before the 2017 tax reforms.

Many businesses will make what is unfortunately a completely rational decision to move their headquarters again. We will see inversions again, taking with them thousands of good-paying jobs and billions of dollars in assets. Others that choose to stay here will nonetheless become prime targets for acquisition, as they were before, by businesses in other countries, like China, that would have a lower tax rate than we.

But who ultimately bears the brunt of these Democratic tax hikes on businesses? Again, it is the workers. Just as the Congressional Budget Office found that 70 percent of the corporate tax cuts go into workers' wages and benefits, the Tax Foundation found that 70 percent of tax increases are borne by workers. It is no surprise, then, that the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, right here in this Congress, found that two-thirds of the Democrats' corporate tax hike would fall on lower and middle-income taxpayers. Let me repeat that. The JCT, a nonpartisan committee here in Congress, found that two-thirds of the Democrats' corporate tax hikes would fall on lower and middle-income tax taxpayers.

By the way, that is about 100 million taxpayers who make less than $400,000 a year. So much for the pledge that no one under $400,000 in income would possibly be affected.

So I look at these facts, and I just can't understand why we would want to move to this kind of a tax plan. Why would the American people support tax hikes that are going to be bad for workers and bad for our competitiveness as a country? Why are we punishing workers? They are the ones who get the short end of the stick here.

Let's focus on what works--on encouraging investment and growth here in the United States of America. That helps workers. Let's not go down a path that will once again send U.S. jobs and U.S. investment overseas.

I yield the floor.

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