[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 62 (Monday, April 12, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1867-S1870]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Infrastructure
Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I am here on the floor of the Senate
this evening to talk about our shared national priorities for
addressing the Nation's infrastructure needs and my concerns--really
deep concerns--about the plan the Biden administration has outlined and
specifically the way they intend to pay for it.
I don't think there is a single Member in this Chamber who does not
recognize the need for us to invest in upgrading America's aging
infrastructure. Our network of roads, bridges,
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ports, railroads, and more has played an integral role over the decades
in growing our world-class economy. Yet, according to a 2019 report,
the most recent one we have from the World Economic Forum, the United
States now ranks only 13th in the world in infrastructure based on
factors like the quality of our roads, how efficient our trains are,
and access to electricity and water.
So we can and should do more to improve our infrastructure,
particularly as competitors like China make substantial investments in
their own infrastructure every year. We can do so in a bipartisan way,
just as we have always done. In fact, last Congress, the Senate
Environment and Public Works Committee approved bipartisan
infrastructure legislation by a unanimous vote of 21 to 0. That was
just last Congress, 21 to 0. This bipartisan approach last Congress
totaled $287 billion--a substantial amount and one we have yet to
figure out how to pay for.
The current Transportation bill that is in play, the so-called
infrastructure bill from a few years ago, is about $310 billion. Yet,
even as we have to figure out how to fund the bipartisan $287 billion
package for roads and bridges from last year--a substantial amount in
its own right--the Biden administration recently introduced its own
infrastructure plan that totals $2.7 trillion, almost 10 times as much.
At the core of this Biden administration proposal is $620 billion in
infrastructure broadly defined. It has a generous definition of the
roads, bridges, and other physical transportation and water components
that have traditionally been considered infrastructure. So a generous
definition would be that out of the $2.7 trillion, $620 billion could
be called infrastructure based on the way Republicans and Democrats
alike have always looked at it, and again, that would include water,
electricity, and other forms of transportation, not just roads and
bridges. So about 20 percent of the Biden administration infrastructure
bill actually fits the bill.
The reason the overall package costs $2.7 trillion is because they
have included a broad set of liberal priorities that are a far cry from
what has ever been defined as infrastructure by either Democrats or
Republicans. So, I guess, knowing the popularity of infrastructure--and
it is popular; people want to see their roads and bridges repaired--the
Biden administration has simply redefined the word to include hundreds
of billions of dollars of spending on priorities like healthcare,
Federal office buildings and other facilities, research and
development, electric vehicle manufacturing, and more.
According to the Biden administration, paid leave is now
infrastructure, childcare is now infrastructure, and caregiving is now
infrastructure. While many are worthy causes and should be debated and
voted on separately, they don't belong in infrastructure bills.
This approach is troubling to me and, I know, to many of my
colleagues on both sides of the aisle because it is a continuation of
the raw partisanship that defined the latest COVID-19 spending package
back in March. Rather than work to find good-faith negotiations with
Republicans to craft a package that can gain bipartisan support, the
Biden administration and Senate Democrats apparently are once again
looking into potentially using reconciliation to jam Republicans--to
pass another trillion-dollar-plus spending bill with a simple 50-vote
majority. And, like COVID-19, infrastructure has always been
bipartisan. So if you can't be bipartisan on COVID-19 and you can't be
bipartisan on infrastructure, what can you be bipartisan about?
This partisan approach, by the way, is the opposite of what President
Biden pledged on the campaign trail and in his inauguration address. In
his inaugural address, he talked about the need to get back to more
bipartisanship and urged unity. I agreed with that assessment and said
so at the time.
Unfortunately, he has apparently listened to the more strident voices
in his party and has gone down the partisan path. As with the $1.9
trillion COVID spending package last March, the end result could be
another spending bill that is far higher than it needs to be at a time
of record debt and deficits and another partisan bill that further
divides us at a time when we are already too divided. In fact, about a
quarter of the Biden plan is not paid for at all, taking us further
into debt.
But even more troubling to me is that the Democrats plan to pay for
roughly $2 trillion of this plan with massive tax increases on American
workers and consumers and by making us less competitive in the global
economy. This would completely reverse the progress we have made over
the past few years in making America competitive again. Thanks to the
2017 tax reforms that the Biden proposal would largely dismantle, in
the couple of years before COVID-19, we saw record growth in jobs and
wages, with the lowest poverty rate since the Federal Government
started keeping track of it 60 years ago.
In promoting the Biden tax increases, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen
claims we need to reverse the 2017 tax reforms because they encourage
businesses to move jobs out of the country. The reality is just the
opposite. The 2017 tax reforms stopped the so-called corporate tax
inversions, which caused American companies to become foreign companies
and move jobs and investment out of America because of our
uncompetitive tax laws. This happened to a number of companies in Ohio
and in every State, practically, represented in this Chamber.
The 2017 reforms also stopped the lockout effect that kept foreign
profits of U.S. companies overseas. They weren't bringing the profits
back. Instead, $1.6 trillion in overseas earnings has come back to the
United States and was invested right here at home.
Most importantly for working families, 70 percent of the savings from
the corporate tax cuts went into workers' wages, contributing to 19
straight months of wage growth of over 3 percent annually that we
enjoyed before the pandemic. This wage growth was really welcome in my
home State Ohio. We had lower wages, or flat wages, for more than a
decade.
And, by the way, who benefited most from this wage increase--19
straight months of wage increases? Lower and middle-income workers--
exactly what should have been happening.
Thanks to the 2017 reforms, the largest U.S. companies also increased
their domestic research and development expenditures by 25 percent,
which amounts to $707 billion more R&D. And they further increased
capital expenditures by 20 percent, aided by this return of foreign
profits.
All of this U.S. investment, job creation, and new R&D would be put
at risk by these proposed tax hikes. Under the Biden plan, which we
have heard is raising the corporate rate from 21 to 28 percent, in
actuality, the combined Federal and State corporate rate would go from
25.8 percent, where it is now when you include the State and Federal--
other countries like China don't have any State income tax on their
corporations. They just have the Federal rate. So we would be going
from 25.8 percent--by the way, which is already above the average of
23.4 percent for other developed countries, so-called OECD countries--
it would go from 25.8 percent up to a staggering 32.8 percent, the
highest rate in the developed world.
Our tax rate would once again be higher than China's and higher than
any country in the developed world--Japan, Europeans. This is exactly
what we got away from in 2017, and it was on a bipartisan basis. There
was a consensus for us to do that--maybe not the exact rate, but the
idea was to make America competitive again.
I cochaired a task force with a fellow Senator, a Democrat from the
across the aisle, Chuck Schumer, on the Finance Committee, and we came
up with this idea of saying: Let's go to a territorial-type tax system,
and let's lower the rate so that we can be competitive around the
world. That is what happened, and it is working.
Now, for some reason, the Biden administration says: We want to
reverse all that. These abrupt tax hikes, which actually would be five
times as large as the corresponding corporate tax cuts in 2017, would
make our workers and our businesses less competitive globally at a time
when our economy is just starting to recover.
The Biden plan goes well beyond just making our tax rates
uncompetitive again. It also doubles the tax on so-called global
intangible low-taxed income, or GILTI, making it more costly for U.S.
companies to operate outside the United States, more costly than any
other country's companies of any
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developed country in the world. Again, it puts us at a competitive
disadvantage. It unfairly punishes American workers who have their jobs
here in America, supporting international operations.
In Ohio, for example, we have Procter & Gamble. It is headquartered
in my hometown. They rely on overseas production to serve foreign
markets in an affordable manner. They are not going to ship diapers
from here overseas because it is not cost-competitive. So, for the
foreign markets, they will make diapers in those foreign countries.
However, by doing so, they employ thousands of Ohioans and others
around this country who support those international sales. So all the
back-office work, the sales work, the research and development, and so
on is done here. The proposed Biden tax increases would make such
companies uncompetitive overseas, resulting in our losing markets there
and losing U.S. jobs. Remember, no other developed country in the world
does this except us. No other country taxes these companies on their
foreign profits. We got away from that on purpose, and we essentially
established a minimum tax, which, again, hardly any country in the
world has, but we wanted to have some balance here.
Now, under this proposal from the Biden administration, that tax
would be more than double. It is going to hurt us. The Biden
administration also proposes to eliminate a provision regarding what is
called foreign-derived intangible income, FDII. In 2017, we put FDII in
place for a very simple reason, and there seemed to be a consensus
about that, which is to provide a carrot to U.S. companies to do their
research and development here in America. It incentivized companies to
bring that research back and to keep that research here. It worked to
create high-skilled and high-wage jobs.
For example, Google, Cisco, and Facebook brought all of their
intellectual property home--brought all of their IP home. And we heard
from other U.S. companies like Intel and Disney, which said they kept
their IP in the United States due to this tax law change. Why would we
want that to go overseas?
The Biden administration claims that it wants the United States to be
more competitive, yet these proposed tax increases do just the
opposite. It makes no sense that while China and other countries are
increasing subsidies to businesses that innovate, the United States
would be punishing our workers and global companies, making them less
competitive
In what amounts to an astounding admission of how deeply flawed these
proposals are, when Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced the
proposal to increase taxes we just talked about, she actually went out
of her way to make a plea to other countries around the world. She
asked them to raise their own corporate tax rates and to increase their
own taxes to ensure, as she said, a more level playing field.
Understanding the nature of the intense global competition, our
competitors are doing just the opposite. It is naive to think that
because we are going to raise our taxes and ask them to do the same
that they would do that. They want more of the jobs and investment in
their country.
In fact, just this past week, the Finance Minister of Ireland, when
asked about this, said they have no interest in raising taxes. Ireland
is one of those countries that has made themselves competitive and
resulted in our tax law changes because they were taking jobs away from
us, and now we were bringing this IP and these jobs back. Ireland,
China, and these other countries are going to continue to lower
barriers to attract capital and jobs. It is wishful thinking, at best,
to think that because we are going to raise our taxes, they are going
to raise theirs.
The Biden plan would mean America standing alone atop the corporate
tax rate chart among all developed countries--standing alone, leaving
our businesses and workers to suffer the cost, a fact borne out from
multiple studies, including from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget
Office that shows it is workers who bear most of the burden of higher
taxes in the form of lower wages and lost jobs. It is not the
corporations; it is the workers.
As I said before, there is a clear need for us to reinvest in
American infrastructure. I think we can all agree with that.
Republicans and Democrats alike want to do it, and, right now, in the
key committee of jurisdiction, by the way, the Senate Environment and
Public Works Committee, bipartisan negotiations are ongoing. This is
the same committee that had a unanimous vote last Congress on the
transportation legislation.
They are talking right now about how to put together a bipartisan
package. That is the right way to do it: Go through regular order and
allow Democrats and Republicans alike to offer their ideas.
There is also a group of Republicans and Democrats outside of the
committee who have met and are looking for a more sensible way forward.
I am among that group. There are others as well.
The partisan approach by the Biden administration looks to be taking
us down the road of another trillion-dollar-plus spending package
jammed through Congress with no support from the other side of the
aisle. That is not good for this institution. It is not good for this
country. It is not the way to get things done.
Instead of a $2.7 trillion plan that goes beyond any reasonable
definition of infrastructure and is mostly paid for with a devastating
tax hike on U.S. workers and our economy, let's do what we know works:
a bipartisan approach focused on what we have all agreed is
infrastructure--roads, bridges, ports, rail, broadband, and other true
infrastructure.
I believe if we take that more targeted approach, we can build on the
bipartisan framework this Congress has achieved in recent years and
work together to find commonsense ways to fund infrastructure
legislation, including user fees, which is what we have always used in
the past, without resorting to partisan tax hikes, which reduce the
competitiveness of U.S. workers, U.S. companies, and undermine
investment in our country. I hope we take that better approach.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, we have just listened to Senator
Portman, and you are hearing others of us on the Republican side of the
aisle talk about the elevated levels of spending and how our Democratic
colleagues have seemed to lose touch with the American people. This is
something that appears to have happened at lightning speed.
It really began on the very first day of the Biden administration. It
started with the stroke of a pen and a stream of Executive orders. On
Day 1, President Biden made a decision that he would weaken our border,
and with that stroke of a pen, he destroyed hundreds--hundreds,
thousands--of good-paying union jobs right in the middle of a pandemic,
and that was by eliminating the Keystone Pipeline. With every decision,
he has made it abundantly clear that he came back to Washington not to
serve this country but to advance an agenda pushed by the most radical
leftwing of the Democratic Party.
That being said, the White House has a problem because the American
people have figured out what they are up to, and as I have been home
for the past couple of weeks, I have talked to Tennesseeans from every
political division. They are Democrats, Republicans, Independents; they
are unaffiliated; and they are concerned citizens. It bothers them,
what they are seeing from this White House. How could they not have,
after seeing Senate Democrats spend $1.9 trillion on coronavirus relief
that spent just 9 percent of that pricetag on testing and healthcare
jobs? If that didn't do it, President Biden surely ticked them off when
he nominated a Health and Human Services Secretary with no healthcare
experience--zero--and a Homeland Security Secretary who believes that
we should have unsecured borders. You cannot make this up. People are
astounded with this.
So when people back home in Tennessee saw President Biden's latest
proposal for a $2 trillion so-called infrastructure bill, they weren't
particularly shocked to see that very little of this legislation has to
do with infrastructure.
Just 3 months into the new administration and already they know that
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this is just another vehicle for the left's wish list.
The most frustrating thing about it is that Tennesseans have
repeatedly told me that a smart, targeted plan to fund infrastructure
improvements would make a tremendous difference in local communities
and in our State. They support that type of investment. They want to
see that. Roads, bridges, waterways, highways, broadband, airports,
they are for that. What they don't support is an administration that
repeatedly promises one thing and then chooses to do the opposite.
Just like last month's over-the-top spending bill, this month's
multitrillion-dollar boondoggle isn't just a waste of taxpayer dollars;
it is a missed opportunity to rebuild parts of our economy that were
struggling to keep up before the pandemic hit.
Here is a number for your talking points: Less than 6 percent. And
what is less than 6 percent? That is the amount, that is the percentage
of this $2 trillion bill that actually goes to infrastructure
projects--less than 6 percent.
Tennesseans are asking me: How could this possibly happen? We have
been talking about having an infrastructure bill now for about 3 years,
and you bring a bill forward--the Democratic leadership does--and less
than 6 percent goes to infrastructure.
Now, this sounds like a familiar tactic: Redefine your standards, put
less than 10 percent of your funding toward your stated purpose, then
throw the rest into yet another handout for projects that would not
stand a chance. They wouldn't have a snowball's chance of receiving
public support on their own, much less 60 votes here in this Chamber.
President Biden's American jobs plan ignores rural Tennesseans who
have to navigate flood plains to get to work or to get to school. It
bypasses crumbling bridges they can't avoid, but it sure does pay a lot
of attention to Green New Deal policies that were nonstarters even
before Speaker Pelosi lost ground in the House.
Climate change studies and union payouts take precedent over roads,
bridges, ports, airports, and waterways. In fact, this absurd scheme
spends more taxpayer money on electric cars than on all of those things
combined. Yes, you heard me correctly. This so-called infrastructure
bill spends more money, more of your hard-earned tax dollars, on
electric cars than on all of the roads, bridges, highways, ports,
airports, and waterways. That is correct.
Another day, another power grab made worse by job-destroying,
corporate tax increases that will put American companies at a global
disadvantage. It is no wonder Democrats have been working overtime to
stretch the definition of ``infrastructure'' past the point of reason.
These days, entire White House press briefings rely on the idea that
the definition of ``infrastructure'' will continue to evolve--as they
say, it is going to evolve--to make it include whatever the Democrats
decide that it should include. It is a time-honored liberal trick that
has run its course.
They can tweet that lie every day for the next 4 years if they
choose, but here in the real world, we are dealing with an economy
still in recovery, major industries in crisis, and millions of families
who are working terribly hard and long hours to just make ends meet.
What we are seeing here isn't just a disconnect. This is an
administration attempting to impose their socialist vision on a country
that cannot sustain the cost.
To my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, I want to be clear.
That vision of America that you have invented to fulfill this purpose
does not exist. It is time to come up for air and talk a little
reality.
I know it is a popular thing here in Washington to claim that
elections have consequences, but on your first day back in power, the
Democratic Party got together and marched right across the line that
separates consequences from punishment. Punishment, that is what they
are all about.
I would also encourage my Democratic colleagues to remember that when
they do this, when they put together these trillion-dollar handouts for
radical special interests, political pain for their opponents isn't the
only result. They are punishing their neighbors, their friends,
communities that are in their States. They are making life harder, much
more difficult, for local businesses and small business manufacturers,
and they are exposing our weaknesses to our adversaries.
I will tell you, if President Biden and the majority leader shove yet
another blank check through this Chamber, they are going to find out in
a hurry, I really do believe, how little the American people have to
give for their leftist agenda.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.