[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 136 (Sunday, August 1, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5240-S5245]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         INVEST IN AMERICA ACT

  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, it is an honor to serve in this body. It is 
an honor to serve with the men and women from whom we have just heard.
  The Senators from whom we have just heard are some of my favorite 
people in the Senate. For that matter, they are some of my favorite 
people. I like them, Democrats and Republicans alike. They are hard-
working. They have been working really hard. They have gotten very 
little sleep in the last few days.
  Notwithstanding my great respect for them personally and 
professionally, I rise today because I have got real concerns with this 
bill, a lot of them. Those concerns, unfortunately, can't be overcome 
by the respect I have for the individuals involved or my gratitude to 
them for their willingness to work hard for months on end and through 
the night on many, many nights in the recent past. These individuals 
are hard-working, and they genuinely want to do good.
  I have a different perspective on this bill. I recognize that I am 
the only one with that perspective on the floor right now, but I assure 
you, Mr. President, I am not alone. I am not alone among Senators, and 
I am sure not alone among those I represent and those represented by 
the 100 of us in this body. There are a number of Americans who see 
that all is not well with the way we spend money, the people's money, 
within the Federal Government, and it is to them that I would like to 
direct my remarks tonight.
  Let's talk for a minute, first of all, about infrastructure. One of 
the things that I think makes this an appealing piece of legislation is 
the fact that it deals with something that most Americans intuitively 
understand we need. Infrastructure is something that is somewhat 
uniquely positioned for government. It doesn't always have to be 
through government, but it can be, and it often is because it is a 
public good. It is a public good that is supposed to be accessible to 
all, not excludable, and it is difficult to have that without some sort 
of a master plan.
  Infrastructure is also something that can make the difference between 
someone having to spend hours of their life each day stuck in gridlock 
traffic and being able to spend time at home with their family.
  Infrastructure benefits us in countless ways. The fact that 
infrastructure is a good thing and that we need it is a different 
question from whether we can afford the infrastructure plan in this 
particular case. It is also a separate question from whether Federal 
infrastructure is what we need, at least to this degree.

[[Page S5241]]

  Remember that we are a government of powers that James Madison 
described as few and defined. That is in Federalist No. 45. By 
comparison, he described the powers reserved to the States as numerous 
and indefinite.
  The powers of Congress and, by extension, the powers of the Federal 
Government are those, for the most part, outlined in article I, section 
8 of the Constitution. There have been a few other powers added since 
then. Most of them, most of the power that we rely on in enacting 
legislation--the overwhelming majority of the powers we rely on can be 
found in article I, section 8.
  Article I, section 8 really does come up with a pretty limited list 
of powers. We are in charge of national defense, trademarks, copyrights 
and patents, postal roads and post offices, and immigration code to 
determine questions on immigration and naturalization, bankruptcy laws, 
declaring war, granting letters of marque and reprisal. That is one of 
my favorite powers because, you know, it is a power that we have to 
issue essentially a hall pass in the name of the United States that 
entitles the bearer to engage in state-sponsored acts of piracy on the 
high seas in the name of the United States with utter impunity, and 
that is really, really cool that we have that power. We don't exercise 
it very often; at least we haven't in the last century or so.
  We also have the power to regulate trade or commerce between the 
States with foreign nations and with Indian Tribes. We have the power 
to collect taxes and to spend that money. And I believe the best 
reading of that clause, clause 1 of article I, section 8, is that we 
have the power to spend money on those powers that are enumerated in 
article I, Section 8 or elsewhere.
  We don't have the power--in article I, section 8, you won't find a 
generalized power that just says: Go out and spend things that you 
think would be good for the American people.
  Some people make the argument that that very power can, in fact, be 
found in clause 1 of article I, section 8. They will refer to what they 
sometimes characterize as the general welfare clause.
  Now, the term ``general welfare'' is a term of art that appears 
exactly twice in the Constitution. The first time it appears is in the 
preamble. Remember that the preamble is a nice, lovely statement. It is 
not an operative provision. It doesn't contain any authority.
  The second time, as I mentioned, is in article I, section 8, clause 
1. James Madison believed--and I believe--that most of the Founding 
Fathers were with him in this belief. As I said a moment ago, it was 
intended to grant Congress the power to spend money on those things 
that they were put in charge of. It doesn't mean just go out and spend 
money on anything that we deem appropriate. There is also no power in 
there--in article I, section 8, or elsewhere in the Constitution--that 
gives us the power to create jobs.
  Now, I understand that that is an appealing thing. People like being 
able to have jobs. They like an economy that provides jobs. So when a 
politician can promise job creation, that sounds like an appealing 
feature. That, in and of itself, can't be our objective; and that, in 
and of itself, doesn't actually work. I will touch on this a little 
more a little bit later.
  But we have to remember that the Federal Government has no ability to 
generate wealth. It lacks that capacity; that, regardless of what you 
think of the Federal Government and the extent of Federal power, the 
Federal Government can't create wealth. It can only transfer it. It can 
collect taxes. It can do new things, and those things can be good. They 
can even have positive impacts on the economy.
  We lack the power to generate wealth. We, therefore, lack the power 
to create jobs. Because, remember, when we are taking money, we are 
taking it from someone else--taxpayers, typically. Or in the case of 
borrowed money--and we will get more to that later--talking about 
future generations of Americans who will pay for this.
  So we are not creating jobs. We are just taking money from one group 
of people to do a specific job. And, yes, some people might be employed 
in those projects. That doesn't mean we are actually creating jobs.
  Nor can we forget the fact that when we do something, we can always 
take credit for the things that we do. Those things don't necessarily 
take account of the things in the economy that would have happened but 
for our intervention. We can't take into account what hospital wings 
might have been built but for the fact that we took a whole bunch of 
money and spent it on a Federal priority.
  So let's get back to the distinction between State power and Federal 
power; specifically as it relates to infrastructure. I can see a number 
of instances in which some infrastructure projects might well be 
appropriate for Federal spending.
  It was President Dwight D. Eisenhower who proposed the creation of 
the Interstate Highway System back in the 1950s. One of the arguments 
that he came up with--in fact, as I recall, is the principal argument 
that President Eisenhower relied on in creating the Interstate Highway 
System--was that, for purposes of national defense, we needed to have a 
way that we could move U.S. military personnel from one part of the 
country to another.
  He did some research on it and discovered that many parts of the 
country would be inaccessible from other parts of the country; and if 
they needed to get troops from one area to another, that could create a 
real national security hazard.
  I suppose he might also have relied on the power to regulate 
interstate commerce. To my knowledge, he was relying principally on the 
defense aspect of having an Interstate Highway System.
  So, on that basis, he proposed that we create the Interstate Highway 
System; and he proposed, and Congress passed with his signature, 
legislation creating a gasoline tax to pay for the creation of the 
Interstate Highway System. It was more or less the deal that he cut 
with the American people
  He said: Look, we, Congress, and the Federal Government, as a whole, 
will fund this. We will then fund the building of the Interstate 
Highway System. Once the Interstate Highway System is built, we will 
hand it over to the respective States, understanding that each State 
would have a portion of the Interstate Highway System running through 
it. We will hand over to each State the portions of the Interstate 
Highway System running through that State. Those States would then be 
responsible for maintaining it and keeping it functioning and so forth.
  In the seven or so decades since that plan was conceived and hatched, 
we have now built the Interstate Highway System. It is complete. The 
Federal gasoline tax has been adjusted on several occasions since then. 
It has been a few decades since it has been adjusted, but it currently 
stands at 18.4 cents per gallon. That is the portion of what every 
American pays when they go to the gas pump. Regardless of what other 
additional State tax they might pay on that gasoline, it is 18.4 cents 
out of every gallon that goes into the Federal Highway Trust Fund, and 
that is still there, notwithstanding the fact that the Interstate 
Highway System is still in existence.
  Now, one might ask why. Well, decisions have been made over time 
suggesting it might be appropriate still for us to maintain the 
Interstate Highway System using Federal gasoline tax dollars. It is a 
decent argument; one that I can accept, notwithstanding the fact that 
it wasn't part of the original plan.
  Why then, with Federal infrastructure money, do we always dip into 
the Federal Highway Trust Fund and have to supplement it with general 
fund revenues?
  Why is the 18.4 cents per gallon--a tax, remember, that is the 
vestigial remains of the tax originally put in place to build it with 
the understanding we would hand it over and the States would maintain 
it.
  The question becomes an even more interesting one when you realize 
that it doesn't cost 18.4 cents per gallon to maintain the Interstate 
Highway System. In fact, it doesn't take anything close to that. 
Estimates vary some, but, according to some estimates, you can do that 
for about 5 cents per gallon. And yet we collect 18.4 cents per gallon. 
And yet that is never enough because, on transportation funding, we 
routinely spend a lot more than that and we have to dip into other 
sources of revenue, including what we collect in income tax and so 
forth.
  Why is that?
  Well, it is because of the mission creep. Instead of just focusing on 
Federal infrastructure, we have focused on

[[Page S5242]]

a lot of things that are not Federal infrastructure; things that, while 
lovely, useful, perhaps necessary, aren't necessarily Federal in 
nature; things like bike paths, hiking trails, beautification projects 
that go alongside of a transportation corridor, and, in some cases, 
mass transit systems; in some cases, surface streets that may or may 
not even be connected to the Interstate Highway System; and that, in 
many cases, start and end entirely within one State that are not part 
of the interstate network at all.
  So why, then, do we do that?
  I mean, we do that to a really large degree. As the sponsors of this 
bill, this bill that I received for the first time just moments ago--I 
was sitting on the Senate floor waiting to begin my remarks, 2,702 
pages long. I see it sitting near the desk clerk right now. It is a 
rather impressive specimen. It is a large piece of legislation. It is 
one that I look forward to reading. It is one that I realize will not 
exactly read like a fast-paced novel.
  Reading legislation like this and being able to digest it takes a 
fair amount of expertise. It takes a lot of patience, and it takes 
countless instances of cross-referencing to multiple existing 
provisions in Federal law to understand. There is 2,702 pages. They 
have worked hard on it. It has taken them 4 months to come up with it, 
and even though I have got grave concerns with the legislation and 
can't fathom a circumstance in which I will vote for it--although that 
said, that remains to be seen, depending on what we are able to change 
about it. You see, any piece of legislation can potentially turn into 
something that any Member ought to be able to vote for it, depending on 
how the amendment process goes.
  In its current form, I couldn't possibly vote for it because it 
simply spends too much money. It spends money that we do not have, and 
it spends an enormous amount of money at a time when the American 
people are feeling the pinch of inflation--inflation brought about 
predictably and foreseeably by a government that spends way too much 
money.
  In effect, it is just printing more money. I mean, technically, I 
know there is an additional step involved in that. Technically, it is 
borrowed money. The Treasury issues instruments of debt, and in those 
instruments of debt, we borrow money from our creditors. There are lots 
of investors from all over America and throughout the world who buy 
those instruments of debt from us
  But because the U.S. dollar is the world's reserve currency, and 
because many regard U.S. Treasuries as sort of the least bad investment 
of its kind, people will buy them; and this stuff functions almost--
when we decide to issue additional debt--functions almost as if hitting 
a button, just printing more money.
  When you print more money and you have a relatively finite basket of 
goods and services that an economy can produce in a particular year, 
the same basket of goods--when that same basket of goods can be 
targeted by more money, inflation is going to hit and people are going 
to have to pay more for the same things that they always need to buy.
  So, look, this doesn't necessarily hurt wealthy Americans. In fact, 
some of the wealthiest and most well-connected Americans will get rich 
off of legislation like this. Keep in mind, this legislation spends 
$1.2 trillion. The $550 billion number is the number that just refers 
to the new spending. So that means there was already roughly $700 
billion that they were anticipating would be spent based on past 
practice. That doesn't necessarily mean that we have to start all of 
this from the assumption that we will continue spending at that pace, 
but it certainly shouldn't obscure the fact that this is an enormous 
amount of money--$1.2 trillion--that we will be spending here.
  This is at a time when Americans are feeling the pinch of inflation 
precisely because of the pace at which we have been spending money. I 
mean, look, we were already spending way too much money even before 
COVID hit. In the last few years, we have typically been shelling out 
about $4 trillion a year through the Federal Government. And, 
tragically, even at the top of the economic cycle, where we were right 
when COVID hit, we were still borrowing $1 out of every $4 we were 
spending. We were taking in about $3 trillion and spending about $4 
trillion before COVID hit. This, at a time where we are at the top of 
the economic cycle, fantastic economic growth, record low unemployment, 
things were going great and we were still borrowing $1 out of every $4 
we were spending. COVID hits. Last year, instead of spending $4 
trillion, which is already too much, we spent $6.6 trillion, $6.7 
trillion. So we spent $3.6 trillion more than we brought in.
  One of my colleagues recently pointed out to me that about 37 percent 
of all U.S. dollars that have ever come into existence have come into 
existence in the last 18 months. That, by itself, should help people 
understand why their dollars are going less far than they have ever 
gone before. Because when you just add to the money supply, when 
government spends that much money that it does not have, that does not 
exist, it lessens the buying power of every dollar of every American.
  There, again, are some people, wealthy, well-connected individuals 
and corporations in this country who will get very rich off of a $1.2 
trillion spending bill. They just will. We know it. They have got 
sophisticated analysts, lawyers, lobbyists, and compliance specialists 
who I can assure you right now, at this very moment, are combing 
through that bill to figure out how they can get wealthy off of it.
  Those who don't get wealthy off of it but who are already wealthy 
themselves probably won't notice the pinch as much. Sure, they might 
notice that they are paying more for everything from gasoline to 
groceries, to air travel and everything in between, but it probably 
won't impact their lifestyle, at least not for the top 1 percent.
  But then you have got pretty much everyone else--pretty much everyone 
else in America who is not wealthy, not well connected, who won't make 
money off of this, and isn't wealthy enough; any person who is not 
wealthy enough to be able to cushion the blow of inflation to where it 
doesn't have to impact their lifestyle, pretty much everyone else, and 
that means the overwhelming majority of Americans.
  I mean, I am talking about probably 90, 95 percent of the men and 
women in America really will get hurt by this. Most people in America, 
in one way or another, are living paycheck to paycheck, and if their 
paycheck remains the same during a time period in which each dollar 
goes less far, that really hurts them. And if they are living close to 
the edge on what they can afford with that paycheck and we further 
diminish the buying power of the dollar through our reckless spending 
in order to bring praise and adulation from the media and from each 
other, shame on us. That is reverse Robin Hood. That is stealing from 
the poor to give to the rich. Why then would we do that? Why would we 
do it right now?

  By the way, because of this same spending spree, this orgiastic 
convulsion of Federal spending of money that we do not have, we have 
labor shortages, and we have material shortages. The cost of labor and 
the cost of materials that will go into these projects are costing more 
than they ever have before. So why is this the time to aggressively 
push something when we know full well that it will cost more right now 
because of other things we have done and that will, in turn, make other 
things that the American people need to buy more expensive?
  Shame on us for making poor and middle-class Americans poorer so that 
we can bring praise and adulation to ourselves and more money to a 
small handful of wealthy, well-connected interests in America.
  It begs the additional question: There has got to be an additional 
reason why you would want to make all this spending Federal. I mean, 
keep in mind, it is not just that most powers of government are and are 
supposed to be lodged in States and localities. That is also true. But 
it is also true that most infrastructure falls within the domain of 
States and localities. Most roads that people use from one day to the 
next are State roads or local roads. They are not Federal.
  So why does all of this need to be Federal? Why couldn't some of 
this, why couldn't most of it, why couldn't perhaps nearly all of 
either the new spending or all of the spending incorporated within this 
$1.2 trillion package, why shouldn't that be something

[[Page S5243]]

that States and localities could play a part in?
  Now, one might reason, perhaps there is some additional efficiency 
that could come from this centralization of this plan by making the 
plan Federal--by making the money Federal. Maybe we can make it more 
efficient. We can standardize it. That argument might be compelling if 
it were true, but it isn't. It is quite to the contrary.
  When you add Federal money to any infrastructure project, the minute 
you add Federal money to it, you attach a whole host of Federal laws 
and Federal regulations that the State or local government carrying out 
the work then has to comply with, such that if the project were not 
Federal, if there were not Federal dollars in place, they wouldn't have 
to comply with the same Byzantine labyrinth. They wouldn't have to 
negotiate this Byzantine labyrinth of Federal regulations and mandates.
  This affects everything from the cost of labor to the cost of 
materials, to the length of time needed to complete the project, the 
paperwork involved. And at the end of the day, it results in less of 
that money going into steel and concrete being placed in the ground and 
a whole lot more of it going to lawyers, accountants, compliance 
specialists, and delays, frankly.
  In fact, this varies a little bit from State to State, but in many 
States, including my own, you often add 30 percent, sometimes it is 
closer to 40 percent, to the cost of a project the minute you add 
Federal dollars. Even just a few Federal dollars will add these 
requirements, and those requirements require a lot of additional money.
  It is not the case that we make this more efficient, that we make 
each dollar stretch farther by consolidating it and distributing it 
back to the States, which is how these infrastructure projects often 
work.
  It is also intuitively something that doesn't add up. Why would we 
take money, bring it to Washington, run it through our filter, knowing 
some of that money can slosh around, some of it gets lost 
administratively, and send it back? That wouldn't make things more 
efficient. Separate and apart from the fact that we make infrastructure 
more expensive when we do that, it doesn't make sense intuitively.
  All of this also arises in the context in which, due to the recent 
spending spree that we have been on in Washington, we are at a scary 
place with regard to our debt-to-GDP ratio. It is about 2 years ago 
when the Congressional Budget Office issued a report expressing some 
concerns about the fact that we were, at the time, about 79 percent--
our debt-to-GDP ratio was about 79 percent.
  It is concerning because it had been mounting for some time. It was 
continuing to mount at the time. It was continuing, tragically, to 
mount, even though we were at the top of the economic cycle with good 
job growth, good economic growth, low unemployment, and so forth, and 
yet we were still adding to the debt at a rate of about $1 trillion per 
year. But they concluded, yes, 79 percent debt to GDP, this is bad.
  They also forecasted at the time that we might cross the dreaded 100 
percent debt-to-GDP ratio within about a decade. I believe the 
prediction at the time was that we would cross that threshold sometime 
in maybe 2029.
  One of the reasons people worry about that is that there has been a 
lot of research done on this. A couple of economists from Stanford 
University wrote a book. The name of the book was, ``This Time Is 
Different.'' It is one of many academic publications that explored the 
relationship of the debt-to-GDP ratio and economic growth.
  They conclude that once you cross that threshold, 100 percent debt to 
GDP, economic growth tends to stall, and it becomes much more difficult 
to manage the Federal debt at that point, the national debt that you 
are dealing with. And they have done this using models from all over 
the world, going back hundreds of years. And they have concluded that 
this is a threshold at which economies tend to stall out.
  The name of the book was inspired by the fact that they said, 
basically, every country, when it approaches this sort of thing, tends 
to--the government tends to tell the people of that country: Don't 
worry. We are different. This time, it will be different, just as 
Americans and the Federal Government tend to tell people this day: 
Don't worry, this time it will be different.

  They say it is not. This is real stuff.
  So it was with some concern a couple of years ago, when the 
Congressional Budget Office issued this report saying: Yes, we are at 
79 percent now, and by the end of the 2020s, if we don't turn things 
around, we should be hitting 100 percent debt-to-GDP ratio.
  Just a couple of weeks ago, the CBO issued another report. That 
report concluded that by the end of this year, by the end of 2021, our 
debt-to-GDP ratio will be at a staggering 106 percent. So at that 
moment when we really should be very concerned--because, look, 
regardless how comfortable someone has been with deficit spending in 
the past, there are people who brushed off concerns by making an 
argument that, look, as long as the economy on the whole and the big 
picture is growing faster than the debt, we should be able to keep a 
lid on it; we should be able to prevent it from spinning out of 
control.
  Now, there is some real appeal to that argument, but that appeal 
starts to dwindle. In fact, it disappears entirely once your debt is 
growing much, much faster than your economy. And it gets even more 
concerning once you past that 100 percent debt-to-GDP ratio because at 
that point, many economists predict that you will experience not just a 
cyclical, not just a periodic or episodic short-term downturn economic 
growth, but you will experience a secular downturn, one that is likely 
to last much longer than that.
  So at a moment like that, I respectfully tend to think we should be 
asking ourselves the question about money that we are already spending. 
Should we even be spending money that we have already been planning to 
spend? The $700 billion that we had planned to spend over the next few 
years, perhaps that could be pared back. But, instead, we are saying: 
No, we are going to do all of that, not cut back on any of it, and then 
we are going to add $550 billion to it.
  To me, that is kind of scary, especially when you take into account 
how all of these things are interconnected. The fact that we have been 
spending too much, way too much, the fact that we have inflated the 
dollar as a result, that as a result of inflation, Americans are 
finding it harder to fill up their gas tank, they are finding it harder 
to pay their grocery bills, to pay for their rent, their mortgage, they 
are finding it harder to do just about everything, so why would we want 
to step on the accelerator at that moment, which also happens to be the 
precise same moment when the cost of all the things that we will need 
to undertake this ambitious infrastructure spending package, including 
materials, steel, concrete, labor, everything else that we will need in 
connection with that, when all of those things are more expensive and 
made more expensive still by the fact that we are making them all 
Federal because, when you use Federal dollars for an infrastructure 
project, it typically cost a lot more.
  In a State like mine, it is often 30 percent, sometimes more than 
that. It costs that much more the minute you add Federal dollars. For 
that reason, in my State and in many others, State transportation 
officials--very bright--my friend Carlos Braceras, who has been the 
long-time head of the Utah Department of Transportation, he and his 
team in the State of Utah and with the help of Utah's Governor and its 
legislature, they have figured ways to make sure that when Federal 
funding comes their way, it doesn't bleed into everything.
  There are a number of projects that they try to keep insulated from 
Federal spending, from Federal dollars, specifically for the reason 
that it is likely to cost more and sometimes take longer if you involve 
Federal dollars in it. So why would we want to continue exactly as we 
have been going and then add to it an additional $550 billion?
  Now, on the inflation side of this argument, some of my colleagues 
will argue--in fact, some of them argued tonight--that this is 
noninflationary spending and that it is going to be lengthened over--it 
will be spent over a lengthy period of time and we, therefore, 
shouldn't worry about the impact it might have on inflation.
  I have a couple of responses to that. First of all, the fact that we 
will be

[[Page S5244]]

spending it over a period of several years doesn't mean it won't have 
an impact on inflation. The fact is, when we spend more Federal money, 
especially Federal money that we don't have, that is the definition of 
inflationary. Maybe it is not as inflationary as it would have been had 
this bill spent two or three times that amount and had it been mandated 
that it all be spent immediately, but that doesn't make it 
noninflationary.
  Many of them also argued that it is OK because it is all paid for, 
the new money is all paid for. Well, it is one of the things that we 
will be exploring over the next few days, and I hope we will have even 
longer than that to wade through it. On this point, I would add simply 
that my colleagues--again, all Senators for whom I have tremendous 
respect and affection.
  Every one of these Senators who has worked on this has worked hard on 
it. They are passionate about it. I like them. I respect them, even 
though I disagree with them on this. But many of them pointed out that 
it is paid for. Yet, when you look at the pay-fors, I wonder whether it 
actually is.
  Now, some of the arguments that they make in saying that it is all 
paid for rely on things like recapturing COVID funds already 
appropriated but not yet spent.
  I suppose that is a good thing to do. If we have got COVID money that 
we have appropriated but that hasn't been spent, I suppose we have got 
to recapture that and direct it somewhere else. But I am not sure that 
that necessarily means that there is no cost or consequence to choosing 
to spend it here.
  I mean, if we appropriated more money for COVID than we should have, 
than we needed to, shouldn't we also consider--I don't know--giving it 
back to the American people or paying down the debt so that we don't 
add to the debt as quickly? I think that ought to be on the table as 
well. So that is part of it, is the argument that we are taking a good 
chunk of it from COVID money that has previously been appropriated but 
not spent.
  They also rely on a number of other arguments suggesting that it is 
paid for and not through tax increases or additional borrowing. Some of 
those arguments are, I suppose, technically defensible but not 
necessarily within the spirit of what they are saying. For example, 
there is a large sum of money, many billions of dollars--the last time 
I checked, their proposal was at about $13 billion--to reinstate the 
fees attached to the production and distribution of certain chemicals. 
Like I said, the last time I checked, the proposal was at about $13 
billion falling into that category. It might be more or less because, 
again, we just now received the 2,702-page bill that now sits at the 
clerk's desk in front of us.
  So let's assume that it is $13 billion from the collection of that. 
Well, it really is--at least, in my investigation of that, they are 
imposing taxes on the production and distribution of certain chemicals, 
many of which are used in the production of basically everything, 
basically all consumer products.
  So it is listed as a fee, not a tax. Sometimes, the distinction 
between a fee and a tax can be relatively minor and relatively 
insignificant, but, regardless, it is money that ends up being paid for 
by poor and middle-class Americans in the form of higher prices passed 
down to the consumer on everything that American consumers buy.
  The biggest difference between this and a tax is that with a tax, 
there is some record somewhere of what the taxpayer is paying. But with 
a fee that is going into basically every consumer product in the case 
of many of these chemicals, it is effectively an invisible or sort of 
hidden tax, so it is actually less desirable than a tax increase, in 
that respect.
  Like I say, there are two purposes of our tax system. The more 
obvious purpose is just to fund the government. But the other purpose 
is to communicate the cost of government to the voter so that the voter 
knows what they are getting and what they are paying for.
  Things like these hidden fees that will increase the cost of all 
manufactured items, maybe just a little but with no pricetag attached 
to it, it seems kind of unfair to me.
  Last I checked also, there were $56 billion counted among the pay-
fors, $56 billion that they were counting on as something that would be 
collected by the Federal Government as tax revenue as a result of 
increased economic activity stemming specifically from the money that 
we are spending in this legislation.
  Now, I don't think we score infrastructure bills that way. To my 
knowledge, we haven't done that in the past. To my knowledge, the 
Congressional Budget Office, whose job it is to score these things and 
which I hope will give us a score here--I don't think it typically 
scores infrastructure bills that way.
  So, yeah, we are going to spend $1.2 trillion on this bill, but that 
$1.2 trillion being plied into the economy is going to do other things, 
and that, in turn, will generate revenue and come back to us this way. 
You sometimes hear of things like that being done from advocates of tax 
reform, and sometimes dynamic scoring has been done in tax reform. I 
don't think it is typically done with infrastructure projects.
  I also think it is wildly speculative to assume that $56 billion will 
come from this and that that $56 billion wouldn't come from the Federal 
Government if we weren't doing this. It goes back to the common fallacy 
with government. You can see the tangible things that government does, 
but seeing those tangible things that government does often obscures 
and makes impossible to know what would have been done in the absence 
of government intervention, what hospital wing won't be built as a 
result of people paying higher prices for everything they buy and 
higher prices on their tax bill and through inflation, generally.
  You don't always see all of the consequences built into that, but you 
can see the tangible benefits, which is exactly why this is such a 
tantalizing, tempting thing for politicians--because, look, when 
politicians vote to spend more money, not theirs but everybody else's, 
the way things work in our society today, in our mainstream media 
today, you will get praised for that. You will pretty much always get 
praised for voting to spend more of the American people's money as long 
as you can identify good people who will benefit from it. And you can 
almost always do that, and I am absolutely certain that there are a lot 
of good, deserving, hard-working Americans who will be able to point to 
things in this bill that they will benefit from. I won't take that away 
from the bill's sponsors, not for a moment.

  There are absolutely good things that will happen to good people--
good, deserving people--if we pass this legislation. It is very 
tempting to do that because we will get praised if we do it. And once 
we create the expectation that we are going to do it and then we don't 
do it, we will get criticized. Predictably, those who vote for this 
will get praised in the media. Those who vote against it will get 
attacked as thoughtless and insensitive and not caring about those 
people who will benefit from it.
  But what about the Americans who will be harmed by it? It is one of 
the tragic consequences of spending large volumes of money through a 
system of government. We have the luxury in government of collecting 
money by force. Usually, that force doesn't have to be brought to bear 
directly; it is the implicit threat of the potential for use of force 
that allows governments to collect money. In fact, it is what 
differentiates governments from businesses or individuals or any other 
enterprise that might want to collect money in some way. Governments 
can use the implicit threat of force and carry out the threat of force 
when necessary in order to carry out our mandate.
  So we always have to remember that, even though we will get praised 
for spending other people's money because there are good people who 
will benefit from it, there are other people who are harmed. It is a 
tragic consequence of concentrated benefits and dispersed burdens 
attached to basically all spending legislation. I mean, it is really 
difficult. I don't know quite how to unravel it other than to say it is 
one of the many reasons why we should adhere to the constitutional 
norms established in 1787, as modified with each of the 27 amendments 
that we have adopted, in figuring out what is and what is not a Federal 
priority.
  There are a lot of things that are good ideas. We don't have to 
utilize

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force or the implicit use of force or the potential use of force for 
all of them, but that is what we do when we push things through 
government. And when we push them through the Federal Government, we 
add other problems to them.
  Back to the drafters of this legislation. It took them 4 months to 
get to this. And, again, I commend them for doing that. I don't fault 
them for the fact that it took them that long. I praise them for their 
willingness to dedicate their time and that much of their lives to 
something they care about. I happen to disagree with where they are 
going with it, but I respect them, nonetheless, greatly for it.
  But think about this. This group that has been working together has 
been very, very intimately involved in the negotiation of the details 
of it, but it took them 4 months to get there. There are, what, 10 or 
so of them. But there are 100 of us, and we have got 435 counterparts 
in the House of Representatives.
  Article I, section 7 tells us that you can't create legislation at 
the Federal level without going through Congress. You can't pass 
Federal legislation without it passing the House and passing the Senate 
and being presented to the President for signature or for veto. So it 
does still have to get through this body.
  What I would suggest is that if it took these 10 or so of our 
colleagues 4 months to get here, it is not reasonable to expect that 
the rest of us can be brought to where they are in a matter of days. 
That is one of the reasons why we have committee processes. And I am 
not of the view that there is no piece of legislation that ought to 
ever be passed without it having gone through a full committee process 
and regular order. There are lots of times when that might not be 
necessary or appropriate or there might be other extenuating 
circumstances.
  I wonder, here, why that didn't happen, but, regardless, the bill is 
here now. It is on the Senate floor now. We ought to consider it. But I 
would suggest this. If it took them 4 months to get comfortable with 
it, is it at all reasonable to expect that we should get through it and 
over the threshold of passing it, placing burdens on the American 
people that will last not just for years but for decades, in a matter 
of days? Would it be unreasonable to suggest that we ought to have at 
least a few weeks to debate it and discuss it; that we ought to have at 
least half the time that they have had to prepare this? It took them 4 
months. Shouldn't we at least have a month or 2?
  We are approaching a time when Members of Congress typically spend 
more time in their home States. Is it at all unreasonable to suggest 
that maybe we ought to take that time to vet this with the people we 
represent in our respective States? I would love nothing more than to 
take that 2,702-page bill around the State of Utah with me in my visits 
to the State in the month of August. I would love to get their input 
on it. I would love for them to be able to have access to that document 
so we can have this debate and this discussion.

  And, yeah, sure, I have got grave concerns with it. In its present 
form, I can't vote for it. That doesn't mean that we can't make it 
better. That doesn't mean that we can't all benefit a lot from having 
those who have elected us have the chance to review this.
  Now, I don't expect that all 3\1/2\ million Utahans will read that 
2,702-page bill. It does not read like a fast-paced novel. But they 
still ought to have time to learn about what is in it, to at least read 
analysis performed by others and presented to them in a digestible form 
so that we can get their input on how it might affect their lives for 
good or for ill.
  Some of the other arguments that we have heard also need to be 
addressed. We have been told tonight that many of our peer nations are 
spending more money on infrastructure than we are. I am not sure that 
is true in every case. In fact, there aren't a lot of countries on 
Earth that can afford to spend anywhere near the amount of money that 
we spend on anything, infrastructure or otherwise. So if that is what 
they are suggesting, I am not sure the argument pans out in a dollar-
for-dollar or dollar-for-dollar equivalent analysis. If they are 
talking about as a percentage of GDP, maybe that is a good point.
  If we are talking about China, I am not sure that we want to measure 
what we do and evaluate the sufficiency of what we do on infrastructure 
the same way China would. China, remember, has a very highly 
centralized form of government and a very highly centralized economy, 
which China, being a communist dictatorship, focuses around the 
government, around their national government. That is a critical 
difference. I don't think the Chinese model is one that we want to 
emulate here.
  The argument was also made that many in Europe are spending more. 
Again, perhaps they mean as a percentage of GDP. I am not sure. I would 
note here that many countries in Europe have the luxury of doing a lot 
of things that we don't, in part, because of the burden that we carry 
for them on issues of national defense. Even with that, I doubt very 
highly that any country in Europe spends more dollars or more dollar 
equivalence of whatever currency they use than the United States, so I 
am not sure what is meant by that argument.
  We have to remember that anytime a politician, anytime an elected 
official, says ``you need me,'' the opposite is true. He or she, who 
when saying ``you need me,'' is actually saying ``I need you.''
  People aren't here to serve the government. The government exists for 
the purpose of serving the people. We have to be very, very wary of 
anything that sounds like we are telling the people ``you need us, you 
need us to take money from you and to take money from your yet unborn 
children or from your children who are alive today but not yet old 
enough to vote and spend it in a manner that we see deem fit.''
  For that additional reason, we should be extra cautious. As much as I 
love and respect the colleagues who put together this 2,702-page bill, 
I want to go through it to make sure that it spends money in the way 
that my constituents would like, which is all the more reason why--if 
it took them 4 months, shouldn't we really at least take a few weeks 
with it and not just a few days?
  Now, $1.2 trillion is what this bill wants to spend. It is easy to 
get caught up in the words ``million,'' ``billion,'' ``trillion.'' In 
fact, I have heard most of our colleagues--most of us at one point or 
another have made the mistake, hopefully not in public as much, but at 
least in our private conversations as we discuss large numbers--large 
numbers necessarily involved in funding a government as large as ours 
is. Sometimes we will find ourselves saying ``million'' when we mean 
``billion,'' or ``billion'' when we mean ``trillion,'' or some other 
combination of syntactic errors. There is a big difference between 
them, a thousandfold difference at every level.
  Remember that a number of people have pointed out recently in order 
to encapsulate the point, a million seconds lasts just 11\1/2\ days; a 
billion seconds lasts 31.69 years; a trillion seconds lasts 31,688.74 
years. There is an enormous difference here--an enormous difference 
that we ought to take into account.
  So I don't mean to suggest that any of this is easy. It is not easy 
at all. But we ought to get concerned anytime someone proposes that we 
spend this much money all at once, we have got to do our due diligence.
  Now, people like to talk about roads, bridges, wastewater projects. 
They like to talk about potholes. Those things are all really 
important.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Would my colleague just yield for a minute for a brief 
interruption? I will close the Senate but then allow him to speak for 
as long as he should choose.
  Mr. LEE. I would be happy to.
  Mr. SCHUMER. I see he doesn't have many notes, but it is all sui 
generis, I know that.
  Mr. LEE. I am not sure I would use the word ``sui generis'' there, 
but go ahead.
  Mr. SCHUMER. No comment.

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