[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 183 (Tuesday, October 19, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Page S7042]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Inflation

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, as I begin this morning, let me just start 
by reacting to a couple of things that have been said here on the floor 
this morning already by my Democrat colleagues.
  You know, the leader, Republican leader, when he was down here 
earlier, talked about the impact of inflation on the economy, and I 
have to tell you, that is very real. The inflationary impact is being 
felt all across this country. Energy costs are up, gasoline costs are 
up by huge amounts. Food costs are up in this country. Housing costs 
are up.
  There isn't hardly any area of our economy where people aren't being 
impacted by inflation, meaning that the dollars that they earn are 
stretching less all the time. That is not a fake thing; it is not a 
temporary thing; it is a real thing. People are experiencing it in 
their economic lives on a daily basis, and to hear the Democratic 
leader say, well, you know, all the spending they are going to do is 
not going to cost anything, that it is going to be covered by tax 
increases and those tax increases are just going to hit people in the 
higher income categories, also is something that just isn't accurate.
  Now let me just for a minute suggest something that I think is sort 
of fundamental when it comes to economics, and that is, when you have 
too many dollars chasing too few goods, you get inflation. The demand 
for a product goes up, and when the demand goes up, the price usually 
follows along with it.
  Well, we have right now a lot of government dollars that have been 
swirling around the economy for some time, which is why I think in many 
respects we are seeing this inflation--the highest inflation that we 
have seen literally in 30 years in this country, affecting, as I said 
earlier, kind of all sectors of the economy and things that people have 
to purchase in their daily lives.
  If you put more dollars out there, which is what is being talked 
about by our Democratic colleagues--another $3.5 trillion that would 
flood the economy--I think the expectation is a very real one that you 
are going to see that inflationary pressure accelerate, intensify, 
because when you have that much money, that many dollars chasing too 
few goods, inflation is an inevitable result. The idea that we need to 
spend another $3.5 trillion and that somehow that is going to be a 
solution right now also is not consistent at all with the facts and the 
data.
  We saw here just recently the Congressional Budget Office come out 
with a report that suggested that government revenues are at the 
highest level--biggest increase, I should say, year over year since 
1977. We are now over $4 trillion this last year in revenues--$4 
trillion. It has never happened before in this country. It is the 
biggest 1-year increase in revenues since 1977, paid for largely by 
corporate tax receipts, which were up 75 percent year over year, and 
also by individual income tax receipts, much of which was coming from 
high-income earners. A lot of that increase that we have seen in income 
tax receipts in this country in government revenues comes from those 
people who are high-income earners.
  All that to say, if you have that much revenue coming in to the 
government in this country, why, then, would you need to go out and 
raise taxes even more and spend even more when you have an economy that 
is in the process of recovering and people concerned about inflation? 
And the Democrats' solution to that is to spend more, put more money 
out there, and raise taxes even higher at a time when you have historic 
revenue coming in to the Federal Government. It is the first time 
ever--ever--in our Nation's history that we have had over $4 trillion 
in revenue come in.
  The other thing that was mentioned by my colleague from Illinois just 
a minute ago is that the issue of the tax gap, which was alluded to 
earlier this morning on the floor by, again, the Republican leader--the 
Democratic solution is to go after people, essentially shake them down, 
and get them to pay more in taxes.
  I am not suggesting for a minute that there aren't people out there 
who aren't paying the taxes that they should under the law and that the 
law needs to be enforced. What I am suggesting is that in the effort to 
close that so-called tax gap, there are huge differences of opinion 
about what effect that would have, how much could be generated, and who 
is ultimately going to pay for that.
  Well, now there is additional research out coming from the Joint 
Committee on Taxation that, in fact, the Democratic efforts to close 
the tax gap will hit lower income taxpayers the most.
  To say that none of the tax increases or none of the tax policies 
that are being proposed by the Democrats in their $3.5 trillion tax-
and-spending spree proposal won't harm people who are making less than 
$400,000 a year is laughable under any--any--plausible review of these 
tax policies and proposals, but this one in particular hits hardest at 
low-income taxpayers.
  According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, people making less than 
$50,000 a year will pay anywhere from 40 to 57 percent off all the 
revenue that is generated off of that one proposal. People making less 
than $100,000 a year will pay somewhere between 65 and 78 percent of 
all the taxes that are generated under that particular proposal in the 
Democratic plan. People making less than $200,000 a year would pay up 
to 90 percent of the amount generated under that particular proposal in 
the Democrats' plan. So people making less than $200,000 a year are 
going to be paying tens of billions of dollars more in taxes just on 
that one proposal which is out there, allowing the IRS essentially to 
snoop into people's personal transactions up to the $600 level. I don't 
think there is any way you can get around the fact that under that 
scenario, people in the lower income categories are going to end up 
paying the lion's share of the cost of that.
  So this isn't going to be without cost. This isn't going to be 
without consequence. This is not going to be without impact on lower 
income taxpayers in this country. They are going to get hit and they 
are going to get hit hard under this Democratic proposal.
  So when we talk about it, we are talking about real impacts, real 
economic impacts on the American people's lives. And we are going to 
continue to do everything we can to fight against really bad tax 
policies being put in place to finance massive amounts of spending, 
expansion, and growth of government at a time when government revenues 
just hit a historic high; never seen before; biggest year-over-year 
increase in revenue since 1977. And Democrats want to raise taxes--
taxes--on everybody, including those in the lower income categories.