[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 187 (Monday, October 25, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7327-S7330]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



              Infrastructure Bill and Government Spending

  Mr. PORTMAN. 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

[[Page S7328]]

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.

[[Page S7329]]

  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,

[[Page S7330]]

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.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Duckworth). The Senator from Alabama.