[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 210 (Monday, December 6, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8928-S8930]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                         Build Back Better Act

  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am here on the Senate floor again this 
evening to talk about the so-called Build Back Better legislation.
  This is legislation that Democrats are trying to push through the 
process here on a purely partisan basis under what is called the 
reconciliation process.
  I believe this massive tax-and-spend bill is irresponsible at a time 
when we

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see an uncertain economy, thanks in large measure to all of the 
challenges we are now finding with regard to COVID, and Omicron in 
particular, at a time of really high inflation that is hurting my 
constituents and everybody's constituents in this Chamber, and at a 
time of record levels of debt. Certainly, this is not a time for us to 
put out another piece of legislation that spends dramatically more 
money and also has big tax increases on the economy.
  This is the 10th consecutive week while Congress has been in session 
that I have come to the floor to talk about reasons I believe this 
legislation is bad for America.
  As we have talked about before, this massive new spending bill 
represents the largest amount of spending of any legislation ever 
passed by the U.S. Congress. This is a big deal.
  Now, some would say: Well, the official score is only $1.7 trillion 
so it is the second largest because the first largest would be the $1.9 
trillion that was already spent earlier this year. That is fine. You 
can say that, but what sets this legislation apart, as a number of 
analysts have shown us, including the Penn Wharton study, is that a lot 
of the spending in this bill, the costs of the bill, have sunsets. So 
it camouflages the full cost of the bill.
  I will give you an example of one of the major spending priorities 
that is going to end up costing a lot more than estimates say. The 
enhanced child tax credit from the March spending bill is extended for 
1 year in this legislation, which means that after next year, this new 
benefit people have come to expect would be cut off.
  Based on the history here in Congress, that is not how it operates. 
Benefits like this are not ended. So if it doesn't end, and these 
programs ended up not being sunset, Penn Wharton estimates that the 
total spending on this bill goes from around 1.75 trillion to about 
$4\1/2\ trillion. Wow. More than double the largest spending bill ever 
considered by the U.S. Congress.
  At a time of record debts and deficits, my hope would be that 
Democrats and the Biden administration have come up with a responsible 
way to pay for this multitrillion-dollar reconciliation package.
  Unfortunately, some of us have been arguing for months that this 
legislation is about as far as responsibly paid for as you can get. One 
of the primary sources of proposed revenue is a series of tax hikes 
that, despite what Democrats might say, hits the middle class, hits 
families in the middle class, hits small businesses the hardest.
  As an example, the proposed Medicare surcharge on active investment 
income is going to hit millions of small businesses that structured 
themselves as passthroughs with a new, across-the-board, 3.8-percent 
increase on all income.
  Proposed corporate tax increases will hit American workers based on 
the analysis of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the 
Joint Committee on Taxation. They say that when you increase the taxes 
on businesses, the main impact is to increase taxes on workers.
  Why? Because wages and benefits are reduced because of it. Costs will 
be passed down to working families. This means higher prices for 
everything.
  What is even worse is that, while the worker making 20, 40, 60,000 
bucks a year is getting hit hard having to pay more because of 
inflation for gas, groceries, and clothes, at the same time, wealthy 
Americans, under this legislation, would get a tax break worth hundreds 
of millions of dollars, thanks to the Democrats' insistence on raising 
the cap on what is called the SALT, the State and local tax, deduction.
  As part of the tax cuts back in 2017, we decided to limit the 
deduction you could take for State and local taxes to $10,000 per year.
  Why? Because it was very expensive to have that deduction out there 
because it is progressive, helps wealthier Americans much more because 
it is an effective policy that leads to an incentive where States are 
incentivized to raise their taxes because people get a corporate--a 
Federal tax deduction for it, and it is just not fair.
  My constituents in Ohio are subsidizing New York and California for 
their high taxes. That doesn't seem to make sense to people.
  However, under this Build Back Better bill that was passed by the 
House, they raised that cap from $10,000 up to $80,000. Over the next 5 
years alone, that provision would cost $285 billion. The vast majority 
of that tax benefit would go to the wealthiest Americans, with one 
recent analysis from the Tax Policy Center finding that almost no 
benefit will go to Americans not in the top 10 percent of income 
earners.
  Conversely, child tax credit expansion, which Democrats argue was 
designed to help lower and middle-income Americans, costs $185 billion. 
So $285 billion for the SALT, which primarily goes to the wealthier 
individuals; 185 billion is put in place for what is viewed as the 
cornerstone safety and social net program in this whole bill.
  So there are $100 billion more in the regressive tax cut than there 
is in this cornerstone social safety net program.
  As Marc Goldwein, with the Committee for a Responsible Federal 
Budget, put it:

       We're debating about whether to give lower- and middle-
     class families a thousand dollars more a year through the 
     child tax credit, while giving upper-class families $10,000 
     or more through SALT.

  That is pretty accurate.
  Through lifting the SALT deduction and a number of other poorly 
planned tax overhauls under the so-called Build Back Better 
legislation, almost 70 percent of people making $1 million or more a 
year--almost 70 percent of them--that is over 68 percent will get a 
significant tax cut.
  So if you make over a million bucks a year, 70 percent are going to 
get over--are going to get a significant tax cut.
  Nearly 90 percent of taxpayers earning between $500,000 and a million 
dollars are going to get a significant tax cut.
  Contrast that to people who make 30,000 bucks a year, as an example. 
While 70 percent of those making $1 million or more are getting a tax 
cut, only 30 percent of those making 30,000 bucks a year or more are 
going to get a tax cut.
  And guess what. That is in the first year. In the second year, it 
goes down to 12 percent. In the third year, it goes down to 10 percent 
or less, and then it goes to single digits.
  So if you make 30,000 bucks a year or more, you got really no 
significant benefit here at all. But if you make a lot of money, you 
get a huge benefit. That doesn't make sense.
  For example, in California, where there are graduated income tax 
rates of over 10 percent--that is the State income tax rate--that would 
amount to a $47,000 deduction, on average, for somebody making 500,000 
bucks a year--that is a lot--while the average taxpayer in California 
is only seeing a $20-per-year benefit.
  So, again, you are getting a deduction of about 47,000 bucks if you 
make over 500,000 bucks; whereas, the average taxpayer is only going to 
get about a $20-a-year benefit. This doesn't make sense. It doesn't 
make sense to Americans as they learn more about this.
  The people I represent in my home State of Ohio are very concerned 
right now about the economy, particularly about inflation. They are 
worried about rising prices for everything, from gas to groceries. And 
they are worried about the fact that their hard-earned paychecks aren't 
going as far as they did just a few months ago.
  Back in March, when the Democrats pushed through that $1.9 trillion 
spending package, many of us on this side of the aisle tried to warn 
them that this stimulus was not needed to get the economy moving. The 
economy was going ahead on its own at that time, and yet this stimulus 
was thrown into the economy, which we said would overheat the economy. 
And it wasn't just Republicans.
  Larry Summers, who served as the Treasury Secretary for President 
Clinton and Director of the National Economic Council under President 
Obama, warned that injecting so much money into the demand side of the 
economy would lead to inflation. He was right.
  Now those same lawmakers are gearing up to do it again. Not only does 
Build Back Better deal an unfair hand to the working families they 
claim to champion, giving a tax break to the wealthy and leaving other 
Americans struggling to get by, it will stoke more inflation by pumping 
more money into the demand side of the economy. That is not what we 
should be doing now.

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  Ultimately, the American people are going to have to look at this 
reconciliation package--this bill called Build Back Better package--
with its job-killing tax hikes, tax breaks to the wealthy, and stimulus 
spending and judge whether this is the right thing for the economy 
right now as we grapple with high inflation and struggle to get out of 
this pandemic.
  It certainly is not the right thing. It is not in our national 
interest to be providing tax breaks to the wealthy and burdening our 
businesses and everyday taxpayers with higher taxes while stoking more 
inflation.
  We are dealing with a host of economic challenges right now, from 
inflation to supply chain delays, to Omicron, to workforce shortages. 
As we seek to overcome these challenges, let's not build back worse.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

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