[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 212 (Wednesday, December 8, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9008-S9009]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                      Democrat Legislative Agenda

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I want to take just a few moments to go 
back to March of this year. After a very tough year fighting COVID-19, 
the American people had many reasons to be optimistic about the future. 
Millions of people were being vaccinated every day. The winter surge 
was fading away, and travel was slowly ramping up. Families were able 
to get back together who hadn't seen their loved ones, particularly 
those who were the most vulnerable to the virus. People were able to 
visit face-to-face and resume their lives, gradually discovering what I 
will call the new normal.
  We knew the war against the virus was not over, but our communities 
were well-resourced to keep up the fight, thanks to the five bipartisan 
bills that were signed into law in 2020.
  Yes, it is true. Just last year, we passed five bipartisan relief 
bills with broad bipartisan support--in some cases, unanimous consent 
support. My, how quickly things changed. After President Biden was 
sworn into office, our friends on the other side of the aisle began to 
view things quite differently. Where Republicans saw progress, 
Democrats saw, as one House Member put it, a ``tremendous opportunity 
to restructure things to fit [their] vision.'' Democrats tried to 
capitalize on the pandemic to check items off their liberal wish list. 
They crafted a nearly $2 trillion bill that included some of the far-
left's highest priorities and tried to brand it as pandemic relief--
backdoor funding for Planned Parenthood, a blank check for mismanaged 
union pension funds, money for ``climate justice''--whatever that is. 
Less than 10 percent of the money for COVID-19 was directly related to 
the pandemic, and less than 1 percent supported vaccination efforts.
  In addition to being wasteful and irresponsible, this level of 
spending has brought with it serious risks. Leading economists who are 
Democrats, like Larry Summers and Steve Rattner, warn this level of 
spending could trigger inflation. Most of the young people who were not 
alive during the seventies, during the tremendous inflation in the 
country, have never experienced anything like that or even like what we 
are experiencing today. But Larry Summers presciently warned that this 
level of Federal spending could ``set off [some] inflationary pressures 
of a kind we have not seen in a generation.'' Still, our Democratic 
colleagues couldn't be persuaded to change course.
  They moved forward with their nearly $2 trillion spending bill, and 
lo and behold, guess what happened. Well, Larry Summers was right, and 
the Federal Reserve that called inflation transitory was wrong. We are 
now experiencing inflation at a level we have not seen in a generation, 
exactly as Larry Summers predicted.
  In October, inflation hit a 31-year high. Consumer prices jumped 6.2 
percent compared with a year ago, making this the highest inflation 
rate we have seen since 1990. If you were to ask the average Texan if 
they were surprised by this news, they would say: Not at all.
  Month after month, families have adjusted their budgets as prices 
ticked up. They are now paying more for everything from gasoline to 
groceries, from cars to Christmas gifts.
  And our Democratic colleagues seem to think the only solution is to 
add more fuel to the fire. They put together a second partisan spending 
spree, which will cost approximately $5 trillion. That has already 
passed the House of Representatives.
  Taxpayers will be disappointed by what they get for so much money: 
tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires--that is in the House 
bill--cuts to healthcare for low-income and uninsured patients, special 
favors for organized labor and union bosses, and taxpayer-subsidized 
electric vehicles for the well-off.
  Our colleagues have worked diligently, I must confess, on this bill 
all year, and this is what they have come up with. Meanwhile, they have 
ignored some of the most basic responsibilities of governing.
  So far, the Senate has not passed any regular appropriations bills. 
There are 12 of them that routinely we pass. They are deliberated in 
the Appropriations Committee, voted on, on a bipartisan basis, and 
ultimately come to the floor and pass as part of the most basic 
function of governing.
  We haven't done that this year. Our colleagues have delayed the 
National Defense Authorization Act, and we are just 1 week away from a 
deadline that Secretary Yellen has given us for a potential debt 
crisis. Our colleagues have failed to do the bare minimum.
  Why on Earth are they pouring every ounce of their time and energy 
into this damaging partisan spending spree when they can't even cover 
the fundamentals of governing?

[[Page S9009]]

  One thing is for sure: It is not because of a lack of opportunities 
to advance bipartisan legislation.
  In fact, over the last year, I have been proud to work with a number 
of our Democratic colleagues on legislation to address some of our 
biggest challenges, so it is not impossible. For example, Senator 
Warner, the Senator from Virginia, and I have partnered on the CHIPS 
for America Act, which became law earlier this year, and now we are 
working together to provide the funds to fund the programs that the 
bill created.
  Then there is Senator Sinema, the senior Senator from Arizona. She 
and I teamed up on legislation to deal with the humanitarian crisis and 
security crisis at our border and to make sure that migrants are 
treated fairly and humanely.
  Senator Padilla, the junior Senator from California, and I have 
worked together on legislation to make big investments in 
infrastructure projects across the country without increasing the 
deficit by a dime.
  Earlier this year, State and local governments received huge sums of 
COVID-19 relief money--more than they could use--and they found 
themselves with more cash than they did eligible expenses. So the idea 
behind our bill was pretty simple: give State and local leaders more 
flexibility to invest in the most critical projects for their 
communities--largely, infrastructure and disaster relief.
  In some places, this still means pandemic-related expenses. We don't 
require them to do anything; we just merely give them an option. Cities 
can continue to use Federal dollars to expand hospital bed capacities, 
increase staffing, or support vaccination campaigns.
  The flexibility granted by this bill wouldn't interfere with any 
plans to bolster the fight against the virus. It simply gives States 
and local governments the ability to invest excess funding in 
infrastructure projects: constructing bridges, extending railways, 
modernizing ports, expanding broadband. This particular bill includes a 
long list of qualifying expenses.
  State and local leaders know their communities best, and they should 
be able to use excess COVID-19 relief funds in a way that makes the 
most sense for their State and their community.
  Senator Padilla and I were happy to work with our colleagues on both 
sides of the aisle to make changes to the bill to gain bipartisan 
support. We added additional qualifying infrastructure projects to 
ensure unique but no less important infrastructure projects in some 
States were eligible. And we placed a cap, working with the White 
House, on the amount of funding that could be used because of the White 
House's concerns that it would take away from necessary COVID-19 
expenses.

  In October, this bill passed the Senate with unanimous support. Now, 
nothing passes this Senate with unanimous support without a lot of hard 
work and a lot of input from a lot of people on both sides of the 
aisle. At a time when something as simple as K-12 curricula are 
controversial, the full Senate supported this legislation. Local 
officials, highway safety groups, and the transportation infrastructure 
construction industry all support this commonsense legislation.
  Leaders from three dozen organizations representing these groups sent 
a letter to House leaders earlier this week encouraging the bill's 
passage. As they said, providing State and local leaders with flexible 
resources is the surest way to see that our Nation's preparedness and 
responsivity continue. And it is important to note that this money had 
already gone out the door, so all of these projects, all of this new 
infrastructure, can be funded without increasing the deficit by a dime.
  As I said, all 100 Senators supported this legislation, and the bill 
currently has more than 120 bipartisan cosponsors in the House. So we 
would encourage our House colleagues to delay no longer and take up and 
pass this commonsense, bipartisan bill.
  So my point is, even in times when we seem irreparably polarized, 
where some colleagues decide it is my way or the highway when it comes 
to trying to pass legislation in a 50-50 Senate--which is, admittedly, 
very hard to do--the truth of the matter is there are real 
opportunities to address some of the biggest challenges facing our 
country in a bipartisan way.
  But none of these opportunities are contained in the Democrats' 
partisan spending bill. This legislation would, as Larry Summers 
predicted, continue to fuel the red-hot inflation that is already 
burning the American people. It will harm our energy security. It will 
give massive tax breaks to the wealthy while increasing taxes on the 
middle class. It cuts funding to our safety-net hospitals that provide 
charity care and care for Medicaid patients. And it will drive our 
national debt to unimaginable heights.
  It will also hand the government control of decisions that should be 
made by families on everything from childcare to healthcare--basically 
hand those decisions to the Federal Government. This is not the type of 
legislation that should be on our Senate's agenda at all, let alone at 
the top of the list.
  There are plenty of opportunities to work together to notch big 
bipartisan wins for the American people. It is a shame, though, that 
our colleagues across the aisle have chosen not to do that and that 
this partisan spending spree has prevented real progress from being 
made in so many other areas.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.