[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 113 (Monday, July 11, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Page S3188]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Inflation

  Now, Madam President, on an entirely different matter, ``people have 
literally become poorer, by any concept, over the last year . . . It 
should not be a mystery why people are worried.''
  That was top liberal economist Jason Furman last month, and he was 
right on both counts.
  Democrats' reckless inflationary spending has already slapped what 
amounts to a gigantic tax hike on working American families. One recent 
poll found more than 90 percent of Americans said they are concerned 
about inflation; 70 percent said they are very concerned. Consumer 
confidence was at a near decade low, and fewer than one in three 
Americans approves of what President Biden is doing about it.
  But, apparently, when Washington Democrats survey this dismal scene, 
they see a mandate for yet another massive trillion-dollar tax hike. I 
am not making this up. Democrats created a runaway inflationary tax 
hike with their reckless spending last year, 2021, and now they want to 
come after the American people a second time with a huge, new tax hike.
  In other words, Democrats have already picked the American people's 
pockets once, and now their solution is to pick your pockets a second 
time--first with inflation and now with tax hikes.
  The policies that are being floated are ruinous--the worst possible 
mix to thrust onto a country that is already teetering on the brink of 
recession. We are hearing proposals for a gigantic tax hike on small 
businesses, so-called passthroughs. Well, one think tank has found that 
about 95 percent of all American businesses are passthroughs. About 
three-quarters of all of the small-scale employers in the Nation are 
categorized this way: 95 percent of American businesses are 
passthroughs.
  This would hammer all kinds of States. Just to pick one, for example, 
nearly half of all of the employment in the entire State of West 
Virginia is at passthrough firms. Half of the people working in West 
Virginia work for passthrough firms--half of all of the jobs in the 
State of West Virginia. And these are the firms that Democrats want to 
hammer with gigantic tax hikes?
  But the bad ideas don't stop there. Exactly as the war in Europe is 
reteaching Americans and our allies about energy independence, 
Democrats are floating a giant, new tax specifically on natural gas, 
which they call a methane fee. One analysis has found this one policy 
would bleed between $40 and $66 billion out of our country every year, 
and you had better believe that these artificially higher energy costs 
will get passed right along to consumers.
  This is what Democrats want to do in States like West Virginia--giant 
tax hikes on small businesses and fossil fuels? It is like they are not 
content watching the recessionary warning signs and are trying to make 
absolutely sure that we get a recession--a recession--on their watch.
  Now, it is not as though there is any shortage of real, important 
work Congress could and should be tackling on a bipartisan basis 
instead of these awful ideas, but this party-line scheming is going to 
crowd that out.
  For example, Democrats moving ahead and trying to jam the Senate and 
the country with a party-line tax hike through reconciliation will 
certainly crowd out our ability to process the bipartisan USICA bill 
aimed at competing with China. Our side cannot agree to frantically 
steamroll through delicate bipartisan talks in order to meet an 
artificial timeline so our Democratic colleagues can clear the decks to 
ram through a party-line tax hike.
  A business owner couldn't bargain in good faith with a customer who 
had already announced he plans to rob the store. We can't negotiate the 
finer points of a nuanced economic policy in a bipartisan way only for 
Democrats to immediately turn around and redesign the entire economy 
along pure party lines. Of course, that can't work. And what about the 
other governing priorities that Democrats are neglecting?

  What about the National Defense Authorization Act? The House is 
advancing their version of this important legislation this week. Will 
Senate Democrats neglect the NDAA like they did last year? That would 
say a lot about their actual resolve to compete with China.
  Now is a terrible, terrible time to paralyze the Senate by trying to 
tax us into recession on a partisan basis.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority whip.