[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 129 (Tuesday, August 2, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3853-S3856]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
INFLATION REDUCTION ACT OF 2022
Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I wanted to come down to the floor and
say a few words about the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which may
be coming to the floor this week.
But before I do, I want to put this reconciliation bill into the
context of where we are as a nation from a political perspective. And
where we are is not a good place to be.
According to the most recent Gallup poll, the approval rate for
Congress is at 16 percent with massive numbers of people disapproving
of the work we are doing here. Further, according to a recent
University of Chicago poll, a strong majority of Americans believe that
the government is ``corrupt and rigged against me.'' That is how people
perceive the government.
Further, according to a recent USA TODAY poll, a very strong majority
no longer believe that the Democratic or Republican Parties are
responding to their needs, and we have to move away from a two-party
system to a multiparty system.
And most frighteningly, there is a growing number of Americans who
actually believe that they have to take up arms--literally become
violent--against their own government in order to accomplish what they
think needs to be done. And, of course, we saw an example of that on
January 6 of last year, with the terrible violence and deaths that
occurred.
All of this speaks to a very dangerous moment for American democracy
and in some ways resembles the conditions that existed in Europe in the
late 1920s and early 1930s, which eventually led to fascism and
totalitarianism.
And I should mention that, as we speak right now, while working
families and the middle class are falling further and further behind
economically, the billionaires in this country, through their super
PACs, are doing everything that they can to elect Members of Congress
who will support the wealthy and powerful against the needs of average
Americans. In both parties, huge amounts of money from billionaires are
coming into campaigns to elect the candidates who will represent the 1
percent.
The people of this country believe, in my view correctly, that we
have a corrupt political system dominated by the wealthy and powerful
and that we have a rigged economy, in which large corporations are
seeing massive increases in their profits while the middle class and
working families of the country continue to see a decline in their
standard of living.
We don't talk about it much here in the Senate or in the corporate
media, but at this moment in American history, we have more income and
wealth inequality than at any time in the last 100 years.
Now, I know we are not allowed to talk about it. It is not
fashionable. We might offend some wealthy campaign contributors. But
today, obscenely, you have got three people who own more wealth than
the bottom half of American society. You have the top 1 percent owning
more wealth than the bottom 92 percent; you have 45 percent of all new
income going to the 1 percent; and you have got CEOs of major
corporations making 350 times more than average workers.
In other words, the people in the middle, working people, struggling;
people on top doing phenomenally well, and the people on the top have
enough money to elect candidates who represent their interests.
And that is the overall context, in my view, in which this
reconciliation bill is coming to the floor.
Now, I have heard from some of my colleagues that the Build Back
Better legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and
supported by some 48 out of 50 Members of the Senate Democratic caucus
and by the President of the United States is dead; it is not going
anywhere; can't get the 50 notes that are needed.
Now, I don't know if that is absolutely true or not, but I do know
that if it is true, it would be a disaster for the working families of
our country who, today, are desperately trying to survive economically.
So let me briefly review what was in the original Build Back Better
plan and contrast it with what is in the so-called Inflation Reduction
Act.
And I should mention that every one of the provisions that I will
briefly be discussing has overwhelming support from the American people
according to poll after poll after poll. In other words, that is what
the American people want.
At a time when the United States has the highest rate of childhood
poverty, shamefully, of almost any major nation on Earth, this
reconciliation bill that will soon be coming to the floor does not
extend the $300-a-month-per-child tax credit that working parents of
this country had last year. That is gone. That is not in this bill.
If you are a parent today, paying $15,000 a year for childcare--which
is what it costs in Vermont and is about the average cost all over
America, $15,000 a year to have a kid in childcare--this bill
completely ignores that crisis and does absolutely nothing for you.
And, of course, unlike the original Build Back Better plan, this bill
does not provide free and universal pre-K.
So if you are a working parent right now, struggling to pay for
childcare, this bill turns its back on you.
At a time when 45 million Americans are struggling to pay student
debt and when hundreds of thousands of bright, young people every year
are unable to afford to go to college and get a higher education, this
bill ignores that reality and does nothing for these young people.
The original Build Back Better plan did not go as far as I wanted it
to, but it would have provided 2 years of free education at a community
college. That is a big deal for millions of young people, but that is
no longer going to happen.
If you are an elderly American--one of the millions of elderly people
trying to survive on your Social Security benefits--and you cannot
afford to go to a dentist and your teeth are rotting in your mouth or
you have no teeth so that you can digest your food or you can't afford
to get a hearing aid to communicate with your kids or grandchildren or
you can't afford the eyeglasses that you need, this bill does nothing,
zero, to expand Medicare to cover these very basic healthcare needs
that the American people want to see covered.
As a result, millions of seniors will continue to have rotten teeth
and lack of dentures, lack of hearing aids or eyeglasses that they
deserve.
Further, at a time when millions of elderly and disabled Americans
would prefer to stay in their homes rather than be forced to go into a
nursing home, this bill does absolutely nothing to address the very,
very serious home healthcare crisis in our country. We will continue to
lack the decent-paid, decent-trained staffing that we need to address
the home healthcare crisis. This bill ignores that issue completely.
I think there is no disagreement on the part of anybody that we have
a major housing crisis in this country. Some 600,000 people are
homeless in America, sleeping out on the streets all across this
country, including a few blocks away from the Capitol.
In addition to that, some 18 million households in our country are
spending an incredible 50 percent of their incomes for housing.
Yep, you guessed it. This bill does nothing to address the major
housing crisis that exists in State after State after State all across
the country. We are ignoring that major issue as well.
One of the criticisms made against the original Build Back Better
plan is that it would be inflationary because it
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would increase Federal spending. That criticism is untrue. Every nickel
spent on that bill would have been fully paid for by increased taxes on
the wealthy and large corporations. Unlike the recently passed
microchip corporate welfare bill that adds $79 billion to the Federal
deficit, unlike the proposed military budget that came out of the
Senate Armed Forces Committee recently, which would increase defense
spending by 45 billion more than the Pentagon even requested, the Build
Back Better plan would not have increased the deficit at all.
Now, let me say a few words about what is in this legislation, a bill
which, in my view, has some good features but also has some very bad
features.
One of the issues that it deals with is prescription drugs, and the
good news is that the reconciliation bill finally begins to lower the
outrageous price of some of the most expensive prescription drugs under
Medicare.
According to the most recent data, if we do nothing, Medicare will
spend about 1.8 trillion over the next decade on prescription drugs,
and our Nation as a whole will spend $5 trillion. And that is not only
outrageous, but it is unsustainable.
But here is the bad news: The prescription drug provisions in this
bill are extremely weak, and it is hard to deny that. They are
extremely complex; they take too long to go into effect; and they go
nowhere near as far as they should to take on the greed of the
pharmaceutical industry, whose actions are literally killing Americans.
One out of five Americans today cannot afford the prescription drugs
their doctors prescribed, and some of them will die.
Under this legislation, Medicare--for the first time in history--
would be able to negotiate with the pharmaceutical industry to lower
drug prices, and that is the good news.
The bad news is that the negotiated prices would not go into effect
until 2026, 4 years from now. So you are not going to see any changes
over the next 4 years.
Further, in 2026, only 10 drugs--10 drugs--would be negotiated, with
more to come in later years. Moreover, with the possible exception of
insulin, this bill does nothing to lower prescription drug prices for
anyone who is not on Medicare.
Under this bill, at a time when the pharmaceutical companies are
making outrageous profits, the drug companies will still be allowed to
charge the American people, by far, the highest prices in the world for
prescription drugs.
I recently--not recently. A couple of years ago, I took a trip with
some midwesterners over the border into Canada where they purchased
insulin for one-tenth of the price that was being charged in the United
States because in Canada, like virtually every other country on Earth,
they negotiate prices with the industry.
If we are really serious about reducing the price of prescription
drugs, something that the American people desperately want us to do, it
is no secret as to how we can achieve that goal. For over 30 years, the
Veterans' Administration--and I am very proud of the legislation that
we just passed a moment ago for the VA--but the VA has been negotiating
with the pharmaceutical industry to lower the price of prescription
drugs. They have been doing it for 30 years--not a new idea.
Moreover, for decades, virtually every other major country on Earth
has been doing exactly the same thing, which is why the price of
prescription drugs in Canada, Mexico, all over Europe is far less
expensive than in the United States. The result of where we are today
is that Medicare pays twice as much for the exact same prescription
drugs as the VA, and Americans, in some cases, may pay 10 times more
for a particular drug as the people of any major country on Earth.
So you have the absurd situation where one government Agency, the VA,
because they have been negotiating drugs--all drugs--for 30 years, pays
half of what Medicare is paying today. In other words, if we are going
to solve this problem when it comes to reducing the price of
prescription drugs under Medicare, we don't have to reinvent the wheel;
we could simply require Medicare to pay no more for prescription drugs
than the VA. If we did that, we could literally cut the price of
prescription drugs under Medicare in half. We could cut the price in
half in a matter of months, not years.
In February, I introduced legislation with Senator Klobuchar that
would do exactly that. Under that legislation, we could save Medicare
$900 billion over the next decade. That is nine times more savings than
the rather weak negotiation provisions in this bill.
By the way, with those enormous savings, we could expand Medicare to
provide comprehensive dental, vision, and hearing benefits to every
senior in America. It could be used, furthermore, to lower the Medicare
eligibility age to at least 60, and it could be used to extend the
solvency of Medicare. That is what we could do with those savings that
we are not achieving under this proposed bill.
What are the other prescription drug provisions in the reconciliation
bill? Well, under this legislation, pharmaceutical companies would
essentially be prohibited from increasing prescription drug prices
above inflation pegged to the year 2021.
Should we be making sure that pharmaceutical companies cannot
increase their prices above general inflation? Yes. But let us be
clear. This provision would lock in all of the extraordinary price
increases the pharmaceutical industry has made in recent years and
would do nothing to lower those outrageously high prices. It would
control costs in the future, limiting what the industry could charge,
but it would not lower prices.
Under this legislation, out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for
seniors would be capped at $2,000 a year, and that is a good benefit
which will benefit up to 2 million seniors who currently pay over
$2,000 a year for prescription drugs, often people who are dealing with
cancer and with other very serious illnesses that require expensive
drugs. But the $25 billion cost of that provision will not be paid for
by the pharmaceutical industry, which is making recordbreaking profits.
In other words, we are going to cap the price. Guess who is paying for
it. You got it. It will be paid for by increased premiums on virtually
every senior citizen in America, although there is a provision to
smooth out those premium increases.
The current reconciliation bill that we are looking at would also
provide free vaccines for seniors--the only population for which
vaccines are not already free--and this is a good thing, something we
should have done a long time ago.
Finally, in terms of prescription drugs, it looks like the
reconciliation bill will cap copays for insulin at $35 a month, which
is a good step forward for people with health insurance but will do
nothing to lower the cost of insulin for the 1.6 million diabetics who
are currently uninsured and, in fact, need our help the most.
So the bill does some things in terms of prescription drugs but
nowhere near enough given the crisis that we face.
In terms of the Affordable Care Act, this legislation will extend
subsidies for some 13 million Americans who have private health
insurance plans as a result of the Affordable Care Act, and they will
be extended over the next 3 years. Without this provision, millions of
Americans would see their premiums skyrocket, and some 3 million
Americans could lose their healthcare altogether.
So this is a good provision, but let us not fool ourselves. The $64
billion cost of this provision will go directly into the pockets of
private health insurance companies that made over $60 billion in
profits last year and paid their executives exorbitant compensation
packages. It would also do nothing to help the more than 70 million
Americans today who are uninsured or underinsured. There are the
estimates out there now that some 60,000 people in our country die
every year because they don't get to a doctor when they should because
they are uninsured or underinsured.
So this bill does nothing--absolutely nothing--to reform a
dysfunctional, broken healthcare system which is based on the greed of
the insurance industry. It does nothing to address the fundamental
crisis of the United States paying by far the highest prices in the
world for healthcare, let alone the 70 million of us who are uninsured
or underinsured. It doesn't even touch that.
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Madam President, let me say a word about climate change and what this
bill does and does not do.
This legislation provides $370 billion over the next decade to combat
climate change and to invest in so-called energy security programs. The
good news is that if this legislation were to be signed into law, it
would provide far more funding for energy efficiency and sustainable
energy than has ever been invested by the government before. That is
the good news. This is, however, substantially lower than the $555
billion in the original Build Back Better plan, which understood that
climate change is an existential threat to this planet, and it must be
addressed in an extremely bold way if we are going to leave a country
and world in which our kids and grandchildren can thrive.
But this legislation does provide serious funding for wind, solar,
batteries, heat pumps, electric vehicles, energy-efficient appliances,
and low-income communities that have borne the brunt of climate change.
That is the good news. But the very bad news that very few people in
the media or in Congress want to talk about is that this proposed
legislation includes a huge giveaway to the fossil fuel industry, both
in the reconciliation bill itself and the side deal that was just made
public yesterday.
Under this legislation, the fossil fuel industry will receive
billions of dollars in new tax breaks and subsidies over the next 10
years on top of the $15 billion in tax breaks and corporate welfare
they are already receiving.
In my view, if we are going to make our planet healthy and habitable
for future generations, we cannot provide billions of dollars in new
tax breaks to the very same fossil fuel companies that are currently
destroying the planet. Think about it. At a time when the scientists
all over the world tell us that we have to break our dependence on
fossil fuel, this legislation provides billions in new tax breaks to
fossil fuel companies. In my view, instead of giving them more tax
breaks, we should end all of the massive corporate welfare that the
fossil fuel industry already enjoys.
Under this legislation, up to 60 million acres of public waters must
be offered up for sale each and every year to the oil and gas industry
before the Federal Government could approve any new offshore wind
development. To put that into perspective, 60 million acres is the size
of the State of Michigan. That is a lot of territory.
Let me read to you the headline that appeared in a July 29 article in
Bloomberg: ``Exxon . . . Loves What Manchin Did for Big Oil in $370
Billion Deal.'' According to Bloomberg, the CEO of ExxonMobil called
the reconciliation bill ``a step in the right direction'' and was
``pleased'' with a comprehensive set of solutions included in this
proposed legislation.
Barron's recently reported that ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Occidental
Petroleum are just a few of the fossil fuel companies that could
benefit the most under this bill.
Now, if the CEO of ExxonMobil--a company that has done as much as any
entity to destroy this planet--is ``pleased'' with this bill, then I
think all of us should have some very deep concerns about what is in
this legislation.
Further, under this bill, up to 2 million acres of public lands must
be offered up for sale each and every year to the oil and gas industry
before leases can move forward for any new energy development on public
lands. In total, this bill would offer the fossil fuel industry up to
700 million acres of public lands and waters, going to oil and gas
drilling over the next decade--far more than the oil and gas industry
could possibly use.
That is not all. The fossil fuel industry will not just benefit from
the provisions in the reconciliation bill; a deal has also been reached
to make it easier for the fossil fuel industry to receive permits for
their oil and gas projects. This deal would approve the $6.6 billion
Mountain Valley Pipeline--a fracked gas pipeline that would span 303
miles from West Virginia to Virginia and potentially on to North
Carolina. This is a pipeline that would generate emissions equivalent
to those released by 37 coal plants or by over 27 million cars each and
every year. It seems to be a very strange way to combat climate change.
Let me quote a statement from 350.org, one of the leading
environmental groups in the country on this subject. They say:
This latest bill has a few good pieces: lengthening the tax
credits for green energy projects from two to ten years to
ensure steady growth in the wind and solar industry;
providing incentives for consumers to buy electric vehicles;
and installing heat pumps to make green energy use more
widespread. However, the amount of giveaways to the fossil
fuel industry . . . is so wide in scope, that it turns all
the gains in addressing the climate crisis into a moot point.
That is from 350.org.
Here is what the Center for Biological Diversity had to say on this
bill:
This is a climate suicide pact. It's self-defeating to
handcuff renewable energy development to massive new oil and
gas extraction. The new leasing required in this bill will
fan the flames of the climate disasters torching our country,
and it's a slap in the face to the communities fighting to
protect themselves from filthy fossil fuels.
That is from the Center for Biological Diversity.
In my view, we have to do everything possible to take on the greed of
the fossil fuel industry, not give billions of dollars in corporate
welfare to an industry whose emissions are causing massive damage today
and will only make this situation worse in the future.
In the reconciliation bill, there is a provision regarding tax
reform. Let me say a word on that.
At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, at a time of
soaring corporate profits, at a time in which we have a broken tax
system, riddled with all kinds of loopholes for the rich and the
powerful, this bill makes a few modest changes to reform the Tax Code.
Under this bill, corporations will be required to pay a minimum tax
of 15 percent. That is the good news. The American people are sick and
tired of companies like AT&T, Federal Express, and Nike making billions
of dollars in profit in a given year and paying nothing--zero--in
Federal income tax. This provision has been estimated to raise over
$300 billion over the next decade.
Further, under this bill, the IRS will finally begin to receive the
funding that it needs to audit wealthy tax cheats. Each and every year,
the top 1 percent are able to avoid paying $160 billion in taxes that
they legally owe because the IRS does not have the resources and the
staffing they need to conduct audits of the extremely wealthy. This
bill begins to change that.
This bill would also make a very modest change to the so-called
carried interest loophole that has allowed billionaire hedge fund
managers on Wall Street to pay a lower tax rate than a nurse, teacher,
or firefighter.
But the bad news is that, while there are some positive aspects for
the tax provisions in this bill, this bill does nothing to repeal the
Trump tax breaks that went to the very wealthy and large corporations.
Trump's 2017 tax bill provided over $1 trillion in tax breaks to the
top 1 percent and large corporations. In fact, 83 percent of the
benefits of the Trump tax law are going to the top 1 percent--83
percent of the benefits--and this bill repeals none of those benefits.
They remain in existence.
Let us not forget that it is very likely that Congress will be doing
a so-called tax extenders bill at the end of the year that could
provide corporations with up to $400 billion over the next decade in
new tax breaks. If that occurs, that would more than offset the $313
billion in corporate revenue included in this bill.
So that is where we are today. We have legislation which, unlike the
original Build Back Better plan, ignores the needs of the working
families of our country in childcare, pre-K, the expansion of Medicare,
affordable housing, home healthcare, higher education, and many, many
other desperate needs that families all across this country are facing.
This is legislation which, at a time of massive profits for the
pharmaceutical industry--and we pay, by far, the highest prices in the
world for prescription drugs--takes some very modest steps to lower or
control the price of medicine.
This is legislation which has some good and important provisions
pertaining to energy efficiency and sustainable energy but, at the same
time,
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provides massive giveaways to the fossil fuel industry, whose emissions
are destroying the planet.
This is legislation which appropriately ends the absurdity of large,
profitable corporations paying nothing in Federal income tax but, at
the same time, leaves intact virtually all of Trump's tax breaks for
the wealthy and large corporations.
This more than 700-page bill, after months of secret negotiations,
became public late last week. A 700-page bill, after months of secret
negotiations, was made public last week. In my view, now is the time
for every Member of the Senate to study this bill thoroughly and to
come up with amendments and suggestions as to how we can improve it. I
look forward to being part of that process and working with my
colleagues to make that happen.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
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