[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.

[[Page S3855]]

  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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