[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 133 (Saturday, August 6, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4055-S4057]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    INFLATION REDUCTION ACT OF 2022

  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, the United States has done some good, 
important, even historic work this week. On Tuesday, we passed the PACT 
Act, expanding VA healthcare to an estimated 3.5 million veterans. 
Their service to our Nation exposed them to potentially deadly toxic 
chemicals from Agent Orange in the Vietnam conflict to toxic burn pits, 
which were found to be ubiquitous in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  It took too long: 12 years. Toxic exposed veterans and family members 
had to stand on the steps of the Capitol, literally camped out for 5 
days and nights to remind us that the veterans suffering from toxic 
exposure deserve care as surely as veterans injured by bullets and 
bombs.
  But in the end, thank goodness, we did the right thing. The vote to 
pass the PACT Act was 86 to 11--86 votes in a 50-50 Democratic/
Republican Chamber. It was a remarkable, bipartisan rollcall.
  And then we made history this week when the Senate voted to ratify 
the entry of Finland and Sweden to NATO. Vladimir Putin gambled that 
Russia could seize Ukraine in just a few days, could use his victory to 
shatter NATO's unity and to deepen divides around the world.
  Vladimir Putin, again, was dead wrong. NATO is more united, larger, 
and more powerful than ever, while Vladimir Putin has become an 
international pariah. Russia's military is bogged down in Ukraine, 
suffering heavy losses. And the Russian economy is staggering under the 
weight of global sanctions imposed by the freedom-loving nations of the 
world against Russia.
  The Senate vote in favor of enlarging NATO to include Sweden and 
Finland was 95 to 1--95 votes in favor of it in a body that is divided 
equally, 50-50. Two major achievements in just 2 days, both with huge 
bipartisan majorities. That is proof for the doubters that the Senate 
can work together when the need is urgent and the solutions are just.
  Now we are debating another historic plan that should have the 
support of both parties. I listen to the speeches each day on the floor 
of the Senate. And every day our Republican colleagues stand on the 
floor and say it is about time we did something about inflation. They 
know that is exactly the way the American families feel--and I feel, as 
well. And then, sadly, when given a chance, as they will be in just a 
few minutes, my Republican friends try to stop legislation that will 
lower the cost and give American families a break on their cost of 
living. All the speeches notwithstanding, they refuse to vote for a 
provision which will actually lower families' living costs.
  They oppose cutting taxes for families. They oppose banning price 
gouging by oil companies. They oppose cutting healthcare premiums. They 
oppose extending the Child Tax Credits. They oppose lowering 
prescription drug prices. But we are going to give them another chance 
to do the right thing.
  They are going to have a chance to actually lower some of those big 
ticket costs which they gave all their speeches about and--listen to 
this bonus--reduce the deficit at the same time. Yes, the Democrats 
have a proposal which will reduce our national debt by $300 billion. 
Our plan is called the Inflation Reduction Act. It does exactly what it 
says and even more.

  The Inflation Reduction Act will cut energy costs, now and in the 
future, by deploying American-made clean energy and by making the 
biggest investment to battle the climate crisis in U.S. history.
  You can't miss on the news the terrible things that have happened in 
the Commonwealth of Kentucky in the last week. Horrible things. Thirty-
seven people--at least 37 people--have lost their lives with the 
flooding in that State. They go to these remote, rural villages. It 
just breaks your heart to look at the devastation.
  And the reporters go to families still, I guess, trying to get back 
on their feet, trying to imagine tomorrow and do these interviews. And 
many times, the people are clearly in pain and distraught over their 
personal losses.
  There was one man I remember yesterday, particularly. He did not 
appear to be the kind of person who spends a lot of time thinking about 
Congressional issues or even great political issues. He was a fellow, a 
hardworking fellow, who just lost his home. And you know what he said? 
He said: This is climate change; what you are looking at here is 
climate change. I have lived in this town for 40 years. And I have 
never seen anything like that. And I can't imagine if it comes again.
  For him to use the words ``climate change'' really was an eye opener 
for me, because it means that he is sensitized to the reality that we 
face in this world. Extreme weather has become the norm in our country, 
whether it is an extreme drought, an extreme flooding situation, more 
tornadoes than ever at different times of the year. The list goes on 
and on.
  Some people think it is just God being restless. I think there is 
more to it. I think we--those of us who inhabit

[[Page S4056]]

this planet Earth--bear some responsibility.
  The question is, will we give speeches, will we lament these extreme 
weather events, or will do something? That is why this bill that is 
coming up today, starting today, subject to amendment, is so important. 
We can't allow our energy and national security to be dictated by some 
foreign power or some foreign leader like Vladimir Putin or anyone else 
who doesn't share America's national interest.
  The Inflation Reduction Act, which is coming before us, invests in 
clean, new American energy sources so that our future can be determined 
by American ingenuity, not by some foreign cartel or some Kremlin 
kleptocrat.
  Earlier today, the Senator from Kentucky came to the floor and talked 
about the EPA police checking on whether people are buying certain 
products or not buying other products. That isn't what this bill is 
about at all. Incentives are there. And I--just from a family point of 
view--am going to take a look at it. Is it time for my family to buy a 
heat pump? I will take a look and see. Tax credits, tax incentives 
could be an incentive for me to make that decision with my family and 
my wife. And that is all that we are offering--incentives for people to 
choose the right things, the environmentally smart things to deal with 
climate change.
  The more energy solutions we discover, the cheaper our energy bills 
will be. Importantly, the Inflation Reduction Act will enable the 
United States--listen to this--to cut greenhouse gas emissions by an 
estimated 40 percent by the year 2030.
  We have a lot of young pages here who come and work in the summer. We 
are glad to have them. They brighten up the place, and their energy is 
a sight to behold. They probably listen to this debate and wonder if 
these graying politicians, these Senators and Congressman, really do 
care about the planet that they are going to be living on, raising 
their own families, building their own futures. Well, this bill is an 
indication we do care. And to reduce greenhouse gas emissions not only 
does the right thing for America, it sets an example for the world. 
Despite all the excuses, there is no excuse for ignoring climate 
change, as that poor fellow down in Kentucky made obvious.
  For anyone who still says global warming is a hoax--and I guess there 
are a handful of those folks left--or admits that it is real and says 
we just can't afford to fix it, know this: The costs of ignoring the 
climate crisis are far greater than dealing with it.
  A recent analysis by the Office of Management and Budget warns, if 
left unchecked, climate change could reduce our Nation's gross domestic 
product by 10 percent and cost Americans $2 trillion a year by the end 
of the century--$2 trillion in the production of goods and services.
  To put that in perspective, that is about a third of the entire U.S. 
budget this year. And in case you are dismissing these warnings because 
they happen to come from a Democrat or from the Biden administration, 
maybe you should listen to Deloitte--a well-known accounting firming in 
this country--their center for sustainable management. They released a 
report in May estimating that left unchecked, climate change will cost 
the global economy $178 trillion for the next 50 years. If rising sea 
levels don't swamp us, rising costs of ignoring climate disasters very 
well may.
  The Inflation Reduction Act will enable us to make reasonable changes 
now that will pay for themselves many times over. It will also cut 
families' healthcare costs in four important ways. First, we extend the 
enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies for 13 million Americans for 3 
more years.
  I was so surprised to read recently that there are still 8 million 
Americans uninsured. There should be none. And our goal is none. But we 
made such dramatic progress cutting by a third to a half the number of 
people uninsured since the passage of the Affordable Care Act.
  Have you ever had a young child in your family who was sick and you 
worried because you had no health insurance as to whether they would be 
seen by the right doctor, the right hospital? I went through it. It 
happened right after our first child was born. We didn't have health 
insurance. I never felt more vulnerable, and I never had an emptier 
feeling when it came to being a father caring for his child as to not 
have health insurance and worrying about that. I don't think any family 
should ever have to go through that. It is an experience I will never 
forget.
  Second, our plan allows Medicare to finally negotiate fair prices for 
prescription drugs. I listened to the Republican leader on the floor 
this morning talking about what a terrible idea that is.
  Well, I just want to suggest to him, we have been doing that at the 
Veterans' Administration for years. They have been negotiating 
pharmaceutical prices so that our veterans get affordable drugs and 
taxpayers get a break and don't have to subsidize them. That, to me, is 
just common sense, and it is humane. The notion that we are going to 
extend that to Medicare recipients is not a radical idea. It involves 
something that we think is fundamental to the free market economy: 
competition. If these pharmaceutical companies want to sell their drugs 
to the Medicare recipients, we say to them, let's negotiate, on a 
certain number of those drugs, reasonable prices.
  Now, some people say that is too much government, government stepping 
in there and trying to establish the prices that will be paid for these 
pharmaceuticals.
  Well, I would say to the same pharmaceutical companies that are 
raising these objections: Look what you are doing today in Canada. You 
take exactly the same drug made here in the United States, sold to 
Americans at an inflated price, and sell it at a deep discount to 
people living in Canada. Why do you do it? Is it out of the kindness of 
your heart? No. The Canadian Government stood up and said you are not 
going to gouge Canadian families. Yes, we would like to have your 
pharmaceuticals and, yes, we will put them in our formulary, but you 
cannot dictate the prices to us. We are going to negotiate those 
prices. And the pharmaceutical companies sat down and did it--not just 
in Canada but in Europe.
  When you say the same thing in the United States, that they treat 
Americans and those under Medicare the way they treat Canadians, you 
have the Senator from Kentucky coming to the floor and calling it a 
college sophomore socialist answer. I don't think so. I think it is 
just common sense.
  These pharmaceutical companies are some of the most profitable 
companies in the United States year in and year out. They make money 
hand over fist. And I am glad they do, in many respects, because they 
can invest that money in the next generation of drugs.
  You say to yourself: Wait a minute. If you are going to give them 
less for the product, they will have less for research. Not necessarily 
because there is something that you ought to remember that I think is 
very important. I want to make sure I get these figures right. The big 
pharmaceutical companies today spend more on advertising than on 
research.
  Let me give you a couple of examples. Bayer, one of the makers of 
Xarelto--you have heard that one, haven't you, on TV--spent $18 billion 
on sales and marketing, $18 billion. How much did they spend on 
research for new drugs and new products? Eight billion. More than twice 
as much of the research budget went to be spent on marketing and 
television advertising.
  Incidentally, the United States is only one of two nations in the 
world that allows direct-to-consumer drug advertising. The other one is 
New Zealand, if you can imagine. They put all this money on television 
advertising drugs like Xarelto. Why? So that people say: Wait a minute. 
Maybe that is what I have needed all along. I have to write down that 
name. How do you spell ``Xarelto?'' They get it right, finally, because 
ads keep coming on hour after hour on television, and they go to the 
doctor and say: I need Xarelto.
  The doctor may have second thoughts about whether that is a good 
drug, but he doesn't have a lot of time for each patient. He is not 
going to debate his customers. He ends up writing a script for a high-
priced drug like Xarelto, and Bayer makes more money.
  They are not the only ones. Johnson & Johnson--that is a pretty well-
known company. They spent $22 billion on sales and marketing. How much, 
if they spent $22 billion on sales and marketing, did they spend on 
research? Twelve--twelve. Do you see a pattern here?

[[Page S4057]]

  To be fair, not all of pharma's big bucks go into TV ads. Over the 
past 5 years, the 14 largest drug corporations spent more on stock 
buybacks lining the pockets of their CEOs than on R&D. Remember what I 
just said. They took their profits, turned them into stock buybacks so 
that the wealthiest people in America got a better balance sheet. Money 
that could have gone into research for new drugs, they diverted into 
profit-taking. So this notion about saying that Medicare should be able 
to negotiate more competitive and fairly priced drugs is not 
unreasonable, and it isn't going to stop research. We know that.
  Can I add one other element to this? Each of these pharmaceutical 
companies has a benefactor, a major benefactor. Think of it. It is an 
Agency that generates research by the billions each year, and the 
product of that research--which is a suggestion for new drugs, for 
example--is literally given to the pharmaceutical industry to use and 
make a profit. What is that Agency? The National Institutes of Health. 
It does the basic research by the Federal Government, paid for by 
American taxpayers--billions of dollars--and makes it available to 
pharmaceutical companies to develop the next generations of drugs. That 
is as it should be. But this notion that the pharmaceutical companies 
are just making it on their own and their own skills goes way beyond 
the obvious. NIH is helping very much.
  We want to cut healthcare costs to make sure as well that seniors cap 
their out-of-pocket prescription drug costs at $2,000 a year, and 
$2,000 a year is still a sacrifice for many seniors, but it is a 
reasonable amount. We know what is happening now. Many seniors have 
drugs that they are supposed to be taking. They can't afford to fill 
the prescriptions or they take half the dose when they should be taking 
a full dosage. That is the reality of the prescription drug pricing in 
America.
  Is it a serious problem? Well, just ask Blue Cross Blue Shield in 
Chicago, and I have: What is the impact of these inflated prescription 
drug prices on healthcare premiums? Blue Cross Blue Shield said to me 
that it is the No. 1 driver of increased health insurance premium 
costs, the cost of prescription drugs.
  So when we start bringing down these costs, we are also going to 
create a situation where we have less incentive to increase premiums 
for health insurance.
  Fourth, we penalize drug companies if they try to increase the price 
of the drug more than the rate of inflation. That was another on the 
list of sophomore in college socialist ideas, according to the 
Republican leader on the floor this morning. Well, I think he is wrong. 
We know what happens to the price of these drugs year in and year out. 
They just don't go up with the cost of inflation, they go up by 
multiples that reach the point people can't afford to pay it. That has 
to come to an end.
  Five years ago, Republicans used this same process we are using 
called reconciliation to pass a nearly $2 trillion tax bill that 
overwhelmingly benefited big corporations and the wealthiest people in 
America, and they put the whole boondoggle on the credit card. It was 
unpaid for--tax cuts unpaid for. They claimed their tax cuts would pay 
for themselves. Dynamic scoring, they called it. Instead, they blew up 
the national debt.
  Our plan is paid for, and here is the bottom line: No one in 
America--no one earning less than $400,000 a year--is seeing any 
increase in their taxes. Now, the Republicans say: Well, if you raise 
taxes on the wealthiest people, it is going to hurt the poorest people. 
When it gets right down to it, many of these corporations are extremely 
profitable--a billion dollars a year in profits and pay no Federal 
taxes. What is wrong with this picture?
  The average American family is paying their taxes, as the law 
requires, and yet these corporations have found an escape hatch to 
avoid paying any taxes whatsoever. If they pay any taxes, they are 
going to hurt the poor families. The poor families are doing their part 
to pay their taxes. It is time these wealthy individuals and 
corporations did the same.

  Instead of adding to the national debt, as our Republican colleagues 
did with their tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, our proposal 
that we will vote on today will reduce the deficit by $300 billion. 
That is on top of the $1.7 trillion we have already cut from the 
deficit this year. Cutting the deficit reduces inflation pressure in 
the long run. In the short term, we are fighting inflation by lowering 
the cost of energy and healthcare, two of the biggest ticket items in 
family budgets.
  And lastly, Senator McConnell and our Republican colleagues seem to 
have developed a great respect for the economic wisdom of former 
Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. I can't tell you how many times 
Senator McConnell has mentioned Larry Summers' name as if he is the 
great leader of all the great thinkers in the economics field in 
America. Let me tell you what Mr. Summers happens to say about our plan 
that we are going to vote for today and that all the Republicans are 
going to oppose. He said:

       This bill is fighting inflation.

  He also said:

       This is an easy bill to get behind.

  I didn't hear that this morning when Senator McConnell came to the 
floor and talked about his view of this bill. Larry Summers was his 
expert previously. Now he is ignoring when Summers says we ought to 
vote for this bill to reduce inflation.
  Do our Republican friends really want to tame inflation and help 
families with energy and healthcare or just come to the floor and 
complain? That is the choice they have. If they want to help, we have a 
plan. It is fair; it is paid for; it fights inflation; and it lowers 
the deficit. Wouldn't it be great if they would join us in a bipartisan 
effort to pass this at this moment in history? It is what America is 
waiting for and looking for. I hope that a number of Republicans will 
surprise us and join us.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.

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