[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 133 (Saturday, August 6, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4057-S4059]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    INFLATION REDUCTION ACT OF 2022

  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, it is good to be back in the Senate. 
Like a number of my colleagues, after dodging the virus for 2 years, it 
finally caught up with me last weekend. I spent a week in quarantine 
and, fortunately, experienced only mild symptoms. I think that is 
because I was fully vaccinated and boosted and I was glad to have the 
help of modern science on my side.
  There is never a good time to be away from our work here in the 
Senate, but we all have a responsibility to keep those around us safe 
as well, no matter how inconvenient. Unfortunately, there are reports 
that our friends across the aisle may be intentionally disregarding 
that responsibility. I am deeply concerned by published reports that 
our Democratic colleagues have adopted a ``don't test, don't tell'' 
policy to ensure full attendance today.
  Allegedly, they are more concerned about ramming through Senator 
Manchin's tax hike than following CDC guidelines to protect not only 
each other but the staff members, the Capitol Police, custodial staff, 
food service workers, and countless others who keep this institution 
running. These folks could have any number of other health conditions 
that could lead to more severe COVID experiences than, for example, I 
had or they could be caregivers for young children or elderly relatives 
who have a high risk of serious illness.
  I sincerely hope these reports are not true. I hope our Democratic 
colleagues are not selfish enough to put so many people at risk in 
order to pass this massive tax-and-spending spree. If any of our 
colleagues are experiencing COVID symptoms, they should do what I did. 
They should get tested, period.
  We know that as soon as this evening, the Senate is expected to vote 
on Senator Manchin's and Senator Schumer's massive tax hike on middle-
class families. You can call it the Manchin-Schumer tax hike of 2022. 
It sprung to life, unbeknownst, I believe, to virtually all the 
Democratic Senators, except for Senator Manchin and Senator Schumer. 
And no one has seen what we will purportedly be voting on later today, 
even our Democratic colleagues. No one has seen the final product. Once 
the so-called Byrd bath has

[[Page S4058]]

been undertaken by the Parliamentarian, this will be a substitute bill 
that Senator Schumer will lay down, but nobody has seen it.
  When the senior Senator from West Virginia announced this bill last 
week--or this agreement--every Republican was shocked and, from my 
view, most Democrats were as well. My private conversations with many 
of my Democratic colleagues said: Boy, that does not look good to be 
working so closely together on a bipartisan bill only to spring this on 
everybody by surprise. It looks like they were trying to pull a fast 
one. After all, Senator Manchin did put the kibosh on the reckless tax-
and-spending spree bill last year, and he doubled down on his 
opposition just a few weeks ago.
  Privately, his Democratic colleagues assured me this was not 
happening. But then the Senator from West Virginia has engaged in a 
gigantic Olympic-worthy flip-flop. Senator Manchin will tell you this 
bill is completely different from ``Build Back Broke,'' but it is not.
  We should take a look at some of the elements of this legislation. 
``Build Back Broke'' was a roundup of expensive, unnecessary damaging 
policies, including job-killing tax hikes, which would leave hard-
working American families without a way to earn a paycheck, Green New 
Deal climate policies that would hurt our energy security and drive 
energy costs through the roof, taxpayer subsidies for wealthy people 
buying expensive cars and SUVs.
  I was listening to the majority whip, the Senator from Illinois, 
talking about these businesses that are making too much money and so 
they need to pay more in taxes. That is what I have come to expect from 
our Democratic colleagues. They are kind of a ``Robin Hood'' party--
take from the rich, give to the poor. Except here, this is a reverse 
Robin Hood. They are taking from middle-class families who can't afford 
to buy expensive electric vehicles and giving a tax subsidy to wealthy 
people who can afford to buy them but are helped with the $7,500 
taxpayer subsidy. So you might call that a reverse Robin Hood.
  Then they want to supersize the Internal Revenue Service with even 
more manpower and authority to track everyday American people and 
perform, I presume, many, many more audits, not just on the rich and 
famous but also on middle-class Americans.
  And then there are the special handouts to powerful friends of the 
Democratic Party. This isn't the type of legislation that will bring 
our economy roaring back to life or cool inflation. In fact, that is 
the first place that this bill is misrepresented. They are calling it 
the Inflation Reduction Act, but nobody believes that, in the near 
term, it is going to have a single impact, at all, on inflation.
  That is what Penn Wharton said. For the next 2 years, they said, it 
may actually make inflation worse, but it is a negligible amount. But 
the one thing we are sure of is that it sure won't go down.
  So it is not an ``inflation reduction act.'' It is really an insult 
to the intelligence of the American people to think that you can spend 
this money and you can tax individuals and businesses during a 
recession--something everybody from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama, to 
Chuck Schumer, to Joe Manchin has said you don't do, which is raise 
taxes during a recession--but that is exactly what this bill does.
  Higher taxes, bigger government, more inflation, and fewer jobs--this 
is a bill whose time has not come. No wonder when this bill was 
originally proposed as Build Back Better, Senator Manchin opposed the 
bill.
  So let's see what he and Senator Schumer wrote in secret behind 
closed doors and then sprung on the American people. And, again, we 
haven't even seen the final product yet, and yet Senator Schumer said 
we are going to stay in session until it passes.
  Well, it is going to have to take all 50 votes of Democratic Senators 
and the vote of the Vice President to do that, because not one single 
Senator on this side of the aisle was consulted, was asked to work on a 
bipartisan basis to come up with a product that could be supported 
across the aisle.
  This will be a purely partisan exercise, after I think we have had a 
pretty good run of bipartisan cooperation, and I have been proud to be 
a part of that. But this is a complete reversal of sort of the spirit 
of bipartisan cooperation that we have seen, frankly, all summer long, 
which has produced some pretty good legislation.
  Well, there are tax hikes that will leave hard-working Americans 
poorer. Not only will inflation be roughly 9 percent, which it is 
today--meaning that for every $100 you earn, you are only going to get 
$91 in purchasing power--in addition to that, the Joint Committee on 
Taxation said the impact of this bill will mean that individuals 
earning as little as $10,000 a year will see an increase in their tax 
burden, because you can't spend this much money, you can't tax this 
many people without it having some trickle-down effect on taxpayers, 
certainly those who earn less than $400,000, which was President 
Biden's pledge. And I heard the majority leader say that again and, I 
believe, the majority whip, too, but this is not true.
  The Joint Committee on Taxation is the entity here--nonpartisan 
entity--which provides the final word on those issues. So 
notwithstanding the denials of the majority leader and the majority 
whip and others, the Joint Committee on Taxation said that taxpayers 
earning as little as $10,000 will see their taxes go up--maybe not 
their income tax, but they will be poorer as a result of this bill.
  Again, part of that is because, in addition to inflation, in addition 
to additional tax burden, you are going to be asking them to pay taxes 
to subsidize wealthy people to buy electric vehicles or to subsidize 
people's health insurance, even though they make well above the 400 
percent of poverty cap that was initially part of ObamaCare, the 
Affordable Care Act. That cap has been lifted now as well.
  We will see what the final product looks like, but the earlier 
provision showed that people earning up to as much as 750 percent of 
poverty would then receive taxpayer subsidies for their health 
insurance.
  Well, Senator Manchin and Senator Schumer may have slapped a new name 
on Build Back Better or ``Build Back Broke,'' but all of the essential 
elements are still there: tax hikes on families, the Green New Deal, 
massive electric vehicle subsidies.
  Oh, and here is another thing. A lot of the American car 
manufacturers said we may not be able to access these tax credits 
because 70 percent of the components that go into electric vehicles are 
made in other countries, like China. That is how slapdash this bill was 
put together. If more time, more deliberation, more debate, more 
bipartisanship had occurred, maybe we could have come up with something 
that would make more sense.
  But this is what happens when you get in a big hurry. You make 
mistakes and do things that make zero sense, like provide this subsidy 
to a limited class of car manufacturers when 70 percent of the 
components of a typical electric vehicle, including the battery, come 
from overseas.
  As I said, this is a misleading-labeled bill. It is not going to do a 
thing to ease inflation in the near term. The budget experts at Penn 
Wharton analyzed Senator Manchin's tax hike and bill and completely 
decimated the argument that this legislation will reduce inflation. If 
this bill becomes law, inflation will not get any better anytime soon. 
In fact, I believe Americans can expect it to get worse.
  The people at Penn Wharton said the Manchin tax hike bill would 
increase inflation slightly in the short term and cause it to stick 
around for 2 more years before it would have any impact. That is what 
you are going to tell hard-working American families: You are being 
priced out of your favorite food and grocery products at the grocery 
store or you can't afford to fill up your car? Just wait 2 more years.
  Well, if the Democrats are successful in passing this bill with 
purely Democratic votes, there will be an accounting, and there will be 
a comparison by voters in November with, OK, they told us that if we 
pass this bill, it would reduce inflation, and let's see what inflation 
looks like in November of 2022.
  I am not wishing for higher inflation. I hope inflation will go down. 
But this is exactly the opposite of what you ought to do if you want to 
reduce inflation to restore people's purchasing power.

[[Page S4059]]

  Well, again, several years ago and more recently, our colleague from 
West Virginia said he didn't think it was wise to raise taxes during a 
recession. He and the majority leader have tried to convince anyone who 
will listen, who is gullible enough, to believe that this bill does not 
raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 a year, but, as I said, 
the Joint Committee on Taxation explodes that myth.
  Next year, more than 60 percent of taxpayers who earn between $40,000 
and $50,000 a year will be hit with a higher tax bill. That is what the 
Joint Committee on Taxation said. It is in the so-called distributional 
tables. It is a pretty complex calculation, but that is why we rely on 
the Joint Committee on Taxation to provide this expert information and 
guidance to us, because, frankly, it is beyond the capability of most 
of us in Congress. They also said that more than 90 percent of those 
earning between $75,000 and $100,000 a year will pay more in taxes, and 
a whopping 97 percent of those earning between $100,000 and $200,000 
will see a tax increase.
  I heard our colleague the majority whip talk about these big, rich 
companies--oil and gas companies, pharmaceutical companies--making too 
much money. But these aren't billion-dollar corporations that they are 
raising taxes on; these are middle-class families--and for what? To 
subsidize rich people driving around in fancy electric vehicles? It is 
a disgrace.
  Well, of course, working families aren't the only ones who are going 
to face a higher tax bill. The Manchin tax hike also hits businesses 
and is sure to have a devastating impact on--guess where--West 
Virginia. I am not making this up. Higher taxes require companies to 
cut costs everywhere.
  I think sometimes our Democratic colleagues have this idea that if 
you raise taxes on businesses, they will simply absorb it and they 
won't pass it along to their customers. That is a flight of fantasy. 
Higher taxes will require them either to pass those costs along or to 
cut costs elsewhere, like to cut off their employees, to not hire as 
many people as they would otherwise hire.
  I was flabbergasted, frankly, when I saw that, according to the Tax 
Foundation, the industry that will be hit hardest is the coal industry. 
Now, we know the coal industry has been the primary target of 
Democrats' green policies, and maybe that is what they have in mind--to 
put even more coal miners out of a job.
  Despite the adverse impact this legislation will have on families and 
communities across the country, it was written by two people: Senators 
Manchin and Schumer. They have been working hard since they announced 
their deal, arrived at in secret, behind closed doors. They have worked 
hard to try to get this bill to the floor, to see if it complies with 
the Senate rules. They continue to make last-minute changes--going on 
even as I speak, which is the reason none of us have seen the final 
product--but we are unlikely to see those final changes before Senator 
Schumer asks us to vote on the bill. But still Senator Schumer said he 
expects every Democrat to fall in line and to vote for this legislation 
within a matter of hours. They haven't seen the bill either. I have to 
imagine that Democrats in both the House and the Senate are pretty 
unhappy with this process.
  Experts have analyzed this bill and said it raises taxes on families, 
and it will have an adverse impact on jobs and keep inflation high--
certainly not cut it--but the top Senate Democrat expects his 
colleagues to ignore these warning signs and to vote for it anyway.
  Like I said, all of us are held accountable by the voters at election 
time. And I guess ultimately that is what this exercise will be about--
it will be about political accountability.
  On average, there have been about 40 amendments in a so-called vote-
arama, which we are all familiar with, which we will experience 
presumably later on tonight. Our colleagues said: Well, there may be 
some amendments I would like to vote for, but I am going to vote 
against them because I want to make sure we get this bill across the 
floor, no matter how ugly the process, no matter what is in it.
  Well, Democrats have tried and failed to convince the American people 
that the biggest problems facing our country aren't really problems at 
all or certainly their problem.
  Despite all the obvious warnings, the Biden administration officials 
insisted that inflation was transitory, that it is temporary, won't 
last long. Now they even want to redefine what it means to be in a 
recession even though we have experienced two consecutive quarters of 
negative GDP--gross domestic product--growth, which is the textbook 
definition of a recession.
  People in my State and across the country know better than to believe 
this sort of sleight of hand. Despite what our colleagues are saying 
today, this bill will increase taxes on families earning less than 
$400,000 a year. It will stifle medical and pharmaceutical innovation 
and prevent new lifesaving cures from being discovered. It will 
threaten our economy and our energy security at a vulnerable moment 
when we are in a recession.
  And it won't do a darn thing to ease the loss of purchasing power due 
to historically high inflation rates--the highest in 40 years--that 
consumers and all Americans are experiencing. It won't do a thing. No 
amount of spin or fast talking can conceal the damage this bill will 
inflict on the American people.
  Senator Manchin likes to say: ``If I can't go back home and explain 
it, I can't vote for it,'' but for the life of me, I don't know how our 
Democratic colleagues are going to explain this one in November.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.

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