[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 149 (Thursday, September 15, 2022)]
[House]
[Pages H7862-H7868]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1545
                          LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM

  (Mr. SCALISE asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I rise for the purpose of inquiring of the 
majority leader the schedule for next week.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), who 
is my friend and the majority leader of the House.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Louisiana for 
yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, on Monday, the House will meet at 12 p.m. for morning 
hour and 2 p.m. for legislative business, and votes will be postponed 
until 6:30 p.m.
  On Tuesday and Wednesday, the House will meet at 10 a.m. for morning 
hour and 12 p.m. for legislative business.
  On Thursday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business.
  Next week, Mr. Speaker, the House will consider S. 1098, the Joint 
Consolidation Loan Separation Act, bipartisan legislation sponsored by 
Representative   David Price and Senator Mark Warner to provide relief 
to borrowers who need to separate their joint consolidation student 
loans. This legislation would greatly benefit the individual borrowers 
who are most in need of relief, including victims of abuse.
  The House may also consider a continuing resolution. As all of us 
know, on September 30, at midnight, the government's ability to fund 
and operate goes out of authorization; therefore, it is necessary for 
us to take action before September 30, and we may do that next week.
  The House may also consider legislation to reform the Electoral Count 
Act from Representatives Zoe Lofgren and Liz Cheney.
  The House will consider bills under suspension of the rules. The 
complete list of suspension bills will be announced by the close of 
business tomorrow.
  As is usual, as we come very close to ending and then have a 
substantial period of time, October and the first and second week in 
November for the election, it is common that we may have other pieces 
of legislation, Mr. Speaker, available and necessary to pass. We will 
notify Members as soon as we have that information.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. SCALISE. As it relates to the continuing resolution that I know 
the gentleman said may come up, we haven't had any details that have 
been shown to us on what that might look like in terms of other items 
in addition to some kind of short-term or even what the duration of a 
short term would be.
  If there are any dates that the majority has already started thinking 
about that would be included in a continuing

[[Page H7863]]

resolution, any extraneous items--there is some other funding that has 
been thrown about. There has been talk about Senator Manchin, that 
there may be some agreement that Senator Manchin would have some kind 
of permitting reform. I am not sure if that would be a part of a 
continuing resolution or a stand-alone bill.
  If the gentleman could provide any clarification on any of those 
items that we haven't been privy to in conversations, I yield to my 
friend.
  Mr. HOYER. Obviously, that is a good question and a good thing to 
have.
  The appropriators are working through the administration's list of 
anomalies, which I know there are three or four items dealing with 
health and also dealing with Ukraine and a couple of other matters. I 
don't have that list in front of me, but the answer to my friend's 
question is that they are trying to get that together.
  I think they are pretty close. I will talk to Chair DeLauro. I 
presume she is in conversation with and discussions with the ranking 
member, as well, but I am sure that that is the case.
  There is also, I believe, money also being asked for for disaster 
relief that may well be in the CR.
  The gentleman referred to the discussions that occurred in the Senate 
between Senator Manchin and Majority Leader Schumer. Obviously, we are 
going to see what the Senate does. I don't know what the Senate is 
going to do. It is one of the reasons there has been a discussion about 
the Senate moving first on that and discussions with the Senator about 
when they were going to move. I think that is under discussion.
  Mr. SCALISE. Obviously, we will be staying in touch on that. 
Hopefully, Ms. Lofgren will have some conversations with Ms. Granger 
about details because we haven't seen those yet. We surely would like 
to be more involved in those discussions.
  Mr. HOYER. If I might add, I want to make the gentleman aware--and I 
know he is--but I want to make the Members aware that we will need to 
be here for such time as it takes us to pass the continuing resolution 
so that government will continue to operate. It is essential for the 
economy, essential for our national security, and essential for the 
employees, but it is also essential for all those whom they serve on a 
daily basis.
  I have told my Members in some discussions about what we are going to 
do the last week in September. I have told my Members, and we also 
would make clear to all of our Members, including the Members on my 
friend's side of the aisle, that they ought to be making sure that the 
last 3 weekdays of November and that Saturday they ought to keep clear 
so that if, in fact, we need to work during those periods of times--and 
my expectation is we are going to have to--that they not be canceling 
events that they scheduled. So, being on notice, I think, will be fair 
to them and fair to anybody that we are scheduling with.
  Mr. SCALISE. As we are more in the first half of September, 
obviously, this would all be at the very end of September. Hopefully, 
we wouldn't wait until the midnight hour. We are all aware of the 
deadline.
  Hopefully, we can get something brought, ideally agreed upon by both 
sides, which we are nowhere near right now, but at least to have more 
direct conversations well in advance of the deadline, so we are not 
here watching the clock strike midnight wondering.

  Mr. HOYER. I could not agree with the gentleman more. I think I am 
probably just as frustrated.
  I know the members of the Appropriations Committee are as frustrated 
as anybody in this institution. As someone who served on the 
Appropriations Committee for 23 years, we ought to be passing bills in 
a timely fashion. We ought to be passing them one at a time. We ought 
not to have these gigantic omnibuses that nobody knows about.
  Both sides have had to prepare two omnibuses at the end of the year 
to fund government because we haven't passed individual appropriation 
bills in a timely fashion either through the House or the Senate or 
through the House and the Senate to the President. So, I agree with the 
gentleman entirely.
  I agree also that we ought to give everybody as much notice as we 
possibly can. I will tell the gentleman, frankly, I was hopeful that we 
would have passed the CR this week. For reasons that are, I think, 
obvious to everybody, we haven't done that. But I am hopeful that we 
can do it sooner rather than later and don't have some September 30 
crisis that we seem to always create.
  I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. SCALISE. Hopefully, we can start seeing actual language next week 
so we can either get to a place where we are in agreement or try to 
resolve those areas of disagreement.
  As the gentleman was talking about the calendar and other items that 
may be coming up, I noticed there were no conversations about any of 
the legislation that we have been talking about bringing to the floor 
to address inflation.
  We just saw Tuesday, as the President was holding a party at the 
White House to celebrate inflation, we saw, yet again, more devastating 
news on the inflation front, to the point where the markets tanked 
during that party at the White House.
  We have a package of bills that would help bring down inflation, 
bring down energy costs, and help those families who are struggling as 
we get ready to face another cold winter. There are expectations right 
now by all the experts that energy costs will go up again because we 
have limited supply here in the country.
  As we identify those bills and yet not see any of them being listed 
for debate on the House floor, can we try to get some kind of direction 
on whether this majority will work with us to bring bills to the floor 
to address these real problems that are hurting families all across the 
country?
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  I, obviously, anticipated that question. I thought about it, and I 
want to say to the Members my thoughts that I, frankly, talk about all 
over the country.
  We passed a number of bills. Inflation is hurting our people. 
Inflation was not caused by President Biden or this Congress. Inflation 
was caused by the pandemic.
  Inflation hurt businesses severely and hurt employees severely. In a 
bipartisan way, we voted as that pandemic started. As we saw the broad 
impacts of that, we, in a bipartisan fashion, stepped in to help. It 
made a very big difference.
  I start that way because the representation of some is that somehow 
we, by passing legislation, have caused this inflation. The OECD 
nations, the economically developed countries of the world, have all 
had inflation. As a matter of fact, the average OECD nation has a 10.2 
percent inflation rate. As the gentleman knows, ours is 8.3 percent.
  Mexico didn't have any of the bills that we passed and had an 8.7 
inflation rate. The Netherlands that didn't have an American Rescue 
Plan has a 13.6 percent rate of inflation. Sweden, a small and very 
successful country, didn't have an American Rescue Plan and has an 
inflation rate of 9.8 percent; Austria, another strong economic 
country, 9.3 percent; Denmark, the country of my father's birth, 8.9 
percent.
  And you say: So what? The ``so what'' is that we have seen a global 
inflation. I haven't mentioned some of the other countries in Asia who 
have inflation rates, as well. I simply say that so both parties and 
all Members understand the consequences and pain of inflation at the 
pump.
  The gentleman in some of the discussions we have had has pointed out 
that prices have gone up. I have not heard him say that the President 
has taken certain action, and it has come down about 35-plus percent 
over the last 6, 7 weeks from $5.02 as an average down to somewhere 
around $3.60.
  Is that low enough? It is not. It has been much higher. It was higher 
in 2008 under George Bush. But it needs to come down further. We will 
continue to work on that.
  We passed a number of pieces of legislation. I mentioned the American 
Rescue Plan took 48 percent of America's children out of poverty who 
were in poverty; not 48 percent of America's children, but 48 percent 
of America's children who were in poverty were taken out by the 
American Rescue Plan.

[[Page H7864]]

  None of us are wearing masks on this floor or around the country when 
we gather together and get in rooms close to one another. Why? Because 
we got 250 million shots in arms.
  We also have people struggling for a variety of economic reasons 
primarily brought upon them by the pandemic, so we put money in their 
pockets.
  We have one of the fastest growing economies. We have one of the 
lowest unemployment rates in the world. We have a country that is doing 
well.
  The gentleman mentions the stock market declining. It did. Why did it 
decline? Because we had the pandemic. Inflation resulted from that, and 
the Federal Reserve--as was true under Ronald Reagan when unemployment 
went to 10.5, 6, 7, 8 percent because Paul Volcker was slowing down the 
economy to defeat inflation.
  Inflation is harmful, particularly to people who are elderly and on 
fixed incomes. So, I want the gentleman to know that we empathize with 
that, and, therefore, we are distressed.
  When we passed a bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, not a single 
Republican voted for it.

                              {time}  1600

  And there is absolutely no denial on the reality that is going to 
bring Americans' costs down. Not only that, it kept 13 million people 
who were going to fall off insurance on the Affordable Care Act--which 
I know the gentleman's party does not support--but 13 million Americans 
who had healthcare insurance as a result of the American Rescue Plan, 
it was going to stop on December 31, and we continued that.
  We put on legislation that would bring down prescription drug costs 
and allow companies to sell drugs to Medicare in a negotiated way. We 
negotiate, as the gentleman knows, and I don't know whether the 
gentleman thinks that policy ought to be stopped, but we negotiated for 
prices with veterans' healthcare. Now we are going to do it with 
Medicare. We wanted to do it for everybody, but the Senate Republicans 
would not agree to that.
  We believe that the infrastructure bill is going to really help bring 
down inflation, create jobs, and expand our economy. We believe the 
CHIPS and Science bill is going to do the same. Only 13 on the 
Republican side voted for the infrastructure bill, which was, I think, 
a bill that would have helped inflation by making supplies better. The 
energy portion of the Inflation Reduction Act is going to bring down 
the cost of energy. It is going to create competition on energy, and 
fight climate change. I lament the fact that not a single Republican 
voted for the Inflation Reduction Act.
  Even if you reject the fact that it is going to reduce inflation--as 
I think you probably do, I don't want to anticipate what you do, but 
that is my guess. There are literally scores of economists who believe 
it is going to bring down inflation.
  As importantly, the committee who looks closely at this--scores of 
economists say it is going to bring it down. The Committee for a 
Responsible Federal Budget say they believe it is going to bring down 
inflation. I don't want to project that it is going to bring it down a 
half a point, a point, 2 points, 3 points, 4 points--I hope it does. I 
think it was certainly worth a try.
  None of your colleagues either in this House or in the Senate--down 
the aisle--gave it a chance. We passed it anyway under a process, 
obviously, that allows just Democrats in the Senate to pass something 
under a process called reconciliation.
  I want to tell the gentleman that I have apprised the committee 
chairmen of the bills that you have talked to me about. I have asked 
them to look at them. Frankly, I cannot tell you I have gotten a 
response from each one of them, but we are giving them attention.
  Obviously, we want to know what our committees think about not only 
your legislation, our legislation--our legislation, that is, bipartisan 
legislation. We lament the fact, I will tell you, very frankly, Mr. 
Speaker--we lament the fact that our Republican colleagues in all four 
of the bills I have just mentioned, which are designed to grow the 
economy--the CHIPS bill, the bipartisan infrastructure--19 Senators 
voted for the infrastructure bill and helped put it together with 
President Biden and Senate Democrats. Lamentably, only 13 of your 
colleagues chose to vote for it. I am glad they did, but it was over 
the advice and counsel of their leadership. That bill clearly was 
embraced by the American people and incorporated policies, essentially, 
that President Trump said in 2016 he was going to recommend and have 
the Congress adopt. It didn't happen in 2017. It didn't happen in 2018. 
It didn't happen in 2019, and it didn't happen in 2020.
  I say to my friend, we think all four of those bills are going to 
have a very positive impact on our economy, on growing our economy, 
ensuring supplies of basic goods, and bringing down inflation.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of different bills the 
gentleman mentioned. Each one of them, by the way, when you rack them 
up, adds up to trillions of dollars in new spending. If trillions in 
Washington spending were going to solve the problem, then we would have 
no inflation.
  Obviously, it has gone the opposite direction, and it is going the 
opposite direction because of the trillions of dollars in new spending 
if you go down the line. Obviously, the gentleman went through all of 
those things, and I would like to respond to a number of them because 
it just doesn't mesh with the realities of where our economy is today.
  If you look at the numbers--and we can talk about other countries--
other countries have passed bad policies that have wrecked their 
economies. You can see Europe right now finally having a renewed debate 
on energy policy because they passed some really foolish energy 
policies that are destroying their energy economies and making them 
more dependent on Russia, for example, to get their oil and to get 
their natural gas. They are finally waking up.
  A lot of them shut their nuclear plants down, which is safe, sound 
nuclear energy. They wrecked their economies. They are starting to 
reverse that. I am glad they are finally waking up and reversing 
course.
  It seems like right here in Washington the failed policies that 
President Biden has put in place, they want to double down on. When you 
look at the results of it, that is why we get where we are which is 
double digit increases in food costs that our families are facing. 
Electricity costs over 15 percent higher just over the last year, and 
it is about to get worse because the bill that the President was 
celebrating at the White House had another increase in taxes on natural 
gas, which will raise those costs even higher.
  Mr. Speaker, I will yield to the gentleman in a moment.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I can't see the chart. Could you tell me what 
it says so I know what the gentleman is talking about?
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, electricity rates are 15.8 percent higher 
than last year.
  Mr. HOYER. Here?
  Mr. SCALISE. In America. This is all in America. Families that we 
represent are facing the burden of all of these policies that started 
in Washington that are ultimately ending up taking money out of their 
pockets.

  When you go to the grocery store--if you can afford to get there--if 
you find the food on the shelves, it is 13\1/2\ percent higher. We have 
seen the list, whether it is eggs, dairy products, bacon, some of them 
are 30 percent higher individually, but it adds up to about 13\1/2\ 
percent more that you are paying at the grocery store.
  Mortgage rates. If somebody is trying to become a first-time home 
buyer, which is part of the American dream, today it is 110 percent 
higher to get a mortgage than it was a year ago. Most economists, 
including many Democrat economists, point to the trillions in spending 
in Washington as the reason for that. Families have figured this out 
and said: Stop the madness.
  Yet, again, at the White House in the most tone-deaf thing I have 
seen in a while, the President is having a party celebrating a $730 
billion increase in taxes and spending at the exact same time that the 
market is tanking because of the inflation created by all this 
spending.
  To finish it up, transportation costs are 11.3 percent higher. That 
is what is happening in America.
  Again, Europe did a lot of these same bad policies. They figured it 
out, and

[[Page H7865]]

they are starting to reverse course. They just got rid of their Prime 
Minister in England because of what they did to wreck their energy 
economy.
  We brought bills--as I shared with the gentleman over months--we have 
brought a number of bills forward that would solve these problems, and 
not one of them has been scheduled for a vote on the House floor. We 
want to address this problem. We don't just sit back and go: Well, it 
is happening in other countries, so let it stay racking up in America. 
It doesn't need to.
  These are all unforced errors that are the result of failed policies, 
and instead of stopping the failed policies and working with 
Republicans to turn it around and lower these costs, it seems like 
there is a desire to just double down and talk about trillions more to 
spend.
  If spending was solving the problems, then we would have none of 
these problems. The problems have gotten worse with each multi-trillion 
or multi-hundred-billion-dollar package of legislation that has come 
out of this body.
  At some point, I would hope that the other side would look and 
recognize and say, okay, forget about Europe and Asia. They need to 
look in the mirror and say, why did they create some of their problems?
  We can do something about these problems. We brought those ideas 
forward, and every single time we have been told no, which must mean 
that this is okay. Because this is not okay to us, and there is a way 
to reverse it.
  If just spending more money and having parties at the White House to 
celebrate that spending while Rome is burning is where we are going to 
be, I think there is going to be a day of reckoning on that. I don't 
think the country is comfortable where we are. And when the idea is to 
just keep spending more money and act like--maybe it is another $5 
trillion--what is the number that is going to finally get us out of 
this mess? If it was trillions, we would be there already.
  Maybe, just maybe, we need to look at going the other way. Stop 
paying people not to work, for example, when everybody is looking for 
workers. Unfortunately, the IRS is looking for 87,000 more people. And 
as CBO just confirmed, a lot of that is going to be going after 
hardworking families, families making under $400,000 a year, even 
though we were promised on this floor that wouldn't happen.
  We brought an amendment to ensure that President Biden's promise 
would be upheld. We brought an amendment that would say and ensure no 
American making under $400,000 would see their taxes go up with these 
87,000 new IRS agents. The majority rejected that amendment. Literally, 
the day of the vote, the Congressional Budget Office came out and 
confirmed that it is over $20 billion in new taxes.
  That bill is going to cost families making less than $400,000. Those 
families are already struggling. They would love to save up and buy a 
new house. They can't even afford to get to the grocery store to pay 
13\1/2\ percent more. If they try to go get a mortgage today, they are 
going to be paying more than double for that mortgage than they were a 
year ago.
  At some point we have got to stop these failed policies that are 
causing these problems. Go look at what some of these other countries 
are doing to finally reverse course because they are, and they need to, 
but so do we. I would hope that we would bring some of those bills to 
the House floor because we could start reversing these horrible trends 
now.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  First, let me say, the gentleman dismisses what other countries are 
doing or he says they are doing bad things and therefore they have 
inflation.
  Every country has inflation. Why? Because the pandemic shut down the 
world. It shut down the markets. It shut down the production of 
supplies. That is why. People had to stay home and they weren't out 
producing and making things.
  We kept a lot of people employed. We spent trillions of dollars doing 
it, which were bipartisan bills signed by Donald Trump. Trillions. As 
soon as Donald Trump left, all of a sudden the other party--his party, 
the Trump party, decided it is over. It wasn't over for the American 
people.
  Kids were not in schools. People hadn't been given shots in arms yet. 
People were really hurting. Those 48 percent of the children in poverty 
were still in poverty, but it was over. No more bipartisanship. It is 
another President, so we are going to blame him.
  That is politics over people. What we did is people over politics 
because we knew people were hurting. We passed legislation to give them 
help. Every Republican, Mr. Speaker, voted no.

  We voted to help them gets shots in arms. Every Republican voted no.
  We voted to get their kids back in school to make their schools safe 
and healthy. Every Republican voted no because they wanted to bleat 
about inflation.
  The reason they don't like these figures is because these are the 
economically successful nations of the world, many of whom have 
inflation higher than we.
  The gentleman is absolutely right. We need to get inflation down. 
There are 126 economists that say that the Inflation Reduction Act will 
reduce inflation, reduce healthcare costs, and reduce energy costs.
  Now, the gentleman and I have had this discussion about his energy 
bills, which they think will be the salvation. They always think: Drill 
more, life will be better. I get it. Louisiana is a State that wants to 
drill. I get that. We use that product. It is an important product, and 
we are going to continue to use it. That is why I have no criticism of 
that.
  In the last bill that we passed, which is really going to fight the 
climate challenge that we face--there were four 1,000-year floods in 
four different communities in America within 30 days of one another.

                              {time}  1615

  The West is on fire, literally and figuratively. Climate challenge is 
real. Every Republican voted ``no'' to invest in meeting that challenge 
head-on; every Republican, House and Senate, Mr. Speaker.
  I can't read the chart, but 13 percent inflation is too high. I go to 
the grocery store almost every weekend. I live alone. I don't buy a lot 
of food at any one time because I am traveling a lot and here a lot; 
don't want it to go bad.
  So I get it on the prices. I get it on gasoline prices. They are 
tough. That is why we passed a food and fuel bill. The gentleman from 
Louisiana voted ``no.'' The leader of the Republican Party, Mr. 
McCarthy, in the House, voted ``no'', and the overwhelming majority of 
Republicans voted ``no.''
  They wanted to make sure that we had competition. That is the free 
market system. That is what brings prices down. If you have a monopoly, 
you can charge anything you want if people need the product.
  Now, I won't go through the statistics because the statistics are we 
are producing more energy today than we produced 2 years ago. I read 
those statistics. I am not going to bore the gentleman, Mr. Speaker, 
with them again.
  They don't bore me because it shows that--when the argument is the 
reason we have inflation is because we are not producing energy, the 
reason we don't have as much energy is because companies made a 
rational decision. What was that rational decision?
  In March and April of 2020, people started staying in their homes. 
They stopped buying gas and other products, petroleum products, and, as 
a result, corporations made a reasonable judgment. We are not going to 
produce more capacity.
  So, when we got out of the inflation, we are still not doing that. 
But we are doing more than we did some years ago, as those statistics 
that I read to the gentleman three or four times, so I won't read them 
again.
  But the industry, as I have also told the gentleman, owns 9,000 
unused permits to drill onshore; 37 million acres offshore; which can 
be permitted, ready to go.
  So when you simply ignore and pretend that somehow Joe Biden, the 
President of the United States, is responsible for worldwide inflation, 
and dismiss the pandemic--I don't think I have heard one time, Mr. 
Speaker, the Republican whip mention the pandemic as a cause of the 
inflation. It is all about energy.
  I beg to differ with the gentleman, Mr. Speaker. I think, honestly, 
the American people need to know that.

[[Page H7866]]

  Yes, the stock market had a rough tumble. Why did it have a rough 
tumble? Because the Federal Reserve, the chairman of which was 
appointed by President Trump, responsibly, along with his board of 
governors, responded to try to get this inflation under control and 
bring it down.
  I don't know whether the gentleman supports that action or not. 
Ronald Reagan supported that action; although he did not appoint the 
chairman of the Federal Reserve that did it.
  So, Mr. Speaker, we are going to continue to fight for the people and 
put them above our politics, or even our own personal economic 
interests, by passing the American Rescue Plan; by passing the 
bipartisan infrastructure bill; by making sure that America can be seen 
as a country that makes it in America; chips, investing in science for 
the future, for the people and, yes, the Inflation Reduction Act, which 
the gentleman and his party has misrepresented over and over and over 
again with something they know is not the truth.
  They project 80,000 new people going after average Americans. They 
know that is not true, Mr. Speaker.
  After years of trying to defund the people who collect the revenues 
from our people so everybody pays their fair share, and those of us--
and I say of us--who are doing well, pay our fair share, and the people 
who make billions, who pay less of a percentage, in many respects, as 
Warren Buffett said, than those who work for them.
  Yes, we want taxes fairly enforced, Mr. Speaker. We don't want 
anybody paying an unfair share because somebody is not paying at all.
  The IRS will, after those 10 years of accretion of employees, have as 
many employees as it had back in the 1990s; trying to make sure it can, 
in fact, enforce a fair system that provides the revenues that the 
Federal Government needs to protect, preserve our people's welfare, 
economy, and national security.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, first, to clarify, it wasn't me who said 
that the IRS agents, this new army of 87,000 IRS agents, would be going 
after people to collect $20 billion more in taxes who were making less 
than $400,000.
  It was the Congressional Budget Office who put in their report the 
day of the vote that that is exactly what would happen, is that those 
IRS agents would, in fact, be going after people making less than 
$400,000, to the tune of $20 billion in new taxes.
  We brought an amendment to stop that from happening, to say they 
can't go after those people making less than $400,000, which is what 
the President promised. The Congressional Budget Office report was 
right there, saying $20 billion is what they would pay in new taxes. 
The majority rejected the amendment. So clearly, the intention was to 
have those IRS agents go after them.
  Again, those weren't my numbers. That was the Congressional Budget 
Office. If there is a dispute the gentleman has, take it up with them. 
But they were the ones who came out with that report the day of the 
vote. Maybe that was why the bill was rushed through. But we pointed 
that out, and no one disputed that the Congressional Budget Office put 
those numbers out there.
  But the President still kept saying, don't worry. They are not going 
to go after them, not a dime. But CBO said $20 billion in new taxes 
those low- and middle-income families will pay. We tried to stop it. 
The majority rejected it.
  Now, to go to the oil and gas comments the gentleman made about 
President Biden, you would think, listening to your comments, that Joe 
Biden was John D. Rockefeller, and he is drilling everywhere. Well, 
let's first----

  Mr. HOYER. I don't think I made that comment.
  Mr. SCALISE. And I won't say the gentleman did, but as the gentleman 
talked about all this production and drilling that is going on and all 
this oil that is coming out, it was Joe Biden who said, as a candidate, 
``no more drilling on Federal lands. No more drilling, including 
offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, 
period.''
  Then he carried out policies to back that up and stop drilling.
  We have pointed out many times, major companies in America that want 
to increase production, as the gentleman did say, that they are not 
increasing production. They tried, and they have been rejected on the 
permits they would need.
  You can't just go drill a new hole tomorrow. Every well ultimately 
depletes. We all know that. That has been going on since man invented 
the ability to drill for oil in the world. So as oil depletes, you need 
to get new permits to go into these areas. The Biden administration, 
over and over again, rejected those new permits.
  So there are leases out there. Again, a lease might be like you have 
a car. You have got a car in your driveway. Well, if you don't have an 
engine in the car, the car is not functional.
  If you have a lease, the lease doesn't do you any good if you can't 
get the permits to build pipelines. We have talked about the pipeline 
problems as this administration, over and over again, has blocked new 
pipelines.
  How do you move the oil? How do you get the permit to go and explore 
for more?
  So what the President did--again, if we were just maxed out on 
drilling here, why did the President get on Air Force One and fly 5,700 
miles to Saudi Arabia to beg them to produce more oil? They said no 
because they don't have the ability over there.
  The President called Vladimir Putin and asked him to drill for more 
oil. Putin said no.
  You don't need to ask those countries to produce more oil because we 
have it here, but there is documented evidence, over and over, where 
this administration has said no to permits, no to the ability for us to 
produce more of our own energy.
  So what happens? The price goes up. They are talking about, during 
this winter, the inability for people to have home heating oil. So they 
are importing it from countries like Russia because they are not 
allowing more production here, where companies are trying to produce 
more and being turned down by this administration.
  The Secretary--I think it was the Secretary of Energy--when asked, 
what is your plan to produce more in America, she started laughing. It 
is not a laughing matter, but that has been the attitude of this 
administration.
  To finish up on the point where the gentleman started talking about 
all these bills that we voted against, starting with the $1.9 trillion 
spending bill that this administration came right out of the box with. 
As the economy was starting to turn around, and people were starting to 
bring workers back, trying to get workers back, a $1.9 trillion package 
of bills came forward to pay people, in part, not to work, to stay at 
home; made it harder for people to get workers back.
  But what it also did--and this is something we brought up during the 
debate--checks were being sent to people.
  Well, we pointed out that checks were going to end up going to people 
in prisons, and we were told that wasn't going to happen. Just like 
with the 87,000 IRS agents, when CBO debunked that. Don't worry; nobody 
in prison is going to get checks. Turned out later, the Boston bomber 
got a check.
  Who knows how many billions of dollars went to prisoners to be paid--
taxpayers are already paying for them to be housed, to be fed, to get 
healthcare. But then they also got checks, actual checks in stimulus 
money. We had an amendment to stop that from happening.
  But ultimately, yes, we voted against those things because we wanted 
to see our economy back open.
  When there was this idea that everybody had to stay home, that wasn't 
the case when we started last year. In fact, many States started to 
open again. There were some States that stayed shut down.
  By the way, you can see a massive movement around the country, where 
New York State alone lost about a million people who moved to States 
like Florida because they didn't want to be shut down anymore when 
there was a State that was open, following safety protocols, protecting 
their people, but allowing people to live in freedom again and live 
their lives.
  So people moved out of States, the shut down States like California 
and New York and moved to States that were open. You can see the 
numbers, and they are dramatic numbers.

  So not every State handled it the same. But the States that opened 
were

[[Page H7867]]

having a lot more success in protecting their people at the same time, 
but the States that stayed closed had devastating consequences.
  Not to mention what we saw with children being shut out of school, 
the learning that wasn't happening. Those are devastating numbers we 
are seeing today because this administration changed the science--and 
that is documented--changed the science over at CDC to cater to the 
unions who wanted to keep schools shut down. So millions of kids didn't 
learn at the levels they should have, and those numbers are still 
showing up today, that those kids were left behind; lost a year or 2 
years they will never get back because other kids were in school 
learning, when the unions wanted to work with the Biden administration 
to keep schools shut down.
  So those are the things that we tried to address. None of those bills 
were allowed to come to the floor. But that is where we are.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  First of all, to your last statement, the unions. What were the 
unions trying to do? They were trying to keep teachers healthy. They 
were trying to keep kids healthy. Because we were telling people, don't 
congregate. Don't get all together.
  They were trying to keep kids out of school whose HVAC systems, 
heating, ventilating systems were not up to date and couldn't transfer 
the air in a clean, healthy way.
  So we gave them billions of dollars. Yes, we spent a lot of money to 
make our people safe, to get people back to work, to get kids back in 
school, and it worked. They are back in school.
  None of us are wearing a mask. We congregate now. We all get 
together. Hardly anybody, if anybody, some people who have particular 
vulnerabilities are wearing masks. God bless them. It worked, and the 
Republicans voted ``no.''

                              {time}  1630

  Now, I want to go to this energy issue because they are Johnny-one-
note. Inflation is caused by administration policy on inflation, gas 
prices, and energy production. But the fact of the matter is he ignores 
that inflation is happening in a lot of places.
  Mr. Speaker, in Denmark, they are pretty energy independent with 
renewable energies and not relying on supply chains per se. Their 
inflation is higher than ours because it was a global phenomenon. Their 
economies were assaulted. Ours came back faster and better.
  Why? Because we invested in our people.
  Now, let me go to a simple fact. According to the U.S. Energy 
Information Administration, average production--that means over 4 years 
for Trump--for Donald Trump was 10,968,000 barrels per day; for Joe 
Biden it was 11,185,000 barrels a day. That is more, not less, than the 
average under Donald Trump. But it serves their political interest, Mr. 
Speaker, to somehow project to the American people that Biden has shut 
down the energy industry which is why you are paying more.
  I explained that the energy companies did, in fact, cut production. 
It was a rational business judgment. People were driving less and 
buying less petroleum.
  There is still concern. Most of them are seeing that there is going 
to be an alternative energy that is going to be required if we are 
going to make sure that this globe does not burn up with the people 
with it.
  He also says--I don't have the report in front of me, so I am going 
to wing it--that no one earning under $400,000 per year got a tax 
increase as a result of the bill the gentleman alludes to.
  If CBO says--and I will read the report--that $20 billion is going to 
be received from that category, it will be because somebody, whether 
they are making $100,000, $200,000, $300,000, or $400,000, is not 
paying their fair share pursuant to laws that we adopt--not because we 
put new taxes on them but because they are not paying the taxes that 
are due.
  I don't have the CBO report in front of me, so I am opining because 
it certainly wasn't because we have new enforcement officers, unless 
those enforcement officers find that the people to which the gentleman 
refers are not paying their fair share.
  By the way, it will also apply to the people who are making billions 
and not paying any taxes, much less their fair share.
  Let me repeat that energy figure again because I think he will 
probably go back to energy because that is what we do almost every 
colloquy. More energy is being produced under Joe Biden than was 
produced under Donald Trump.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, if Joe Biden wants to keep producing more 
energy, we are giving him opportunities, but he says no. He said ``no'' 
many times, and he campaigned on that. We will continue to push to 
bring those bills to the floor.
  We are going to continue to push to bring bills to the floor to solve 
a lot of these problems that we have identified, and we have bills to 
address them. If the majority doesn't want to bring them up, I 
understand. That is the prerogative of the majority, but we are going 
to still keep talking about them.
  We are going to still keep pushing every opportunity we can to bring 
down inflation, to lower energy costs, and to address so many of these 
other problems that people are still facing today.
  If that single mom who is working as a waitress two shifts is going 
to be audited by some new IRS agent who is tasked, under the terms that 
we saw, with going out and generating that money, if the result of that 
is that she has to pay more money, it doesn't mean she is cheating on 
her taxes. If all of a sudden an auditor is coming after you, who knows 
what kind of pressure they are putting?
  But it is 87,000 more IRS agents tasked with going and generating not 
$20 billion. The $20 billion is just for the people making under 
$400,000. It is over $250 billion that some of the numbers show that 
they have to generate, meaning they are going to have to go out and 
find that from taxpayers.
  That doesn't mean every one of those people they audit is a tax 
cheat. It just means that person is going to now face an audit who 
otherwise is working two or three shifts to meet the demands of these 
higher costs that they are facing because of inflation.
  We are going to continue fighting for those hardworking families and 
fighting to lower the burden on this government, take some of that heat 
off so they can spend more time at home with their family, not working 
two or three shifts or worrying about the next audit they are going to 
face from a new IRS agent who is told to go generate more money. 
Hopefully, we can address that. We will continue to push for that.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I think 
we are probably pretty close to closing.
  I would say this, Mr. Speaker. I think the American people are in the 
process of making a judgment. On our side, we see things as pretty 
positive in terms of the response to the policies that we have been 
adopting without any significant help from our Republican colleagues, 
but they will have a chance to vote and decide.
  We have passed legislation, as we said we would do, for the people--
not for the sake of politics but for the sake of children, families, 
the young and old, and, yes, even the rich and poor.
  I want to comment because I urge my Republican friends to be precise 
in their conversations with the American public. There are not 80,000 
revenue auditors or agents included in this bill that we talked about 
on bringing inflation down and which economists say will bring 
inflation down.
  Our Republican friends say they want to do that, but they vote 
against bills that will bring down demonstrably, and without 
possibility of denial, costs for people, health costs for people, 
prescription drug costs for people, insulin, which costs about--it 
is single figures, and we capped it at $35. That is about 400 percent 
profit, but they are now paying $300 or $400 or $500.

  Now, luckily, because we could pass it with Democrats, seniors won't 
be paying that. They will be capped at $35. But millions of other 
Americans, because the Republicans would not support it in the United 
States Senate--we passed it here--will not get the benefit of that cap. 
They will be paying far above justifiable prices for insulin.

[[Page H7868]]

  We are producing energy. The argument is specious that somehow this 
inflation is caused by our cutting back on energy supply when I just 
read a figure, subject to dispute. Maybe next week I will hear, no, 
that figure is wrong. Maybe. We are producing more energy than Trump 
did--not Trump himself, but the country--during Trump's Presidency.
  I urge, Mr. Speaker, my Republican friends to tell the American 
people the truth. Yes, there are some more agents because there are 
people not paying their fair share. If you have an audit, and they say 
you are not paying your fair share, and you pay more, isn't that what 
we expect when we pass tax bills, that people will pay pursuant to what 
the law says, whether they make $100,000 or $100 million or $100 
billion? I don't guess anybody makes $100 billion in a year.
  We ought to be honest with the American people. Give them the facts, 
and then they will make a decision, but tell them the truth.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, we will continue to be honest with the 
American people. It was the administration that used the 87,000 number. 
If that number should be lower, I would love to hear what that number 
would be.
  Mr. HOYER. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. SCALISE. I yield to the gentleman from Maryland. If the gentleman 
has a number, please tell me because that is what we heard from the 
administration.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, there are 80,000-plus additional, which will 
get back to the 20 years ago level of employment in the IRS. The IRS 
has been reduced in personnel in all categories, not just enforcement 
agents, but in all categories, which will undermine their ability to 
serve the public and collect taxes so that we all pay our fair share 
and so people who don't have accountants and who don't have ways and 
means to avoid taxes are treated fairly themselves.
  Everybody ought to be treated fairly. If we don't think they are 
being treated fairly because of the law then we ought to change the 
law, but we ought to tell the American people the truth.
  There are not that many enforcement agents. They are in so many 
different categories in the IRS to make sure that the IRS can 
successfully do its job and answer people's questions about what, when, 
where, and why they have to do things pursuant to law. That is what I 
meant, not that the 80,000 people are enforcement agents. They are not. 
They are not. It is a far lower number than that.
  But we know that there is over $100 billion--I think it is a much 
larger figure than that--in taxes that are owed under the law that are 
not being paid, which means that the tax rates need to be higher on 
others than they ought to be.
  That is what this bill gets at. In other words, this bill, the 
inflation reduction bill, is more than reducing inflation. I am sorry 
that my Republican friends made a determination it was not a bill they 
could support to help bring down inflation, but that was the judgment 
they made.
  I think they want to bring down inflation. We want to bring down 
inflation, but when we present a bill to the floor which does it, we 
would hope we would get support on a bipartisan basis.
  Mr. SCALISE. We will continue to tell the truth about these policies. 
Clearly, there is a disagreement on many of them, but that is why we 
have this debate. I look forward to continuing it with the gentleman.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________