[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 200 (Tuesday, December 5, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5722-S5725]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                        Inflation Reduction Act

  Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, I rise today, I can say, out of 
frustration, out of anger, out of disappointment that our 
administration is continuing to break the law that we all passed and 
that President Biden signed, knowing full well what was in it. I am 
talking about the Inflation Reduction Act, the IRA. The reason I am 
saying this is because, in putting this bill together, at the time that 
we did, I made sure that everyone involved had to sign off on it. The 
President, the majority leader, and the Speaker knew exactly what was 
in the bill and the purpose of the bill.
  I still believe that the purpose of this bill was done in the right, 
proper way. I think it was a transformative bill, if we could just stay 
within the guidelines of how the bill was written. It is not left to 
interpretation, but they have interpreted.
  They are trying to, basically, implement a piece of legislation that 
they couldn't get passed, and I have said this. The purpose of the bill 
had three purposes. The first on the Inflation Reduction Act was to 
reduce our debt. We all talked about that.
  We have $33.8 trillion in debt today, and if everything that we do 
does not take that into account and we do not think about our children 
and grandchildren and future generations, what we are leaving them is 
untenable. Something has to be done. So that piece of legislation had 
debt reduction in it--debt reduction.
  It is also based on securing our energy. When the Ukraine war broke 
out, we were not energy secure. We couldn't help our allies over in 
Europe, and basically energy was weaponized by Putin. He used it as a 
weapon, which was very harmful to our allies. Basically, I said this: 
If you can't help the people who are willing to fight and die for the 
cause you believe in and we all believe in--the freedoms and democracy 
that we cherish--then they are not going to be there when you do need 
them.

  The third thing was to bring manufacturing back to America, the 
building blocks that we need. And transportation is a major building 
block of how we deliver our goods, how we basically take care of our 
lives, how we secure our own jobs, and how we are able to pay for our 
own way through this wonderful world of ours, but it also runs our 
economy.
  And I still believe the intent and the ability of the IRA to work as 
we hoped, the level of investment that we have been seeing from the IRA 
is transformative. We have never seen this fight. People have been 
predicting us to fall into a recession, if you will, with high 
inflation, and we have been able to stave that off because we had this 
piece of legislation that has given us kind of a shot in the arm that 
nowhere else in the world has had.
  But here is the problem we are running into. It really, truly seems 
from my standpoint--because we in my Energy Committee wrote the bill, 
unknown to most any American for over 3 months before it was 
introduced, and it was done because of the war in Ukraine. It was done 
because we were not secure.
  Let me talk to you about transportation. They want to move to 
electric vehicles sooner than what we are prepared to do. The building 
blocks that you need is to basically have total, absolute self-reliance 
on your transportation mode. Up until this piece of legislation or the 
intent of the administration, we were able to take care of basically 
our planes, trains, automobiles and everything in between. We could do 
that with American ingenuity, manufactured in America or reliable 
countries. We never had to rely on foreign supply chains that were 
unreliable, such as China, such as Russia, such as Iran, such as North 
Korea. But because of the political desires of trying to transform the 
transportation mode that we weren't able to basically secure ourselves, 
this is what is happening.
  If President Biden were still a Member of this body and if he were 
Senator Biden, I guarantee you, he would be absolutely incensed at what 
is happening, in any administration, with a piece of legislation that 
he worked so hard on, that he basically cosigned or signed off on as 
something he believed in, watching it be completely shredded. And that 
is what is happening.
  Since the administration seems to have forgotten, I am going to 
remind everyone what we agreed to. This was on a phone call that I had 
with the President, with the Speaker, and with the majority leader at 
the time before the bill was signed.
  I said this is a $687 billion bill--$687 billion in revenue--and $384 
billion of that bill would be invested in energy security while also 
improving our environment--energy security. That means we would be 
producing more energy and be more self-secured than at any time. And 
right now I can say that it has worked absolutely the way it was 
intended to. We are producing more energy in this country today than 
ever before. We are producing more oil and gas, and we are doing it 
cleaner than anywhere else in the world. And we are producing LNG to 
help our foreign allies. So we are doing exactly what we intended to do 
with this piece of legislation. That was $384 billion.

[[Page S5723]]

  Another $64 billion went toward healthcare. We put a $35 cap on 
insulin; we are allowing Medicare to negotiate; and we have an 
extension of lower prices with healthcare.
  With the balance--you have never heard this--we have paid down $239 
billion in debt. Now, everything I just told you, you very seldom ever 
hear from the administration or really from the President himself, 
speaking about what this bill, all included, does. You don't hear him 
speaking about we paid down $237 billion, in the most trying times that 
we have had, the most deficit that we have ever carried before. We 
should be proud of that; that for the first time since 1997, we have a 
piece that was directed--almost one-third of that bill--to pay down 
debt for our future generations. The IRA did that. You have never heard 
it mentioned.
  Also, what the IRA did and what we intended for it to do was 
basically give us the energy that we need today, making sure we are 
producing the fossil fuel in the best, cleanest fashion, using all the 
modern technology. And I have always said this: You cannot eliminate 
your way to a cleaner environment. I know my environmental friends on 
the far left are thinking, Please, don't drill anymore--no more oil, no 
more gas, no more coal. Well, that is not how the world works. It is 
called global climate, and you can innovate through technology, but you 
are not just going to tell people to eliminate something. That is what 
this bill does. We are producing more energy than ever before, and we 
are doing it cleaner and with more technology. So we are producing the 
energy that we have to have to be energy-secure today while we are 
investing in the energy that we would like to have carbon-free in the 
future. We are doing both. That is what is creating all of this 
excitement and investment from around the world.

  Also, the purpose was to bring manufacturing back to the United 
States, to secure the manufacturing that we need that we allowed to 
leave 30 years or more ago and to bring it back home. Now they are 
trying to change that to meet the radical climate change that basically 
is going to harm the country and still be able to help countries that 
we know are unreliable.
  This becomes more and more obvious to me every day. It is frustrating 
to read the law and know that they are knowingly violating it. That is 
what they are doing. I would hope that the President of the United 
States, if he is watching or listening to me--bring your team in and 
ask them how they can basically neglect the way the bill was written 
and the numbers that we put in the bill and the definitions we put in 
the bill of what was going to be not left to interpretation and how it 
goes to different Agencies, whether it be DOE and back up to Treasury, 
to basically find ways that they can maneuver and work around this.
  Transportation is fundamental to our economy. Think about this. I 
have been sitting here long enough and listening and watching different 
proposals. At one time, $60, $70, $80 billion was going to be 
recommended, and we were going to build charging stations around the 
country. I said: Let me make sure I understand how history works. I 
said: I remember reading the history books on when the Model T was 
basically brought onto a mass assembly line, that the average person 
could own, and they were going to build cars for the American family. I 
don't remember the Federal Government stepping up and building filling 
stations.
  This is a capitalist society we live in. The market meets the 
demands. It always has and always will. But this administration was 
concerned that the market wouldn't meet it, so we had to throw Federal 
dollars at it, which I was totally opposed to. We have cut that down 
drastically because the market has always met the demands of a 
capitalist society. That is what we believe in. You either believe in 
it or you don't.
  That was done, and I couldn't believe that, and I said: I don't 
remember us building any filling stations. But, again, I don't remember 
basically, during the greatest Depression the world has ever seen--the 
1930s--that FDR ever sent a check to anybody. My grandparents never 
received any checks. My grandfather received an opportunity to find a 
job to take care of the kids--my dad and them--but he never got a 
check. But we thought we had to.
  So you can look back on this and find out how better off we are 
because of some of the changes we have made into the country that we 
are today. I think that is what we have to do.
  I remember waiting in gas lines in 1974. I had to wait to buy gas to 
go to work every other day, depending on your license plate's last 
number. There were so many different ways you could. Then we started 
trying to find different ways that we could maybe buy in bulk and be 
able to use that during times when we couldn't buy gas.
  I do not intend to stand in line and wait for a battery or a battery 
component for me to drive my vehicle if I am forced to by an EV car. 
And that is what we are doing. We are almost bribing American citizens 
to buy EVs.
  The car companies in America, the big three, were so committed that 
they had to have $7,500 in credit. Now, here is General Motors, Ford, 
and Chrysler that have to have this money coming from the Federal 
Treasury for them to be able to make their market plan. That is their 
business plan. I mean, that makes no sense to me at all because I have 
watched the automobile industry over the years. I love automobiles, and 
I love what they do and how they market them. Basically, when they have 
an oversupply, they use incentives for you and me to want to go buy 
them. They give you discounts. They give you low interest rates or no 
rates in interest. They do everything they can.
  But, here, they needed to have the Federal Government entice you to 
buy a vehicle that maybe you don't want, that maybe you are not ready 
for. And I said: Well, fine. If that is the direction we have to go, 
then don't you think we should get something for it? So that is when I 
made sure that $3,750--$3,750--would be basically granted as part of 
the discount if--if--you basically sourced the critical minerals from 
North America or free-trade agreement countries or allies of ours, not 
from foreign supply chains that we believe are basically unreliable. It 
makes no sense for us to be fighting over whether to get China out of 
our supply chains. The bottom line is to have them controlling our 
building blocks, how we build our batteries, where they come from, the 
anodes and cathodes and all the critical minerals in the processing.
  Let me just show you. Basically, when we wrote the bill, we put 
strict, tough, but achievable standards in the IRA to ensure that China 
and other nations that don't share our values don't benefit off the 
backs of American taxpayers. I do not believe the United States of 
America and the citizens of our great country and the hard-earned tax 
dollars they are paying to our Treasury should be used to benefit 
another nation that could use them against us. We were very, very clear 
on that.
  If you look at the chart right here, you can just see what they have 
done.
  Everything on the left here shows, by 2023, 40 percent of the 
minerals must be extracted or processed in the United States or in 
free-trade agreement countries or recycled in North America. This is 
written in the bill, this 40 percent. Guess what. They cut that in 
half, to 20 percent, arbitrarily by basically saying that these are 
temporary rules; they are not permanent rules. This is what we are 
dealing with.
  This was in the bill all the way down so that we would not have to 
rely on sourcing requirements from countries that we couldn't rely on 
if they wanted to hold us hostage. It goes clear down, all the way 
through. In 2024, 50 percent had to. They cut every one of them in 
half--every one of them arbitrarily in half.
  I would like for the President of the United States to see this, and 
I would be happy to make this presentation to him. I want his 
administration to look at this and for the Treasury Department--from 
Janet Yellen--to try to explain to the President and explain to the 
American people why you could arbitrarily cut in half the intentions of 
the bill and what you think that you can do, because we cannot meet the 
demands in America.
  With all of this investment coming back to our country, they can't do 
it quick enough because of their political agenda to get more EV cars 
out the door. That is it. That is the only reason. It is not for 
securing, basically, this manufacturing back to America

[[Page S5724]]

quicker. It is not to get off the reliance that we have on unreliable 
foreign supply chains. It is basically to meet a political agenda.
  The other $3,750 was supposed to be directed for production, for 
producing the anodes and cathodes. This is what we are dealing with 
continuously here.
  These are the minerals that were extracted or processed in U.S. free-
trade agreement countries or recycled in North America, according to 
Treasury's proposed rules. That is what they want to do. This is what 
the IRA says. It is in the law. This is the bill that the Presiding 
Officer and I and a lot of people voted for, and we have explained to 
them: Follow the law. If you don't follow the law, then you are 
breaking the law.
  I guarantee you that then-Senator Biden and now-President Biden would 
be totally outraged--totally outraged--at this.
  They are also distorting the law to make it easier to qualify for tax 
credits by pretending that battery component manufacturing is the same 
as critical minerals processing. What I mean by that is, you extract 
the critical minerals wherever they may be and in whatever part of our 
country. That means that we have to do our permitting reforms so that 
we can start extracting in the United States the large deposits that we 
have that we haven't been able to get to and those in other countries, 
such as Canada, North America, and Australia, which are free-trade 
agreement countries--start processing them, taking them out, and 
getting them ready to go to manufacturing. They are now defining 
``manufacturing'' as part of the processing process. That was never 
ever part of the law, and they know that.

  The fake free-trade agreements, including with Indonesia, which is 
totally controlled by China, make them say: We can go to Indonesia and 
do business with them and use their critical minerals for processing 
and manufacturing and say it meets the qualifications.
  It does not. That is not a free-trade agreement country. It is 
absolutely controlled by China. Then we have other battery companies, 
such as CATL, where basically Ford is going to pay 12 percent for 10 
years, a 12-percent royalty for the technology, without having the 
ability to create their own technology or it will basically reverse the 
technology that was stolen from America. It makes no sense to me at 
all. And they want the U.S. Treasury tax dollars--the taxpayers of 
America to be giving a 12-percent royalty to China. It makes no sense, 
none at all.
  They did it again last week with the proposed rules on foreign 
entities of concern, delaying deadlines we wrote right into the IRA 
that were intended to remove China completely from our battery supply 
chains.
  To quote from the IRA, the consumer EV tax credit does not apply to 
``any vehicle placed in service after December 31, 2024.''
  So I want you to look at this chart here. This is in the bill. This 
is how it was written from the IRA: The consumer EV tax credit does not 
apply to ``any vehicle placed in service after December 31, 2024, with 
respect to which any of the applicable critical minerals contained in 
the battery of such vehicle were extracted, processed, or recycled by a 
foreign entity of concern.''
  Basically, in the bipartisan inflation bill that we passed, we 
identified--and it was written into law--those countries of concern, 
foreign countries of concern. We wrote that into the law--China, 
Russia, North Korea, and Iran.
  Then, if you see here, this is what was written into law as the 
deadline in the Inflation Reduction Act--no extraction or processing of 
critical minerals by Chinese entities or other foreign entities of 
concern after December 31, 2024.
  Look now at what the deadline is in the proposed Treasury rules. 
These are proposed Treasury rules. They want to change that to 2026 or 
later--2026 or later.
  And this is written into the law. This is the code: no battery 
manufacturing by Chinese entities or other foreign entities of 
concern--December 31, 2023. We are coming up on that deadline.
  Look at what they did over here: 2026 or later. That is for the 
anodes or cathodes, which are the positive-negatives of batteries. That 
is what they want to do to meet their political agenda, not to meet, 
basically, the enticing manufacturing know-how that we have in America 
to get us up and running. These investments are coming because of that. 
But when you strike this out and basically lengthen it to these 
timetables or later, this could go clear through the cycle of the bill, 
2032.
  So do you think that then-Senator Biden would not have been incensed 
to see what was done in clear view, plain view, by what any 
administration was doing to his bill or a bill that he supported or a 
bill that he voted for and what is happening to it now? I don't think 
so.
  The credit is also not applied to any vehicle placed in service, as I 
said, after December 2023 with respect to which any of the components 
contained in the battery of such vehicle are manufactured or assembled 
by a foreign entity of concern.
  China, along with Russia, Iran, and North Korea, is listed in the law 
as a foreign entity of concern. It is listed. They are spelled out. It 
wasn't like you had to say: Well, we are not sure what the 
interpretation of that means. What is a ``foreign entity of concern''? 
We spelled it out. It is because they are willing to weaponize their 
control of supply chains against the United States and our allies. 
Russia has already done that with Ukraine and all of our allies in 
Europe.
  China, I am sure, is doing the same thing with critical minerals that 
they know we have to have for the building blocks that we use every 
day--computers, chips--for everything we need.
  But now the IRS is proposing temporary exemptions from the end of 
2026 to allow batteries containing Chinese minerals to qualify for 
years longer than the law allows, as the charts show. It completely 
violates the law. I see it, and I am sure many of my colleagues do too. 
Yet this administration is moving forward.
  I hope the President sees it. I hope he asks for an accounting from 
his people who are interpreting and implementing it from the Treasury 
Department and DOE and from his own people on his environmental council 
within his office.
  The IRA clearly set deadlines in 2023 and 2024, not at the end of 
2026. Can anyone at the IRS read? Is it that difficult to understand 
that the IRA clearly set deadlines of 2023 and 2024, not at the end of 
2026 or later?
  So it is another 3 years of American taxpayers truly getting screwed 
over by the administration. It is another 3 years of China and other 
foreign nations reaching deeper into and controlling more of our 
electric vehicle battery supply chains. This will put America another 3 
years behind.
  This loophole means that automakers will not be required to know 
whether Chinese critical minerals are actually in a given battery until 
2027. They won't even report it. They won't even know where it is 
coming from. It puts all of our investments that we have coming to the 
country at a critical disadvantage. If they can undercut and basically 
flood the market with lower prices, it makes it very difficult for our 
own manufacturers in the United States of America to be able to find 
the footing and the support they are going to need to make sure the 
batteries and components are made right here in America and to make 
sure the critical minerals are coming from countries that have supply 
chains we can rely on.
  I ask you: What is the point of the IRA with loopholes like this? 
What is the point of passing a law that the lawmakers can just throw 
their hands up and say: Well, here is a $7,500 tax credit that 
taxpayers are paying for. This is where your tax dollars are going, and 
we don't even know where the batteries came from--whether it is China, 
Indonesia, or anywhere else.
  Worse yet, the IRS, under this administration, seems to have adopted 
a new legal strategy to avoid any accountability from the courts or 
Congress. I want you to hear this. They have, basically, a new legal 
strategy to avoid accountability by issuing what they call proposed 
rules.
  A proposed rule means that you are working diligently to get the 
permanent rules in place. If you can't get them in place, then nothing 
should go out. There shouldn't be any credits. There shouldn't be any 
of these incentives until you actually get your act together. Not only 
do they not get them together, but they said they can't even come close 
to getting them together before 2026, when the law says

[[Page S5725]]

2023 and 2024 in different categories. And they say it might even be 
later than that.
  That is what they are using. That is the gimmick. That is the legal 
strategy to, basically, usurp the law. Then the IRS can break the law, 
implement it in a way in which it was passed, and possibly avoid any 
judicial review.
  They are trying to push into the market, quicker than what we can 
basically produce and rely on ourselves, EVs. That is the bottom line.
  Car companies have changed and done that to put themselves in a 
position where, without the credits and without the incentives from the 
American taxpayers, who are giving them money for the cars, they think 
it is going to be actually destroying their business plan. This is 
wrong. This is not America. This is not capitalism as we know it. This 
is not the market-driven performance that we have seen over our 
lifetimes. It is absolutely ridiculous and not the way the government 
and this country should operate.
  I intend to hold the IRS accountable. I will support anyone who 
attempts a legal challenge to these proposed rules. If you have been 
damaged by what they are doing, and it is basically putting you in 
jeopardy of not having your market shares, not being able to get your 
product to market quick enough, and basically China is overrunning you 
with lower prices because they are keeping you out of the market, then 
you should sue the Federal Government--the Treasury--and I will do an 
amicus brief behind it because they are breaking the law.
  Although we can't normally do a Congressional Review Act resolution 
for proposed rules--they know that. That is their strategy: We will 
just do proposed rules. That gives us all of the flexibility that we 
need.
  This situation is unique. Credits are being awarded as if proposed 
rules were final. That is what they are doing. That has never been how 
we have operated.
  Then-Senator Biden knew exactly, and he knows it now, and I am hoping 
he gets involved and stops this ridiculousness by some of his 
administration and some of the heads of his Agencies.
  The Congressional Review Act should apply here. Xi Jinping has 
already shown that he will use critical minerals as leverage to put 
Americans and the free world at risk with new restrictions on exports 
of several critical minerals. I would expect that from Xi Jinping and 
China. What I never could have expected was our own government to give 
up so easily and continue to let foreign nations control our Nation's 
transportation.
  The administration is breaking our promise to the American people 
that this bill will reduce our debt. These proposed rules are breaking 
the law and blowing past the CBO cost estimate. The biggest mistake 
that we made--the biggest mistake that I made--was not putting a cap on 
the money. If you want to know how we have accumulated $33.8 trillion 
of debt so quickly, it is that, when we pass a piece of legislation and 
there is a 10-year period on that, the CBO scores it. We have to find 
pay-fors. We want to show that we are prudent, that we are paying for 
things.
  How can you accumulate this? I came here in 2010. The debt was at $13 
trillion. We are now at $34 trillion. How can you accumulate that much 
debt that quick if you are paying for things?
  Let's just quit kidding ourselves.
  The bottom line is this. They put a piece of legislation. The CBO 
scores it. It becomes very popular. So we have 10 years of spending 
authority. We run out of money in 3 or 4 years. Guess what happens. 
Rather than coming back to the legislature--because it was such a 
successful program--and expanding upon that and making sure that we 
have new appropriations and new ways to pay for the additional services 
that people want, what happens then? We debt-finance it. It is 
basically added to the debt for the next 6 years, if you run out of 
money in 4. That is what is happening, and no one seems to really care 
about that.

  I need my Republican colleagues, I need my Democratic colleagues and 
everyone to be serious. The debt we have now, we have accumulated it.
  If we do two things, do this: Stop. Stop this craziness of allowing 
pieces of legislation to have a CBO score. Make it stop when the money 
runs out. If the money runs out in 4 years, then the spending authority 
should run out in 4 years. Even though we intended for it to last 10, 
it didn't. Don't wait until the next party or the next political 
movement changes it. Do it ourselves so we never get ourselves in this 
deficit spending and keep accumulating more debt.
  The second thing, proposed rules--don't let temporary rules basically 
rule the day. Don't let any credit score out the door, don't let any 
incentives take effect until you have permanent rules in place. Then 
the Treasury would do its job on time.
  We are not holding anybody accountable whatsoever, and that is what 
we need to do.
  Let me be clear. There is no question that the IRA is bringing more 
investment to this country than ever before, and it will work the way 
it was intended to work.
  Electric vehicle and battery makers announced $52 billion in 
investments in North American supply chains before the IRS started 
loosening rules.
  It was working. It didn't need all this. They are placating--just a 
few players here--the large carmakers that basically want this 
advantage. They want it to be quicker because they put so much 
investment into electric vehicles, and we can't supply them. They got 
way ahead of their skis, and they want the taxpayers of America to pull 
them out. That is it in a nutshell.
  Numbers like this show that breaking the law doesn't get us more 
investment. It just makes the cost go up for American taxpayers, and it 
also keeps jobs in China, not bring them back to America.
  This administration knows the deal they made, and the intent of the 
IRA was to secure our energy, reduce our debt, and rebuild our critical 
supply chain. They are attacking all three of those principles. You 
have never heard about the good that the bill did and the reason and 
the purpose of the bill: reduce our debt--reduce our debt; secure 
energy--we are doing that; and, basically, rebuild our critical supply 
chains so that they are reliable and not dependent on foreign supply 
chains that, basically, are unreliable.
  I am going to do everything in my power to hold them accountable, 
protect the American taxpayers, and secure energy supply chains.
  This is something we all should be concerned about. I say that 
because of this: If we work hard, and we pass a piece of legislation, 
and we have an understanding that we all have agreed to on what a bill 
does, then every Agency should adhere to the intent of the legislation. 
They should not be able to look for loopholes and find loopholes and 
even write them in when there are no loopholes. But they are doing 
that, not just the Democrat administration or Republicans. They have 
all done this.
  You can't accumulate $33 trillion of debt or an additional $20 
trillion of debt in 12 years, 13 years. You can't do that unless 
something is critically wrong. We have been able to show it. We have 
seen this, and it has to stop.
  So I am asking the President: Please, get involved, Mr. President. 
Hold your Agencies to the letter of the law the way you would if you 
were still a Senator.
  I yield the floor.