[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 17 (Monday, January 27, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Page S388]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                      Nomination of Scott Bessent

  Ms. WARREN. Madam President, I rise today in opposition to Scott 
Bessent to be the next Secretary of the Treasury and in support of tens 
of millions of working families who need a government on their side.
  The Treasury Secretary is one of the President's top economic 
advisers. He has the power to lower costs for hard-working people or to 
give billionaires another break.
  Now, Mr. Bessent has a long history as an investment manager, helping 
rich clients get even richer. In fact, helping rich people get richer 
has been a very profitable business for him. Mr. Bessent is now a 
billionaire himself. He owns not one but two multimillion-dollar 
mansions, including one in the Bahamas, and he has hundreds of millions 
of dollars in investments.
  Now, he spent a lot of money, but he saved money in one area: He 
hasn't paid the taxes he owes. According to an analysis from 
congressional tax experts, Mr. Bessent has refused to pay $2 million in 
taxes that he owed on his hedge fund earnings, just in the past 3 
years.
  And Mr. Bessent has no demonstrated track record of fighting to make 
life better or more affordable for working people.
  So, let's start with some of Trump's economic plans that Mr. Bessent 
would be in charge of advancing. Right now, Republicans in the White 
House and in Congress are working through their plans to extend tax 
breaks for billionaires and giant corporations, paid for in part with 
major cuts to healthcare. In plain English, Republicans are hoping you 
won't notice major budget cuts for nursing homes that take care of your 
grandpa or the cuts in school lunches for poor kids. Move grandpa out 
of the nursing home and let the little kids go hungry in order to make 
sure that a tiny handful of billionaires get a few more truckloads of 
cash from Uncle Sam.
  There is a truth no one can escape: Someone has to pay to run this 
country. Folks like Scott Bessent think the burden should be just a 
little heavier on working people because billionaires like him are 
smarter than everyone else. One place or the other, someone has to pay.
  So during his hearing, I asked Mr. Bessent about those cuts for 
billionaires. I asked if there were any billionaires already rich 
enough that they didn't need another tax cut. And Mr. Bessent said, 
well, that it was unwise to single out anyone--not even billionaires.
  You wouldn't want to single out a billionaire like Jeff Bezos, who 
pays a lower tax rate than a Boston public school teacher? You wouldn't 
want to single out a billionaire like Mark Zuckerberg, whose company 
Meta paid a tax rate of just 11.5 percent in 2023, despite making 
nearly $40 billion in profits? You wouldn't want to single out a 
billionaire like Elon Musk, who is more focused on flying to Mars than 
making life better for working families here on Earth?
  Those billionaires had better seats at Donald Trump's inauguration 
than Trump's own Cabinet members. Those billionaires dominate the 
American economy, and Republicans plan to give them more tax breaks.
  This is the payout for Trump's ``rich as hell donors,'' and Mr. 
Bessent is another billionaire ready to do the hard work of cutting 
taxes for every billionaire in America, himself included.
  The top economic issue today is: How do we lower costs for families 
and build an economy that works, not just for the wealthy and the well 
connected, but an economy that works for everyone?
  I am hammering out plans to make it a little easier for families to 
be able to pay their bills, to buy a home, and to build some financial 
security.
  Trump's tax breaks for billionaires is the same old Republican 
playbook of trickle-down economics: Help the rich get richer, and leave 
everyone else behind.
  But that is not the Trump administration's only bad economic idea. 
Mr. Bessent has been an advocate for deregulating Wall Street and 
letting big banks load up on risk. Deregulate Wall Street--yes, a lot 
of people remember how that approach brought our economy to its knees 
back in 2008. People who remember include the millions of people who 
lost their homes, the millions who lost their jobs, and the millions 
who lost their savings. And now, once again, President Trump wants to 
run the same economic play, and Mr. Bessent is the guy he has picked to 
do it.
  We don't need less oversight of giant banks and Wall Street movers 
and shakers. Risk is building in the system. The too-big-to-fail banks 
are quietly taking on riskier investments. The shadowy private credit 
market has loaded up on highly leveraged loans. And after waves of 
catastrophic losses, the insurance industry is facing a reckoning that 
even climate change deniers can't ignore.
  Without significant changes, another financial crash is coming. As we 
learned, those big crashes fall hardest on hard-working people who are 
just trying to make a living.
  A billionaire willing to roll along on deregulation poses a threat to 
the economic well-being of every American, and a billionaire who 
supports more tax cuts for every single billionaire in America is not 
someone who is watching out for hard- working families.
  For me, this is simple. I am ready to work together with President 
Trump's team wherever we agree to help working families. But I am also 
ready to fight like hell when Republicans pursue economic policies that 
load up the risk in our financial system or tax policies that mostly 
benefit billionaires.
  I will vote no on Mr. Bessent to be the next Secretary of the 
Treasury, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.