[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 62 (Monday, April 7, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2452-S2453]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           GOVERNMENT FUNDING

  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, as the Presiding Officer will recall, it 
was 2:30 in the morning on Saturday--just a few short hours ago, it 
seems like--that the Senate voted to pass a budget resolution amending 
the House budget resolution, the next important step to passing 
President Trump's ``America First'' agenda.
  The budget will go back--and has gone back--to the House, and then it 
will be time for the committees to do really the hard work. This was 
the easy part, passing the framework, but now we have to write the 
bills to implement not only the continuation of the current tax 
provisions but also the spending cuts that are so important and to help 
the President keep his other promises that he made on the campaign 
trail. And we are on our way to what President Trump likes to call 
``one, big, beautiful bill.''
  Well, a lot of important conversations have been taking place, on 
both sides of the Capitol, about what the result will be. But while 
these questions and some differences are natural, the critical matter 
at hand in this budget resolution is to make sure that we don't impose 
a multitrillion-dollar tax increase on the American people.
  Now, there have been a lot of crazy allegations made about what the 
budget actually did or did not do, while some of our colleagues have 
said that the American people don't want to see their tax cuts 
extended, which is false, and I don't know who they are talking to. And 
then they claim that the extension would benefit the wealthy few at the 
expense of the middle class. That is also another false statement.
  As I said, if the President's tax cuts are not extended, we will see 
a multitrillion-dollar tax hike, the largest in history, and 62 percent 
of American taxpayers will see a tax increase in 2026. Working parents 
will see the child tax credit cut in half, and the average family of 
four that earns $80,000 a year will face a $1,700 tax increase. Back 
home in Texas, my constituents would see their taxes increase by $3,000 
on average next year.
  Now, imagine this. If we failed to follow through on President 
Trump's campaign promises and on our campaign promises, if we agreed 
with the Democrats who were demagoguing this issue, can you imagine 
what that would do to the standard of living of hard-working American 
families? And that would be on top of 4-year high inflation--actually 
the highest in 40 years. So that would be, to me, insult added to 
injury, to add a huge tax increase on top of all of the inflation that 
Americans experienced during the last 4 years--roughly, on average, 
about a 21-percent increase in the cost of living.
  But not just families would be affected. Small businesses would see 
their Federal tax rates increase by almost 50 percent. One recent 
survey found that 61 percent of small business owners said they would 
have to increase prices as a result of the tax increase on them. Can 
you imagine what that would do to already high prices as a result of 
inflation?
  Nearly half of these small businesses reported that they would have 
to postpone or cancel capital investments; in other words, they 
couldn't grow their business, hire more employees, or improve their 
equipment.
  Now, these are not massive corporations, as we hear from folks on 
that side of the aisle. They talk about businesses as if they were all 
Fortune 500 companies. Most businesses in America are small businesses, 
the owners of which pay business income on an individual tax return--
so-called passthrough entities. And these are the folks--these local 
entrepreneurs are the ones--that create jobs and help employ hard-
working Americans who are pursuing their American dream.
  Republicans, it is good to announce or report or reassure that we are 
united against these defenseless claims coming from the other side. 
That doesn't mean they will stop. They are depending on low-information 
voters, people who just read the headlines or read certain propaganda 
to carry the day on their false allegations about this just helping the 
rich people. Or one of my favorite is they were arguing during the 
budget vote-arama, as it was called, that this was going to affect 
Social Security.
  They know and we know that the law prevents Social Security from 
being even included in these discussions. So how could it possibly be 
true? It can't be true.

[[Page S2453]]

  So we have to get this bill over the finish line by sometime this 
summer. In addition to preventing the biggest tax increase in history, 
this bill will provide an opportunity for us to take important steps in 
controlling spending and addressing our national debt.
  Now, I noticed the chairman of the Armed Services Committee just came 
into the Chamber, and he knows, like I know, as the Presiding Officer 
knows, that we are now paying more for interest on the national debt 
than we are on defense, in a very dangerous world--perhaps the most 
dangerous since World War II.
  So we have to begin the process of controlling our spending, and the 
only way we do that is by looking at everything that the Federal 
Government spends.
  The Federal Government spends about, I think, roughly $6.7 trillion a 
year, but it is crazy to acknowledge that we only typically look at 
about 28 percent of what the Federal Government spends--so-called 
discretionary spending. So we have to find a way to reduce our 
spending, not only on the discretionary side but on the mandatory side, 
so we can fund our Nation's priorities.
  And our top priority as the Federal Government has to be to defend 
and protect the American people and our way of life. But we can do this 
without tampering with essential programs like Social Security, as I 
said, and programs like Medicare that our seniors rely on.
  Now, one of the ways we can do this, which I hope we will embrace 
wholeheartedly, is to look at means-tested Federal programs. So what 
does it mean to have a means test?
  Well, it depends on your income. Wealthy people don't qualify. People 
of modest and lower income brackets can qualify for these means-tested 
programs. But they need to have work requirements for able-bodied 
adults because there are a lot of able-bodied adults that are simply 
living off of the American taxpayer, costing billions and billions of 
dollars for the taxpayer, running up our national debt, when they 
should be contributing to our economy and contributing to their 
families and their communities by doing meaningful work.
  For a long time, there was a bipartisan consensus around work 
requirements. In 1996, for example, President Clinton and Newt 
Gingrich, when he was Speaker of the House, came together to pass 
monumental reforms on the way our welfare system works in America, and 
one of the key components of that was that welfare assistance depended 
on work for able-bodied adults.
  We are not talking about children. We are not talking about the 
elderly. We are not talking about the disabled. We are talking about 
able-bodied adults.
  The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 replaced AFDC, as it was called, with 
TANF, or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which imposes a 5-
year limit on cash assistance and required recipients to either work or 
participate in some type of job training. The bipartisan goal of this 
policy was to promote self-sufficiency rather than dependency, 
something the Federal Government ought to encourage and incentivize as 
much as we possibly can.
  And here is the good news: It actually worked. It worked.
  It is not just a theory. Within 5 years of passing the law, welfare's 
caseloads declined close to 50 percent--the first significant decline 
since World War II. Employment and earnings increased among low-income 
individuals, with employment among single mothers increasing from 50 to 
100 percent 7 years after President Clinton signed it into law. During 
the same time period, child poverty declined by 2.9 million people.
  But despite the success of this bipartisan policy, the Obama 
administration began to roll back these requirements by issuing TANF 
work requirement waivers. In other words, they said to the various 
States: You don't need to impose this work requirement on able-bodied 
adults in order to collect temporary assistance for needy families.
  The Trump administration built on previous successful work 
requirement policies by issuing a rule that would condition SNAP, or 
food stamps as they are sometimes called, on similar work requirements. 
After all, why should somebody be able to qualify for food stamps if 
they are able to work and simply refuse to do so--and, in fact, when it 
is good for them to actually go back to work and provide the dignity 
that goes along with that, to self-sufficiency supporting themselves 
and their families and their communities.
  The U.S. Government spends about a trillion dollars on means-tested 
assistance programs, and work requirements are a commonsense step 
forward for reform.
  But setting aside the budgetary impact of work, there is a moral 
reason for these work requirements. Gainful employment has dignity. 
People feel better about themselves. They are more productive. They are 
happier. They are able to contribute not just to their own well-being 
but to that of their community and their family.
  So it is more than just a paycheck. It can help address the 
loneliness epidemic that we saw, particularly post-COVID, and it is 
proven to improve mental health outcomes across the board.
  So I would encourage my Republican colleagues to join me in 
strengthening work requirements across means-tested programs when the 
time comes to identify these savings within our committees.
  The American people voted overwhelmingly for President Trump, and now 
it is our turn to deliver the ``America First'' agenda that our 
constituents voted for and take this opportunity to address our 
national debt and encourage more Americans to pursue gainful employment 
instead of solely relying on government benefits.
  The Senate has completed our next step by passing President Trump's 
budget, and it is time for the House to do the same.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.

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