[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Pages 14495-14496]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       WORKING ACROSS PARTY LINES

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, one of the hallmarks of President-
Elect Trump's campaign was his desire, often stated, to clean up 
Washington, to lift the dark hand of special interests off of the 
levers of government and, as he said it in his speeches, to drain the 
swamp here. I would like to assure the President-elect that on this 
side of the aisle we are very keen to work with him on a whole variety 
of reforms to control the role of big special interests, their lobbying 
apparatus, and their political machinery here in Washington.
  I very much hope that President-Elect Trump will indeed choose to 
work with us. I hope he will bear in mind that although he won the 
electoral college, it appears now clear that Secretary Clinton actually 
won the popular vote and that she may have won the popular vote by as 
many as a million votes.
  It is also worth noting that if 2012 is any prologue to 2016, it is 
likely that Democratic Members of Congress--of the House of 
Representatives--received more votes than Republican Members of 
Congress. The shift and the reason for Republican control of the House 
of Representatives has been the gerrymandering effort that has packed 
Democrats into very heavily saturated Democratic districts so that 
Republicans can create strong--but not massive--majority districts for 
themselves. I believe in the last Presidential election, States such as 
Pennsylvania and Ohio reelected Democratic Senators statewide, elected 
a Democratic President statewide, but then sent heavily Republican 
delegations to the House of Representatives because of that 
gerrymandering.
  It may be a fluke of the way the California vote would have shaken 
out, but it would not surprise me if it turned out in this election 
that Democratic Senators and candidates for the Senate received a 
bigger popular vote than Republican Senators and candidates for the 
Senate. Those numbers are not in yet.
  My point is that I hope President-Elect Trump will recognize that in 
a divided Nation, it makes more sense and it will bind us together 
better if we try to work together across party lines rather than try to 
ramrod a hard-right partisan agenda through. There is no place I can 
think of--perhaps infrastructure, but few places where we are more 
willing to hear his ideas and work with him than on draining the swamp.
  The environment here in Washington is obviously one that lends itself 
to very substantial political manipulation. In all of that political 
manipulation, most of the cards are with the big special interests. 
Indeed, corporate lobbying of Congress has been reviewed and measured 
as being more than all other lobbying of Congress combined by a ratio 
of 30 to 1. So if we are wondering where the power structure comes down 
here in this building, think about a 30-to-1 advantage for corporate 
lobbying over all other lobbying combined.
  There are issues where I think we can work together if, in fact, 
President-Elect Trump wishes to drain the swamp. There are substantive 
issues. One of the things I have been concerned about has been the 
carried interest loophole, which is a quirk of the Tax Code that allows 
people who are hedge fund billionaires to pay a lower tax rate than a 
brick mason or a truckdriver does. That, to me, is not fair.
  We have seen some reflections of this in studies that looked at, for 
instance, an enormous building in Manhattan in New York City. The 
building is so big that it has its own ZIP Code, and because the 
Internal Revenue Service calculates tax payments and income by ZIP 
Code, we can get a general sense of how much money the individuals in 
that building make and how much they pay in taxes. What we see when we 
look at that study is that the average income of the inhabitants of 
that building is well over $1 million, but the tax rate they paid was 
actually in the low teens in terms of a percentage tax rate. And if you 
look at what the Department of Labor says about security workers and 
janitorial workers, we see that they pay more like a 20- to 30-percent 
tax rate in New York City. So what that leaves us with is a 
circumstance in which the hedge fund mogul coming back to his luxury 
apartment building in his limousine, as he steps out into the rain, is 
paying a lower tax rate than the doorman or the security official or 
the janitor working in that building. The doorman holding the umbrella 
over the head of the billionaire is probably paying a higher tax rate 
than the billionaire.
  I can see why Donald Trump raised that issue on the campaign, and I 
can see why crowds responded to that. It is a disgrace in the Tax Code. 
We would love to work with him, but then we look at who his transition 
team is. The chiefs of his transition team are a whole slew of hedge 
fund and Wall

[[Page 14496]]

Street billionaires--the people getting out of the limo paying the low 
tax rates. When it comes time for Donald Trump to keep his promise on 
carried interest, it will be interesting to see if he can hold his own 
against the insiders around him who want to preserve this disgraceful 
tax loophole.
  We want to work with him on infrastructure. We think there should be 
a big infrastructure bill. The civil engineers of this country give our 
infrastructure a D. Everybody who drives on our roads or crosses our 
bridges knows we need to invest in infrastructure, but the Koch 
brothers have already thrown down a gauntlet saying they will challenge 
the President-elect on that infrastructure plan. Will he have the 
strength to proceed, or will the insider lobbying political operation 
of the Koch brothers block him? It is another contest that remains to 
be seen between insider politics and the President-elect.
  Finally, the biggest swamp thing of them all is the fossil fuel 
industry. The fossil fuel industry has more or less taken over the 
Republican Party in Congress. What remains of the Republican Party in 
Congress is a little bit like what remains of that unfortunate farmer 
in ``Men in Black'' whose body was occupied by the alien, who then 
walked around in the skin and the overalls of the unfortunate farmer. 
The fossil fuel industry is a special interest. It is the biggest swamp 
thing in the swamp. Will the President-elect be willing to take it on 
in any respect? That, too, remains to be seen.
  There are a lot of very powerful creatures in the swamp. It is one 
thing to say you are going to drain it; it is another thing to actually 
take them on.
  I am here to assure the President-elect that not just I but many 
Democrats would like to work with him toward responsible climate 
policies, notwithstanding the nefarious presence of the fossil fuel 
industry; toward an infrastructure bill, notwithstanding the 
ideological position of the Koch brothers; and on carried interest, 
notwithstanding the infiltration already of his transition team by Wall 
Street special interests.
  With that, I yield the floor to my outstanding colleague from 
Massachusetts.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.

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