Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, Relating to ``Contributions in Exchange for State or Local Tax Credits''

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I will be making a unanimous consent request to move the SAFE Act in just a couple of moments. This is legislation that Senator Klobuchar and I have teamed up on for quite some time.

It basically incorporates the three priorities that all of the nonpartisan election cybersecurity experts recommend: paper ballots, routine post-election, risk-limiting audits, and Federal cyber security standards for election systems.

I am going to make some brief remarks and then pose a unanimous consent request.

I just find it stunning that the Republican Party continues its wall- to-wall campaign of obstruction against election security. Because of this legislative blockade, the Senate has been AWOL when it comes to stopping foreign cyber attacks on our elections.

For example, I think most Americans would be stunned to learn that there is not a single mandatory, nationwide election cyber security standard on the books. For example, there are no rules barring connecting voting machines to the internet. I say to the Presiding Officer and colleagues that doing so is equivalent to putting American ballot boxes in the Kremlin. That is what happens when you don't have cyber security standards.

Let's remember what happened in the election cyber security debacle of 2016. Russian hackers probed all 50 State election systems. Russians successfully hacked at least one election technology vendor, according to the Mueller report. Russians penetrated two Florida county election systems, according to Florida's Governor. That is just what we know about.

People are always saying: Well, no votes were changed. Nobody knows that because you wouldn't know it unless you had a real forensic analysis conducted by cybersecurity experts who broke the systems down, and that hasn't been done.

Despite all of the ways foreign hackers have already made it into our election infrastructure, Congress has refused to arm State and county election officials with the knowledge and funding they need to secure their systems.

I will just make one additional point, and I thank my colleague for her courtesy because I know everyone is on a tight schedule. This summer, I saw for myself how vulnerable election systems are. I went to DEF CON, which is really the major ``white hat'' hacker convention in Las Vegas. I went because I wanted to see how easy it was to hack e- pollbooks, voting machines, and other key parts of election infrastructure. I sure wish some of my colleagues on the other side, including the distinguished majority leader, could have seen all of these young people in the Voting Village going through a who's who of hackable voting machines and see how easy it was to compromise voting machines to alter votes, disrupt ballot printers, and meddle with registration systems.

Teenagers in the DEF CON Voting Village showed me an e-pollbook hacked so completely that young people were playing video games like ``Doom'' on it. I sure wish my colleagues could have been there.

I sit on the Intelligence Committee. I am not going to get into anything classified, but I am going to close simply by saying that, as of today, the threats that we face in 2020 from hostile foreign powers, in my view, are going to make 2016 look like small potatoes.

For that reason, I now ask unanimous consent that the Rules Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 2238, the Securing America's Federal Elections Act, otherwise known as the SAFE Act; that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I am going to be brief because I just think it is so critical to respond to the comments my colleague has made.

The first argument was that, on this side of the aisle, people really aren't interested in election security. The fact is, what Senator Klobuchar and I and those on our side of the aisle have been interested in are the three priorities that independent cyber security experts agree are essential to protecting our elections: paper ballots, audits, and cyber security standards. So that ought to dispose of this issue that somehow on this side of the aisle, people really aren't interested in election security.

Second, I want it understood that over here, we have been interested in working in a bipartisan way. But our ranking member, Senator Klobuchar, on the Rules Committee said that at one point there was a markup scheduled on these issues, and, essentially, the leadership on the other side of the aisle intervened, and it was canceled.

The fact is that here we are, with just a few months until people start voting. They are going to vote in primaries early next year. They are going to go to the polls from sea to shining sea in the fall of 2020. I will just say to my colleagues that we have something like 25 States in America that are nakedly vulnerable. These are the States that are still using hackable, paperless voting machines and States that do not have routine, post-election audits.

As Senator Warner, Senator Klobuchar, and I have said, and the distinguished minority leader, Senator Schumer, all we are interested in is working to deal with this issue in an objective way, based on the facts outlined by the experts who aren't at all political.

I think it is very unfortunate that there has been an objection to the proposal from the distinguished Senator from Virginia, Mr. Warner, and the proposal from the ranking member on the Rules Committee, who has worked with me on the SAFE Act, and the SAFE Act itself because, as a result of this action, the Senate is missing yet another opportunity to provide an additional measure of security for the 2020 election.

I will close with one last response in light of a comment my colleague, our new Senator from Tennessee, has made. She and I have talked about these issues, and I have appreciated it. She said that no votes were changed--no votes were changed in the election. Nobody knows that. Unless you do a forensic analysis and break down the machines, you won't know that.

I sure hope that soon we will be back on this floor moving the proposal advanced by the Senator from Virginia and the proposal advanced by the Senator from Minnesota and me because these are measures proposed by independent experts who don't care about Ds and Rs; they care about what is right for America.

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I want to make sure the Senate and the country understand what this debate is all about.

Senate Republicans have been writing letters to the Department of Treasury saying that the Treasury SALT rule hurts their State charities. Yet they have been unwilling--at least based on what I am told--to be part of an effort to fix this and to support those charities. That is what we would be doing in our effort today to overturn the Treasury Department's flawed--deeply flawed--SALT regulations.

My view is that these regulations illustrate essentially what was wrong with the Republicans' 2017 tax law. This was a law that was half- baked and rushed to shovel hundreds of billions of dollars to those at the top of the economic pyramid in our country. Then $1.5 trillion was borrowed so that Donald Trump and his Republican allies could find a way to cover this tax cut for cronies and donors.

Then, because they still needed revenue, Republicans deliberately targeted middle-class homeowners in States like New Jersey, New York, Maryland, and Oregon for tax increases.

For some communities in Oregon, it is not uncommon for property tax bills alone for middle-class folks to exceed $10,000. But when our Republican colleagues took this flawed approach on the SALT issue, they didn't want to listen to experts. So the Trump Treasury Department stepped in, and without any clear authority to do so, the Treasury Department reversed a longstanding IRS provision that had allowed taxpayers a full deduction for charitable contributions to State tax credit programs.

In essence, the Treasury Department created a new rule that extended the $10,000 cap on State and local tax deductions to also include charitable contributions to State tax credit programs.

To make matters worse, because Republican Senators began to see what an absurd approach this was, Secretary Mnuchin put together another carve-out for Republican interests, trying to figure out how to manage this flawed regulation. In effect, businesses using these same workarounds to fund private school voucher programs would be exempt from the regulation. Middle-class families pay more; businesses pay less. That is the Republican way.

My view is that the Treasury Department shouldn't be putting its thumb on the scale on behalf of Republicans, and it certainly shouldn't be using what amounts to a phony regulatory justification to fix this extraordinarily poorly drafted law.

While Donald Trump certainly intended for these regulations to hurt middle-class families in some parts of the country in Democratic States and protect Republican interests, the bad news for my Republican colleagues--and this is why so many Republican Senators are writing the Treasury Department, talking about why their State charities are getting hammered. The regulations produced by the Treasury Department are overly broad, and they hurt the majority of States by effectively eliminating the benefit of those State charitable tax credit programs. These include credits that support priorities like conservation, child care, charitable giving, and access to higher education.

This is particularly striking, given that the Trump tax law was already estimated to slash overall charitable giving by as much as $20 million a year.

Now on top of that, the regulations that I oppose and feel so strongly about coming from the Treasury Department threaten more than 100 charitable State tax credit programs in 33 States.

My Republican colleagues' constituents will be hurt by these regulations, just like my constituents at home. We are talking about childcare centers in Colorado and Missouri; foster care organizations in Arizona; historic preservation groups in Kansas; charities in Iowa, Kentucky, and Mississippi; conservation groups in Arkansas, Iowa, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee; rural hospitals in Georgia, the home State of the Presiding Officer; universities in Indiana, Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota; and volunteer responders in Nebraska.

As today's debate proceeds, you are going to hear about these comments against these regulations that were submitted to the Trump administration. There is a rural hospital in Georgia that was able to upgrade its heart monitors, a childcare center in Colorado that helps parents remain in the workforce, and a conservation group that has preserved more than 10,000 acres of land in Florida's gulf coast.

In wrapping up, I just hope my Republican colleagues will put their constituents first by shielding them from these unintended consequences of losing their charitable tax credits and supporting this resolution offered by the leader, Senator Schumer, myself, and other colleagues.

Senate Republicans have a choice. They can keep writing letters to the Treasury Department, complaining about the regulations that hammer their State charities, or they can join us in voting to reverse this policy. I just hope that Senators move to this vote, and they take the option that I think is the only one you can explain to the folks at home in a townhall meeting. I have had more than 950 of them. I am going to have some more very shortly. There, folks have a chance to really see what your priorities are.

The question here is, Are your priorities with folks at home, with these State charities that I have emphasized--everything from conservation to healthcare, to children? Are you going to support the State charities doing that important work or are you going to continue to support the Department of the Treasury with their incredibly flawed regulations to hammer these State charities?

I hope Senators from all sides--from those 33 States that I have just ticked off--will vote to protect those charities and join me, Senator Schumer, and a host of other colleagues in voting to get rid of the Treasury Department's rule and stand with us on the CRA.

With that,

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