Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Relating to ``Update of Commission's

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, a couple of weeks ago, President Biden unveiled his so-called American Families Plan, which one might summarize as free stuff--free preschool, free community college, lots of government subsidies. It sounds great, but the problem, of course, is that none of that is really free. The government may not send individuals a bill for any of those items, but that doesn't mean they don't have to be paid for by someone. So President Biden proposed a raft of tax hikes to at least partially pay for his proposals--a hike in the capital gains tax, an additional new death tax to add to the one we already have, and a hike in the top income tax rate.

Now, President Biden is selling these tax increases as tax hikes on wealthy Americans, whom Democrats view as a bottomless source of funding for new government programs, but there are two problems with that.

In the first place, there is no question that some middle-class Americans will be hit by President Biden's new death tax. While he provides an exemption for gains of $1 million or less, the truth is that it is possible to die with an estate whose value has increased by more than $1 million over the course of your life, while never breaking out of the middle class. We are not talking about individuals with a yearly income of $1 million; we are talking about the lifetime gains on assets an individual has at his or her death.

Then, of course, there is a good bet that many of those individuals' heirs--the ones whose inheritance will be diminished by this tax--are thoroughly middle class. Your parents might die with an estate that has gained $1 million-plus in value, but you yourself might be earning just $40,000 or $50,000 a year.

All this is especially true in the case of family farms and businesses. Farming is a cash-poor business. Farmers might have land that has appreciated over decades by substantially more than $1 million even though the farmers themselves may at times struggle even to break even. Levying President Biden's new tax at death could permanently destroy a family farm or business.

Now, President Biden has suggested that he will carve out an exemption for family farms and businesses if the next generation commits to running them, but it remains to be seen what that exception looks like and whether it truly protects family farms. He has not pledged to carve out an exception for middle-class Americans whose inheritance will be hit by this new tax.

Then there is the fact that President Biden's new income tax hike will also hit small businesses, many of whose owners pour a substantial part of their profits back into the business instead of raking in a large salary.

But even leaving all that aside and supposing that President Biden's new taxes will be levied only on wealthy Americans, there is still a problem. Sure, if you are in the middle class, the government might not be sending you a tax bill, but that doesn't mean you won't be negatively affected by these taxes.

You see, Democrats operate under the entirely false assumption that you can tax higher earners without consequences, that you can tax investments without consequences, and that you can tax businesses without consequences. In Democrats' world, you can heavily tax something, but no one will behave any differently. No one will reduce his or her investments. No business will flee high tax rates by moving overseas. No business will pass on higher tax bills to consumers in the form of higher prices at a time when inflation is already on the rise.

But, of course, in the real world, people do respond to tax hikes. Businesses raise prices on their products, they limit wage growth to their workers, and they create fewer jobs. In fact, studies suggest that 50 to 70 percent or more of the burden o corporate tax hikes is borne by workers in the form of lower wages and fewer job opportunities.

Corporations also move overseas. Before Republicans lowered the corporate tax rate to make American businesses more competitive in the global economy, a significant number of American companies were moving their headquarters overseas.

Small businesses hit with big tax hikes cut jobs or limit their creation of new ones. They raise prices. They decide not to expand.

Investors hit with major tax hikes decide not to invest as much. Since investment fuels jobs and innovation, both of those suffer as a result.

In every one of these cases, ordinary Americans are affected--not just the rich; not just millionaires; ordinary, middle-class Americans. After all, most Americans, if they are not self-employed or working for government, are employed by businesses. If the business they work for isn't doing well, their prospects are going to be significantly affected. If businesses hold down wages to deal with the impact of tax hikes, for example, ordinary Americans' long-term earning potential will be diminished. These effects may not sound as concrete as being handed a tax bill, but they have just as real of an impact on Americans' income and Americans' lives.

Democrats talk a lot about making the rich pay their fair share. We hear it constantly. From the way Democrats talk, you would think that rich people rarely pay any taxes. That is not even close to being the case.

The fact is that our tax system is highly--highly--progressive, the most progressive in the world, and the tax relief Republicans passed 3 years ago actually made it even more progressive.

In 2013, individuals making over $1 million paid twice as much per dollar in taxes--I should say in 2018, individuals making over $1 million paid twice as much per dollar in taxes as individuals making between 75,000 and $100,000 or more than 10 times--10 times as much per dollar as individuals making between $20,000 and $30,000.

It would be interesting to know what exactly Democrats consider to be a fair share. When financially successful Americans are paying half of their income in taxes, is that when it is fair? Seventy-five percent of their income? Ninety-five percent of their income? And when they are paying that much, what happens then? Well, I have already indicated what happens. Investment declines, wages stagnate, prices go up, job creation goes down, and ordinary Americans start feeling the consequences. But, unfortunately, Democrats are so used to viewing the wealthy as an inexhaustible source of money that they refuse to admit that hiking taxes on wealthier Americans will have consequences.

It even goes further than that. It is not just that Democrats view wealthier Americans as an inexhaustible source of money; it is that Democrats are well on their way to a kind of Marxist-style class warfare that demonizes success.

Nowhere is that more evident than in the fact that Democrats are proposing a capital gains tax hike on the wealthy that will fail to maximize government revenue. That is right. Democrats could actually get more revenue to pay for their social programs if they raised the capital gains tax less. Democrats are proposing a capital gains increase so substantial that it will actually return less government revenue--thanks to the resulting decrease in investment--than a lower rate hike would return.

At the level of tax hike Democrats have proposed, the tax hike becomes less about raising government revenue and more about punishing more prosperous Americans for being successful, which is a pretty un- American way of looking at things. Democrats like to portray the wealthy as a bunch of billionaires sitting on inherited piles of money and not doing a day's work. But the truth is that a lot of prosperous people in this country are, A, not billionaires, and B, only wealthy because they worked hard, saved, and made prudent financial decisions and took advantage of the opportunities they were given.

Focusing on punishing successful Americans for being successful instead of focusing on how we can create opportunity and remove obstacles to success for everyone else is counterproductive because it has a negative effect on our economy. It fosters an atmosphere of envy instead of possibility, hostility instead of determination. Rather than focusing on how we can lift everybody up, the focus becomes on how we can drag part of society down.

Rather than counterproductively hiking taxes to punish the successful or pay for an ever-increasing array of government programs, we should be focusing on creating an economy that gives every single American the chance for success and that reduces the need for government programs by increasing economic opportunity for all Americans. Unfortunately for the American people, Democrats' tax hikes will have the opposite effect.

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Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Alaska (Ms. Murkowski) and the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio).

The result was announced--yeas 50, nays 48, as follows: [Rollcall Vote No. 195 Leg.] YEAS--50 Baldwin Bennet Blumenthal Booker Brown Cantwell Cardin Carper Casey Coons Cortez Masto Duckworth Durbin Feinstein Gillibrand Hassan Heinrich Hickenlooper Hirono Kaine Kelly King Klobuchar Leahy Lujan Manchin Markey Menendez Merkley Murphy Murray Ossoff Padilla Peters Reed Rosen Sanders Schatz Schumer Shaheen Sinema Smith Stabenow Tester Van Hollen Warner Warnock Warren Whitehouse Wyden NAYS--48 Barrasso Blackburn Blunt Boozman Braun Burr Capito Cassidy Collins Cornyn Cotton Cramer Crapo Cruz Daines Ernst Fischer Graham Grassley Hagerty Hawley Hoeven Hyde-Smith Inhofe Johnson Kennedy Lankford Lee Lummis Marshall McConnell Moran Paul Portman Risch Romney Rounds Sasse Scott (FL) Scott (SC) Shelby Sullivan Thune Tillis Toomey Tuberville Wicker Young NOT VOTING--2 Murkowski Rubio

The resolution (S.J. Res. 13) was passed as follows: S.J. Res. 13

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That Congress disapproves the rule submitted by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission relating to ``Update of Commission's Conciliation Procedures'' (86 Fed. Reg. 2974; published January 14, 2021), and such rule shall have no force or effect.

(Mr. HICKENLOOPER assumed the Chair.)

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