Motion to Discharge

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor to join my colleagues in opposing the Democrats' reckless tax-and-spending spree.

The bill that we are talking about is the centerpiece of Bernie Sanders' socialist plan for America. The Democrats' plan does play favorites, however, and what they really focus on doing, interestingly, is hurting the working folks in rural America to give tax breaks to wealthy families in big cities in liberal States.

The reason I tell you this is that this bill includes huge subsidies for people who buy and drive electric vehicles. You don't see a lot of that in rural States with long distances between community to community.

Well, the government is already giving billions of taxpayer dollars to electric vehicle manufacturers and for owners. Nearly 80 percent of the tax credits go to households making at least $100,000 a year.

So what is happening now? The thing is, right now, the roads are being used, chewed up, vehicles on the road, and how is it paid for? Well, the highway trust fund. And how does that get paid for? People paying the gas tax.

People who use electric vehicles do the same wear and tear to our highways and pay nothing in terms of a use fee to use the highways as they do. So they are paying nothing in, they are using the services, they use the roads for free, and now they want subsidies.

And that is what the Democrats are offering. This bill would give up to $12,500 to married couples to buy electric vehicles--12,500.

What kind of income? Maybe there is an income limit. I mean, you don't want to give it to rich people. So the Democrats said: OK, if you are a single person earning up to $400,000 a year, you can get a subsidy. If you are a married couple earning up to $800,000 a year, you still get the subsidy because, boy oh boy, we are going to push those electric vehicles for the big cities and for our Democrat colleagues.

Democrats have gone so far as to even want to spend $7 billion to subsidize luxury electric bicycles--astonishing.

Now, these giveaways have a pricetag, and that is why Democrats want to pile enormous new taxes on the American people. They propose more than $2 trillion in additional new taxes. This would be the largest tax increase in half a century, but it is still not enough to pay for all the new spending they want to do.

That is why they are trying a backdoor tax increase. What the Democrats are proposing is putting the IRS on steroids--supersizing the IRS. They want to increase funding for the Internal Revenue Service by $80 billion.

The IRS says: Hey, give us a lot more money. We can hire a lot more agents, and they can collect more money, even more than the $80 billion that you give us.

So last week, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen said she wants to make banks report every transaction that is over $600--she didn't just say it; she wrote it in a letter to the chairman of the House Budget Committee--so they can watch and look at, investigate, spy on families all across the country.

I have heard more from people of Wyoming about this one letter from the Secretary of the Treasury than I have on many, many issues over the years.

Every time somebody pays their rent, the IRS will now know about it. Make a car payment; the IRS will now know about it. Pay the plumber; the IRS will know about it.

The amount of power that the IRS has will now be more than ever before. Democrats are going to send the IRS to shake down people for every last dime they can. It is too much power. It is too much of an invasion of privacy. The American people find this dangerous and scary.

The IRS is already one of the most powerful and unaccountable Agencies in the Federal Government, if not the most powerful and unaccountable Agency in the Federal Government. Now the Democrats want to unleash it even further.

I just want to talk about one last tax, and it is a hidden tax, but it surely hurts many Americans, especially the poor. And it is a tax called inflation.

Inflation is happening because Democrats borrowed and spent too much money already. If they pass this, prices are going to continue to rise. People go to the grocery store; they are paying more. People go to the gas station; they are paying more.

The Democratic Party's priorities are backward, but under the Democratic Party today, prices are going up. Yet they are giving kickbacks to the wealthy, their powerful friends. This is heading America toward bankruptcy. The American people don't want higher taxes. They want higher wages, lower prices, more jobs, more opportunity. They don't want this reckless tax-and-spending spree--no, not one bit.

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