Who Pays for the Woke?

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, during the Trump administration, Republicans passed one of the biggest tax cuts in American history and the largest regulatory relief ever. Together, they produced the biggest economic expansion in our lifetimes.

Before the lockdown left took a wrecking ball to our economy, Americans were prospering with the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years, the lowest poverty rate in 60 years, and the fastest wage growth in 40 years. For the first time in decades, the income gap was narrowing.

Well, Joe Biden and the Democrats have reversed these policies with reckless abandon, and it is no coincidence that real wages for Americans have declined every single month since he took office.

History is crystal clear on this point: No country has ever taxed, spent, and borrowed its way to prosperity, but many have done so to their ruin.

Brian Riedl tallied up the total cost of the Democrats' new spending bills for the New York Post today and estimates $8 trillion over the next 10 years, more than $60,000 per family. Joe Biden and the Democrats tell us it won't cost you a penny. It will all be paid by somebody else.

But here is the dirty little secret of government spending. Government cannot put a dollar into the economy that it hasn't first taken out of the same economy. Every dollar it gives to you, it must take from you, and there are only three ways to do that: through current taxes, which rob you of your current purchasing power; through borrowing, which robs you of your future purchasing power; or by printing money, which robs you every time you go shopping by reducing the value of your earnings, while it silently hollows out your savings and retirement funds.

Don't fall for their lie that their taxes will only fall on businesses. Businesses don't pay business taxes; you pay business taxes. You pay them as a consumer through higher prices; you pay them as an employee through lower wages; and you pay them as an investor through lower earnings. That is your retirement fund.

You know they are coming after working families because they want to hire 87,000 new IRS agents--87,000 new IRS agents. That is every man, woman, and child living today in Miami Beach, Florida, or Ogden, Utah. Imagine the entire population of one of those cities hired to go after every taxpayer in America.

And get this: The Democrats' so-called American Families Plan will require your bank to report every one of your private transactions over $600 to the IRS--every transaction you make over $600 automatically reported to the IRS.

Does that sound like they are coming after the Biden family? No, they are coming after your family.

If you are typical, you already paid more in taxes last year than you paid for food, clothing, healthcare, and entertainment combined. Yet, according to the Democrats, that is just not enough.

What else do you get for your $60,000 of new taxes and inflation and tax-driven price increases? Well, you get amnesty, legal permanent residence, and a fast track for citizenship for 8 to 10 million foreign nationals who illegally entered our country and demand to stay.

Now, let's just take the lower number, 8 million. That is the entire population of Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont, South Dakota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Montana, and Maine combined--this at a time when real family earnings are declining, crime is increasing, homelessness is rampant, and mounting debt is killing the American Dream of a better future for our children.

Explain to me how American workers are helped by flooding the labor market with low-wage labor.

Of course, the woke ruling class makes out very well. That $60,000 taken from your earnings over the next decade will, for example, pay bonuses of up to $50,000 each for reporters and bloggers across the country who so shamelessly do the Democrats' bidding. There are lavish handouts to Ivy League universities and the fashionable elite who buy $82,000 Teslas.

There is even a new civilian climate corps, presumably filled with officious little climate pioneers ever eager to report whose chimney is smoking, who is watering the lawn on the wrong day, and who is spreading forbidden climate disinformation.

It is easy to make fun of all this until you realize this is about to become law. America, for God's sake, wake up. Our country is on the precipice.

I have just one question for my Democratic colleagues: What makes you think socialism will work any better here than everywhere else it has been tried?

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