Cloture Motion

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, from gas stations to grocery stores, to utility bills and restaurant checks, the American people are being pummeled by inflation. The cost of everything is going up.

Last week, the Commerce Department reported that a key indicator of inflation had reached the highest level in three decades--30 years.

The Chairman of the Federal Reserve has said that we are unlikely to turn a corner on this until sometime next year. How he knows that, I don't know. Previously, he said, well, this inflation would be merely transitory, a passing thing. But it is beginning to look like that is not the case. And, clearly, he is mainly guessing.

With this as a backdrop, our Democratic colleagues are apparently trying to figure out how to inflict even more economic pain on the American people. They spent months negotiating solely among themselves in order to bring about a radical transformation in our country by spending money on programs we don't need or want--things like permanent welfare for no work requirements; things like tax increases that, contrary to President Biden's promise, will hit Americans earning less than $400,000 a year; subsidies for millionaires; buying electric vehicles that most average wage earners can't afford; taxes that will hurt American businesses and help our major nation-state competitor, China; as well as provide a range of so-called free--they like that word ``free''--social safety-net programs that really aren't free at all.

Now, this isn't critical funding necessary to lead America out of the pandemic like we did last year on a bipartisan basis. This isn't even designed to revive our struggling economy. I would argue that it would do just the opposite. It would suppress the recovery from the recession that was caused by the pandemic. This is merely a reckless, partisan spending spree designed to grow the size of government's role in our daily lives.

In recent weeks, I have heard from more than 50,000 of my constituents--that is a lot--about one absurd example of government overreach proposed by the administration and which is part of the reconciliation bill that is now sitting in front of the House of Representatives. The IRS already knows how much money you make, but now the Biden administration wants to know how you spend it too. This isn't a safeguard to stop illicit activity like money laundering or tax fraud. That already exists. Any taxpayer who receives a transfer of $10,000 or more in a single transaction has to report that to the IRS. But what our Democratic colleagues want to do is to invade the privacy of everyday Americans who rarely make five-digit transactions. So tucked in the President's budget is a new IRS reporting requirement with a much lower threshold, $600.

If you use your bank accounts to spend or receive more than $600 in a year's time, our Democratic colleagues think that should be reported to the IRS. So if you are writing a check for your mortgage or your rent or maybe you are buying a new washer or dryer or refrigerator, the IRS wants to know that you are spending that money.

This is an Agency that has already been plagued by scandals and has hardly been a responsible steward of personal financial data.

Earlier this year, an unknown source within the IRS leaked more than 15 years' worth of taxpayer information to journalists. And we all remember the IRS targeting conservative-leaning groups during the Obama administration. But the IRS has given even more personal financial data, literally conducting surveillance on the American people. The trove of information that could be abused gets a lot bigger.

Democrats want to give the IRS more manpower to sift through all of this by doubling the size of the Agency, adding to an army of Internal Revenue agents out searching for more revenue with which to grow the government. So instead of a chicken in every pot, every household will get an audit.

This is, I submit, a fundamental attack on the privacy and financial freedom of everyday Americans and puts all Americans' data at risk of being hacked or leaked.

It also places a huge new burden on our community banks and credit unions. Having to organize and transmit all this additional data to the IRS in a secure way is no easy task. Does the administration plan to help local banks, credit unions do this? I doubt it. It is just going to add to their overhead and to their administrative burdens.

Our Democratic colleagues also want to reinstate the so-called SALT deduction, which allows wealthy individuals in blue States--it is no coincidence--to pay less in taxes. According to the liberal Tax Policy Center, 93 percent of those making a million dollars or more would get a tax break.

So much for our Democratic colleagues' rhetoric about millionaires and billionaires getting a tax break. They want to make sure that each one of them gets about a $48,000 tax cut under their proposal. This isn't an attempt to support those who are struggling to make ends meet; it is a financial lifeline for millionaires and billionaires.

This type of legislation our colleagues are trying to pass includes a massive, ill-conceived tax plan; government overreach; irresponsible spending; and radical policies that put unnecessary burden on beleaguered American workers and families.

Earlier this year, our Democratic friends charged nearly $2 trillion to the taxpayer credit card in a party-line vote. Unlike the COVID-19 relief bills we passed last year virtually unanimously, one after the other, when the Biden administration came into office, the first thing they did was spend $2 trillion in borrowed money, only 10 percent of which was related to COVID-19.

So they did that without any Republican help. Now they are trying to figure out how to go on an even bigger spending blowout--once again, all alone. But they think upping the credit limit should be a bipartisan task. Our friends across the aisle have talked about how, historically, lifting the debt ceiling has been a bipartisan endeavor, but they failed to mention that so has spending.

There has never been a time in our country's history when one party has spent trillions of dollars and aspires to spend trillions of dollars more without the support of a single person on the other side of the aisle.

Why would Republicans vote to increase the debt limit and sign off on this reckless spending? If someone stole your credit card and ran up the bill, would you up your own credit limit so they could continue shopping? No way. But that is exactly what Democrats are asking Republicans to do by upping the debt limit.

They have the votes. They have a process by which they can raise the debt limit, and they need to do it before we risk a default, according to the timeline given to us by Secretary Yellen.

So our Democratic colleagues have chosen to light taxpayer dollars on fire, but we are not going to hand them another match. We have been clear on that point since at least July. Unsurprisingly, our friends on the other side don't like this plan. They see the dangers in continuing to drive up the debt without any action to address the root causes, and they want to have Republicans to share the blame.

But what needs to happen is some accountability because accountability will bring with it some fiscal responsibility. But as long as our Democratic colleagues can continue to spend trillions of dollars in borrowed money on their reckless tax-and-spending spree and have us join them in raising the debt limit, then no one--no voter, no taxpayer--can actually know who is to blame.

Well, if Democrats want to spend alone, they have to up the debt ceiling alone, too, and we know they have the tools and the votes to do it. But rather than addressing this problem in July or August or September, our Democratic colleagues have waited until the last minute and march us closer and closer to a debt crisis. They have had the time to up the debt limit on their own, and they have had the means to do it. So they need to stop playing chicken with an economic crisis and do what they know needs to be done.

So far, Democrats have not been held back by their razor-thin majority. It didn't stop them from spending $2 trillion in borrowed money at the beginning of this year. It hasn't slowed their plans to try to spend trillions more this fall. And now it shouldn't stop them from increasing the debt limit on their own so the American people can see who is responsible and hold those elected officials accountable in the 2022 election.

The Democratic majority of the Senate has embraced a go-it-alone attitude on legislating all year, and these are just some of the examples of what that has produced: tax increases on the middle class; car subsidies for millionaires; taxes that hurt American businesses and American jobs but actually help China; providing so-called free, taxpayer-funded social safety net programs to try to turn the United States into a European welfare state; increased IRS surveillance of the everyday finances of average Americans; and I mentioned, finally, tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires.

So now is the time to reap what our Democratic colleagues have sown, and I hope they will act sooner rather than later.

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