Motion to Discharge

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Thank you, Senator Crapo, for leading this effort to point out what is wrong with this $4.2-trillion reckless tax-and- spending spree. It is a massive government intrusion into the daily lives of American families.

Under their vision for America, there isn't any aspect of life in which the government shouldn't perform a leading role. From cradle to grave, childcare to healthcare, college to career, the Federal Government will be there in your lives, shaping your every decision.

Their plans go well beyond shoring up the social safety net to prevent those in need from falling through the cracks. And everybody agrees that people that have needs, there is a role for government. But that doesn't include 320 million Americans.

No longer, then, will the Federal Government's primary role be about lending a helping hand so individuals can get back on their own feet. Instead, government would be the ultimate helicopter parent, constantly hovering, regardless of need.

Even wealthy households would be in line for generous handouts to procure Federal Government-approved childcare, send their kids to a Federal Government-structured preschool, purchase Federal Government- approved health insurance on the individual market, and obtain Federal Government-provided paid family leave.

Isn't that a staggering list of things that the Democrats are proposing in this 4.2 tax-and-spending spree they are pushing?

On the one hand, my Democratic colleagues rail against the wealthy paying too little tax. On the other hand, they want to shower the wealthy with government benefits, not to mention hand the wealthy, for instance, $12,500 to purchase a luxury electric car and make Federal taxpayers subsidize the State tax bills of millionaires.

Can you believe the inconsistency of their arguments?

Tax the wealthy; give to the wealthy. At the same time, Democrats have decided that the best way to crack down on billionaires evading taxes is to snoop on the middle class. You just heard Senator Crapo speak at length about that. Under their proposal, every American's bank account with $600, or even if it is $10,000, of annual taxations would be subject to the peering eyes of the IRS.

Democrats are betting the promise of free gifts will be too enticing for Americans to resist. However, Americans understand anything advertised as free comes with strings. Particularly, if it is free from the government, there is going to be strings attached. Those strings include higher taxes today and in the future and any loss of control over intimate family decisions.

Liberal Democrats, in their progressive bubble, are under the mistaken impression the general public is clamoring for evermore government programs. Now, in reality, Americans have long held a healthy skepticism of Big Government. A recent Gallup poll shows this continues to be true to this very day. According to Gallup--I think it was a weekend poll--nearly 80 percent of Americans say that they prefer lower taxes and less government, or would like to see no change in either. Only 19 percent said they wanted more taxes and more government.

President Clinton--up until 21 years ago, the President of the United States--understood this well when, in 1996, he declared in a State of Union message, ``the era of big government is over,'' and then worked with Republicans on comprehensive welfare reform.

Why can't those things go on today?

Hopefully, President Biden and Senate Democrats come to their senses and realize this before taking our Nation down the path of fiscal ruin. And I would define ``fiscal ruin'' by a Democrat by the name of Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration--and I think he also had some posts in the Obama administration--anyway, he told us in January, he told us in April, he told us in August, and I saw it again on television just last week: Spending all this money is feeding the fires of inflation like gasoline on that fire, and we ought to learn not to go through what we did in the seventies and eighties with inflation out of control.

Listen to that, fellow Democrats, today.

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I hear about rising costs of prescription drugs at nearly every one of my townhall meetings.

Three years ago, I began a bipartisan effort to lower prescription drug costs. Following our Finance Committee hearings at that time, we had a markup, and we had bipartisan negotiations. Senator Wyden, now chairman of the Finance Committee, and I introduced, at that time, the Prescription Drug Pricing Reduction Act.

The bill caps yearly out-of-pocket drug costs for seniors at $3,100. It prevents drug costs from growing faster than the consumer price index on a yearly basis. It ends uncapped taxpayer-funded subsidies to Big Pharma. It creates more sunshine, more competition, and it even has oversight into the world of drug pricing. It brings meaningful reform while driving down costs. It has $72 billion in savings for seniors-- that is out-of-pocket costs to them--and $95 billion savings of taxpayers' money through Medicare.

An important goal that we accomplish in our bill is lowering drug costs without hurting innovation. We did this by keeping government out of the business of setting prices and indirectly keep the government out of your medicine cabinet.

Democrats have proposed the irresponsible idea of government dictating drug prices. They would do this by getting rid of the noninterference clause in the Part D part of Medicare. It is better known as so-called drug price negotiations, but it is not negotiation; it is dictating prices.

Eighteen years ago, I was the principle architect of the Medicare Part D Program. Adding a prescription drug benefit for seniors was the right thing to do then, and it is still the right thing to do, but it needed to be done in the right way, and that right way is for the patients.

In creating Part D, we enacted a very key policy: keeping the government out of the business of dictating drug prices. Governments don't negotiate; they dictate. Competition is the only thing that drives innovation, curbs costs, expands coverage, and improves outcomes.

The Congressional Budget Office has consistently stated that government negotiations of drug prices would not achieve greater savings than the current market-based system, unless you restrict the formulary or dictate the price through reference pricing based upon what socialist healthcare systems pay in other countries. That is the outcome. The government gets between you and your doctors prescribing.

Democrats propose so-called drug price negotiations in their reckless tax-and-spending spree to save hundreds of billions of dollars. Who is hurt by this policy? Of course, patients are.

The Democrats would have government dictate drug pricing based upon an international reference pricing index. Study after study has shown so-called drug pricing negotiations will reduce the number of new drugs produced. What your doctor wants to prescribe for you might not be on that formulary.

This policy would be devastating if one of those drugs was the cure for Alzheimer's or diabetes or cancer. I don't believe that is what Americans want.

While Democrats attempt to advance their partisan drug pricing scheme, I hope common sense will prevail, and we pass a bipartisan prescription drug bill. I have engaged with colleagues on both sides of the aisle and in a bicameral way. I did this so common sense would prevail, if we ever get to the point of Democrats realizing that the government dictating prices on an international basis of what the prices are in other countries will never get 60 votes here in the U.S. Senate.

All of the Republicans and Democrats I have contacted have expressed eagerness to find a solution to meaningfully lower prescription drug costs. Holding Big Pharma accountable has historically been a bipartisan effort.

Delivering new reforms to fight price hikes should be no different. Democrats should stop pursuing their reckless tax-and-spending spree that will hurt innovation and produce less cures. Instead, we should act by passing my bipartisan prescription drug bill.

I think maybe there is an inkling of good news coming from the Speaker of the House--and I have had a chance to visit with her at least three times in the last 2 years on this very subject about my bill--when she said that she didn't think--I don't know whether she referred to the number H.R. 3, but that is the bill that has their main effort on reducing prescription drugs--when she said that she didn't think that that would have the votes to get passed.

I hope there is some awakening to the fact that we need to do something and that this bipartisan approach is the answer. Trump Investigation

Mr. President, today I would like to discuss the media's complete misrepresentation of the Republican report on Senator Durbin's Trump investigation, in which my staff participated according to Committee rules.

I gave an October 7 speech on this subject, and you wouldn't know that anybody read my speech based upon what has been reported on TV. But as I noted in that October 7 speech, Senator Durbin publicly released a Democratic staff report on his investigation. We Republicans did the same thing that very same day.

I came to the floor that same day to describe the Republican report. In so doing, I laid out what the available facts and evidence showed within the scope of the inquiry. That scope was from December 14, 2020, to January 3, 2021. But TV seemed to think we were talking about what happened on Capitol Hill on January 6.

The Durbin investigation ended on January 3--or events leading up to January 3. I say that date range yet again because many reporters have wrongly conflated this investigation with the January 6, 2021, events here on Capitol Hill. We know all the damage that was done to the Capitol that day.

So I want to repeat: The scope of the investigation stopped on January 3, not January 6, but you wouldn't know it from the TV reports.

I am not going to rehash my entire speech. I have incorporated it here by reference. However, I will note, yet again for the media, several key facts. This is not analysis, as I think TV was trying to do, just the facts.

Fact 1. Records indicate that President Trump's focus was on ``legitimate complaints and reports of crimes.'' And those words come from the transcript.

Fact 2. Witnesses testified that President Trump's main focus was making the Justice Department aware of the potential criminal allegations and to ensure the Department did its job. Trump's focus then wasn't to direct or order specific investigative steps. And to that point, witnesses said that Trump's focus was on the American people--not himself or his campaign--being harmed by what he believed to be widespread election fraud.

Fact 3, these witnesses testified under 18 U.S.C. 1001, which makes it a crime to give false statements, that it was not unreasonable for President Trump to question what the Justice Department was doing to investigate election fraud and crime allegations.

In fact, one witness testified under 1001 that Trump had ``no impact''--those two words--on the Department's actions to investigate election allegations.

I would be remiss if I didn't also note that one witness testified under 1001 that the Justice Department was ``dragging their feet and maybe more to keep these investigations from going forward.''

Fact 4, my staff read former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, BJ Pak, a press release from the Biden administration where Biden set policy for the Justice Department by prohibiting it from using subpoenas for records of reporters in criminal leak investigations.

My staff then asked if any President has similar authority to set the Department's policy with respect to investigating and reviewing voter fraud and election crime allegations. This witness stated, ``I would agree that the President has that duty.''

And the last fact, 5, President Trump twice rejected firing Acting Attorney General Rosen, and twice rejected the notion of sending what is called the ``draft Clark letter.''

Now, after giving you those facts, accordingly, on the basis of this foundational evidence, with respect to the scope of this investigation from December 14, 2020, to January 3, 2021, President Trump sought and followed the advice and also the recommendations of his senior advisers. I note with specific emphasis the fact that he followed their advice and recommendations. This is a crucial fact.

The report is entitled ``In Their Own Words.'' It is based on actual witness evidence, not CNN-style partisan analysis. I encourage everyone to read the report and the transcripts and draw your own conclusions. That is how I always approached my investigations in the years that I have been in the U.S. Senate.

Now let's go to how my speech was reported on TV. Some on CNN have said that I showed ``fealty'' to Trump by stating the facts. They called these facts that I just recited ``delusional.'' I have never had a problem following the facts wherever they lead, no matter who is in power.

So I am going to refer to an investigation I did in the Trump administration, and it involved some people in the Trump--and close to President Trump.

I ran a transcribed interview on Donald Trump, Jr., during the Trump administration. That was done as part of my Trump-Russia investigation when I was chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which focused on the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting.

I also subpoenaed Paul Manafort to appear at a hearing and provide testimony. Instead of publicly testifying, Manafort voluntarily agreed to an interview with my and then-Ranking Member Feinstein's staff. But as the ranking member's staff then refused to interview him and objected to my staff doing so without them there, that didn't move forward.

Notably, the committee never received any--when I was chairman during this investigation I am talking about, the committee never received any emails from the Democratic National Committee or the Clinton campaign, even though we repeatedly asked for them. Of course, the Democrats wouldn't support subpoenaing them, and you didn't hear a lot about that from the media--the double standard media. The Trump campaign produced records.

Just like there is a coverage vacuum, particularly by CNN, of Hunter Biden and James Biden and their connection with the communist Chinese Government, my and Senator Johnson's September 20 report on those financial connections and their potential criminality was attacked as Russian disinformation. Later on, Hunter Biden publicly admitted that he was under criminal investigation for financial matters. I don't hear much about that on CNN.

In my and Johnson's report, we made clear that based upon deep financial connections between the Biden family and foreign governments, Hunter Biden is a counterintelligence and extortion concern.

On that note, recently released emails have opened up the possibility that Joe Biden mixed bank accounts and funds with Hunter Biden. Other emails show that Joe Biden shared office space with individuals connected to the communist Chinese regime.

Of course, my and Senator Johnson's report was the first to prove that Hunter Biden, James Biden, and other family members had extensive financial and business relationships with individuals not just connected to the communist Chinese regime, but its intelligence and military services.

About that Grassley and Johnson report, POLITICO ran the off-base headline: ``GOP Senators' anti-Biden report repackages old claims.''

In contrast, one of their own reporters just very recently confirmed the authenticity of some of Hunter Biden's emails for a book that he was writing.

One Washington Post columnist said: ``Even after accepting disinformation from Russian agents, Johnson and Grassley couldn't come up with anything new or interesting on Hunter Biden.''

And NPR said about the New York Post Hunter Biden stories: ``We don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don't want to waste the listeners' and readers' time on stories that are just pure distractions.''

Now, compare what I have said--how different Democrats and Republicans are treated; how investigations are done differently by Republicans and by Democrats--and then look at the state of journalism today. What I just said is so much for investigative journalism. Investigative journalism died without so much as a whimper.

The media's attack against the Republican Trump report is essentially an attack on witness testimony received by the committee. Time and again, many in the media have failed to meet the facts head-on in order to fit their own biased story line.

So I say to everybody, including journalists that don't want to do hard work: Read the testimony of those people that were taken on what went on between December 14 and January 3. Read what I say about it. Read what Senator Durbin says about it. But at least read the testimony if you are going to make comments distorting what I said on October 7. In other words, stop screwing up.

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