Local Business Taxes, Regulations, and Reduced Workforce
Floor Speech
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend, Ranking Member Luetkemeyer, and all of our Republican colleagues on the Small Business Committee for leading this very important discussion this evening. And this is very important.
Madam Speaker, the Democrats' radical multitrillion-dollar agenda is bad for America. It just is, and we can all see it. The voters can see that, too. In fact, while we are here right now, there are still voters lining up just down the road in Virginia. They cannot wait to vote for their next Governor. It is a race that is currently classified as a toss-up but it appears to be going very, very well for the Republican candidate.
The reason this is so noteworthy, the reason everybody in the country is watching this, the reason that everyone is so excited that it is a toss-up election is because this is in a State that President Biden won by 10 points just several months ago. And there are simply no conclusions to draw other than that the Democrats are leading our country down the wrong path. That is what the polling says and even the mainstream media outlets have had to report on that in the last few days.
It is the content of this tax-and-spend agenda, and not just the cost, that is especially dangerous for American families and our economy overall. You just have to think about the harmful effects the Democrat bill is going to have on our local businesses, many of whom, by the way, we all know are already operating on shorter hours due to the current labor shortage. But specifically, the legislation that is being debated and pushed through even this week is that the Democrats want to increase OSHA penalties, increase penalties on small businesses. That is a tax. They want to reduce the pass-through deduction. That is a tax. They want to increase the regulatory burden on small business owners at the worst possible time. You know what this amounts to? A tax. They want to make the child tax credit pay the same whether you are working or not, which what will that do? Logically, it will exacerbate the current labor shortage.
So let me repeat. The Democrat bill, in spite of what they are saying, will definitely increase taxes while prices are soaring. It will increase workplace penalties while companies are trying their best to get back to work, and it will encourage people not to work while the job market struggles, and our supply chain is slowed down due to a lack of workers in these critical positions.
There are nearly 32 million small businesses in the United States. About 350,000 of those are in my home State of Louisiana. They are our main employer. They employ more Louisianians than any big company or the government. This is the mainstay. This is the lifeblood of our economy. You are talking about deli managers and barbershop owners, and bookstore owners. You name it.
Small businesses across the country had to fight tooth and nail to survive the COVID-19 pandemic. The last thing this Congress needs to do is make it more difficult for these businesses.
But that is exactly what our Democrat colleagues are trying to do. As for the rest of the bill, well, they are still working on it, they tell us. We heard today there may be some deal on prescription drugs. Who knows? We have to see how that goes. There have been lots of promises broken--made and broken--here the last few weeks.
Meanwhile, the Democrats are still trying to include amnesty in this spending bill. What that has to do with the reconciliation, we have no idea. Hopefully, the Parliamentarian on the Senate side will put another kibosh on this. But they want to include tax breaks for wealthy New Yorkers and just a bunch of terrible ideas.
I have to digress for just a moment and talk about this amnesty problem, because not only will that be another burden on our small businesses; not only will it really take jobs away from law-abiding citizens, but you have to consider the insatiable appetite that our friends on the other side of the aisle have for amnesty.
We spent about 13 hours in the Judiciary Committee about 3 weeks ago working on their effort. The Democrats pushed that through to graft amnesty onto the spending bill. And after all of those hours, near the very end--late at night--we asked them if there was any end to this appetite they have for amnesty. We are talking about as many as 10 million illegals who have come across the border. And we brought a few amendments and we talked about this in our Conference, but we said, you know, gee, if you are going to grant amnesty and you all have the votes in the committee to move this through, we understand that, but we just want to see if there is any limit on who you might include in amnesty.
So we brought an amendment to the bill and said: What if someone is a known MS-13 gang member? Surely, you would want to exclude them from your amnesty plan. And I will tell you, every single Democrat on our committee voted that amendment down. Of course, every Republican voted ``yes.''
Then we said: Well, well, wait a minute. What if somebody is a convicted is sex offender, somebody coming from another country and they are a convicted sex offender? Surely, you would not want to include them in your amnesty plan. Every single Democrat voted ``no'' on that amendment. So I brought an amendment. I said: What if someone is a convicted criminal, and they are convicted of DUI, driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs, a terrible crime, as you all have said in your speeches in recent years? It kills thousands of Americans every year. It maims hundreds of thousands. Surely, if someone has been convicted of at least one DUI, you would not want to include them in your amnesty plan. Every Democrat voted it down.
So we tested it a little further. Okay, what if they have two or more DUI convictions? Every Democrat voted it down. So I went to 10 or more DUI convictions, would they be excluded from your magical amnesty plan? Every single Democrat voted ``no'' on that amendment. Every single one. There is no limit to what they want to do with this.
The one thing they do know, they want to spend trillions and trillions of our tax dollars before we know the score on all of this, before the actual text of the legislation has even been read. They are ready to roll. Democrats have a mere three-seat majority in this House. We have a 50-50 split in the Senate. They are acting as if they have some sort of big majority to radically transform the country, as they keep telling us. And what they have presented is the most partisan, most expensive legislation package in the history of this country, using the slimmest majority possible, and before they even tell the American people what is in it.
Make no mistake, a toss-up election in Virginia is just a taste of what is to come for congressional Democrats in 2022 if they do not immediately ditch this ridiculous spending plan and harmful government overreach.
I just say this: Today we have a battle that comes down to competing ideologies and agendas. It is now free-market capitalism versus Big Government socialism.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Will the gentleman yield?
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. So I wish that that proposal had been on the table before we got out of that particular hearing because we certainly would have liked to have heard about that. But if you add that up, you are talking about perhaps $1 million per family, and $1 billion in cost overall, more costs to the American taxpayer.
And by the way, that little payment that the illegal migrants would be given by the American taxpayer is more than we give to Gold Star families, persons who have been lost in the line of duty, as you know. It is more than the victims of 9/11 that they have received for their pain and suffering. And, of course, those separations are permanent, not temporary. It is just not right.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. That is what it means, and convicted sex offenders, and multiple DUI-convicted felons, and everybody else. They have included them all. There is no limit to it at all. Isn't that outrageous?
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. It is incredible. You can't make this stuff up.
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