Motion to Discharge
Floor Speech
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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President.
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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I have a real concern for our economy, for the future of what is happening right now, and a lot of it wraps around the vaccine mandates that are being laid down by President Biden.
On September 9, President Biden had announced: I am losing patience with the American people, and it is time for you to get vaccinated.
And he laid down a rule on every Federal worker, every Federal contractor, everyone in the military, and everyone who is in a private business with 100 employees or more. He created a new mandate.
He literally reached into union shops and changed their collective bargaining agreement unilaterally and said: The President's going to add a new feature in your collective bargaining agreement, and it is going to be that you are going to have a vaccine or you are going to be fired.
He told every police officer; he told every firefighter; he told every doctor, every nurse; he told every member of the military, no matter how many badges they wear or how many decorations they received: You will be fired if you don't follow my instructions.
It didn't matter if they were frontline workers. It didn't matter if they laid their lives on the line all of last year. It didn't matter. He declared to them: You will be fired if you don't follow my instructions.
He made it very, very clear: If you have already had COVID and recovered and have natural immunity, I don't care.
If your personal doctor has told you not to--his perspective in what is coming down is, if the CDC from Washington, DC, says it's OK, it doesn't matter what your personal doctor says.
While he said you can have a religious accommodation, so far, as I checked in with the military services, no one has been given a military or religious accommodation. And across the Federal workforce, I have yet to hear a soul getting a religious accommodation.
The words are: ``We are going to pay attention to your local doctor.''
The reality has been totally different. And we have pushed in every way possible against this administration, and will continue to do that not because it is unjust, not because, quite frankly, I think the vaccine is the wrong thing to do--I think it is the right thing to do-- but the mandate is absolutely the wrong thing to do.
Americans have a lot of different reasons to not take a vaccine. Allow Americans to be Americans.
I have a friend of mine who, by the way, is a liberal Democrat. Yes, I have liberal Democrat friends. He called me and said his son has had long-term COVID. Eight months he has been in recovery from COVID. He does not want to have the vaccine not knowing how his body will react to that. This week, he will lose his job because the President of the United States told him he is losing his patience.
That is not right. Build Back Better Agenda
Mr. President, on a separate but related subject, we continue to be able to walk toward a $2 trillion proposal coming down. We hear the House is taking it up even in the next 24 to 48 hours. Of course, we heard that over and over again lately.
There has been a real concern about what is happening in the economy because of rising inflation. Oklahomans are paying $175 more a month right now for their basic utilities, groceries, and gasoline--$175 more a month that they are paying because of the rising inflation that has happened this year.
That inflation, you can take it right back to the middle of March, when a $2 trillion package was passed in this body on a straight partisan vote that everyone on this side of the aisle was saying: Don't do this. This will cause rising inflation.
And it was done anyway.
As simple as I can state it, it was if you add a lot of extra money and you discourage people from working, you will get fewer products and more buyers. It is not hard to be able to see what is going to happen as a result of that.
Larry Summers, who used to be my Democratic colleagues' favorite economist--he was the National Economic Council director to President Obama--has been a very outspoken progressive economist. He wrote in February, challenging this body not to do that $2 trillion package, saying this:
There is the risk of inflation expectations rising sharply. Stimulus measures of the magnitude contemplated are steps into the unknown. For credibility, they need to be accompanied by clear statements that the consequences will be monitored closely.
At that same time in February, he said:
Based on the proposal that's out there, there will be an individual that normally has $22,000 worth of normal income in a year that will move to $30,000 in benefits for the year, and that will cause problems.
And, boy, has it. Employment all over the country has had all kinds of chaotic moments where employers are trying to hire employees and they are making more on benefits than they are at work, and it has caused all sorts of chaos across our economy.
It is interesting, several progressive economists in March of this year, right after the bill passed, made general statements, like: ``A relief plan is different than a stimulus.''
It doesn't matter. It is not a stimulus. It is a relief plan, so we can spend as much as we want.
This was my favorite--one of the economists came out and said: ``The risk of generalized overheating in the goods market appears low . . . ''
``The risk of generalized overheating in the goods market appears low . . . '' That was the statement of the economists in March of this year.
Yet the reality is, this year, there is a backup at the Port of Long Beach and people can't get supplies all over the country, and exactly what was forecast in February and March is occurring in our economy right now.
Larry Summers again identified it this way. He made the statement:
The pandemic had punched a $20 billion hole in Americans' monthly wage income [and] Biden [has] proposed filling it with $100 billion.
He said:
I know the bathtub has been too empty, but one has to think about what the capacity of the bathtub is and how much water we're trying to flow into it.
What do I mean by that?
That $2 trillion package that was in March caused all the economic issues of this year. It has caused all the inflation, all the challenges in employment across our economy and across our workforce.
It is now being followed up, apparently, by another $2 trillion proposal that is coming in the coming days. If we had giant inflation with the last one--by the way, with the highest inflation rate since 1982. If we had that inflation from that $2 trillion package, what is going to happen when you put another $2 trillion on top of the last $2 trillion in this economy?
The simple fact is, quoting Larry Summers, we don't know what will happen. We are literally taking ``steps into the unknown.'' But I can tell you, it is not hard to predict.
That is just the economic issues.
As I look at this package--it is hard to be able to look at the package that is being proposed. I have heard quite a few folks back in Oklahoma on the weekend say to me: What all is in this $2 trillion package that a couple weeks ago was at $3.5 trillion? Now we hear it is $2 trillion. What actually is in it?
And I smile at them and say: I am not sure yet. I hear bits and pieces.
To tell you how much it is moving around, last week, when it was released to the public, it was 2,400 pages. By this morning, it was 1,700 pages. But wait. Now this afternoon, it is 2,000 pages long. That is in a week. It has moved from 2,400 pages to 1,700 pages, to 2,000 pages, as the proposal continues to be able to change over and over again.
It is incredibly difficult to be able to track what all is in it, but we can track some things that are in it.
There is a massive hole that is holding for immigration, as we have now seen three different major proposals on immigration on how to be able to give amnesty to the largest number of people. Several have already been knocked down by the Parliamentarian, but it seems to come back again just to try to find a new way to be able to do amnesty for as many people that are here illegally present in our country as possible. That seems to be a piece of this economic proposal that is out there.
We do know in this proposal that it finds as many ways as possible to be able to fund gaps in Hyde funding.
Now, what is that?
Using Federal dollars to be able to pay for abortions in our country--an agreement that has been in our country since 1976--that we have strong disagreements on a child's life.
I happen to believe that a child is a child is a child, and every child is valuable, no matter how small they are. Many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't believe children are valuable until they can see them. They have to be born before they are valuable. I believe there is no difference in a child in the womb than a child outside the womb other than time.
This bill is full of areas to go around the Hyde rules to start allowing the funding with Federal dollars to pay for the taking of human life.
I am disappointed how obsessed my Democrat colleagues seem to be about finding new ways to pay for the taking of human life of children. That has not been so, even as recently as 2 years ago.
Quite frankly, Senator Biden was outspoken about protecting the Hyde protections. Now, President Biden and this body seem to be focused on how many ways we can increase abortions in America.
There are a lot of energy aspects in this: the new tax on natural gas, where just 5 or 6 years ago, we called the ``bridge fuel to the future'' to be able to reduce carbon. Now, natural gas is receiving punishment in this in brandnew taxes.
There is a block on production from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Some of my Democratic colleagues celebrate, saying: ``We are going to cut off anything from Alaska and protect that region,'' which is remarkable to me. We are now buying more oil from Russia than we are from Alaska, right now--twice as much, in fact, more oil from Russia than we are from Alaska.
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is an area 19.3 million square acres--19.3 million acres. That is about half the size of my home State of Oklahoma. That is an enormously large area. And in that area, there are 2,000 acres that would actually be set aside for oil production. So to put it in perspective, ANWR is half the size of my State of Oklahoma, and the oil production area that will be needed is a third of the size of the airport that I fly out of, the Will Rogers airport in Oklahoma City.
If you took a third of the size of the airport, that is the size of, actually, the oil production area that will be needed in an area half the size of my entire State. Yet that is being blocked in this bill.
We will see the price of energy go up, but we will see a new benefit for electric vehicles that are here. For even very, very wealthy Americans, they will get a benefit of $12,500 on new luxury vehicles that they want to be able to purchase, as long as they are electric.
There are direct attacks on the school choice in this bill that actually goes after any kind of private institution or faith-based institution. It says that you will get funding for a secular government school for one level, but if you are in a faith-based school, it is a different level or none at all.
If you are in a pre-K program or a childcare program--and in many rural communities all across our State, when you come to Oklahoma, in many rural communities, the pre-K program and the childcare program is run from a local church. Oh, but they won't be allowed to be able to be a provider in this. You have to be a secular provider because religious institutions are being blocked out by this bill.
It does supersize the IRS, though. It adds $79 billion to the IRS to increase audits--$79 billion. To give you a perspective of how big that is, the normal IRS budget for a year is $12 billion. Yet this bill gives an additional $79 billion to the IRS to be able to increase audits. And if anyone has a belief those audits are only going to connect to people that make $400,000 or more, I have a bridge to sell you.
I have to tell you, as I read through the bill--and it does take some time, and it is difficult to be able to get through it because it is changing so much--I am amazed at some of the things that are in it that have been slipped through this: $350 million are sent to unions to provide for electronic voting systems for unions--$350 million. There are $4.28 billion being set aside for training activities in industry sectors and occupations for climate resilience. There are whole sections in this bill, as I go through it, that are set aside for specific areas: $20 million for State, local, and Tribal governments to mitigate online services to the dot-gov internet domain. To be able to help cities go to the dot-gov internet domain, there is $20 million that is set aside.
And there are some set aside for even some of my colleagues who are here today on the floor: $49 million carve-out for Native Hawaiian climate resilience programs in the Office of Native Hawaiian Relations.
It depends on the State that you are in and the perspective that you are in, but as I go through this bill and start identifying the programs, I hear broad descriptions of different programs, and I hear all these different sales of what is in it. But when you read through the bill, when you go through the details of the bill, this is the kind of stuff that you find.
Oh, by the way, one last piece in this ever-changing bill, just within the last hour and a half, they have added a new section of the bill over in the House side. It is a bill dealing with State and local tax deductions that will help the wealthiest Americans get a bigger tax cut. Yes, I did say that correctly. Currently, for Americans who are in high-taxed States, they can only deduct $10,000 of their State and local taxes, only $10,000 off their State and local taxes that they can actually deduct from their Federal tax.
The new proposal that just came out in the last hour from the House of Representatives increases that to $72,500 in deductions off your State and local taxes. That will be a great tax benefit to the wealthiest Americans--$72,500.
All that we are asking is, Show us what the real bill is. Let Americans be able to see the real bill. Have the transparency and the ability to be able to actually track through what this will mean day to day, what this will mean to our economy, because we have seen what $2 trillion did to our economy this March--what is another $2 trillion going to mean on top of all of that coming up this fall?
I think we are walking into the unknown, except this time, I think we do know what is about to happen to our economy. We need to see this bill and stop this bill before it damages our economy even more than we have already been damaged.
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