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Floor Speech
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Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, two-thirds of Americans are worried about inflation. About half of the middle class and 70 percent of low- income families just told Gallup that rising prices have been a personal hardship for their households. That is why 67 percent of the American people say that Washington needs to ``cut back on spending and printing money,'' but here in Washington, Democrats are bound and determined to do just the opposite. They want to try the crazy strategy of inflating their way out of inflation--another massive, reckless taxing-and-spending spree.
Even the most generous estimates, when the CBO has to swallow all-- all--of the Democrats' accounting gimmicks at face value, still say their proposal would entail $800 billion in new deficit spending over the next 5 years alone--over just 5 years. Outside experts who are allowed to reject the Democrats' obvious budget gimmicks find the real cost--the real cost--of their bill would actually be close to $5 trillion. That is with a ``t''--trillion dollars. After a decade, it would increase deficits by $2.8 trillion, but the reckless pricetag, actually, isn't the only problem.
What is remarkable is that the Democrats want to spend all these trillions but not leave citizens with any impressive, enduring national project in return. There is no Hoover Dam, Interstate Highway System, or Moon landing on the other side of their mountains of borrowed money--nothing like that. It is just a giant catalog of socialist mediocrity: new entitlements here, new transfer programs there, new ways to let bureaucrats run families' lives, and shameless--shameless-- goodies for specific interest groups that support the political left--a giant, muddled mess that would leave families with fewer childcare choices and higher costs, with fewer new prescription drugs and cures, with higher prices for less reliable energy. It is, literally, a reckless taxing-and-spending spree that hurts American families and actually--believe it or not--helps China.
There are a lot of big, sweeping, radical changes in their proposal that would change families' lives dramatically and entirely for the worse. But in between the sweeping wish-fulfillment for people who call themselves ``democratic socialists,'' there is also a remarkable amount of just pure waste, absurd--literally absurd--little giveaways, and interest group goodies. A billion here, a billion there, and hope the American people won't notice if it is buried in enough bureaucratic gibberish.
Here are just a few examples.
This bill would supply billions of dollars to help colleges and universities indoctrinate college students with even more leftwing propaganda and billions more to give them made-up Potemkin jobs in a make-work program they are calling a Civilian Climate Corps--this at a time when industries already cannot find workers.
Their bill would set aside multiple billions of dollars to put Federal Government employees, like IRS agents and postal carriers, into brandnew electric vehicles.
Earlier this year, the Biden administration made sure that luxury Teslas, with a sticker price up to $97,000, were on the list for government procurement--$97,000 per vehicle.
So working families might be having to choose between heating costs and new shoes for the kids. Oh, but don't worry, Democrats will make sure IRS auditors can cruise around in Silicon Valley's finest.
Their proposal would create a huge $29 billion slush fund that activists are applauding as the foundation for something called--now, listen to this--a national green bank. Can you say Solyndra on steroids? An entire bank to finance pipe dreams that can't earn support out in the real economy.
Separately, they are planning to spend multiple billions of taxpayer dollars for something the liberals are calling--listen to this one now--tree equity. I will let that one speak for itself.
Of course, the Green New Deal folks aren't the only constituency Democrats want to pay off. This reckless taxing-and-spending spree is also designed to knock out all their Christmas shopping for trial lawyers, Big Labor bosses, Ivy League administrators, and blue-State millionaires, all in one fell swoop.
There is the State and local tax carve-out, the SALT gimmick, that would give an extra tax cut to two-thirds of the households making a million dollars or more a year. Perhaps to make sure these reckless policies get good press, Democrats have included a $1.6 billion bailout for the news media. I am not making this up. We are essentially talking about government welfare for newsrooms--for newsrooms. All this, and it goes on and on and on.
There is a new special tax break for rich universities' massive endowments--hundreds of millions of dollars to overhaul kids' school lunch menus, including making sure they are ``culturally appropriate.'' I guess they want to make sure that children's cafeteria trays are sufficiently woke.
And goodness knows they couldn't skip over Big Labor. So the Democrats' plan would let working Americans' above-the-line tax deduction for charitable contributions expire--that goes away--but they would replace it with a brandnew deduction that only applies to union dues.
And then there is pure pork of the old-school kind. The Speaker of the House tried to sneak in hundreds of millions of dollars for a special park in San Francisco. And the Senate Democratic leader has spent much trying to double the bill's funding for public housing so the chronically mismanaged authority in his hometown could get $40 billion to clean up its messes.
There is even what appears to be a $33 million kickback that is largely for one Democratic Congressman whose vote Speaker Pelosi literally had to lock down. Out of nowhere, one mostly dormant government Commission that is important to this particular Democrat's district gets a funding increase of 13,000 percent--13,000 percent. You heard that right, a funding increase of 13,000 percent. What a terrific coincidence for this particular Democratic House Member.
So take a step back. Our colleagues' proposal isn't some big national leap into the 21st century; it is an endless--endless--hodgepodge of this nonsense: partisan back-scratching, interest group giveaways, and shameless--shameless--waste. And through tax hikes and inflation, working American families will foot the bill.
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