Providing for Consideration of Senate Amendment to H.R. Build Back Better Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend from Texas for yielding.
(Mr. COLE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
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Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, it is worth asking why we are here at all right now, quite frankly. We face no emergency. The government is not about to shut down. Nothing in this bill is actually going to take effect in the immediate future. We are simply here because my friends on the other side want to create the illusion that they are doing something positive before the midterm election.
I think they also fear that the American people will actually have a chance to look at this monstrosity over a month and their own Members would then have to go home and give a full accounting of what they have done here. Sadly, we are going to rush this through without appropriate consideration.
It is worth noting, Mr. Speaker, 180 of our own Members-plus are not even here. They are not here because they have submitted a declaration because we are in a health emergency.
What health emergency?
We have vaccines, we have therapeutics, the airports are full of people. People are traveling pretty easily, but 180 Members won't be here--both parties. Again, that is a sad commentary on the manner in which we are operating this House.
This bill comes before us in a process that I can only describe as lousy. No committee of jurisdiction in either the Senate or the House has dealt with this bill as written. No House Member has had any meaningful input in this legislation. The reality is this bill was negotiated in back rooms by two Senators and rammed through the Senate on a partisan vote. My friends have picked it up without changing it, without considering it, and they are going to ram it through here today. That is a process that they ought to be embarrassed by.
There are two reasons to oppose the legislation itself, Mr. Speaker. The first is simply because of what is in it. The Democrats are repeating the mistake they made last year. They are going to try and spend their way out of inflation--a novel approach.
We see how well that worked when they rammed through the American Rescue Plan under reconciliation. It is going to work exactly the same way again.
On top of that, we are going to try and tax our way out of recession. That is a novel, new economic idea: Raise taxes while you are in a recession, something other administrations of both parties have always rejected as a bad idea. But my friends, feverishly intent upon action, are going to do it here.
We are going to do one thing, and I guess that could start immediately. We are going to hire, as my friend from Texas suggested, 87,000 new IRS employees. Only my friends on the other side think that is a good idea. Nobody thinks 87,000 new IRS agents are going to do anything to help us with inflation, or help us with the problems that we have in energy, or help us in any meaningful way improve the economy or the lives of the average American.
What is not in this bill is another reason to vote against it. It does nothing to deal with inflation. Indeed, during the Rules Committee, we submitted a letter from 280 economists that said this is going to make it worse, not better.
They can rely on Mr. Summers. I will rely on the 280 economists from both parties and every point of view who said this is not going to work when it comes to inflation. There is nothing in this bill that is going to increase energy production in the United States, nothing at all.
Finally, there is nothing meaningful, as my friend from Texas pointed out, that will actually reduce the deficit. That deficit doesn't begin to come down until 7 years from now under this legislation. That assumes everything stays the same for 7 years. That is not going to happen.
For those reasons, Mr. Speaker, we ought to reject this rule. We ought to submit this bill to the appropriate committees of jurisdiction in this House, allow them to do their work, and continue to negotiate with the Senate. There is no emergency. There is no hurry here. We don't need to ram this through.
For that reason, Mr. Speaker, I urge the rejection of the rule and the rejection of the underlying legislation.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose the rule to provide for consideration of the Senate amendment to H.R. 5376, the grossly mis-named Inflation Reduction Act. Instead of actually doing something to address the current economic crisis, the bill is instead yet another partisan tax- and-spend bill. My friends on the other side of the aisle will tout the deficit reduction as good for reducing inflation--and that's true. But the bill we are considering isn't a serious attempt at deficit reduction. Eighty percent of the deficit reduction they claim in this bill doesn't even show up for seven years. And the deficit reduction they claim is laughable when you consider the one point nine trillion spending bill they put on American's credit card just last year. Americans need relief now.
I shouldn't be surprised but I am disappointed at the Majority's egregious surrender of the House's institutional prerogatives. When you have a process that is this bad, you should expect bad results. And the process on this bill was about as bad as it gets. The bill before us was written behind closed doors with just two senators negotiating its provisions. No Member of the House had any input into the package, nor did any but a few senators. Nor have we been given an opportunity to amend this package when the Majority completely rewrote the original bill at the Rules Committee, when we first considered this on the floor in November of last year, or today since every Republican amendment to this package was blocked in the rule. Instead, the House is preparing to pass exactly what the Senate produced behind closed doors. At least the Senate had the luxury of a CBO score during its consideration. The House isn't even afforded that. This is an embarrassment.
The Majority pushed through a reckless one point nine trillion dollar reconciliation bill last year, stubbornly insisting it would not lead to inflation, even though economists were warning us the exact opposite. Today, hardworking American taxpayers are suffering for their hubris.
Instead of learning their lesson, the Majority is once again pushing another foolhardy tax-and-spend package through on partisan lines. They were wrong last year and they are wrong again this year. Unfortunately, it will be the average American who again pays the price in the form of more inflation, fewer jobs, slower growth, and a lower standard of living for every family in America.
It is easy to see why when you think about the policies that are actually included in this bill. A tax hike on corporations that will inevitably pass their increased costs onto consumers. A six hundred percent increase in the budget of the IRS so they can hire an army of eighty-seven thousand new agents. Massive spending on Green New Deal priorities, including giving subsidies on luxury electric vehicles to high-earning individuals. Policies like these are bad enough in good times, but raising taxes when we are in a recession to give subsidies to the rich to buy luxury electric vehicles just doesn't make any sense.
But we should also talk about what is not in this bill. Despite the title, there's nothing in this bill that will reduce inflation. There's nothing in this bill that will address our current energy crisis, and in fact, the policies in here will make it worse. While my friends in the Majority are willing to pour tens of billions of dollars into Solyndra-style green energy programs, there is nothing in this bill that will lower the price of gasoline, nothing that will make it cheaper to heat and cool homes, and nothing that will ensure energy independence for America. The Majority could have chosen to prioritize these things but didn't.
Instead, the Majority is showing what their priorities truly are. An army of new IRS agents to harass taxpayers at all income levels. A massive and unaffordable tax increase that will make the recession worse. Massive new spending programs on the Green New Deal. Subsidies for high-income folks to buy luxury electric vehicles. It all adds up to a bad deal for taxpayers, a bad deal for the economy, and a bad deal for the nation.
Mr. Speaker, at the end of the day, this bill will make inflation worse, not better, and will make the recession longer and deeper. We should not make the exact same error the Majority made last year in passing yet another tax and spend boondoggle. We cannot tax and spend our way out of a recession, and we cannot tax and spend our way into lower inflation. The nation has already suffered enough after last year's reconciliation bill. Doing so all over again will only make this suffering worse.
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