Democratic Legislation

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the Senate is witnessing an unusual sight. Our colleague from West Virginia, Senator Manchin, is trying to roll back legislation that he himself wrote and passed less than a year ago. Reports say the Senator now wants Congress to delay the new electric vehicle tax credit that he himself hand-designed just last summer until he can resolve a fight with his fellow Democrats and the administration over what their own law actually says or actually does.

It would be comical if this Democrat-on-Democrat chaos weren't impacting our country. Republicans pointed out over and over that Democrats' reckless taxing-and-spending spree was unfair as well as unworkable. We said from the start this is a hugely expensive, hopelessly tangled mess of subsidies, regulations, and redtape. They raised taxes on American jobs, American families, and American energy in order to inefficiently send little chunks of the people's money back to them if they plan their lives according to unclear and changing Big Government standards.

This is the classic tax-and-spend liberal logic: The IRS takes more of your money so bureaucrats can take over more of your life. Well, it is proving just as tangled and messy for the country, as we all predicted last summer.

Our Democratic colleague from West Virginia is locked in some battle with the Democrats' own Treasury Department over the sweeping new regulations that need to be written. He seems to be suggesting that some Americans who have already received the EV tax credit--that he wrote--should have to actually pay it back. In the meantime, while Democrats keep fighting it out, the Senator apparently wants Congress to act again to halt or change the implementation of his own policy.

So good luck to American families trying to understand what on Earth does and does not qualify for the Big Government subsidies. Good luck to American businesses trying to figure out how to direct their investments. Now, this is what happens when Democrats make it up as they go along and clumsily try to rewire huge parts of our economy on the fly.

Now, remember, the senior Senator from West Virginia has already acknowledged that other Biden policies completely cancel out the supposed deficit savings from the massive climate bill. He has admitted that President Biden's student loan socialism wipes out all of their claimed deficit savings from the Green New Deal, and then some. And now, on top of all that, the redtape and expensive subsidies are so tangled that the very Senator who wrote the law now wants to delay or change it.

This has been a terrible deal for the country right from the beginning. Nonpartisan experts said the Democrats' boondoggle would increase inflation in the short term and do nothing for inflation in the long term. Nonpartisan experts said it would shatter President Biden's promise not to impact middle-class families with tax hikes. Nonpartisan experts said that none of it would have any--any-- measurable impact on the global temperature.

And now, apparently, even the author of the bill wants Congress to rescue the country from his own handiwork. This is no way to run a country. People need to plan their lives. Businesses need to plan their futures and their investments. How can American workers and entrepreneurs do what they do best if Washington Democrats are micromanaging the economy and changing their mind every 5 minutes?

So, to summarize, we have a Senator asking Congress to delay and modify the signature bill that he himself wrote less than a year ago. We have American families being treated as pawns in a fight between Democrats and other Democrats. This bill was already an incredibly bad deal for the country, and the giant mess gets worse and worse every day.

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