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Floor Speech

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Mr. HOEVEN. Mr. President, I would like to join the good Senator from North Carolina as well as my colleagues in bringing Senate attention to the President's fiscal year 2024 budget.

At the outset, I want to say I support a balanced budget amendment and have done so since I first came to the Senate. I think that is something that we need to pass. We need a balanced budget amendment.

But with that, I do want to comment on the Biden administration's budget released last week, which goes in the wrong direction.

President Biden's $6.9 trillion proposal is full of the same tax-and- spend policies that do not balance a budget, do not help reduce inflation, and instead they levy taxes on hard-working Americans and spend money that we don't have.

In total, the budget proposes $4.7 trillion--let me repeat that, $4.7 trillion--in new taxes on the American people.

We need to get our fiscal house in order, and we do that by controlling spending, not again raising taxes on hard-working Americans. It is time that we come together to reduce our debt and deficit and enact responsible policies that will reduce inflation and lift the burden that our American taxpayers currently face.

The President's budget calls for increasing the corporate tax rate to 28 percent. This is higher than the average corporate tax rate in Europe, which is currently 21.7 percent, and it is even higher than the tax rate in China, if you can believe that, which is 25 percent.

This policy neglects the fact that tax increases like these are ultimately passed through to consumers in terms of higher prices for goods and services. That is just the reality.

We know this because in 2021, the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation scored a similar corporate tax increase proposal and very clearly came back and demonstrated that that tax increase would be borne by hard-working taxpayers and certainly taxpayers making less than the $400,000 per year that President Biden has talked about.

Because of this administration's past tax-and-spend policies, just yesterday, the updated CPI--Consumer Price Index--indicated that prices for goods and services in this country continue to rise.

We have seen historic levels of inflation, and a big part of controlling and reducing that inflation is controlling and reducing overall spending.

With the latest numbers, unless you have gotten at least a 15-percent raise since the Biden administration took office, you have effectively suffered a pay cut because the rate of inflation has gone up faster than your rate of pay.

During the previous administration, we took a different approach, cutting the top corporate rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. This approach led to economic growth and businesses coming back to America, and it also led to higher wages for American workers.

Of particular concern in my State of North Dakota are the proposed tax increases on energy production, including oil, gas, and coal. In fact, the Biden budget proposes to increase taxes by $31 billion on fossil fuel companies.

What the budget fails to recognize is that these taxes are borne by consumers in higher prices at the pump--when they pull up to the gas station, higher prices at the pump, higher electric bills, and higher costs when they go to the grocery stores. That is where they are ultimately paid.

We need to produce more energy. We need to create incentives to produce more energy in this country to bring down the cost of energy. There is an energy component in almost every product that you can think of, and we need to find ways to produce more energy to help increase supply and reduce the cost of energy. That will help with inflation across the board.

Furthermore, taxes like these only help oil-producing countries like Russia, Iran, and Venezuela--countries that have far inferior environmental standards to those here in the United States. That makes no sense--no sense at all.

My colleagues and I worked with the last administration to put in place policies that made our country not only energy independent but energy dominant--energy dominant. More energy, more supply helped reduce the cost of energy. That benefited consumers in their pocketbook. It also created more jobs and increased the wages in the jobs we have. That benefited the American worker.

Energy security is also a national security issue, making us less dependent on our adversaries and helping our allies--helping our allies so that they don't have to depend on energy from our adversaries. Look at what is going on in Europe right now, with our support and Western Europe's support for Ukraine at the same time Europe is looking to get energy from Russia, a country which has invaded Ukraine. Yeah, that makes no sense.

We need to return to policies that incentivize energy production in this country, not tax the very energy producers that produce more energy in this country with better environmental stewardship than anywhere else in the world.

Also, on defense, the budget falls short on defense. While on paper the budget proposes increased defense spending in 2024, it fails to take into account the incredible inflation costs which have been generated by this administration's tax-and-spend policies.

Our current threat, obviously, not only with what we see in Europe but globally, we can only respond to with a position of strength-- strength. This budget would result in just the opposite--a smaller Army, fewer Navy ships, fewer Air Force aircraft. We need to support our men and women in uniform by providing them with the resources they need to address the global threats posed by our adversaries.

In conclusion, the President's budget is the wrong proposal at the wrong time. Congress must work to find savings, reduce our debt and deficit, and responsibly fund our priorities without increasing taxes on hard-working American taxpayers.

As a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and the ranking member of the Ag Appropriations Subcommittee, I look forward to working on the fiscal year 2024 appropriations bills and enacting commonsense legislation that meets our country's needs while facing our fiscal realities and working to get our debt and deficit under control.

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