Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the Department of Education Relating to ``Waivers and Modifications of Federal Student Loans''

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. LEE. Madam President, $32 trillion--it is a colossal sum burdening every single American taxpayer. It is a tangible reflection of the prodigious debt accumulated over many decades of reckless spending.

Now, the ramifications of our bloated national debt are far-reaching, felt in the daily lives of hard-working families crushed under the weight of relentless inflation. The prices of everyday necessities continue to rise, eroding purchasing power and placing an intolerable burden on the shoulders of every American family. The staggering figure ought to jolt us from our complacency, send shivers down our spines, and compel us to confront the dire consequences of Congress's longstanding recklessness when it comes to fiscal matters.

Amidst the gravity of our Nation's current predicament, we find ourselves standing at a precipice, a pivotal moment where our choices today will inevitably shape our economic outlook tomorrow and for years and, in fact, decades to come. The burden of our national debt and the relentless grip of inflation have placed us at this critical juncture, demanding nothing less than a resolute and visionary response.

Regrettably, the lopsidedly negotiated Fiscal Responsibility Act, as it is called, heralded by Speaker McCarthy and President Biden, fails to provide the respite our Nation desperately needs. Rather than offering substantive solutions to tackle the root causes of our fiscal woes, it appears to be a palliative pill. It is a bad deal for America, a missed opportunity to confront our challenges, an abdication of our responsibility to protect Americans' economic security and well-being.

We can and must do better. We must abandon the complacency that has brought us to this point and chart a new course, a course that values something approaching fiscal sanity. We can no longer afford to settle for half measures or short-term fixes, and we desperately need a comprehensive and responsible plan, one that addresses the root causes of our fiscal predicament, curtails the bloated bureaucracy, and empowers American families once again to thrive.

It is time to go back to the drawing board. Failure to do so and to do so right now, at this very moment, is to ignore the lessons of history. Nations that neglect their fiscal health often face economic calamity and social upheaval as a result. We are obligated to ourselves and to future generations of Americans to break free from this cycle of debt and inflation and forge a path of prosperity and sustainability.

I talk about it in terms of the cycle of inflation and debt because the two go hand in hand. We cause inflation when we spend more than we have and spend more than we should. That makes every dollar that Americans earn, save, or have previously saved purchase less.

So I must express my profound disappointment over the Orwellian-named Fiscal Responsibility Act. In harsh juxtaposition to the Limit, Save, Grow Act, the ambitious plan by the House of Representatives, the meager offerings of the Biden-McCarthy deal are profound.

First, House GOP leadership proclaims that the Fiscal Responsibility Act will save $1.5 trillion over a 10-year period through the 2-year caps deal. But, see, therein lies the deception. The supposed savings are largely--in fact, almost entirely--illusory. The bill contains a mandatory 2-year caps deal for discretionary spending; but, in reality, the spending limits for the other 4 years, the out years, are unenforceable and easily waived--in fact, easily ignored.

It is a shell game of sorts, a carefully orchestrated act to create the false illusion of savings. But history has shown us that no caps deal has ever been fully enforced against future appropriations. The most recent and relevant example of this may well be Congress, in its decision in the Budget Control Act of 2011, to impose statutory caps on discretionary spending and then to raise those caps on four separate occasions, in a bipartisan fashion, over the decade that followed the adoption of those caps, completely negating the stated purpose of that bill.

And unlike the BCA's 10-year statutory caps, all of which were, in fact, statutory, the FRA has only 2 years, which can be maneuvered around themselves. Just 2 years of statutory caps; that is all. You can get around those, too. It is just a little bit harder. But after those first 2 years, it is not even a difficult thing because these aren't statutory caps at this point.

It is a largely symbolic and ultimately feckless gesture. Yet House leadership wants us in the Senate to rubberstamp a mammoth increase of $4 trillion in new debt in exchange for supposedly $1.5 trillion of claimed deficit reduction, the vast majority--in fact, the overwhelming share--of which will never be realized.

I am confident stating that, predicting it, right now. This is a pipe dream, and they know it.

And what did they demand in return for raising the debt ceiling, effectively by $4 trillion? What did they extract to ensure that this colossal sum, once borrowed, wouldn't go unchecked? A meager $12 billion, a drop in the ocean compared to our Nation's monumental burden. And that is a best-case scenario.

Considering that rather than raising the debt ceiling by a specific amount--which, I think, is the right way to do this and the way that Congress has usually done this in the past--the deal raises it; it suspends the debt ceiling altogether through January 1, 2025. It grants the Treasury authority to issue debt without any numerical limit to restrain its appetite. It is a carte blanche, a blank check of sorts, for the government to spend, to borrow more money without accountability.

This deal begs the question: With Republicans like these, who needs Democrats?

We deserve better. We deserve a deal that genuinely reflects the urgency of our economic challenges and delivers meaningful results. To grant such a colossal debt ceiling increase while settling for a mere $12 billion in immediate savings is also an act of fiscal irresponsibility and betrayal of the trust placed in us by those who elected us.

Equally disheartening is the state of work requirements within the deal. These work requirements were supposed to be part of the deal and a meaningful change in the law and supposed to help things get better, help us not spend as much money, help people get out of poverty, help make sure that we don't have to come back to the well just 18 months or so from now and raise the debt ceiling yet again.

Limit, Save, Grow championed a robust approach, acknowledging the importance of promoting self-sufficiency through work requirements. In contrast, this swamp deal that we are actually facing offers only token requirements, riddled with exemptions and phaseouts. It is a farce of sorts. It is a charade that perpetuates the vicious cycle of entitlement, leaving countless Americans trapped in the clutches of dependency.

Limit, Save, Grow adds significant work requirements for TANF, food stamps, and for Medicaid. This bill strips the Medicaid work requirements altogether. With respect to TANF, arguably, it doesn't do much at all, if anything. With respect to food stamps, according to some figures that we are studying from CBO, it arguably costs more money than it saves.

In matters of fiscal prudence, Limit, Save, Grow stood firm in its determination to repeal the Democrats' $1.2 trillion Inflation Reduction Act. Talk about Orwellian names, that is one for you. Yet in its lamentable capitulation, the McCarthy-Biden deal preserves every cent of the Inflation Reduction Act, leaving our Nation mired in a quagmire of unsustainable and expensive policies that have done anything but reduce inflation.

In fact, when you go throwing around trillion-dollar increments that you don't have, that is what it does cost. It is more inflation, and that is, indeed, what it has caused.

Now, the consequences of this surrender in this bill are grave. If enacted, this bill would grant President Biden everything without meaningful safeguards or provisions to address the pressing issues.

While it may be hailed as some sort of triumph of bipartisanship, the American people will ultimately bear the brunt of its shortcomings. You see, not everything that is bipartisan is, in fact, in the interest of the American people.

Bipartisanship and compromise are an inevitability in anything that moves through the U.S. Congress. Some work for the benefit of the American people, but when a small handful of Members of Congress get together and decide what will be easiest for them, what will work best for them, what will make them look the best, without due regard to how it will impact the American people, that is not compromise. That is better described as collusion.

Look, it is the American people who will bear the brunt of this bill with the implementation of President Biden's half-trillion-dollar student loan plan--a plan which now stands as a testament to President Biden's misplaced priorities, a millstone around the neck of hard- working individuals who will never benefit from such largesse.

It is a stark reminder that, while the government claims to champion the cause of equality and opportunity, it is very often the very policies it enacts that perpetuate inequality and hinder genuine progress. The hard-working veterans, the diligent plumbers, and countless others are made to shoulder the weight of others' degrees-- often, degrees of people who now earn a whole lot of money--while relegating their own aspirations and dreams to the sidelines. It is a profound injustice when we shift the burden of personal choices and individual responsibilities onto those who have already toiled and sacrificed.

That is what we are voting for with this bill. We are saying that it is OK to force those who labor in essential trades to bear the financial burden of others' educational pursuits.

This is a patently unfair and boldfaced patronage racket. And, like all good rackets, you need your strong-armed collector, and this administration found theirs in the IRS.

The egregious expansion of the IRS is epitomized by the Democrats' allocation of $80 billion to this bloated Agency with a demonstrated history of unethical targeting of conservative nonprofits, among others.

The compromise reached between Biden and McCarthy, which retains 98 percent of the IRS expansion--98 percent--is nothing short of a surrender, an anticipatory capitulation of sorts. It is a thing that is going to cause more problems.

And so armed with a hefty budget and a woke agenda, the IRS will become an even stronger instrument of political bias and partisan manipulation. The merging of ideology and bureaucracy poses a grave threat to the fabric of our Republic, eroding the trust and confidence that should underpin our tax system.

It might be true that this bill attempts to claw back some of the unspent COVID funds and the CDC global health funding. But while they point to rescinding roughly $28 billion in unspent COVID funds, we must acknowledge that much of that will merely offset spending increases elsewhere. This deal falls woefully short, failing to seize this opportunity to maximize the potential of these unutilized resources.

Perhaps the cherry on top of this deal from hell is the glaring omission of an essential regulatory reform measure, called the REINS Act. The REINS Act is a proposal. It is an acronym. It stands for Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny. Limit, Save, Grow, the debt ceiling bill passed by the House about a month ago, incorporated the REINS Act, which seeks to ensure that every major regulation put forth by a Federal Agency has to pass through congressional scrutiny. It has to be affirmatively enacted by Congress.

This is already required by the Constitution. The very first operative provision of the Constitution--the first clause, the first section of the first article--says: ``All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.''

Legislative powers or the power to make law--article I, section 7 makes it clear that this is the only path to do it. Article I, section 7 reiterates and builds upon the legislative powers clause of article I, section 1 by saying that, in order to pass a law--a Federal law--any Federal law must become law only after it has been passed by the House and the Senate and presented to the President for signature, veto, or acquiescence. You cannot make a Federal law otherwise.

Executive branch Agencies have been getting around this for a long time with the assistance, sadly, of Congress. Congress has delegated, increasingly, lawmaking power to unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats-- people who don't work for the American people, who can't be fired by them. This is a big problem.

Now, look, Limit, Save, Grow incorporated the REINS Act, and that would have done a lot of good by subjecting this lawmaking power to elected lawmakers to give them--us, the people elected to make laws-- the final say.

We were finally going to close that loop and say that Agencies can write laws that would be considered proposed bills--bill proposals-- within Congress, but only Congress can enact them.

They are laws--laws made by the unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats who have no constitutional lawmaking authority--that would not, under the REINS Act, be self-executing. Congress would have to be the lawmaker, as the Constitution already makes clear.

The REINS Act really is about so much more than regulatory reform. It is about accountability to the public, the same kind of accountability that was envisioned by the Founding Fathers when they wrote article I, section 1 and article I, section 7. It is about the republican form of government as a whole. It is about representative government, about people through the democratic process being able to elect those who will create laws to which they will become subject. It is about the American people being put adequately on notice as to what their legal responsibilities and obligations are.

James Madison, in Federalist 62, spoke somewhat presciently when he wrote:

It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood: if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes, that no man who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow.

We are now suffering through a circumstance where not only are our laws so voluminous, complex, and ever-changing that we can't read them and understand what they require of us, but they weren't even written by men and women of our own choosing. This is wrong. This is as big of a miscarriage of justice as exists in this country. This is unreviewable legislative discretion of the sort that has historically been reserved for despots and tyrants.

Despotism and tyranny to this degree, in this unique way, exist in America today in our executive branch Agencies. Limit, Save, Grow was going to address this through the REINS Act. But, sadly, that provision was removed from this measure.

Now, the sudden excuse for this glaring exclusion--something that was really important to Republicans and should be really important to Republicans and Democrats and everyone else--is that the deal imposes an administrative pay-as-you-go provision, or pay-go, as it is known. However, this is easily waived. It is bereft of any significant congressional role in the regulatory process.

Let's not be naive to the realities of implementation. This process will be artfully manipulated in the hands of the Biden-appointed Director of the Office of Management and Budget.

The bureaucrats--the masters of their bureaucratic chicanery--will exploit every nook and cranny of the legislation, every nook and cranny that generates fake direct savings. The noble intentions behind this provision will be buried beneath a mountain of smoke and mirrors.

So when you read section 263 of the Biden-McCarthy deal, you will see this regulatory pay-go measure. But if you keep reading and you get to section 265, you see that section 265 destroys it. It takes it away. It effectively nullifies it. A restriction on a government actor that is then in a subsequent section, 265, given the power to exempt herself from that restriction is nothing at all. See, within the fine print of that loophole, in section 265, is language that renders the entire endeavor of regulatory pay-as-you-go completely toothless. The OMB Director possesses complete waiver authority. If she deems it ``necessary for program delivery,'' then she can circumvent the provisions that purport to rein in the excesses of the bureaucratic machinery--section 263. This is akin to placing the fox in charge of the henhouse and then granting the fox discretion to determine when the rules apply and when they can be conveniently cast aside. If the fox wants to consume the hen, the fox will, if the fox deems it necessary and appropriate.

Don't believe me?

Well, it didn't take long yesterday for the OMB Director to say the quiet part out loud. When asked about the PAYGO waiver authority included in the Biden-McCarthy deal, OMB Director Shalanda Young said:

If that waiver is deemed necessary to make sure President Biden's agenda is carried forward, we're going to use that authority.

Translation. This means one thing: The regulatory PAYGO measure means nothing. It is worth no more than the paper it is printed on. Less than that, in fact. Nothing. It does nothing.

So if you are tempted to vote for this, perhaps taking some comfort in the idea that this is going to rein in regulatory excesses, please look elsewhere for comfort. It does not exist here.

What irks me is not just that the REINS Act measure was removed--that is plenty irksome in and of itself. It shouldn't have been removed. We should have insisted it be in there. If some objected to it, we should have at least insisted it be in there as long as this debt ceiling issuance Mardi Gras remains in effect. It should be there. If you are going to take that out and replace it with the regulatory PAYGO measure, don't claim that it is real when, in fact, it is fake.

This is appalling. With Republicans like these, who needs Democrats?

Look, they are not even pretending to negotiate in good faith. In fact, while Republicans claim that this is a big victory for Republicans, meanwhile, the Democrats are doing everything they can to hide their excitement over this deal. Representative Jamaal Bowman, a Democrat from New York, Member of the House of Representatives who is listed as undecided, said President Biden ``kicked McCarthy's butt.'' Fair point; he did.

Madam President, in contemplating the magnitude--the sheer weight, volume, mass of our national debt, a colossal sum of $32 trillion--$32 trillion that will soon escalate to $36 trillion under this awful deal--one cannot help but be seized by a sense of awful foreboding. This staggering figure should serve as a haunting reminder of the consequences of our profligate ways, a testament to the grave irresponsibility that has permeated our political landscape for decades far too long.

Instead of confronting this existential threat head-on, this deal is racked with complacency and false, cowardly compromise--placating the disconnected without addressing the root of the problem. It is the child of uncertainty, born out of cowardly fear of confrontation and lack of conviction; and it represents the victory of expediency over integrity. I cannot support it, and I will emphatically vote no absent material changes that will render this bill something other than what it is--a fake response to burdensome debt.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source