Agricultural Act of 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, earlier this month the Quinnipiac poll asked voters what the top priority they had for President Obama and Members of Congress in 2014: 18 percent said health care; 16 percent said jobs and unemployment; 15 percent said the economy in general. By comparison, only 1 percent of the voters said income inequality.

In other words, 99 percent of the voters in this Quinnipiac poll felt that income inequality should not be our top priority and that, rather, they would like for us to focus on not only the symptoms of the problems but the root causes: how do we get people back to work; how do we increase upward income mobility, letting people climb that ladder of success so they can pursue their own American dream.

Yet the most significant economic proposal President Obama mentioned in his State of the Union was aimed not at fixing our health care system, creating jobs or boosting growth but, rather, at this idea of reducing income inequality. The American people are pretty darn smart, and they understand that we need to grow the size of the pie, not only cut up the pie into different pieces.

The best way to do that is by guaranteeing that people have the opportunity to pursue their dreams, not some socialistic notion of let's slice up the pie in Washington, DC. No one does better under that kind of system.

But I also mentioned the President's--apparently--signature proposal for addressing income inequality; that is, by raising the minimum wage. I heard my friend from Maryland talking about the minimum wage as if Washington can wave a magic wand and say: You, Mr. Employer, you, Madam Employer, are now going to start paying your employees 40 percent more than you did yesterday because the big bad Federal Government orders you to do so.

They act as if that would have no other consequences or costs.

As I mentioned yesterday, there are studies that have been done that indicate that if we raise the minimum wage to $10.10, for which the President has argued, it could well dislocate as many as several hundred thousand people from their existing jobs.

Let's think about this for a minute. A small employer has a business--let's say they have a fast food restaurant; I have hundreds of them, maybe thousands of them in my State--and the employer is worried about bringing money in the front door from selling their product, selling the food at their fast food restaurant, they know they are going to have certain expenses. Some of that is the materials or food they put together. Some of it is their overhead such as electricity and energy, but a significant part of that is going to be the cost of labor, paying people to work there.

If we automatically tell that small employer, that fast food restaurant, instead of $7 an hour, they now have to pay 40 percent more, what is that going to do to their ability to not only hire and grow their business but to maintain their current level of employment?

Perhaps there is a reason the President has counterintuitively decided to come up with some sort of feel good quick patch such as the minimum wage, which would actually make things worse. Perhaps he has decided to focus on this because maybe he is feeling a little bit guilty about his record over the past 4 to 5 years.

According to the New York Times--hardly a bastion of conservative propaganda--the trend of rising inequality ``appears to have accelerated during the Obama administration.''

The President--and I will get to this in a moment--appeared to concede that much in his State of the Union speech. In fact, one measure of the income gap suggests the inequality of wages has increased four times faster under President Obama than it did under the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush. The best thing we could do to support upward mobility is not to address the symptom of lower wages but to address the root cause, expand the economy, jobs, and to give people the tools they need to qualify for good, high-paying jobs for which they don't have the job skills currently.

We know a lot of our community colleges, such as the one I visited last week in Houston, San Jacinto College, does a very good job of training people for the skills they need in order to qualify for good, high-paying jobs. That is where we ought to focus our government, not by the Federal Government trying to fix prices when it comes to wages and actually end up making things worse.

Unfortunately, the President seems incapable of embracing an economic strategy that doesn't involve more government, particularly more government spending and more government control over the private sector. My constituents in Texas tell me one reason they are feeling uncertain about the future and the economy, particularly if they are a business owner, is they don't know what kind of new taxes, they don't know what kind of new regulation, and they don't know what financial burden, such as ObamaCare, will be thrust down on them that will totally change their business model and cause them to go bankrupt--perhaps because they hadn't counted on what the Federal Government might do to them, as opposed to the market.

But we have tried the President's approach: big government, spending, stimulus spending, and the like. That is a big reason why we are suffering through the slowest economic recovery since the Great Depression and the highest and longest period of high unemployment since that same time.

Even when the President seems to be supporting a fresh approach, he is actually selling old ideas in a new package. I remember the President talking, for example, about tax reform. He called for abolishing loopholes in the Tax Code and simultaneously lowering the marginal rates. That sounds pretty good. I would support that, and I believe we could get strong bipartisan support for that kind of tax reform--lower the rates, cut out a lot of the underbrush, the tax expenditures.

They are much like the President's own bipartisan fiscal and debt commission, the Simpson-Bowles commission, recommended in December of 2010. But what did the President do when his own bipartisan fiscal commission reported to him a bipartisan plan to deal with the debt and to get the economy moving again? He ignored it. He walked away from it.

Unfortunately, the President, when he talks about tax reform, is actually talking about a way to raise taxes, to raise revenue. This is what I mean by that. He talks about tax reform as a vehicle for a tax increase, even though he has already raised the taxes of hardworking American families by $1.7 trillion while he has been President. But the American people are plenty smart and they can figure out if the President is going to eliminate their deductions and tax credits and the like that he is going to have to bring down their rate or else it will actually be a tax increase.

There is another good reason why we need to do the kind of tax reform I am talking about, and that occasionally the President talks about when he is talking about progrowth tax reform, and that is to make it revenue neutral, to bring down the rates, which will encourage people to invest and create jobs because they know the incentives will be there for them. They will be able to reap the fruits of their labor and of their risk. That is the kind of tax reform both political parties supported back in 1986 and the kind of tax reform we need to do again.

Sadly, the President and the majority leader have chosen to hijack this wonderful idea of tax reform while demanding another $1 trillion tax increase. Meanwhile, the President wants to use the Tax Code to pick winners and losers by discriminating against certain industries and increasing government subsidies to others.

I heard him talk about the oil and gas industry again. This is actually one of the brightest sectors of the economy. But the President wants to take the goose that laid the golden egg and burden it with additional regulations and taxes.

Truth be known, 80 percent of the tax benefits that flow to the energy sector flow to the so-called green energy sector--many of which I think are important--but we have to be realistic. We are actually writing them a check as opposed to the millions and millions--and literally hundreds of millions of dollars--of tax revenue generated from the oil and gas industry.

If there is one sector of the energy economy that is creating more jobs and opportunity and provides more chance for us to reduce our imports from dangerous parts of the world, it is our domestic energy sector. But the President wants to raise their taxes.

The President acknowledged on Tuesday night that what has happened during the 5-year term of his Presidency is that average wages have barely budged, inequality has deepened, and upward mobility has stalled. In other words, he agrees with the assessment of The New York Times. The problem is the solution to that condition would actually make things worse and not better.

So I actually agree with the President's assessment: During his 5 years as President, average wages have barely budged, inequality has deepened, and upward mobility has stalled. So why in the world would we want to add another $1 trillion tax burden on our economy and on the productive sector of our economy at a time when average wages have barely budged, inequality has deepened and upward mobility has stalled? Why in the world would we jeopardize the renaissance in American oil and gas production, which represents one of our few economic bright
spots? Why in the world would the President continue to reject the Keystone XL Pipeline from Canada, which would create thousands of well-paying jobs?

You will notice, by the way, Madam President, that President Obama said nothing--zero, zip, nada--about the Keystone XL Pipeline in his State of the Union. It really is just mind-boggling.

I would like to close by noting something the President said about health care, and this is another interesting aspect of his State of the Union speech. It was about 40 minutes into his speech before he even mentioned health care, when that is the big, looming, 800-pound gorilla in the room. People are anxious about this rollout of ObamaCare--first the Web site, then the cancellations, and then the sticker shock. People are worried about it. But the President waited 40 minutes into his State of the Union speech before even addressing it.

But here is what the President said to congressional Republicans. He said: If you have specific plans to cut costs, cover more people, and increase choice, tell America what you would do differently.

The problem is we have been telling the President since 2009, but he has refused to listen. He has refused to listen, and he is still refusing to listen.

The President went on to say that Republicans owe it to the American people to say what they are for, not just what they are against. I agree with the President, and we have, and continue to do so, but he continues not to listen.

Republicans have been offering health care alternatives for at least the last 5 years, most recently just earlier this week when three of my colleagues: Senator Hatch, Senator Burr, and Senator Coburn introduced a health reform blueprint that would reduce costs, expand quality insurance coverage, and improve patient access to doctors and hospitals. If President Obama wasn't aware of this, then perhaps he needs to spend a little more time outside the White House and the Democratic echo chamber and actually engage with Members of this side of the aisle in serious discussions. It is really easy to knock down a straw man, but only when it is not true. Given all the massive problems with the implementation of ObamaCare--not just with the Web site, not just with the cancellations, not just with the sticker shock or the fact you can't keep your doctors if you like them--and along with all of the massive problems still plaguing our economy and stalling wages, it is time for the President to show some real leadership. The way he could show that leadership is simply to get in a room with Members of the opposing party and to say: Let's figure this out.

This plan or this blueprint that Senators COBURN, BURR, and HATCH have introduced is just one of dozens of ideas that would actually bring down the cost of health insurance, which would make it more affordable, and that means more people could buy it and more people would get covered. But the difference between our approach and the President's approach under ObamaCare is that under ObamaCare the government gets to choose, and under our alternatives individuals and families get to choose what is best for them.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

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