Cole Slams Democrats' Irresponsible, "Bad Bad Bad" Legislation

Statement

Congressman Tom Cole (OK-04) on Friday made remarks on the House floor in opposition to two connected pieces of legislation, a Senate-passed infrastructure package (Senate Amendment to H.R. 3684) and an unscored multi-trillion-dollar reconciliation bill (H.R. 5376). The infrastructure legislation passed the House late Friday evening and will proceed to the president's desk. For the reconciliation legislation, a resolution was approved to provide for its further House consideration in the future.

Madam Speaker, we have purportedly a $3 trillion package in two different parts in front of us today. We are not going to talk a lot about the first part of the package, the so called "infrastructure package." But I want to talk about it because it didn't come through the Rules Committee. It didn't need to. And it's not going to be subject to much debate here. But we ought to talk about it.

Now, of the two bills we are purportedly dealing with, it's the better of the two, but it is abominable. It's unpaid for. The CBO has told us it's $400 billion, $398 billion to be precise. The Senate process that produced it did not go through the committee of jurisdiction. Worst of all, it's the most egregious surrender of House prerogatives I have ever seen in my time here. It's not come through any committee. We've not had anything to do with it. We're just going to simply accept what a few Senators negotiated and went through and call it a victory and call it bipartisan. It's nothing of the sort.

Worse than that is the bill that this rule is to advance. That is the so called "BBB" bill. Now my Democratic friends call it the "Build Back Better" bill. I call it the "Bad Bad Bad" bill. It's been cobbled together in a convoluted process of missed deadlines, broken promises and legislative sleight of hand. The defects are almost, Madam Speaker, too many to mention.

And my friends will say it's paid for. It's not. Quite frankly, they have about "$1.5 trillion" in revenue, as far as we can tell, and they have "$1.75 trillion" of expenditures. But they intend to make every program here -- programs they have for a year or three years or five years -- permanent. If you add them all together, it's a minimum of $4 trillion with about $1.5 trillion of revenue. So, it's an outrageously unbalanced bill.

Some of my friends are going to vote for this because it has immigration in it. Really? Immigration, frankly, will not survive the Senate parliamentarian, and everybody on your side knows it.

Some of them are going to vote for it because it has state and local tax reform: a nice way of saying, "my gosh, tax break for millionaires and billionaires in blue states." That too, by the way, will probably be changed in the United States Senate if you believe Senator Sanders and Senator Warren and look at what they have to say about this thing.

Finally, we have some people who say, "well, I'm going to vote for it just because it's the right thing to do." It's the wrong thing to do for the American people.

The bill will not get better in the Senate. When it was sold to your side, you were told we are not going to move ahead until we have an agreement the Senate will accept. The Senate won't accept this bill. We are going to send it over there, and a few Senators are going to write it and send it right back. And if you don't like it now, you're going to like it less when it gets here.

So we should defeat the rule. We should defeat the infrastructure package. And when it comes, we should defeat the "Bad Bad Bad" bill.

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