Motion to Discharge

Floor Speech

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Mrs. FISCHER. Madam President, while we haven't yet seen any bill text for this reckless tax-and-spending bill, we have seen or we have heard an outline of it, some chatter about it, snippets about it--about what is in this reconciliation bill. So, Madam President, let me state the obvious: Billions of dollars in reckless spending and major tax hikes--they will not solve the economic crisis our Nation finds itself in. Yet, somehow, this concoction of truly terrible economic policies is exactly what my colleagues on the Democratic side are pursuing.

Let's start with the tax hikes. In the Schumer-Manchin bill, they have proposed imposing a corporate minimum tax on those big, bad corporations. Well, 50 percent of this change would be borne by the manufacturing industry--an industry that both Republicans and Democrats have been trying to grow. We have been trying to grow that, not harm it with bad policies.

Manufacturers are already struggling to navigate inflation and supply chain crisis, but this bill will punish manufacturers, and there is no question that this would hurt the middle class by raising prices and lowering wages. At a time of historic inflation, manufacturers will have no choice but to pass on higher prices to the consumer.

That is just one part of it. Democrats say the rich should pay their fair share. OK, let's look at that.

A nonpartisan analysis of the entire bill found that it would cause a $16.7 billion tax increase for American taxpayers earning less than $200,000 in 2023. President Biden is going back on his promise and raising taxes for those earning less than $400,000, and he is doing this during a recession.

What about the claim that this proposal will address inflation? The Penn-Wharton Budget Model, which Senator Manchin frequently cites for producing the best economic analysis, found the proposal produces no meaningful reduction in the deficit or with inflation. Any suggestion otherwise is insulting to the intelligence of the American people.

OK, now let's look at the spending. Why, during a time of significant economic hardship, should the American people be on the hook to fund $369 billion in incentives to the Green New Deal businesses to promote those energy policies? Can anyone in this Chamber argue with a straight face that subsidizing Tesla purchases will help to ease inflation? I can tell you it certainly will not help working families.

Then there is the $80 billion for the IRS, which is six times the Agency's current annual budget. Our folks on the other side of the aisle are once again trying to hire an armada of new IRS agents-- 87,000, to be exact. This would unleash a wave of new audits. Half of those new audits would hit Americans making $75,000 or less.

You know, we have been here before. The public does not want this deal. The bottom line: It is clear this economy is not working for the American people.

The Biden administration's policies have saddled this country with two consecutive months of negative economic growth--which is the definition of a recession--9.1 percent inflation, a negative 3.6 inflation-adjusted decline in pay for workers, and more Americans than ever before are now holding two full-time jobs.

In the face of all this hardship, we need real solutions, not more of the same backward spending policies.

The cute name that Senators Schumer and Manchin have come up with for their proposal should not hide these facts. And the facts are massive tax hikes and billions of dollars in reckless government spending. That is the last thing our country needs right now.

So why are we even debating such a terrible bill? A short history lesson may offer some answers. People may recall something called the Cornhusker Kickback--an agreement in 2009 between my predecessor and Senator Harry Reid. In exchange for a special carve-out only for Nebraska to reduce the costs of enacting ObamaCare in our State, my predecessor agreed to vote for ObamaCare. Well, the kickback, once public, it angered and it embarrassed Nebraskans.

History often repeats itself, and from what I am hearing, it seems as though we have a new kickback--the Mountaineer kickback, a deal only for West Virginia; tax hikes and reckless spending that all of us will have to bear in exchange for a pipeline.

I will close by saying again, this is not an inflation reduction bill. Like a bad Hollywood franchise that just won't die, this is simply the third installment in the ``Build Back Broke'' trilogy. I hope it does as poorly in the box office as the first two.

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