Motion to Discharge

Floor Speech

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Mr. BOOZMAN. Madam President, as cochair of the Senate Recycling Caucus, I am all for efforts to reuse material in a manner that gives it a second life unless we are talking about recycling bad ideas. The reckless tax-and-spend plan the White House and the majority are threatening to bring forth once again is a terrible idea to revive.

The Senate wasted almost all of 2021 chasing this apparition. Now here we are, over a year later, and our economic situation is much more dire. Inflation is over 9 percent--the highest in more than four decades. Many economists predict we are headed for a recession by next year. There are indications that we are already there. Americans feel this daily as prices at the pump and the grocery store eat away at disposable income and as home price affordability becomes a thing of the past.

According to a CNN poll last month, 64 percent of Americans feel the economy is currently in a recession, but President Biden and allies of his think that raising taxes, eliminating jobs, and spending billions more will somehow help. Their wild claim that all of this spending will reduce inflation was almost immediately debunked by the Penn Wharton Budget Model, which found that, if enacted, the bill will have no measurable impact on inflation.

Americans are struggling with high prices at every turn. Yet the majority wants them to pay billions for Green New Deal programs that could exacerbate energy security and food security concerns while using fuzzy math to sell it as fighting inflation.

Their message to Americans is, We are sorry you are paying so much for every necessity you need, but we really have to plant some trees in Brooklyn.

That is right. Tree equity--a Green New Deal program resurrected for this bill--is the majority's secret weapon to fight inflation.

As the lead Republican on the Senate Ag Committee, I can attest to how our section of the bill is chock-full of misplaced priorities like this, but worse than that, when it comes to agriculture policy, this bill sets a particularly bad precedent for farm bill programs. If they go down this road, we very well might be looking at reconciliation as the only way future farm bills are actually written. Whoever holds the pen wields the fate for vital programs that farmers, ranchers, and foresters depend on, not to mention nutrition programs that help low- income families and policies that allow conservationists to achieve our shared goals.

We haven't had a single hearing on this bill. Yet its agriculture title spends $40 billion--a huge amount allocated, with no input from stakeholders, Republicans, and, quite frankly, most Democrats.

The majority is extending conservation programs until 2031--well beyond the life of the next two farm bills, deliberately taking away Congress's ability to change the focus of these programs or how they operate.

The bill unilaterally creates a multibillion-dollar slush fund for farm bill priorities shared by the President and his allies. That is a terrible idea for any legislation, much less a bill that is historically written in a very bipartisan fashion.

The current farm bill passed this Chamber with a record number of ``yes'' votes on the floor. My goal, as current ranking member, is to top that. To say this reckless bill jeopardizes the chances of that would be an understatement. We have never written a farm bill in this manner. It is antithetical to how the Senate--and the Ag Committee, in particular--should operate. We have a storied history of working together on the Agriculture Committee. Our stakeholders value the fact that we approach the issues they face together rather than as Republicans and Democrats. They appreciate that their voices are heard.

Unfortunately, with this decision, the majority has changed that dynamic. In their zeal to pass their reckless tax-and-spend agenda, they have undermined one of the last successful bipartisan processes remaining in the Senate.

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