The Economy

Floor Speech

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Mr. TUBERVILLE. Mr. President, Members of the Senate were all home last week for 2 weeks during their State work period. It was a good time to get back--to get back to reality, as I call it, because we all know here in Washington, people aren't always operating in reality. If we were, we wouldn't be seeing some of the policies that are coming out as we speak.

These State work periods are a great time to hear directly from the people we represent, and that is who we work for--what they care about and how they are affected by what is happening here in our Nation's Capital.

This is what folks back in Alabama were talking about. They were talking about small businesses that can't find people to work because the government is paying more in unemployment benefits than folks make on the job. And that is understandable. We have to understand that, and we have to understand the problem and how we rectify that problem. We need workers in the State of Alabama in the worst way, almost in every business and in manufacturing.

They were talking about an economy that is hurting--really hurting-- for hard-working Americans. They were talking about the real costs of rising inflation--rising prices on goods and services that the average family possesses.

While driving around, I fill my truck up with gas. The cost was double what I spent just a few months ago, and that affects every American in this country.

By the way, in June, consumer prices increased 5.4 percent. I got an earful from people about bread, eggs, and milk, all across the State of Alabama. I am sure that the people of Alabama are not alone in their concerns.

This didn't happen by accident. This is the direct result of us up here spending way too much money, flooding the country with money that is out--I call it invisible money--out there just going into people's pockets that either they are saving, putting in the stock market, or spending on goods.

This makes the timing of the President's proposed tax increases even worse. Simply put, President Biden's proposal is launching an all-out assault on the working Americans in this country, people who work hard for the money they put in their pocket to pay for the things that their family needs.

Altogether, President Biden has called for 30--let me repeat that--30 different tax increases on the American people that total over $3 trillion.

This is the worst time--the worst time--that we could be pushing a new tax increase, especially during this pandemic, which we thought was coming to a close, but it looks like we are not even close to that. So this would be the worst time for us to be raising taxes. Businesses and families have worked very hard to make progress after a very, very tough year and a half, and it has been tough. Higher taxes would set most, if not all, back even further.

The President's budget laid down a marker. It lays out straight the priorities of the administration. It spotlights areas where the American public can expect a political emphasis. Well, with his budget, President Biden has telegraphed the types of tax increases that Congress can deploy to pay for his progressive policies. We are sure to see a few of them in the new reconciliation package. I am not going to talk about all 30 proposals, but let's take a look at some of the big tax increases that President Biden is going to propose.

President Biden wants to raise the corporate rate from 21 to 28 percent, which was lowered just a couple of years ago and put money in people's pockets all across the country. Now we are going to raise it from 21 to 28 percent on corporations. That is not a tax on corporations; that is a tax on the people who work across this country, especially for these corporations.

If our Democratic colleagues get their way, Communist China will have a lower corporate tax rate than the United States. Let me repeat that. If our colleagues pass this tax, we will have a higher corporate tax rate than China. Take a moment to think about that.

The Biden budget targets certain industries that our Democratic colleagues don't like, such as the oil and gas industry, which supports more than 10 million good-paying jobs in this country. It would face nearly $150 billion in industry-specific tax increases. That is in addition to the already massive corporate tax increase.

Once again, the President is undoing the progress made over the last few years. The United States became fully--and I mean fully--energy independent for the first time in decades. As a net exporter, we exported oil and natural gas. What are we doing now? We are buying it. Since Biden has come into office, we have become increasingly dependent on Saudi Arabia, OPEC, and Russia for oil and gas.

Colleagues on the left want the government to subsidize expensive and inefficient energy, like wind and solar, so we can put oil and gas out of business. We are all for natural energy, but you can't do it all at one time. You cannot do it all at one time. Just look at the people with the Keystone Pipeline who are out of work. They were told they would get shovel-ready jobs. I hear from them every day. There are no jobs out there for them like they had when they worked on the Keystone Pipeline.

Many other preferred green energy sources require critical minerals that only China produces. In enforcing their Green New Deal policies on Americans, our Democratic colleagues are forcing us to be more dependent on China for key resources.

I want to say one thing about what is going on in China. They are getting ready to use a molten salt reactor that we invented years and years ago that we decided not to use. Now, they are starting to build it, and we are helping them. We are helping China to become energy independent off of coal in the future because of these nuclear reactors. We invented it and shut it down, and now, we are going to help China with the progress of putting these in all over their country.

All of this will effectively be a tax on regular working- and middle- class Americans since their energy bills will go sky high as a result of this all-out assault on our oil and gas. It makes no sense.

Not content with raising taxes at home, our President wants to implement a 21-percent global minimum tax on income that U.S. businesses earn overseas. Now, they are going to pay taxes overseas already, and we are going to turn around and tax them 21 percent more. Again, this is basically a double tax on the companies with international operations. Since they already have to pay taxes overseas, too, this tax would destroy American competitiveness. It would incentivize U.S. firms to headquarters overseas and move production offshore. We have got to rethink that. We have got to rethink it. Again, we are working for the American people, not for us here.

President Biden is also calling for a 15-percent global corporate minimum tax based on the misguided assumption that other world powers will play fair. Well, I can guarantee you one thing: Russia and China are not going to play fair. We cannot count on anybody other than our allies. Everybody else is on their own. Even for the countries that do play fair, this international rate is lower than the 28-percent rate that companies headquartered in the United States would have to pay.

So what does that mean? It means inversions are going to spread like wildfire, and large business corporations are going to move their headquarters overseas. We cannot allow that to happen. We are going to lose jobs.

What is more, the President's budget calls to increase the IRS's budget by $80 billion over the next decade and add thousands of new agents. The President wants even more tax collectors to knock on your door and shake you down for all you are worth. I don't know if you have ever been audited. I have been several times, and it ain't a lot of fun. So what we are going to do is add even more people. If you get a tax refund, you are going to be audited. If you get some kind of refund, they are coming.

We are talking about the same Agency that aggressively targeted conservative groups and individuals during the Obama administration. Now that there is another Democrat in the White House, the IRS is up to its old tactics again. We cannot politicize the IRS again.

In just the past few months, the IRS has leaked the tax returns of American taxpayers to other groups. Now, to me, that really needs to be investigated. It has all gone down in the wash. For some reason, nobody is looking at this.

Even more outrageously, news recently broke that a Christian organization based in Texas was denied tax-exempt status by the IRS. They were denied. Why? Because the IRS, for some reason, thinks the Bible is too closely associated with the Republican Party. That is ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. It is sad commentary on where America is today. What is next? Is the IRS going to start pulling the tax-exempt status from churches? I hope not, but if we are adding all of these other agents, we are going to run into more and more problems.

Before Congress even thinks about giving the IRS a dime more, the Agency must demonstrate that it treats all Americans--and I repeat, all Americans--equally and protects our personal tax information. Individuals responsible for the most recent leak must be prosecuted. We have to get control of the IRS. For some reason, they are out of control.

Sadly, there is more. The President's administration also has its sights on small business owners--this is huge in my State and in a lot of other small States in this country, especially in farming communities--family farmers, middle-class Americans who would like to pass on to their children what they have worked so hard to build. By ending the longstanding step-up in basis rule, the President would force anyone who inherits something to pay capital gains tax on that asset at the time of inheritance.

I want you to think about what that is going to do to millions of people, to millions of family members. This doesn't just apply to folks who inherit millions in wealth, and I know, as we all know, that is probably what this is aimed at; it would slam middle-class folks who inherit family farmland or a house or a small business.

I am going to say this: After campaigning for 2 years and in going throughout my State of Alabama and talking to our farmers, if we lose our family farms in this country to big corporations, we are going to be in huge trouble. This is exactly what this is going to do. If we tax them at the time of inheritance, we are going to have huge problems. Many would have to sell their businesses just to pay the taxes, and it would destroy American jobs in the process. We need to give incentives to small businesses, farmers, and the like to make sure they understand and know that they can work hard and pass it down from generation to generation.

Opposition to this particular tax increase is bipartisan. Congressman

David Scott of Georgia, a Democrat and chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, wrote to President Biden:

Step-up in basis is a critical tool enabling family farming operations to continue from generation to generation. The potential for capital gains to be imposed on heirs at death of the landowner would impose a significant financial burden on these operations.

This is a terrible--I mean a terrible--tax on small business and the American people. I agree with the Congressman.

The American dream is about working hard so that your kids can have a better life than you did. That is why my parents worked so hard to give me and my brother and sister a chance. My dad never made over $15,000 a year, and we thought we were rich. We were actually poor, but they never let on to that. They worked hard to give us the opportunity to go to school, to get an education, and to try to make something of ourselves. I know that millions of mothers and fathers across the country feel the same way.

When you boil it down, the tax plan is really just a tax on the American dream. We cannot take away the American dream from the American people. That is what we have lived off of. That is what we believe in.

So why do we need to raise taxes so badly? It is in order to, obviously, finance all of the money that, in the last year and a half or 2 years, we have pushed out onto the public and for what we are going to do in the future. We have to tax.

I keep hearing people say: Well, we are not going to raise taxes.

Let me tell you that money doesn't grow on trees, so we had better find some way to understand that in the very near future or we are going to lose the future of our kids in this country. We can't let any of these tax proposals creep into the legislation that we are seeing. We can't let them do that. We can't let our policies overtake the things that will overcome our kids' future--and not just that of our kids. I used to say our kids and grandkids. Heck, it is us too. We are getting to the point now of no return, but we are looking at a package here in the next few weeks that is going to be $3.5 trillion, possibly even more. That is unfathomable. It is hard to understand.

We have got to get this country back going again after the pandemic. Let the American people do it. We don't need to do it in this building. That is not our obligation. Our obligation is to give the people of this country the opportunity to get a job because growth and prosperity are what have made this country great, and that is what we need to continue to do.

The root of the problem, I believe, is that a lot of people think that they can spend the hard-working people's money better than they can. They say: Trust us because Big Government knows best. Folks, Big Government is going to put us under--6 feet under. Governments have been making that argument to people for centuries.

I would say this: In our growing up, look at the things that we as the government have taken control of, and you name me one thing that has been prosperous. I have thought long and hard about that. We try to put people to work through the Federal Government, and it doesn't work. We have got to allow it to happen through small businesses and corporations.

Kings and Queens would demand more money from the people, but the monarchy felt that they were entitled to it. That was normal throughout the world until the United States was formed.

We formed this country because of Kings and Queens saying: We know how to spend your money. We know how to spend your money more than you do.

So the Founders wanted a country that was of and by and for the people, and that is why the United States of America was formed-- because the people built this country, not government.

Thankfully, they set up a system that allows us to voice our opposition to taxes through democratic means. When the government tries to raise taxes, the American people have the opportunity to let their voices be heard at the ballot box.

Just remember that when you earn, grow, and work hard to preserve your money, it is your money, not the government's.

Our President would do well to remember that he serves at the will of the American people and not the other way around.

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