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World Affairs
Mr. President, I wish I could say that is the only issue that is actually moving right now. As I turn and look around the world, there are so many issues and things that are going on right now.
Turkey has actually announced that they are going to buy more Russian missiles. They are completely ignoring what is going on.
France is furious with the United States right now and feels like the United States stabbed them in the back in forming an alliance without them--withdrawing their Ambassador, which is the first they have done in centuries with the United States, because that is a broken relationship with France.
We have put sanctions on individuals. I wish I could tell you it was due to a Russian pipeline, but no--those sanctions were pulled. I wish I could tell you it was on Turkey for actually buying Russian surface-
to-air missiles, but no--that hasn't been done. We have added sanctions onto the Attorney General of Guatemala. Attorney General Porras, they are saying, is corrupt, although she is actually trying to address corruption in her country.
I wish I could tell you that is even the only issue we are dealing with. In Afghanistan, the Taliban has now announced their new leader for the Taliban in Afghanistan, Mullah Muhammad Hassan, who is a U.N.-
sanctioned individual. That is the transition to the new government that we are going to work with, where hundreds of Americans still remain because they were left behind.
In Iran, it doesn't get any better. In Iran, they just announced again that they are not going to allow the IAEA inspectors to be able to come in and to deal with cameras in the centrifuge sites. They continue to be able to stiff-arm the world and to say that is what they are going to do, and there seem to be no new consequences for Iran. But there is for the Attorney General of Guatemala, but not in other areas.
In the Armed Services Committee this week, the top brass for the United States made it very clear that they had recommended to the President leaving 2,500 troops in Afghanistan. When the President announced, ``No one ever told me that,'' the top leadership all said they made it clear.
I wish I could even tell you that is the only issue going on with the military right now, but many people don't know that President Biden, just a couple of weeks ago, fired every appointee from the Trump administration time period that President Trump put in for the Board of Visitors for all of our academies--the Naval Academy, West Point, Air Force--just cleared them all. It wasn't based on their qualifications; it was just if Trump appointed them, they are all bad--and cleared all of those appointees from every single academy board.
By the way, that has never been done by any President, ever. Just clear the deck. If Trump said they are good, they must be bad.
On the southern border, we all know full well what is happening in the chaos that is there, as we have now topped well over a million individuals that we have interdicted from over 100 different countries that have crossed our southwest border illegally. And the number, I would love to tell you, of those that have been allowed to able to come into the country, except DHS won't tell us that number for months.
Federal courts have stepped in and have told the Biden administration they have to reimpose the MPP process that President Trump put in that dramatically dropped the number of people coming to our southwest border illegally. The Federal courts instructed the Biden administration a month ago that they have to put that back in place. And so far, the Biden administration has said: We are thinking about it; we are examining it--and won't even release a timeline to be able to follow the Federal court.
Now, it is one thing for the Biden administration to be angry at Congress, but currently, they are ignoring a Federal court order. That is a whole different issue on our democracy.
Afghan evacuees have one set of standards to be able to come in; people on the southwest border have an entirely different set. And in the middle of it, there is an ongoing dialogue about vaccine mandates for every American. The President gave a speech and dropped a mandate and said: Everyone that works in a company that has 100 people or more has to get the vaccine. It is his requirement.
Now, he has yet to give the legal authority for that. In fact, they have yet to put out a single document from the Department of Labor. They just put a deadline date out there, and they are asking every company to be able to implement it simply based off his speech.
The President cannot just give a speech and mandate to the country what to do. That is not how a representative republic works, but yet that is what is happening. It is even more chaos among Federal workers and among Federal contractors because they did the same mandate to them. But, quite frankly, agency to agency, they are trying to figure out what do. And one agency handles it one way, and another agency is handling it completely different because no instructions have come down from the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget.
They have failed to be able to put out the most basic instructions, so there is chaos. And, literally, we--I have individuals that are Federal contractors saying: We are just not going to do Federal contracting anymore on this--or they can't complete a contract because so many people within their company have said: I am not going to take the vaccine. I have already had COVID. I have natural immunity. I am not going to do it.
Currently, the President has only given a speech. And whether it is the National Guard that only has 40 percent of the Guard vaccinated or whether it is in private companies, the chaos is running around the entire country. As people that are vaccinated like me encourage others to be vaccinated and say: I am glad that I have been vaccinated, and I am glad that I have the vaccine, others are saying: You know what, I am an American; why are you making me take this; why am I going to lose my job if I can't do this?
I have talked to union employees that work in Federal unions that are saying: Why isn't my union protecting me? My union seems to be capitulating instead of actually helping me, I thought my union was supposed to represent me. But yet union bosses are telling their union members: We are not going to listen to you this time; we are going to listen to the President instead of you as a union member.
And I have talked to quite a few that are really ticked off because this was not in their collective bargaining agreement. And they are wanting to know when their voice actually gets heard. I will tell you, I don't know when their voice actually gets heard because they have been locked out.
All of those things are happening all around the world. And on the other side of the building, they are working on fighting over an infrastructure bill and a $3.5-trillion social welfare entitlement bill that they are working to be able to move through as the left and the uber-left fight about how much they can spend today. The $3.5-trillion bill that is out there has an enormous cost. But, quite frankly, the content of the bill is more dangerous than the cost.
I remember full well in the 1990s President Clinton standing in front of the Nation and saying: We are going to end welfare as we know it--
and his statements about the welfare experiment that we have had for decades to be able to send cash payments out to individuals we now know doesn't work. We need to incentivize work. We need to incentivize individuals so that individuals are able to rise.
Shockingly, in this $3.5 trillion entitlement bill, they are literally going back to welfare as we once had it, rather than ending welfare as we know it. They are returning to just checks rather than encouraging jobs.
We have seen already what that looks like in our economy just this year when in March, April, May, June so many States had such a hard time hiring individuals because individuals were getting just enough money to be able to get by. And so employers were trying to hire people, but people are saying: As long as I can get by, I am just going to be able to get by.
And we watched company after company struggle to be able to actually bring staff on. We watched lots of restaurants cut their hours. We watched lots of stores cut their hours because they couldn't get enough staff. That is the plan for this $3.5-trillion bill: to cut more checks to more individuals, to make it even harder to be able to function in our economy.
And it is not just that; it is throughout the bill. They changed the way that the Affordable Care Act funding is even done. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation study that is tracking all of these changes, a family of two adults with a 5-year-old child with an annual income of
$100,000 will now get $10,500 a year in additional subsidies. A family of $100,000, they are going to give an additional $10,500 per year.
That is not the only issue as well. Dramatic change in preschool entitlements, $450 billion they want to spend on this massive childcare and preschool entitlement program--and that all may sound great like we need do more. Why aren't they engaging in things like Head Start and some of the child development block grants? They are ignoring those to do an even bigger new program.
It is fascinating to me. In the budget documents they put out, they continue to attack the most basic issue of life. While they do childcare spending in one hand and say, We really want to help children, if you are a baby in the womb, you have no chance under their bill.
If you are a child that they can see, they want to do $450 billion in new entitlement programs. But if you are child in the womb, the bill is full of additional incentives to increase abortion in America and to do taxpayer-funded abortion in America.
I have to tell you, I saw a New York Times article just recently that had a line where they were talking about abortion and encouraging abortion, and they were talking about the new Texas law dealing with abortion and life. And they added into it, ``I think a majority of women are being sentenced to being parents''--``sentenced to being parents.'' How about welcoming a child and seeing them for who they are?
This bill includes a methane fee that will kill the oil and gas industry in my State and around the country. This bill includes a new clean electricity performance program, which will drive up the cost of electricity for every single American. If you think your electricity bill was expensive this summer, wait until the Clean Electricity Performance Program comes in and see how much your summer electricity bill is.
Oh, but don't worry: If you plug in your electric vehicle--if you are getting an electric vehicle, they are going to give you a $12,500-tax credit if you get an electric vehicle--if it is produced in a union shop, because apparently union shops are more carbon-friendly, I guess. They don't say that. There is no requirement for that.
It is not about a cleaner environment. It is just an extra perk to the unions on that and a shot to anyone who does production in a State that is nonunionized or a nonunion shop--$12,500 that they want to be able to pay towards an electric vehicle. And that is not just for some; that is for most every American would get that.
It includes massive new subsidies for solar and for wind, even though wind and solar can make money right now, but because it is so expensive to do the transmission lines from far distances, they are including massive new subsidies for that.
They create $3 billion for the Civilian Climate Corps to be able to pay young people to do climate activism all around the country, so those folks that are climate activists will actually be paid for with your tax dollars.
It includes what the Joint Committee on Taxation states that taxpayers--get this--at all income levels will see a tax increase under this bill--all income levels. Forty different tax hikes, over $2 trillion in tax increases that they have announced--it will cost zero dollars. We are going to spend $3.5 trillion, and it will have absolutely no cost, except that Joint Tax has already looked at it and said: All taxpayers will have a tax hit on this.
In addition to that, companies in the United States will have one of the highest tax rates in the entire world. Just basic economics: When you are trying to compete, do you want to have a lower price or a higher price? Just basic economics. If the United States is going to compete with China, should we have a lower tax rate than Communist China or a higher one?
According to this bill, the United States will have a higher tax rate than Communist China on our businesses. I don't know of anyone that thinks that is a good idea other than the folks that are voting to increase taxes dramatically on the American people.
And for folks that continue to say, Well, it is only on corporations, and they think it is Apple and Ford and Conoco, you know what?--when you talk about corporations, 1.4 million small businesses are organized as C corps. Over 84 percent of C corps have 20 employees or less. So if you think this is all about the big boys, oh, just wait.
Not only that, in their tax policy, they include new marriage penalties to disincentivize marriage in America--or if you get married and file jointly, you are going to pay more taxes.
It includes new enforcement from the IRS. Initially, it was a talk about $600. If you deposit or withdraw $600 from your bank account, then we are going to do new enforcement. That is going to have to get turned into the IRS. Then they changed it because they figured out people get nervous with that. So now, they are talking about if you do
$10,000 of additions or subtractions in your bank account in a year, then we are going to track you.
Can I tell you, almost every American in their bank account puts in
$10,000 in or out in the year. If you make $12,000 in a year and deposit a check in your bank account, you will be turned into the IRS with your transactions.
This is a new way to be able to harvest data from every single American and turn it over to the IRS that is leaking information like a sieve currently, as information is being leaked out from ProPublica to be able to just release Americans' tax returns. At the same time, my Democratic colleagues are saying, We want the IRS to have even more data.
And if you don't capitulate to the vaccine mandate, well, guess what, the $3.5-trillion new bill increases OSHA fines for you 10 times higher than what they used to be--10 times higher than what it used to be.
This is about caving to their will. Yeah, there are a lot of things in this bill, and I didn't even touch the hem of the garment on how many things are in it.
We need to be engaged as Americans. And we need to know what is actually being proposed by this body and by this President and to be able to see the results of that worldwide.
It is time for us to engage and to stay informed, and it is time for this body to consider, Is that really where the American people are? Is this really what the American people want? I can assure you, in Oklahoma, it is not.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Ossoff). The Senator from Wyoming.
Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak for up to 15 minutes and allowed to use a prop; and that, when I finish, Senator Tester be allowed to speak for up to 10 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 171
The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
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