American Rescue Plan Act of 2021

Floor Speech

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Mr. RICE of South Carolina.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind my friend and my chairman, who I have great respect for, Mr. Neal, that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was one of the pivotal successes of the Trump administration that led to the lowest poverty among all Americans that had existed in decades, if not ever, and the strongest economy and lowest unemployment among all demographic groups.

Whereas, this plan, this so-called COVID relief plan, is not, in fact, a COVID relief plan at all. By far, most of the money goes to creating new entitlement programs. You see, my friends on the other side of the aisle are more concerned with making the American people rely on government programs than they are on creating opportunity for them to lift themselves up.

Mr. Speaker, if you operate a small business trying to get people to come back to work, if you are a frontline worker eager to be vaccinated and hoping this plan will speed that up, if you are a family attempting to educate your children while schools refuse to open, this bill won't help you. It leaves you behind.

My friend, Mr. Clyburn, said last year that this COVID pandemic created a great opportunity for Democrats to mold things to their vision. Boy, are they delivering.

My friends on the other side say this bill is popular, and I don't doubt it is. I mean, it is certainly good politics to say: Hey, we are going to hand you a check for $1,400. Just help us get this across the line, and we will give you a check.

But what they don't talk about is what this bill costs. You see, $1.9 trillion is $5,487 for every man, woman, and child in this country-- $5,500 for every man, woman, and child.

What these guys want to do is have the government borrow $5,500 in your name, and not just your name, your wife's or your husband's name and each of your kids' names. $5,500 they are going through in the kitty, but they are going to give you $1,400 of it back, so vote for this bill.

I think we should look a little further than that. I think we should look maybe at where the other $4,100 that they are borrowing in your name goes. Guess what? That money is going to have to be paid back. It is going to be paid back in higher taxes. It is going to be paid back in lower productivity. It is going to be paid back in lower government services. It is going to be paid back in less opportunity for your children and your grandchildren.

Let's look at where this $4,100 goes.

$750 of your $4,100 that they are borrowing in your name and each of your kids' names goes to paying extra unemployment for people to stay home. In fact, it pays people more unemployment than they can make at work, in most cases.

To bail out union pension plans that are chronically underfunded--and this problem needs to be fixed, but this plan does nothing to fix the problem. They will continue to be chronically underfunded. $177 of your $4,100 they are borrowing in your name and not giving back to you goes to bail out union pension plans.

$1,067 of your $4,100 that they are borrowing in your name and not giving back to you goes to bail out blue States. In the prior plans, we already had money to help States. A lot of the money hadn't been spent from the prior plans that we had. But they changed the allocation formula in this plan.

It was based on population, so every State was treated fairly. But that is not good enough for places like California and New York that are shut down. So they said: I know. Let's add unemployment in there because our Governors have shut our States down, and our unemployment is higher, and we want more money. We want to take money from places like Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and other States in the Midwest that stayed open, and we want to redirect it to California and New York.

So, they threw in unemployment as a criteria. South Carolina, my home State, is the third biggest loser. Florida is the biggest loser. We lose over $1 billion, and $5.4 billion extra goes to rich California. That is $1,067 each of your money.

K-12 education, colleges, and universities get $500 of your money that they are borrowing in your name. But guess what? We know you want to send your kids back to school, but they don't require that the schools actually open. Schools are sitting there closed.

They are still getting your property taxes. They are still getting all the property taxes that normally fund you. But they are going to send them another $500 of your money but not require that those schools open.

$34 of your money goes to museums and Native language preservation. You are spending $34 of your $4,100 on that.

Public health organizations, including Planned Parenthood, get $58 of your money that they are borrowing in your name and your kids' money that they are borrowing in their names. It goes to Planned Parenthood.

Transportation grants, $128.

Agriculture includes socially disadvantaged farmers. What does that mean, people who have historically been socially disadvantaged? That means if you are a White farmer, don't apply.

Foreign aid gets $30.

Then, I am lumping all the other progressive priorities of $1,279, and with a direct check of $1,400, it adds up to $5,487.

Mr. Speaker, this bill has had an absurd lack of bipartisanship. My chairman, my friend that I respect, says that the Ways and Means Committee created this bill. We didn't create this bill. Madam Pelosi uses COVID as an excuse to keep us out of town so she can write this liberal grab bag.

We had no hearings on this bill. When we marked it up, there were dozens of amendments offered. Not one single amendment was accepted. This is an absolute ram job by the Democrats of a menu of liberal priorities.

Mr. Speaker, we can do better.

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Mr. RICE of South Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I would remind my friend, the majority leader, that the reason that this bill is not bipartisan is there has been no effort to make it bipartisan.

There have been zero committee meetings on this. Ms. Pelosi uses COVID as an excuse to keep us away from Washington so that she can write these liberal grab bag bills on her own. There were no hearings on this in the Ways and Means Committee or I don't think any other committee. I am sure we could have found a bipartisan response to this, but instead they chose, because they have the majority now, to ram through their list of liberal priorities in a massive expansion of the entitlement system under the guise of COVID relief.

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Mr. RICE of South Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I would point out to my friend from Alabama that because of the change in the allocation formula in this bill, relief for States--from the prior COVID relief bills--now this formula will focus on the unemployed; therefore, places that have shut their economies down and hurt their citizens economically will get more money than places who haven't.

As a result, Alabama is the fourth or fifth largest loser in this bill in State and local government recovery money. Alabama will lose about $890 million, almost $1 billion, and that works out to approximately $178 lost for every man, woman, and child living in Alabama.
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Mr. RICE of South Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I would respond to the comments of my friend, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee when he said that he voted in favor of the bill when Hank Paulson came over and said it is something we needed to do, as opposed to this bill, which President Obama's former director of National Economic Council warned about consequences of this bill for the value of the dollar and financial stability because of the excessive borrowing that we are doing.

Again, folks back home, we are borrowing $5,500 in your name, in your wife's name, in your children's name, and giving you $1,400 of it.

President Biden's chief of staff boasted about this bill that this is the most progressive domestic legislation in a generation. So it is no surprise, Mr. Speaker, that there is no bipartisan support for this bill.

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Mr. RICE of South Carolina.

I agree that the priorities could not be more stark, when the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act led to the most successful economy in decades, if not ever, and the lowest unemployment among African Americans, Hispanics, and women in the history of the United States. Whereas, this bill just represents a massive expansion of our entitlement system.

Our priorities are to get people to work. The Democrats' priorities are to get people hooked on the government, to make them reliant on government checks.

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Mr. RICE of South Carolina.

Mr. Speaker, I would remind my friend that what we are doing here is waving a $1,400 check in front of our constituency and saying, ``Look at this,'' but we are like the Wizard of Oz, ``Don't look at what is going on behind the curtain,'' because what we are doing with this $1.9 trillion bill is borrowing $5,500 for every man, woman, and child in this country.

We are giving them $1,400 so it is palatable to them. We are giving them a little sugar. We are not reminding them about the $4,100 other dollars that we are borrowing in their name, of which $1,067 goes to bail out blue States like New York and California.

Mr. Speaker, $177 of their money, of that $4,100, goes to bail out union pension plans; $750, folks back home, of your $4,100 that we are borrowing in your name and your wife's name and your kids' names is going to extend unemployment benefits to pay people more to sit home than they can make at work; $34 goes to museums and Native American language preservation; $393 goes to K-12 and $120 to colleges and universities, of your money, each of your money, and there is no requirement that they reopen; $58 goes for public health organizations, including Planned Parenthood.

Mr. Speaker, this bill, again, is simply a guise. COVID relief, no. As Mr. Clyburn said: Let's use this disaster to mold things to our vision.

And they are doing exactly that. This is a massive expansion of the entitlement programs.

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