Udall Foundation Reauthorization Act of 2023

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, clearly it is an election year, because we are hearing more and more political speeches from the floor of the Senate and precious little work doing the hard things that we actually are elected to do, which is to legislate.

Here we find ourselves dealing with appropriations bills that should have been completed last September. I don't know if people really understand that. What we are doing today, lurching from one shutdown to the next, is dealing with last year's work. But you would think that, under the leadership of Majority Leader Schumer, we would have enough things to do rather than squander the opportunity to deal with those because we are dealing with last year's work.

I think we can do better next year. Hopefully, with a different majority, we can actually pass a budget. We can take up and pass appropriation bills on a timely basis, and we can get our work done on time--something that has not happened under the current leadership.

I want to mention one hopeful sign, where, at least, one branch of the legislature is actually moving things through committee and across the floor and allowing votes, amendments, and debate. That would be the House of Representatives, not the U.S. Senate, sometimes called the world's greatest deliberative body.

To their credit, earlier this year, the House passed a bill that made significant changes in our tax system, and that is what I want to talk about for the next few minutes.

This legislation was negotiated by the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, on which I am privileged to serve, Senator Ron Wyden, and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith. They released a framework of this agreement in mid-January, and our colleagues in the House immediately began work on the bill.

The Ways and Means Committee, for example, held hearings--actual hearings, legislative hearings--and then a markup to debate the legislation. Members offered and voted on amendments, and, ultimately, this package passed the committee and the full House with strong bipartisan support.

Given the polarization and partisanship that often grips Congress, advancing a bipartisan bill is no small feat, especially during an election year. But that doesn't mean the work on the bill is finished. As every high school student knows who takes civics or American history--they know that Congress is a bicameral body. The House and the Senate have to work together. There are two Chambers, two sets of Members with diverse views, Senators representing whole States--in my case, 30 million Texans. The House Members represent a much smaller Congressional District. But the process means that both Chambers need to work through these bills to improve them and make sure they are as good as we can make them before they are signed into law.

So my point is that the Senate is not a rubberstamp for the House, and the House would say that they are not a rubberstamp for us. And that is the way it is. So be it. Members of both Chambers have a responsibility to evaluate and shape legislation before it is sent to the President's desk.

Congratulations to the Members of the House for doing their job. They sent a bipartisan bill to the Senate at the end of January, and now it is the Senate's turn to take a closer look at this legislation and see how it might be improved.

I had hoped that Chairman Wyden would schedule a markup in the Finance Committee and allow members to ask questions and offer amendments to the bill. I am sure he thinks his negotiated bill with Chairman Smith is perfect and doesn't need any improvement, but others may have a different point of view.

After all, members of the House Ways and Means Committee had that opportunity. That is called the legislative process. That is what we are supposed to do.

So you would think that Chairman Wyden would want members of his own committee to have the same opportunity that the members of the House Ways and Means Committee had, but apparently that is not the case.

Nearly 2 months have passed since that bill passed the House, and Chairman Wyden has shown zero interest in moving this bill through the Finance Committee and across the floor of the U.S. Senate, giving all Senators a chance to participate in the process and hopefully improve the final outcome. In fact, the chairman has refused to schedule a hearing or even a markup, as I mentioned, and has rejected commonsense proposals by Ranking Member Mike Crapo and Senate Republicans.

Earlier this week, the majority leader virtually guaranteed that the bill will not go through the regular order in the Senate. He took a procedural step to put this bill on the fast track for a vote here on the Senate floor, without any opportunity for the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over tax matters, to engage--no hearing, no markup, just ``take it or leave it.''

Well, I have reviewed this bill, and while I will concede that there are some portions that are very promising, there are problematic areas that need more work. For example, this bill aims to incentivize research and development here at home by easing the tax burden on America's innovators.

Cutting-edge research and development is absolutely critical to our competitiveness, and Congress needs to promote new investments in the capabilities that will propel our economy and our national security into the future. This legislation, to its credit, restores full and immediate expensing for equipment and machinery purchases, which will enable small businesses to make new investments in their business and boost domestic manufacturing.

I have spoken to a number of my small business constituents in Texas about the need for these types of reforms, and the House-passed bill is a great starting point for a full debate here in the Senate.

I believe there is a lot of potential here, but I share Ranking Member Crapo's concerns about some of the remaining provisions in the bill. One example is the watered-down work requirement for the child tax credit. Under the proposed change, parents with zero earnings would still be eligible for a government check.

In other words, historically, tax credits have been tied to work and have been a credit against taxes that you would otherwise owe. But a refundable tax credit is merely a check from the Federal Government, regardless of whether you worked or created any income whatsoever.

Under the proposal by Chairman Wyden and Chairman Smith, as long as a person worked during one of the last 2 years--one of the last 2 years-- they would be eligible for the child tax credit. As I said, historically, the child tax credit has been tied to work. I would think we would want able-bodied people to be working, if work is available. But this change would completely undermine that basic principle.

When the Joint Committee on Taxation analyzed this bill, they found that the expanded child tax credit would cost more than $33 billion over the next 3 years.

You heard my colleague--our colleague--Senator Rand Paul talk about the fact that our national debt is approaching $35 billion. This would add another $33 billion to that. And despite what the authors of this proposal have said, the vast majority of that cost is not due to tax relief.

According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, 91 percent of the cost of this legislation is spending. It is writing a check. It may be called a tax credit, but really it is a welfare payment. It is a transfer payment. Mr. President, 91 percent of the money will be sent as a check to people with zero tax liability because they have insufficient income to cause them to have any kind of tax liability. So it is not a credit against earnings or work; it is essentially a welfare check.

Only 9 percent of that $33 billion cost is true relief for hard- working taxpayers with children. The rest is a new welfare program by another name. And it is not limited to the 3 years of the R&D tax credit and the expensing of interest; it is permanent. And I have every confidence that our colleagues across the aisle will come back for another bite at the apple.

We would be doing a great disservice to taxpayers by allowing the child tax credit to morph into another welfare program. We should not set the stage for it to become a permanent fixture of entitlement spending.

Again, you heard our colleague from Kentucky talk the fact that the money that we are appropriating here today and that we did a couple of weeks ago--this is only about a third of what the Federal Government spends. The rest of it is on autopilot. It is mandatory spending. We don't even vote to appropriate that money; it is automatic. Proponents of this tax bill want us to add another $33 billion over 3 years to that number.

The truth is, when it comes to the discretionary spending, the money we appropriate, we have done a much better job controlling the rate of increase of that spending, but right now, entitlement programs grow at 6, 7, 8 percent a year. That is one reason why our national debt is approaching $35 trillion.

Well, supporters of this proposal have tried to downplay concerns about the cost of the bill because they say: It is only a temporary change. Well, that reminds me of Ronald Reagan's observation that the closest thing to eternal life on Earth is a temporary government program. There is no such thing as temporary around here. People come back either to reauthorize it or to extend it or to grow it. Once created, it doesn't go away.

As soon as the temporary change expires, supporters will argue it has to be extended. They will frame anyone who opposes another extension as trying to increase taxes on hard-working families. Well, as I said and as the Senator from Kentucky said, our national debt is currently $34.5 trillion. A lot of that was money we spent during the COVID pandemic trying to deal with the public health crisis and the economic crisis caused by that virus. We did whatever we had to do to make our way through that, but in doing so, we added a lot of money to the national debt. We should not continue that.

The national debt is increasing by almost $1 trillion every 100 days, and the permanent tax credit expansion would only fuel the debt crisis we are facing. Someday--someday--there will be a terrible crisis as a result of the trending national debt. Already you are hearing we are spending more money this year on interest on the national debt than we are on our own defense.

Well, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, this child tax credit expansion would cost $180 billion over the next 10 years. We need to pump the brakes on this expansion, this runaway debt train, not stomp on the accelerator, which is what this proposal would do.

Mandatory spending already represents nearly two-thirds of Federal spending, and a permanent child tax credit expansion would drive that number even higher. That is just one of the concerns that I and many of my Republican colleagues have with this legislation.

Over the last several weeks, as we have been able to analyze the text of the bill, even other concerns, more concerns, have come to light.

This legislation would have major impact on families and job creators across the country. We need to be careful, we need to be deliberate, and we need to make sure we understand what the impact of this legislation would be before a vote on the Senate floor, which is the reason why committees like the Finance Committee exist. Getting it right is far more important than doing it fast.

If Chairman Wyden's goal is to build consensus, which is the way we do things around here, he can't shut everybody else out of the process. I understand building consensus in a diverse body like this is not easy--it is hard--and I think some people are positively allergic to the difficulty of that job. But that is the way we govern. That is the way the Senate operates. We need an open forum to debate this bill and make changes at the committee level, and I am disappointed that the chairman of the Finance Committee himself has refused to do so.

Just as our counterparts in the House had their chance to evaluate this legislation and make improvements at the committee level, Senate tax writers need to have the same opportunity.

As each of our colleagues knows, Congress has developed a very bad habit of abandoning the procedures that were designed to give every single Senator a voice in the legislative process. For too long now, we have had bills cooked up behind closed doors and plopped here on the Senate floor, facing another deadline, another cliff, and being told: You have no choice. You can't change it. All you can do is vote up or down or else there will be dire consequences, like a shutdown.

Committees have been sidelined, and we have moved toward a process in which a small number of Members make decisions and try to bully or threaten everyone into voting yes.

Well, I can tell you that I, for one--and I know I am not the only one--am tired of being cut out of the process and being treated like a potted plant.

That cannot happen with this bill, so I will not vote to move this bill on the Senate floor until we have a process that allows all Senators to participate but starting with members of the Senate Finance Committee. I hope my Republican colleagues will join me in requesting that the Finance Committee be given an opportunity to do its job. Until that time, I hope there are 41 Senators who will deny the majority leader's request that we proceed to consider this legislation after bypassing the Finance Committee process. But once we do that, the majority leader must allow a robust floor debate and amendment process. That is what we do. That is our job.

All Senators deserve a chance to participate, as I said, first in the committee and then on the floor.

Many supporters of this bill are pushing for a truncated process in the Senate because the tax season is already well underway. They suggested that the Senate should just abdicate its job and rush to get the bill done. But, as our colleagues know, the tax season began before this bill even passed the House, and the chairman of the Finance Committee completely undermined the urgency argument by sitting on this bill for the last 2 months.

The majority leader and the chairman of the Finance Committee want to ram this bill through the Senate without proper debate or amendment, and Republicans must not allow that to happen. The way we gain leverage and force a negotiation rather than being run over and treated as a mere speed bump is for 41 Senators to stick together to deny cloture on a motion to proceed.

Members deserve the chance to shape a bill before a final up-or-down vote on the floor, and I urge Chairman Wyden and Leader Schumer to give us that opportunity.

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