Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank the Chair, and I appreciate the insight the majority leader provided. We will look at that and see where we stand on it, but I would urge that we do not need to wait a great deal of time for this to be fixed.

The inspector general for Tax Administration of the U.S. Treasury Department started raising this formally in 2009. The issue actually came up in 2007 when individuals in the Treasury Department thought there was something wrong occurring. So the inspector general did a report, and he has called on us to fix it.

In fact, he said in his report:

We continue to believe the legislation is needed to ensure compliance with both laws.

I would say that is what we need to do. The House has acted and we should act. Four billion dollars a year is a great deal of money. It is about $10 million a day that is going out of the country to individuals who should not be receiving it.

According to the inspector general's report, the amount of the child tax credit--and as Senator Vitter said, this is not a tax deduction. This is a $1,000-per-child tax credit that we have for people in the United States who work, who have worked lawfully, and who have children and they get a check. If they owe no income tax at all, and a substantial percentage of the people who work in America end up not paying income tax, but they still get a check from Uncle Sam for $1,000 per child.

It was a policy I supported because over the years families had not gained the kind of deductible advantage that had been done 30 years ago when people had children, and it leveled the playing field and helped working families raise children in a decent environment. It is a policy I like, but it is not for somebody here illegally and has children in some foreign country. That is not what it is about. It is for $4 billion. It has surged.

In 2005 the inspector general noted that the IRS paid out to these ITIN filers $924 million in 2005. In 2006, it was $1.3 billion. In 2007 it was $1.7 billion. In 2008 it was $2.1 billion. In 2009 it was $2.9 billion. From 2009 to 2010 it went from $2.9 billion to $4.2 billion. It has been surging every year.

As a matter of protecting the Treasury of the United States from abuse, the IG says we need legislation. The Senator from Louisiana has drafted legislation that will do the job precisely as it should. Would the Senator agree that Congress should not wait around another year? It is something that the House already passed, and if we passed it, it would become law in perhaps a matter of days.

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Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I would point out to my colleagues how much $4 billion is. It is a matter that we deal with on a regular basis around here. It is a number that has come up several times recently.

For example, we had a shortfall in our plans to fund the Federal highway program--a deeply disappointing event that we couldn't get that bill passed. It started out as a $4 billion shortfall. They worked that number down, but it is still not fully paid for. We would like just a few billion dollars to pay for the bill, and it hasn't been passed.

The student loan fixed rate where the interest rates would be dropped--if I am not mistaken, that was $4 billion. We need it to reduce interest rates on student loans. That is $4 billion, according to the IG, going out of our country wrongfully every year that we could save.

The President spent a lot of time traveling around the country saying we should raise taxes on the rich and we should pass the Buffett tax. He had a proposal for the Buffett tax. How much would the Buffett tax raise? It would raise $4 billion. That is how much closing this loophole would raise. Frankly, I am a little disappointed that the Treasury Department officials and the administration itself haven't immediately seized upon this loophole that is costing the taxpayers large amounts of money and responded themselves by sending legislation over and asking us to pass it. Why aren't they asking us to pass it to begin with? Well, the inspector general, who is an independent--who gets a little independence within the Department of Treasury but, in fact, is an employee of the Secretary of the Treasury--he says we need this legislation. Quoting his report:

Clarification to the law is needed to address whether or not refundable tax credits such as ACTC may be paid to those who are not authorized to work in the United States.

Well, of course they ought not to be getting a check from the U.S. taxpayers if they are not authorized to be working here.

So as the ranking member on the Budget Committee, knowing how tight our budget is, I salute Senator Vitter for doing it this year as well as last year when he saw this problem and attempted to get it passed. I am pleased the House has passed it. I think if we keep working at it, I say to Senator Vitter, maybe we can get it done in the Senate, remembering that $10 million a day is going out of the country for every day we fail to act.

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Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, to conclude, I think the American people are unhappy with their leaders. They feel as though the money they have sent here is not being well spent, is not being watched closely enough. We have a big judicial conference for the second year--since 2010, the second time--to go spend $1 million on a resort conference in Maui. We have the Solyndra loans going out to cronies that are not being paid back in any way. We have the General Services Administration having a big party out in Las Vegas with hot tubs and magicians and so forth. We have no budget for three consecutive years in the U.S. Senate. And what are we hearing from many of our leaders here in Washington? Well, we have a problem, American people. We have too big a debt. Send us more money. Send more money. We don't have enough. We are borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend. Send more money.

I think the American people are tired of hearing that. I think they have a right to be tired of hearing that. Until this country is willing to face up to saving $10 million a day on this kind of manipulation that has been going on since 2007, at least, and has been raised by the inspector general since 2009, until those kinds of things are stopped, I don't think they should send any more money to Washington. We need to honor the money they are sending.

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