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Government Funding
Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, the debate on President Biden's massive plan to expand social programs has focused primarily on its enormous cost. Remarkably, little attention has been paid to the content of those policy changes. Yet the expensive entitlement programs the administration is proposing would have profound implications for people's lives and for the values that are among the pillars of our society, for they would break the connection between work and a brighter future.
From antiquity to our time, great thinkers have observed that work is about more than just putting food on the table, important though that is; it has a profound value that enables people to build lives of self-
reliance and meaning.
As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once said:
No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity.
Under the President's plan, assistance checks sent from Washington would have no requirement that a recipient work, or pursue education or training, or participate in programs to remove barriers that prevent him or her from working. These unconditioned checks would sever the link between government assistance and work, education, or other requirements. No one would help a family identify obstacles to a better life. In essence, the Biden administration would reverse the pledge and reality of President Clinton's reforms when he promised to ``end welfare as we know it.''
Robert Doar, who oversaw assistance programs both for New York Governor George Pataki and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, described what has long been a bipartisan consensus. He said:
. . . the way to help people escape poverty is through a combination of work and government aid--not work alone and not government aid alone. But the two together.
Why is that combination so powerful and so successful?
Government assistance provides a hand up and aids families who are struggling to overcome barriers to a better life. Work not only provides the economic pathway out of poverty, but--also equally important--imparts dignity, self-reliance, and confidence. It allows people to provide for their own families. It instills a sense of belonging and pride. It strengthens our communities.
Let me give you two examples.
I first met Adais when she was enrolled in the Federal Job Corps program in Limestone, ME. As a teenager, she had been homeless and wanted to get as far away as possible from the terrible circumstances in her life--thus her choice of the Job Corps in northern Maine. After completing this program in Limestone, Adais earned her degree in nursing from Husson University in Bangor. Today, due to her own perseverance, hard work, and government support during a very difficult time, she has a good life working as a nurse and providing for her three sons. She can take much pride in the life that she has built for herself and her family.
The second example involves women I met at the Aroostook County Community Action Program. They have benefited from a holistic approach to poverty, one that focuses on the needs of both the children and their parents--a two-generation-together approach--in order to end intergenerational poverty.
This two-generation approach identifies obstacles to work and financial independence, and then provides the necessary coaching and supports to help parents succeed in their goals while also meeting the needs of their children.
These mothers recounted to me with great pride their very moving stories of climbing the economic ladder out of poverty and into the workforce, providing a much better life for themselves and their children.
What these stories have in common is the dignity of work. As Stephen Hawking observed, ``Work gives you meaning and purpose.'' Securing the skills and support to get good jobs changed the lives of these parents and the lives of their children.
Now, let me be clear that I have supported providing additional help to assist low-income working families. For example, I worked with Senator Rubio to successfully double the child tax credit and expand its refundable portion as part of the 2017 tax reform act, but this credit was tied to work until the Biden administration changed the rules of the American Rescue Plan earlier this year.
Given the pandemic, that may well have been justified as a temporary measure. But now, the administration wants to jettison the work requirement permanently, and the House Democrats' bill removes all means testing for a new childcare entitlement program so even very wealthy families would qualify.
Shouldn't we look carefully at the consequences of sending checks from Washington untethered to any work or other requirements? Shouldn't assistance prioritize those with the greatest needs but in ways that position them to achieve self-reliance?
There are certainly times when it is appropriate for government to step in, and no one is arguing that people who cannot work, who may have disabilities, for example, should not receive government assistance--of course, they should. And in a time of crisis, certainly, we should do all we can to help those who are in need, through no fault of their own, and that is what happened during the pandemic.
There were many temporary programs that were instituted to help as our economy shut down and people were laid off. I, along with three of my colleagues, authored one of them--the Paycheck Protection Program. The rationale was to allow employers to receive funding so that they could continue to pay their employees and keep intact that bond between employers and employees so that the workers could return to the workplace once the economy reopened. That program was successful and temporary.
But that is not what this administration is proposing. Rather, it is creating entitlement programs untethered to work that would fundamentally change incentives for our families, our communities, our society, and our economy, depriving people of their dignity and eroding their ability to provide for themselves and their families. Absent a pandemic or other crisis, Washington should not simply write monthly checks, creating dependency among those who could have a better life. The Federal Government's obligation is not fulfilled by simply sending a check, washing its hands of any responsibility to actually help people achieve self-sufficiency.
It appears that this administration is moving toward the left's proposal for a guaranteed minimum income, regardless of one's ability to work. Never forget that the first version of the Green New Deal included a guaranteed income for those ``unable or unwilling to work.'' We must not go down that path.
We will not build a more prosperous, just, and equitable society, characterized by opportunity, dignity, and meaning, just by issuing government checks. The time-tested way to achieve those goals for American families is by supporting and rewarding work. It is by recognizing the dignity of work. And that is the tradition that we must continue to embrace.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, it is one of the most basic questions that we get in almost any setting: What do you do? It is common conversation, back and forth between adults or teenagers or college students alike: What do you do?
It is a philosophical issue, though, that really has to be addressed, and, interestingly enough, it has become a greater divide between Republicans and Democrats of late. It didn't used to be that way.
The simple conversation about ``what do you do'' and encouraging people to be able to be engaged in productive work and what they do seemed to be something that was unified.
Democrats and Republicans alike rallied in the 1990s, as Bill Clinton declared: We are ending welfare as we know it. A 60-year experiment of sending out checks to individuals, saying we are going to help people escape poverty by sending a check to individuals, and if we give them a check, they will rise out of poverty.
Bill Clinton stood before the Nation and said: I campaigned to end that because that experiment didn't work, and he focused in a whole different direction, encouraging, as he spoke often on deadbeat dads, individuals that should pay their child support, need to pay it, and he highlighted how many people weren't doing that because those families were left exposed.
And he talked about the dignity of work, saying: To help people to be able to escape from poverty, we need to incentivize work and stop just sending a check to individuals but instead attach that to work.
The Nation stood and cheered and rallied around a moment to say: Let's help people, but let's help people actually rise.
There is a statement that I heard often, even during that time period: Let's not make welfare a hammock; let's make it a trampoline, that they can get assistance for a moment and be lifted out and to be able to rise to other things.
I thought that was a settled issue, until just last year. I suddenly started hearing President Biden on the campaign trail, and now in office, with my Democratic colleagues in the House already passing something over there in their committees, saying: We want to actually go back to welfare as we knew it. We want to be able to go back to that failed experiment, when we used to just mail checks to people, and so people in government would feel good to say: We took care of childhood poverty.
I have already heard people--even today in this body--say: If we pass this $3\1/2\ trillion proposal, we will cut childhood poverty in half. That was a statement that was made pre-1990s, when government believed if I just mailed a check, suddenly children would rise out of poverty because the numbers are right. But, actually, what we discovered was inflation would rise as checks were mailed out, and families were trapped in permanent levels of poverty because there was a disincentive to actually engage in work.
Now, again, this used to not be a Republican-Democrat thing. This was just a thing that we could look at the data.
Brookings Institute, which is a left-leaning think tank--I think we could all commonly agree with that. The Brookings Institute has, year after year, gone back to be able to look at how people actually escape poverty. How does it happen? What are the features that are there if people--if it is true in their life that they escaped poverty. They have identified three areas; that if these three areas are true, you will escape poverty.
No. 1, graduate high school. People that graduate high school, much lower level. No. 2, have a full-time job; have an income; if you actually are working full time. And, No. 3, if you wait until 21 to be married and then have children after marriage.
If those three things are true, the Brookings Institute said only 2 percent of the people actually are in poverty. Seventy-five percent of those folks in poverty that graduate high school, get a full-time job, have children after marriage--if those three things are true, 75 percent of them rise into the middle class.
This is not rocket science in some ways; it is just human nature. But the bill that is being set in front of us that is $3\1/2\ trillion in entitlements--and just to be able to put in perspective how large that is, if you combined the budgets of all 50 States, the total budget of all 50 States, it is $2 trillion. This new entitlement bill is $3\1/2\ trillion that is being proposed--$3\1/2\ trillion of new entitlements that would go to individuals that removes things like an incentive to work. It says you can get childcare tax credits, even if you are not working; that no matter if you are working or not--and the current limit, by the way, don't forget, is only $2,500 of income in a year. If you will do at least $2,500 worth of income in a year, then you get additional assistance. It is the encouragement to say the State will come alongside of you, but we have got to help you to be able to rise out of this spot--even that is taken away.
There is a marriage penalty that is included in this. Ironically, when I read from the Brookings Institute, and they say, ``Do you want to help people rise out of poverty,'' there is actually a marriage penalty in this where it actually punishes.
So we seem to be punishing work and punishing marriage rather than encouraging people to be able to rise.
Listen, this statement should be common for us: What do you do? It is not just meaningful for individuals and for communities, it is meaningful for children because, in school, children will be asked: What do your parents do? And if it is nothing, it matters to a child. A child has the example that is set in front of them, and it becomes a generational issue. We should encourage each generation to be able to rise and be a part of our society, not to be disconnected but to be engaged with all of our society. That develops community between individuals. It helps our economy to grow. It is what made us the most powerful economy in the entire world because we had what we called the American work ethic.
The American work ethic was a very simple principle that everyone should have the opportunity to be able to do whatever job they choose to be able to do, to be able to have access to the economy.
And if we find any individual or any group that is blocked out of the economy, government steps in and clears the path to make sure there is a level path to be able to be engaged so that everyone has that option to be able to engage in the economy; that everyone has the chance to be able to rise.
That does not get better by telling people: Oh, sit down. You don't have to work. Oh, sit down right over there. We will take care of all your kids all the way through. You don't have to engage.
It sounds nice unless you are living in it. And then it traps people in generational poverty--urban, rural, across the country. It traps people in generational poverty. That doesn't help families. That doesn't help children. That doesn't bless families and help them to be able to rise out of poverty. It keeps them trapped in it.
We have a philosophical difference. How do we help people in poverty? I believe we help people in poverty by clearing out of every opportunity and making straight level paths, setting that in front of individuals and saying: You are an American. Go after the American dream. Apply the American work ethic: try, graduate high school, get a job, get married, stay engaged, bless your children. I believe that is the best way to be able to help our Nation.
Apparently, others believe that it is better just to be able to say: No. You can't do it. Sit down. I will send you a check.
I don't think that casts a vision for their children, and I don't think that helps our Nation.
If you want to make it very straightforward and simple, the census said that we have 21 million children who have a parent that lived outside the household in 2018. Thirty percent of those children were in poverty--three times the rate of children in households where both parents were present.
I could read the Brookings. I can read the census data. But I think we all know it in our gut; that we provide purpose and meaning to people when they can answer the question: What do you do, and it matters to our country and to them as a family.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Baldwin). The Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. SCOTT of South Carolina. Madam President, I thank my colleagues, both Senator Collins and Senator Lankford, for their thoughts and their comments and their words today because what we are talking about today is not about simply a $3\1/2\ trillion spending bill.
We are talking about something more fundamental to what it means to be an American. I am proud to be an American. I am proud to live in a country where upward mobility is a reality; that we can, by hard work and a strong education, change our fortunes in this country and not only change it for ourselves but change it for the generations that follow us.
As Senator Lankford talked about the three important ingredients of escaping poverty, I will say that, as a kid who stumbled in high school, who did not do well as a freshman, who did not see the opportunities that America had available, who did not believe always that there was a way that a poor kid in South Carolina could ever escape poverty, I am thankful that I met a mentor and had a powerful mom who believed in me in a way that I could not believe in myself.
I am thankful to live in a country where the American free enterprise system provided a pathway forward, and if I could just see it and believe it and work towards it, it was possible for me to achieve the outcomes that we are sitting here trying to defend.
I am thankful that, as a kid who then finished high school, went on to college, and experienced the American dream, that we are here together to defend the American dream for the next generation. The challenge, of course, is that when we look at the $3.5 trillion package, it makes it harder for a kid trapped in poverty, as I was, to find a path forward.
I will simply say that while we discuss this $3.5 trillion package, the content of this package is more concerning than the cost of the package. I am certain that someone on the other side will figure out that taking 10 years of funding and making it 5 years of funding cuts it from $3.5 trillion down to $1.75 trillion. I am confident that that math is easy to do on either side. But I am not confident that we can preserve the American dream in all of its glory if the content of this package becomes law.
I think about how unfortunate it would be, in a nation that is narrowly divided, 50-50, that we would find ourselves, because the Democrats control the White House--there is a 50-50 split in the Senate that requires the Vice President to break a tie and a five-seat majority the Democrats have in the House. With those slim majorities, they want to do something so fundamentally transformative that it scares me for the future of the kids trapped in poverty all over America.
I don't know how we will continue to be able to preach the good news of economic opportunity and economic freedom when you are on the road to socialism. The two are antithetical. They don't go in the same direction. There is a fork in the road, and we as a nation have to choose one. Unfortunately, the Democrats, who have the slimmest of majorities, have the votes to fundamentally weaken the greatest economic engine in world history through taxing and spending policies that bring us so much closer to socialism.
The Democrats actually want you to believe what they say more than what you see with your own eyes. You see, the breadcrumbs of this $3.5 trillion package can be seen by the level of inflation. If you put too much money into the economy too quickly and the supply remains about the same, it leads to inflation.
What inflation means to kids living in single-parent households and to people living and working paycheck-to-paycheck, what inflation means is, it means a tax. It means that even with a small, marginal increase in your income, with the rate of inflation being over 5.5 percent, your spending power goes down.
So when you pull up to the gas station, as I did and as so many Americans do every single day to go to work, and you look at the price per gallon, it is over $3 a gallon, which represents over a 40-percent increase in the cost of gas. On a fixed income, as our Social Security recipients and our golden Americans are, on people working paycheck to paycheck, a 40-plus percent increase in the cost of gas deprives them of some of the luxuries, the margins in their paychecks, and then stack on top of that a 20-percent increase in the cost of your utilities.
It is impossible--impossible--to recognize the devastating impact that the Biden inflation is having already on middle-income Americans, on paycheck-to-paycheck Americans, people living in poverty, and single-parent households.
But worse than the inflationary effect, which, of course, is a precursor to the $3.5 trillion, is what the content does. Think about this: In America today, if you write a check for $10,000, the IRS wants to know who you are writing it to. Under this proposal, imagine, if you will, the IRS spying on your bank account for every transaction over
$600. Imagine four tires--more than $600. So the IRS wants to know why you are spending $600 on tires. Imagine if your engine runs hot and you have to take your car in to get it checked--more than $600. Imagine trying to find the money, scraping the resources together just to be able to buy school clothes for your kids, and if you have a couple kids, a couple pairs of shoes, pants--dresses are up 18 percent. Imagine that $600 expense being taken out of your account, and the IRS is looking into your account to see what you are spending the money on.
The content of this legislation is more dangerous than the amount of the legislation. And I got to tell you, $3.5 trillion is pretty dangerous, but more dangerous than the $3.5 trillion is having the IRS empowered to take a look at every single transaction. Not only the
$600, but imagine doubling the number of IRS agents with the $80 billion in this package--doubling the number of agents to come take a look at your family business, your family accounts. Destructive.
Go beyond that. Think about the average farmer in South Carolina who spent their entire life farming and who has more land than money. Because of this package and its impact on family businesses and family farmers, because of the way they want to refigure the death tax or the estate tax, as we say it when we are being polite in mixed company, here is what it means: It means that you jeopardize the ability to pass your family farm to the next generation.
This is not theoretical. You can talk to a farmer named Whit Player from Lee County or Monty Rast in St. Matthews, SC, who have been farming for decades. Ask them about the impact of not being able to pass the family farm or small business to the next generation.
Think about punishing the farmers and still providing a check for
$12,500 for someone making $800,000 a year to buy a luxury vehicle, an electric vehicle. You are going to give them a tax credit even though they make $800,000.
Imagine a part of the bill where union workers at an auto factory are able to sell their cars with a $4,500 tax credit, but the Volvo workers in South Carolina, the BMW workers in South Carolina who don't work at a union factory--their cars don't get the $4,500 tax credit, embedding a unique form of bias into this bill. It just doesn't feel right. Restoring the tax credits for the State and local taxes for millionaires and billionaires across this country and putting that burden back on the backs of working people, middle-class working people.
I won't even go into raising the corporate tax from 21 percent to 28 percent or 26.5 percent. I won't go into eliminating passthroughs for small businesses, mom-and-pop businesses; a 20-percent increase because they eliminate the 20-percent credit on their small businesses. I won't get into that because we don't have enough time. I won't get into the raising taxes on individuals. I won't get into the capital gains tax going from 23.8 to 43.8. I won't get into all of that right now, but I will say this: If the Democrats' plan succeeds, I fear for that American dream that I am able to live right now. I fear that kids stuck in poverty today will be stuck in a caste system of socialism tomorrow.
Madam President, thank you for your time, your patience. I am just concerned about the greatest Nation ever designed in the history of the world. Thank you.
SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 169
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