Biden Administration
Floor Speech
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Mr. HOEVEN. Madam President, I rise today to talk about how Congress can work together in a bipartisan way to pass infrastructure legislation, following my colleagues from Ohio, from Wyoming, from Iowa--and my colleague from North Carolina is here as well--with a real desire to come up with an infrastructure package, but we want it to be bipartisan.
Republicans and Democrats agree that investing in our national infrastructure is necessary to increase economic growth, ensure global competitiveness of American businesses, and create new, high-paying jobs. In fact, just last Congress, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee unanimously approved a 5-year surface transportation reauthorization bill, which included about $300 billion for roads and bridges. That actually represents a 27-percent increase over the FAST Act. We really feel that bill, with its bipartisan support, creates a starting point--a starting point on a bipartisan basis--for the negotiations that we should have in developing the infrastructure package.
Tonight we expect the President will outline his American Jobs Plan, but unfortunately it is not focused on infrastructure. It is a massive, $2.25 trillion tax-and-spend bill that dedicates less than one-third, just over $600 billion, toward actual traditional infrastructure.
The administration's plan would increase the corporate tax from 21 percent to 28 percent, resulting in reduced wages, increased costs for consumers, and a reduction in economic growth.
The Biden plan would revert the U.S. tax system to a worldwide tax system, increasing taxes on U.S. multinational corporations, reducing the competitiveness of American businesses, and driving U.S. jobs and profits to other countries. The 2017 tax bill brought the United States into a territorial tax system for the taxation of multinational companies. It has worked. From 1985 to 2017, 85 U.S.-based multinational corporations took advantage of corporate inversions, resulting in a $19.5 billion tax revenue loss to the U.S. Government. Since the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, there have been no corporate inversions. The Biden plan would abandon this successful approach.
Further, the administration has proposed a $35 billion tax increase on U.S. energy producers, endangering U.S. energy independence, costing U.S. jobs, and empowering foreign energy production. A recent study from the National Association of Manufacturers shows that nearly 1 million jobs would be lost in the first 2 years alone if this tax increase goes through.
Tonight we expect to hear from President Biden on additional proposals to increase taxes on American workers as well as increase our debt and deficit. For instance, we have seen reports today that the President is going to seek to repeal stepped-up basis. Now, while the administration indicates there may be some exceptions, repealing stepped-up basis would place a significant and complex tax burden on small businesses and particularly family farms and ranches, not only in my State of North Dakota but across the country.
Right now, the average age of our farmers in America is about 60 years old, and we need to get the next generation into farming, but they can't do it if they have to sell the farm to pay the tax.
A repeal of stepped-up basis would increase the cost of capital, discourage investment, reduce the wages of workers, and stunt economic growth in both the immediate and long term. A recent analysis from Ernst & Young shows that eliminating stepped-up basis will result in the loss of 80,000 jobs a year for the next 10 years and a loss of nearly $10 billion in GDP growth per year.
While we continue to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, we should not be constraining economic growth by increasing taxes and regulation. Instead, we should maintain the pro-growth, low-tax regime put in place in 2017 by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and make targeted investments in traditional infrastructure, while reducing regulatory barriers to provide long-term certainty to Americans.
Last week, I met with President Biden at the White House to share this very message--that Republicans stand ready to work with the administration and our Democrat colleagues on the infrastructure package, in a bipartisan and targeted manner, focusing on updating our roads, bridges, railways, airports, broadband, and other traditional infrastructure.
We also support investing in energy infrastructure, including enhancing the 45Q tax credit to accelerate the deployment of carbon capture and sequestration technology, as well as pipelines to provide the safe and efficient transportation of our natural resources.
We should be working together for the American people to enact policies that will improve our national infrastructure. To this end, I want to highlight a number of bipartisan proposals that I have been working on with my colleagues across the aisle.
I have introduced bipartisan legislation with Senator Smith, Senator Capito, Senator Whitehouse, and others to enhance the 45Q tax credit for carbon capture and sequestration.
Also, Senator Smith and I have legislation that would empower rural electric and telecom cooperatives to refinance existing debt, reinvest in improved energy efficiency, and expand broadband delivery to more of their rural customers.
Likewise, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Wyden and I have introduced a bill that would encourage private investment in infrastructure by expanding private activity bonds and creating a new infrastructure tax credit.
Additionally, I have introduced legislation with Senator Bennet that ensures that our farmers, ranchers, and producers have the regulatory flexibility needed to safely and efficiently move their products-- livestock, in particular--to market while ensuring the safety of all road users.
We don't need to burden hard-working Americans with increased taxes in order to pay for this. There are a number of potential options to provide the necessary revenue for a targeted infrastructure package. For example, we can make modest changes to our user-fee-based highway trust fund system, ensuring that electric vehicles pay into the fund. We can repurpose unused Federal spending, including using funds from the recent American Rescue Plan Act. We could also use revenue generated from energy production on Federal lands. These are just a few of the ideas we put forward.
Last week, Ranking Member Capito of the Environment and Public Works Committee, along with the ranking members of the Banking, Commerce, Energy, and Finance Committees, unveiled the framework of an almost $600 billion infrastructure package, which focuses investment in traditional infrastructure.
We should use this framework and begin working through regular order in a committee-driven process to produce a bipartisan, targeted infrastructure bill that does not increase taxes on American workers. That way, we truly upgrade our infrastructure, create jobs, and keep our economy growing.
That is the right approach. We need to work in a bipartisan manner to get it done.
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