Ron Wyden

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Yes. What ``sunset'' means is you would unravel the basic principles of Social Security and Medicare. We don't subject them to annual or regular political fights. We have said that people have earned those benefits, and we aren't just going to set arbitrary dates and say we are going to, in effect, move on and we will decide what happens to seniors and the disabled based on the politics of the moment. It is a 180-degree departure from the kind of guarantee that you spelled out that I feel so strongly about. We don't say we are just going to have these arbitrary changes that could put at risk the entire program.

Mr. WYDEN. My colleague from Ohio is being way too logical because, you bet, what this essentially means is if you sunset it, the program and the benefits are not going to continue as they have. As you said, if people decide because of some particular kind of flurry at the moment that for some cause they don't want to continue it, the well- being and security of seniors is jeopardized.

Mr. WYDEN. You have stated it well. It would mean that when you sunset it, you would have to have a brand-new fight to reestablish its primacy as a guarantee. You sunset it.

Mr. WYDEN. Nope, no question about it, and it would put in jeopardy fundamental core principles that seniors all across the country--in Ohio and Oregon and Massachusetts--have been able to count on. When you sunset it, you say you can't count on it. You have to wait for another political battle. And I would just say to my colleagues--showing how extreme the position is of our colleague from Florida, Senator Scott--that Senator Orrin Hatch, the late Senator Hatch who worked with us, when he was in the Senate said: We will update the Medicare guarantee to start covering chronic care. This is something the Senator from Massachusetts has worked with me on, home care for seniors. So Senator Orrin Hatch, our late colleague and my personal friend, who was not exactly a liberal, he understood what you and I are talking about: that Medicare and Social Security are a guarantee. And when we talked about chronic care, he said: We are going to update the Medicare guarantee--nothing about saying: Well, gee, maybe we will do something after we sunset it. So my colleague has said it well.

Mr. WYDEN. He hasn't talked about it, but I think that would certainly be one of the questions our constituents would ask about, because this issue of there being a double standard between seniors at home and their elected officials would be very real. He hasn't spelled out how he would deal with that, but there is certainly the question of elected officials, because we have these retirement benefits that have been part, again, of a program that has been established for some time. They haven't been talked about. But I will tell you, I think the chair of the Social Security Subcommittee and myself on the Finance Committee, we are going to go out there and say: No double standard. You can be sure of that. If something is sunsetted for working people and seniors and the disabled, we are certainly not going to let Senator Scott pretend that somehow it is business as usual for elected officials. Mr. President, I think Senator Brown started us off very well, and he is asking questions that I think millions of Americans are going to ask. My understanding is that my colleague from Ohio, the chairman of the subcommittee, is going to be looking at a lot of these issues in his subcommittee. But certainly this last point, about politicians talking out of both sides of their mouth and saying somehow that we are going to have a program sunsetted for seniors and the disabled--Social Security, Medicare and others--but we are not going to even talk about what happens for elected officials is an example of how you shouldn't legislate. It is an example of what I believe could be a double standard. And I will just close, unless Senator Brown wants to. In fact, I am going to let Senator Brown do it. I thought, as I listened to Senator Brown, and I put it in the context of all these years with the Gray Panthers, that everybody can understand what Senator Brown is talking about. Medicare and Social Security are a guarantee--period--inviolate, as a result of the history that we have had in this country where people worked so hard for this. On the other side, we are talking about privatization, we are talking about portability, and we are talking about lots of new cost analyses in the private sector and individualized programs. I am for individualized programs on top of Social Security, not in place of it. So I really appreciate your resolution, Senator Brown, and I am going to do everything I can to support it.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, we are now several weeks on from the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. The IRA is transformational legislation that will improve the lives of millions and millions of Americans: more affordable prescription drugs, cheaper energy bills, the largest investment in the climate in history, a serious commitment to cracking down on tax cheats who rip off the American people for billions of dollars every year, and ensuring that corporations pay a fair share. I am proud to say that the vast majority of the Inflation Reduction Act came from the Finance Committee majority. It is no exaggeration to say that the team on the committee and in my personal office collectively spent thousands and thousands of hours developing these proposals, building support for them under zero margin for error, and guaranteeing that they would pass under challenging Senate rules. Senate Democrats spent more than a year debating what would go into this bill before it finally came together, but the staff of the Finance Committee began its work long before that. Some of the components of the IRA go back more than a decade. So before the Senate goes out in the coming days, I wanted to come down to the floor to thank my committee and personal office staff, as well as the brilliant teams at the Joint Committee on Tax, Congressional Budget Office, and legislative counsel who made this achievement possible. I will shout out a few specifics as I thank the staff, but understand that legislation this significant is always a collaborative effort. And furthermore, there are major priorities that did not make it into the final version of the IRA, and the staff who worked on those issues deserve credit, too. I will start out with Tiffany Smith, who leads the best and hardest working tax policy team there is. Bobby Andres has honcho'd the Clean Energy for America Act for 7-plus years. He tweaked and edited and improved that bill so many times, he can probably recite the text in his sleep. Chris Arneson, Jon Goldman, and Sarah Schaefer have been instrumental in going after the tax loopholes that allow massive, profitable corporations to get away with paying little to nothing. Their work on those issues is going to continue to find its way into law. Adam Carasso and Eric LoPresti helped to make sure the IRS has the resources it needs to go after wealthy tax cheats who skip out on paying what they owe. And proof positive that Finance Teams support one another: Drew Crouch contributed tax policy help to the prescription drug reforms. Rachael Kauss has put a ton of work into developing the billionaire's income tax, and although that proposal didn't make it in the final bill, there is more support than ever for making sure that those at the very top pay a fair share like everybody else. Grace Enda assisted on the clean energy tax policies and more. Ursula Clausing supported the tax team and also made sure that our team and Senate Democrats were ready and organized for a tough floor debate. Arthur Shemitz and Melanie Jonas also supported the tax team's hard work. One other point about the Finance Committee majority's tax team--and this applies across the board, not just to the Inflation Reduction Act. If anybody out there mistakenly believes it is easy to offset the legislation passed here in the Senate, it is only because our tax team, time and time again, makes it look effortless. The truth is, it takes a ton of hard work, but they get it done. Patricio Gonzalez, a member of the committee's investigations team, has been digging into the tax practices of some of the biggest drug companies out there. His work went a long way to convincing key Senators that our corporate tax laws needed reform. Ryder Tobin, another member of the investigations team, contributed to that work and also helped us survive the grueling floor debate, as did Madison Moskowitz, Claire Kaliban, and Bonnie Million. Next up: healthcare. When it comes to drug prices, Big Pharma has had a stranglehold on the U.S. Senate for a long, long time. A lot of people have gone up against Big Pharma and lost. Shawn Bishop and the Finance Committee health team took on Big Pharma and won. Anna Kaltenboeck played a key role in our efforts on finally allowing Medicare to negotiate on behalf of seniors for a better deal on prescription drugs. She also worked with Raghav Aggarwal on crafting the Senate version of drug price negotiation, as well as key protections for seniors in Medicare Part D. That includes a $2,000 annual out-of-pocket cap on their medications and a price-gouging penalty for drug companies that hike prices faster than inflation. At a time when families in Oregon and across the country are getting hit by rising prices, Eva DuGoff worked on extending subsidies for ACA health insurance coverage. It will save people hundreds of dollars a year and a family of four up to $2,400 a year. Peter Fise worked on capping the out-of-pocket cost of insulin for seniors at $35 per month--another huge savings for many Americans. Liz Dervan expanded Medicaid's coverage of vaccines for adults. There is a long list of people who pitched in on the vital process of making sure the bill was compliant with the rules of the Senate known as the Byrd Rules. It includes Liz Dervan, whose legal acumen was invaluable to supporting the committee's efforts to navigate the Byrd rule, as well as major efforts by Peter Fise, Kristen Lunde, Kimberly Lattimore, Mary Ellis and Daniel Whittam from the health team. It also includes Sally Laing and Virginia Lenahan from our trade team, who contributed to the clean energy provisions. When it comes to Byrd rules, the point man on the Finance Committee is our chief counsel, Mike Evans. For all the months of work that goes into writing legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act, the whole thing can come crashing down if it doesn't comply with the Byrd rules. Nobody is more skilled or experienced than Mike at making sure legislation is Byrd-compliant from the start and protecting it in Byrd rule arguments before the Senate Parliamentarian. Opposing counsels weep when they see Mike Evans and his stacks of papers enter the room. Reconciliation under the Byrd rule is arduous work, yet Mike approaches it with humor and grace along with great skill. Mike is a valued member of my senior leadership team, who have directed years of effort that made the IRA possible. I want to thank him, Jeff Michels, Joshua Sheinkman, Sarah Bittleman, John Dickas, and Isaiah Akin for guiding the team through setbacks and struggles to get this bill done. The Finance Committee's communications leads on the IRA were Ashley Schapitl on tax and investigations; Taylor Harvey on healthcare; Ryan Carey, speechwriter; and Emily Zahnle-Hostetler, digital director. The IRA dealt with some incredibly complicated policy issues, and it challenged a lot of powerful special interests. But our team got the word out and stood up to withering attacks in the press and here in the Senate. The Finance Committee works with many, many skilled and dedicated staff at the Joint Committee on Taxation on a daily basis. Suffice it to say, we would be out in the cold without Tom Barthold and the team of all-stars at JCT: Rob Harvey Chris Giosa Tim Dowd Cecily Rock Natalie Tucker Ross Margelefsky Jeff Arbeit Jared Hermann Carol Wang Kristine Roth Harold Hirsch Sanjay Misra Clare Diefenbach Rhonda Migdail Andrew Lai David Lenter Vivek Chandrasekhar Chia Chang Lin Xu James Elwell Kelly Scanlon Sally Kwak Chris Overend Kashi Way Bert Lue Deirdre James Connor Dowd Nick Bull Melani Houser Tanya Butler The same goes for the highly skilled and dedicated team at the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office under Director Phil Swagel. They do a difficult job to keep Congress informed of what proposed changes to our Federal programs will cost and always come through under extremely tight deadlines: Terri Gullo Leo Lex Paul Masi Chad Chirico Lara Robillard Asha Saavoss Stuart Hammond Carrie Colla Tamara Hayford Christopher Adams Evan Herrnstadt Colin Baker Scott Laughery and other CBO staff who analyzed drug pricing in the U.S. over the last decade. And finally I want to thank the talented legal team at the Senate legislative counsel's office who help committee staff write the law--on tax policies, Mark McGunagle, Jim Fransen, Allison Otto, and Vince Gaiani; on health policies, John Goetcheus, Kelly Thornburg, Ruth Ernst and Phil Lynch. Whether you are talking about JCT, CBO or legislative counsel, the Congress grinds to a halt without their work. Finally, I would like to commend the work of the Senate Parliamentarian and her assistants. A reconciliation bill turns up a lot of highly complex procedural questions, and the Parliamentarian has to make the calls. I was not happy with all of the decisions, but the Parliamentarians worked tirelessly, skillfully, and with an even hand. Also, I would like to thank the clerks and floor staff for their work and endurance during the vote-a-rama. The debate the American people read about and watched on TV is just a small portion of all the work that went into the Inflation Reduction Act. It can be awfully frustrating to spend years developing legislation when Congress is this polarized. We dealt with a lot of setbacks. At certain points, we thought it was over. And there is still a lot more to get done. But the IRA truly is an accomplishment that will improve life for the American people: more affordable medications, more affordable health insurance, cheaper energy, the biggest ever investment in the fight against climate change, major progress cracking down on tax cheats and improving tax fairness--that is progress to be proud of. I thank the Finance Committee majority staff, my personal office staff, and all the other teams who contributed to this effort. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. I thank my colleague, and I know that Senator Van Hollen is here as well. I am going to be brief. I particularly want to thank our colleague from Rhode Island because he has been relentless in terms of making this case day after day. I want to put this in very personal kind of terms because all of us who have the honor of serving in the U.S. Senate can relate to this issue. Senator Whitehouse has added a reform to his proposal that is very personal to me and I think embodies the accountability and the transparency that Oregonians and people in Minnesota, Michigan, and Maryland are calling for. Here is how I would start it: A number of years ago, I authored legislation that millions of Americans now understand is called Stand By Your Ad. Stand By Your Ad stipulated that as an elected official or a candidate, you would have to actually put your name behind these attack ads where you go after your opponent. And, now, day after day, in these next 50-plus days, we are going to see plenty of these ads. The law worked well, and it is still on the books today, much to the chagrin of some officials who would like to take a quick hit on their opponent--an official or a candidate--and then scamper off without any accountability. I do want to make clear, because of the good work of the Senator from Rhode Island, that Stand By Your Ad doesn't mean as much today because we now know the premium is ongoing for these secret, incredibly negative ads on your opponent because the people paying for dark money ads aren't required to put their name behind what they are saying. That is an extraordinarily strong hit against openness and accountability and transparency in our democracy. Oregonians and people across the country are rightfully disgusted by it. It is extraordinary the lengths that those who are orchestrating these dark money attacks will go in order to make their case when there is no accountability. I see my seatmate from the Finance Committee. We have worked together for years to change the Medicare statute that barred Medicare from negotiating to hold down the price of medicine. Big Pharma protected this negotiating ban like it was the Holy Grail. My colleague and I would come to the committee day after day and talk about: How is this common sense? Everybody in America negotiates in order to get the best possible deal. But we looked, particularly in this session, at the start of the debate as a classic study in dark money. Big Pharma, and groups associated with it, spent enormous sums of money attacking me personally in Washington, DC, media. There was scary music, and there were attacks about how anybody who wanted these reforms was like a leech and taking away cures from the American people. The striking part of all of this, and why what Senator Whitehouse has had to say is so important, is that the ad wasn't even directed at me, because it was in Washington, DC. I am barely a household word in my own household, let alone in Washington, DC. And what was the point of these extraordinarily large sums attacking me in Washington, DC? The point of it was to scare my colleagues-- Senator Stabenow, Senator Van Hollen, all of my colleagues here-- because there was so much money at the hands of these extreme groups associated with Big Pharma that wanted to undermine a commonsense reform backed by millions of Americans that Medicare should negotiate. At one point, someone said: Oh, there is so much opposition to this effort to negotiate. I said: Are you kidding me? The opponents of negotiating on Medicare must be in a witness protection program because we can't find anybody who thinks you shouldn't negotiate. Yet Big Pharma was willing to spend huge sums of money--dark money-- not really to damage me politically, because my constituents live in Oregon, but to scare other Senators. So people, of course, are going to get bludgeoned with these dark money ads every time they turn on the television, the radio, or watch a video online. I just don't think that Americans should be forced to guess or wonder what special interest is funding these ads that come from murky groups that have these radical names like the Coalition for Prosperity and Justice. We all know that they are not going to tell you who they really are. My colleague from Maryland has been very patient. We had some glitches in the schedule, and we want to hear from our friend from Michigan as well. I want to thank Senator Whitehouse for basically taking the ``Stand By Your Ad'' concept and kind of reconfiguring it in the DISCLOSE legislation. Senator Whitehouse's bill would require the heads of corporations, unions, or other organizations to identify when they are behind political ads, the same way Stand By Your Ad works under the original version of the law that I authored. And remember--and I want this to be the takeaway about this issue-- Senator Whitehouse's proposal and extending ``Stand by Your Ad'' in this kind of fashion treats everybody the same. This is quintessential good government. It is not about going after somebody on the right or somebody on the left. This is about common sense. It is not a radical, leftwing proposal. The American people ought to know who is trying to influence their votes. By the way, when we authored the original ``Stand by Your Ad'' proposal, it used to be bipartisan. And as my colleague from Rhode Island has mentioned, of late, it has been the Republicans who have been protecting dark money and protecting the basic kind of disclosure that I think our system of government has been all about. The American people have strong differences of opinion on issues. There is no question about that. But I have had more than 1,020 open- to-all townhall meetings. What nobody disputes is that openness and accountability is what the American system is all about. So, Senator Whitehouse, our thanks to you for spending years and years at it because you are taking us, in a significant way, back to what I think used to be common sense, used to be accountability, used to be something that transcended the kind of thing that Big Pharma was doing early on where they didn't even pretend--they didn't even pretend--it was about an individual legislator; it was about scaring off all Members of Congress. We can do better. Senator Whitehouse's proposal moves us in that direction, and I want to thank my colleague from Maryland, who also was trying to deal with the scheduling kind of challenge, and look forward to working with him and my seatmate on the Finance Committee and Senator Whitehouse, another exemplary member of the Finance Committee. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I come to the floor to discuss the new Graham legislation to create a national abortion ban. The centerpiece of the Senator's argument is that Senator Graham wants our country to believe that his national abortion ban is a moderate proposal--his words. Wrong, wrong, wrong. A moderate bill would not institute criminal penalties for doctors providing lifesaving medical care. That is what this so-called moderate bill does. A moderate bill would not take rights away from American women, no matter where they live. That is what this so-called moderate bill does. A moderate bill would not create a presumption of women's guilt by requiring them to report a rape or seek counseling before they get an abortion. This so-called moderate bill does that, too. Just think about that last point. If you are trying to assess our colleague from South Carolina's argument that his bill is moderate, under Senator Graham's new restrictions, a 12-year-old rape victim, regardless of the terror she feels or the danger she faces, would have to find a way to report her assault to police before she could get the care she needs. That is a stunning overreach and there is absolutely nothing that is moderate about this proposal. The reality is this is not a moderate proposal. It is an extreme proposal, way out of step with the overwhelming opinion of the American people. The other important argument I wanted to discuss was this whole matter of how so many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have pledged loyalty--pledged loyalty--to the importance of States' rights that they are going to leave the decision on abortion to the States. But Senator Graham has shown us that all his talk about States' rights means that the States have to agree with Senator Graham. That is what his idea about States' rights is all about. His bill tramples, for example, on the rights of Oregonians, who sure don't share Senator Graham's view on this, and people in many other States, women and men who voted to protect abortion, women's healthcare, and women's individual freedom. Senator Graham's bill is about control. It is about government-- government--mind these words--government having control over women's bodies rather than women having control over their bodies. It is also clear that what has always been envisioned is not just a nationwide ban on abortions but criminalizing this with women and doctors at some point, I gather, possibly locked behind bars. It is election season and Senator McConnell wants everybody to forget the Republicans' top priorities include passing these extreme restrictions through Congress and the courts. I believe that Americans know better. When it comes to this kind of legislation that is so far removed--far removed--from the moderate claim of its sponsor, I think we ought to recognize what we are looking at is a total national abortion ban, criminalization, and the rights of women curtailed and the power of government over them increased. Senator Graham's bill is the next step in that direction for Republicans. Introducing his proposal, Senator Graham basically confirmed that: If [we] take back the House and Senate, I can assure you we'll have a vote [on our bill]. Madam President, I think we have a lot of speakers coming, but I think the American people ought to take Senator Graham at his word. This is what his agenda is about. This is what he is going to be championing from sea to shining sea. I just hope we do everything we can here in the Senate--in this country--to make sure that the Graham bill does not see the light of day. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, in reserving the right to object, it is time for a reality check here in the Senate. The far right has had an awful lot to say about the IRS in these last few days. Even Senators who should supposedly know better are spinning wild fantasy stories about 87,000 agents who are armed to the teeth and coming to the doors of innocent small business people. All this talk is unscathed by the truth. Here is what is true: Every year, wealthy tax cheats and scofflaw corporations skip out on paying what they owe and rip off the American people for billions and billions of dollars. Let me say that again. Wealthy tax cheats are ripping off innocent taxpayers, every year, of billions and billions of dollars. They are sophisticated. They are wealthy. They want to protect the status quo. By attacking the IRS, the Republicans are helping high-flying tax cheats get away with breaking the law. The IRS has had its resources gutted by the Republicans over the last decade. It is badly outmatched now by the wealthy tax cheats, who have armies of lawyers and accountants who are prying open loopholes and hiding income in the shadows. Let me give the Senate an example. A few weeks ago, I put out the findings of a yearlong Finance Committee investigation into the largest alleged tax evasion scheme by one individual in American history. With the right financial wizardry and a complicated network of offshore accounts and partnerships, this individual, Robert Brockman, was able to evade taxes on over $2 billion in income. To hide his money, he set up offshore entities that we call shell banks. They were offshore entities dressed up like financial institutions that Mr. Brockman set up to hide his money from the IRS, betting correctly that the IRS wouldn't have the resources to uncover his scheme. There may be hundreds of thousands more of these shell banks that the IRS has never examined. The Finance Committee is also in the midst of an investigation into the tax practices of some of the biggest members of Big Pharma. One of the companies whose tax data we examined was AbbVie. In 2020, 75 percent of AbbVie's sales were made in the United States, but AbbVie reported only 1 percent of its income to the United States for tax purposes. Earlier this year, we requested financial information from Merck, which makes nearly half of its sales in the United States, but it reported only 14 percent of its income here. We also requested information from Bristol Myers Squibb, which reportedly used a thicket of foreign subsidiaries and partnerships to take its effective tax rate from 24.7 percent all the way down to a negative 7 percent in a single year. The IRS struggles to do anything about many of these cases even when they get reported in the press. Criminal tax evasion cases have fallen nearly by half. The number of highly trained experts who know how to break down these complex tax evasion cases has fallen by a third. It takes hundreds and hundreds of hours to review the tax filings of corporations and the rich, and the IRS just doesn't have the resources to go after these wealthy tax cheats and scofflaw corporations. So there is a reason the Democrats believe you have to invest more resources to enforce the laws on the books. Here is the most important point: It doesn't have anything to do with middle-class taxpayers, because their taxes are taken out automatically of every single paycheck. That is really different than the way the big guys go about their activities in ripping off the little guys with complex tax evasion schemes. What so many Republicans want to do is preserve the status quo so that only the little guys get audited while billionaire friends like Robert Brockman get off scot-free. Funding for the IRS is also about providing a basic level of customer service to taxpayers who are in Colorado, in Oregon, and in every part of the country. At one point during the filing season this year, the IRS told the Finance Committee that it was able to answer only 11 percent of the service phone calls it was receiving. Taxpayers in America deserve better service from their government, and that means making sure the IRS has the resources to provide it. The far right and the tax cheats--the wealthy tax cheats--want the IRS, apparently, to continue to struggle because it makes it easier to attack and vilify. That is why we have heard so many falsehoods about the thousands of new IRS agents. I don't know where this number came from. It is absolute nonsense that has been conjured out of nothing. Even worse are the falsehoods about IRS agents and firearms. Alongside the DEA, the FBI, and other law enforcement Agencies, the IRS often plays a part in going after drug cartels, money launderers, and other serious, hardened criminals. So the question is, How do my Republican colleagues expect IRS criminal investigation officers to defend themselves during drug busts against violent cartels? Should they bring a set of sharpened No. 2 pencils? We are talking about living in the real world. The IRS funding that the Democrats passed last month is about making sure that the IRS can do its job and meet the expectations of the American people. I can tell you, as a Senator who has townhall meetings in every county of my State every year, the people of my State say: Look, we are law-abiding. We pay our taxes. There is something way out of whack when these wealthy tax cheats and scofflaw corporations can pay little or nothing. It is time for Members of Congress to stop going to bat for these wealthy tax cheats who break the law. The IRS needs to be able to crack down on these rip-offs. The IRS needs to be able to provide adequate and timely service. The taxpayers need help, and that is what the IRS funding does. What we have heard so much about from my colleagues on the far right in raising this specter of agents--thousands of them, armed to the teeth, coming to the doors of small businesses--is simply unscathed by the truth. For that reason, I object.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I would just like to briefly discuss the amendment that came up during the budget discussion. Senate Democrats made it very, very clear that we were strongly against taxing those in our country with incomes under $400,000. The problem with the amendment that the Republicans offered is they used the word ``taxable'' income. So, while we strongly opposed raising taxes on middle-class people and others making under $400,000, the wording of the Republicans' amendment, which talked about taxable income, could have immunized billionaires from being subject to an audit. That is because, as the Presiding Officer and I have talked about, billionaires often live by this ``buy, borrow, and die'' philosophy, and they have little or no taxable income for years on end. My colleagues probably saw some of the stories, for example, about billionaires who are claiming the child tax credit because their taxable income is actually low under the way it is defined. Just to make sure the record is clear, we are all in on this effort of not taxing middle-income folks. We subscribe completely. In fact, it is what we had in the bill, and our enforcement section made that clear as well. But we are not for creating new paths to tax evasion for billionaires. Regrettably, that is what the language in the Republicans' amendment would have done. I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, public service is about making people's lives better, and here is what is on offer this afternoon to make people's lives better in our country: Reduced healthcare costs for seniors, reduced carbon emissions, reduced energy costs, and reduced cheating by wealthy tax cheats. That is just a part of what is on offer this afternoon. Let me just briefly touch on each of them. We all know that medicines are way too expensive in our country. People always come back from trips, and they say: Why is it so much cheaper overseas? It is because these big pharmaceutical companies are under absolutely no restraints to hold down the prices, and that is what we are beginning to change today. What we are beginning to change today is to say that for those seniors who count on Medicare, for the first time, the program that they love, Medicare, is going to have the power to negotiate lower drug prices for them. The fact is, the Senate is lifting a curse with this legislation. That is how seniors feel when they hear that Medicare can't even go to bat for them. And, of course, Big Pharma has protected this ban on Medicare negotiating like it was the Holy Grail. Even today, they are warning that when we pass this, they are going to try to tie it up with the courts and the State legislatures and the Agencies. But we are not going to let that happen. The prediction from some independent authorities on medicine has said that because of the compounding benefits of our bill--with more drugs being negotiated on a regular basis--we are looking at the possibility of a trillion dollars in savings before too long. If a drug company refuses to negotiate, they are going to face a steep excise tax on the sale of their products until they come to the table. If they are price gouging, if they are raising their prices above the rate of inflation, say, for an older drug, they are going to pay a penalty. And then we have new significant relief for seniors who, when they get mugged at the pharmacy counter, come home and say they just can't pay all the bills. Our legislation puts a new $2,000 out-of-pocket cap on Medicare Part D so that seniors are no longer forced to choose between paying for medicine and paying for food. Those are all important benefits. The fact is, that penalty for price gouging is going into in effect in a couple of months, in November, so seniors are going to be able to say: We are seeing real relief from this legislation. There are other steps that we would have liked to take. I understand that. I pushed for them. The President of the Senate has pushed for them. But let's understand the bottom line here. Every one of the policies I have outlined, on their own, is going to be life-changing for millions of senior citizens, and it is going to lay the groundwork for doing more. I would also like to move briefly from healthcare to climate because the Inflation Reduction Act includes the biggest effort in history to save our climate and invest in clean energy and jobs. And because we all worked together, those are going to be jobs here in America. They are going to be clean energy jobs in our country because of the black letter text that we wrote into the bill. The old system was a joke. It picked winners and losers, and anybody who was powerful could probably figure out how to get a tax break. And there were permanent breaks for oil and gas but only temporary incentives for clean energy. The system was broken. It was out of date a long time ago. We put that old system into the dustbin of history, and we put in place emissions-based credits to turbocharge investment in clean energy, clean transportation, and energy conservation. Our new plan is going to reduce the typical American household's energy cost by $500 per year, and it is going to create 600,000 new jobs from Portland, OR, to Portland, ME. As the President of the Senate knows, we pay for this bill with a few important changes in our tax law. For example, we just showed a couple of days ago that of 100 companies--these are companies with billions of dollars in profits--they are paying--many of them, more than 100--an effective tax rate of 1.1 percent. Let me say that again: More than 100 hugely profitable companies that are going to pay under this legislation, and the President of the Senate did very important work on this, they are paying, on average, 1.1 percent in taxes. Now, it is no surprise that those companies that are paying 1.1 percent think that somehow making them pay a minimum rate--a minimum rate, by the way, which is far less than the rate that a firefighter and a nurse pay--that, oh, my goodness, we won't have jobs, we won't have businesses if they do. And we make it clear that we are not raising taxes on anybody. Anybody making less than $400,000 is not going to pay any additional taxes under this bill. I know there are some of our colleagues on the other side who have always subscribed to this trickle-down theory of economics and say that, well, if those at the very top--say, those corporations paying 1.1 percent--actually pay some taxes, that means that nurses and firefighters are going to pay more taxes, and nurses and firefighters don't buy that for a second. We also paid for the legislation in an important way that was proposed by our colleague from Ohio, Senator Brown, that I was proud to join him on, and that is a 1-percent tax on stock buybacks. Corporations have spent trillions of dollars on stock buybacks in recent years, a huge windfall for corporate executives and wealthy shareholder. It set a record in 2018, broke it again in 2021 right in the middle of a global pandemic, and I just noticed the profits of some of the biggest oil companies here in the last few weeks, again, they are kind of leading the league in stock buybacks. Stock buybacks make a lot of wealthy people even wealthier on paper, but they do very little to strengthen the economy, drive innovation, or improve the well-being of American workers. Our 1 percent tax is not only going to help pay to prevent the worst effects of climate change, it is also going to encourage big corporations to invest in their workers and research and development instead of more handouts to the top. Finally, I just want to emphasize this question of tougher IRS tax enforcement. We have heard some of our colleagues on the other side say that somehow this is going to target the working person. I see our good friend from Delaware, another member of the committee. That is just not going to happen. And the reason it is not, as my colleagues on the Finance Committee know so well, working people are not the problem here. They pay taxes with every single paycheck. It is right there on their paycheck. Everybody knows what taxes they pay, and should they be engaging in any questionable activities, it would end up showing up on these forms. They are not the problem. But as we have been told again and again by independent experts, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, we do have a problem with big, wealthy tax cheats. Big, wealthy tax cheats don't pay taxes with every single paycheck like firefighters and nurses. And after a decade of Republican budget cuts, we are now in a very difficult position to go after these wealthy tax cheats who rip off the American people for billions of dollars every year. The current Commissioner who joins many Democratic Commissioners and Republican Commissioners in the past--the current one is a Republican appointee--estimated the number of taxes owed that are not collected could be as much as a trillion dollars per year. We believe that the Agency ought to have the resources it needs to go after sophisticated, lawbreaking tax cheats at the top. And I know that my colleagues on the Finance Committee join me in saying: We are going to watchdog the Agency very carefully and make sure the focus is on these wealthy tax cheats and not the typical working person, as my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have talked about. So there you have it, folks. Here is what is on offer: What is on offer are lower costs for seniors, reduced climate emissions, help for working families, cracking down on wealthy tax cheats. That is what this is all about today. That is why this legislation, I believe, is going to give public service a good name. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. I am pleased to join the senior Senator from Nevada in this colloquy today to discuss sections 13701 and 13702 of the Inflation Reduction Act. These sections of the Inflation Reduction Act reflect the work of a variety of Members, but few Members have been as focused on geothermal energy than the Silver State's senior Senator.

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. Yes.

Mr. WYDEN. Yes.

Mr. WYDEN. I thank the Senator for his inquiry and can clarify that the Senator is correct that the current-law limitations that generally apply to tax credits under section 38 would not reduce the amount of credits eligible for transfer by the transferor of transferable tax credits under the bill and that the Treasury Department should issue technical guidance that reflects this intent.

Mr. WYDEN. I thank the Senator for her inquiry. That is correct. The credit is intended to incentivize production of biofuels of a certain quality, usable as fuel for highway vehicles or aircrafts, but not limited only to fuels which are actually used in highway vehicles or aircrafts.

Mr. WYDEN. Yes, regulations such as these would be in line with the legislative text and our intent for companies to be able to appropriately utilize foreign tax credits in the corporate alternative minimum tax.

Mr. WYDEN. I thank the Senator for his inquiry and can clarify that, for purposes of the corporate alternative minimum tax, Other Comprehensive Income is not included in financial statement income.

Mr. WYDEN. I thank the Senator for his inquiry. That is correct. The credit is intended for any eligible components produced and sold after December 31, 2022, regardless of the portion of the component that was produced before January 1, 2023.

Mr. WYDEN. Yes, we believe that Treasury will have authority to issue regulations dealing with potential issues with the ordering of the calculation of the credit under section 53 and the tax under section 59A. Regulations such as these would be in line with our intent in drafting the BEAT interaction provisions in the corporate alternative minimum tax.

Mr. WYDEN. A commercial lawn mower could qualify as mobile machinery, since it performs a similar operation to the purposes listed in the statute. Therefore, if such a vehicle met the other criteria for the qualified commercial clean vehicle credit, it would be eligible.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, this amendment would strike a four-tenths- of-a-cent-per-gallon fee on Big Oil refiners that helps pay for the cleanup of toxic waste spills, especially important to our low-income, historically disadvantaged communities. One expert analysis found that our bill is going to decrease the average household's energy costs by $500 per year. So, for many consumers, the Superfund fee would be less than $10 a year, a fraction of the savings from our bill. I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment. Vote on Amendment No. 5301

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I rise in opposition to my friend's amendment. We all agree here that taxpayers with less than $400,000 in taxable income should not face a tax increase. And there is language already--and I would like to note this--in the enforcement section of the bill that says just that. But the Crapo amendment goes much further than that. It applies--and I quote here--``to taxpayers with taxable income.'' And as Americans have learned recently, billionaires often have little or no taxable income for years on end. So under this amendment, the billionaires who live off their borrowings would be immune from audit, and that would invite further tax avoidance. I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment. Vote on Amendment No. 5404

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I gather that this is the first of the motions to commit this legislation back to committee. I want my colleagues to understand what this is really all about. These motions to commit are motions to kill this bill, period. And what that means is: Let's try to do everything we can to delay Democrats from being able to deliver for the American people lower prescription drug costs for the elderly, lower healthcare premiums, lower carbon emissions, lower energy costs, less tax cheating by the wealthy. The Senate ought to be moving this legislation forward instead of trying to kill the bill through these motions to commit. One last point, I gather we are going to have a bit more of this discussion.

Mr. WYDEN. I ask unanimous consent for 30 seconds of additional time.