{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=F82CEB98-AF2F-46B2-A8B4-701A8C9C700F", "Thune: Democrats\u2019 Disastrous Spending Bill is Chock-Full of Tax Hikes, Radical Energy Policies", "2022-08-02", "2022", "2022-08", "Republican", "Senate", "SD", "John Thune", "T000250", "www.thune.senate.gov", "thune", "https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases", "scraper", "Click here to watch the video\n\nU.S. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) today discussed how the Democrats\u2019 disastrous spending bill would increase inflation, raise taxes, and fund radical Green New Deal projects. Thune noted that rather than increasing accountability and improving taxpayer services, the Democrats\u2019 bill would double the size of the Internal Revenue Service in order to increase tax audits to fund their reckless tax-and-spending spree.\n\nThune\u2019s remarks below (as prepared for delivery):\n\n\u201cMr. President, Democrats dropped the latest version of their tax and spending spree last week.\n\n\u201cAnd like every previous version, this bill is a bad deal for the American people.\n\n\u201cWhere should I start, Mr. President?\n\n\u201cMaybe with the bill\u2019s title.\n\n\u201cIn true Orwellian style, Democrats are calling the bill the Inflation Reduction Act \u2026 even though the bill would do nothing to reduce inflation.\n\n\u201cAnd you don\u2019t have to take my word for it.\n\n\u201cThe nonpartisan Penn Wharton Budget Model analyzed the bill and found that the bill would not reduce inflation.\n\n\u201cIn fact, the analysis found that Democrats\u2019 bill would contribute to inflation through 2024 and have no material impact on inflation in the long term.\n\n\u201cMr. President, inflation has hit working Americans very hard.\n\n\u201cTheir grocery bills have ballooned.\n\n\u201cRents have skyrocketed.\n\n\u201cFilling up their cars costs 75 percent more per gallon than it did when President Biden took office.\n\n\u201cTheir utility bills have increased.\n\n\u201cThe list goes on.\n\n\u201cFamilies are having to cut back on purchases and dig into their savings or pull out their credit cards \u2013 or in some cases, visit a food bank \u2013 to make ends meet.\n\n\u201cAnd what does Democrats\u2019 tax-and-spending spree do to help?\n\n\u201cNothing.\n\n\u201cAmericans are dealing with the worst inflation in more than 40 years, and Democrats\u2019 bill does nothing to help end our current crisis.\n\n\u201cNothing.\n\n\u201cSo what does the bill do, Mr. President?\n\n\u201cWell, for one thing, it raises taxes.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s right, Mr. President.\n\n\u201cOur economy has shrunk for each of the past two quarters \u2013 in fact by any common definition we are now in a recession \u2013 and Democrats\u2019 bill raises taxes \u2026 by hundreds of billions of dollars.\n\n\u201cHere\u2019s what the Democrat leader previously had to say about raising taxes in a recession: \u2018If we\u2019re in a recession and we\u2019re in a difficult economic time, I don\u2019t think Sen. Obama or anyone else is going to raise any taxes. You don\u2019t want to take money out of the economy when the economy is shrinking.\u2019\n\n\u201cPresident Obama expressed a similar sentiment: \u2018[T]he last thing you want to do is to raise taxes in the middle of a recession.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018The last thing.\u2019\n\n\u201cWell, Mr. President, apparently that doesn\u2019t apply when Democrats have Green New Deal projects they want to pay for.\n\n\u201cDemocrats\u2019 bill attempts to offset the cost of their Green New Deal spending spree by raising taxes on American businesses, particularly manufacturers.\n\n\u201cThe proposed book minimum tax would be a $313 billion tax hike, with roughly half of the increase falling on American manufacturers.\n\n\u201cMr. President, I don\u2019t think I need to tell anyone the likely outcome of raising taxes on businesses \u2013 particularly when the economy is contracting.\n\n\u201cThe likely outcome is less growth, lower wages, and fewer jobs.\n\n\u201cAccording to an analysis from the National Association of Manufacturers, in 2023 alone the bill would reduce real gross domestic product by more than $68 billion and result in 218,108 fewer workers in the overall economy.\n\n\u201cDemocrats\u2019 bill also raises taxes on the energy sector \u2013 specifically on domestic oil and gas production.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s another facepalm move from Democrats.\n\n\u201cCurrently, gas prices are 75 percent higher than they were when President Biden took office.\n\n\u201cElectricity prices are up.\n\n\u201cThe cost of utility gas service is way up.\n\n\u201cAnd yet Democrats think it\u2019s a good idea to raise taxes on domestic oil and gas production.\n\n\u201cApparently Democrats want our current high energy prices to stick around for the long term.\n\n\u201cSo what are Democrats going to use all that tax-hike money for?\n\n\u201cWell, for one thing, they\u2019re going to use it to fund Green New Deal projects.\n\n\u201cCritical \u2018priorities\u2019 like monitoring gaps in tree canopy coverage and road equity and funding the Post Office\u2019s purchase of electric delivery vehicles.\n\n\u201cThen there are the multiple slush funds for Green New Deal projects.\n\n\u201cAnd the tax credit for the purchase of a new electric car or truck.\n\n\u201cOf course, you\u2019ll only be able to use the credit if you can afford to spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $60,000 \u2013 the average price for a new electric vehicle \u2013 while we\u2019re in a recession.\n\n\u201cSo it would almost undoubtedly be mostly Americans with higher salaries \u2013 up to $300,000 per household \u2013 who would be able to make use of this credit.\n\n\u201cBut I guess Democrats think electric vehicle tax credits for wealthier Americans are a good use of taxpayer dollars.\n\n\u201cWhat else, Mr. President?\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve mentioned the bill\u2019s tax hikes.\n\n\u201cBut Democrats\u2019 bill also attempts to raise revenue by increasing IRS audits and enforcement.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s right.\n\n\u201cDemocrats\u2019 bill would more than double the current number of IRS employees, making the agency nearly three times larger than U.S. Customs and Border Protection \u2013 the agency charged with security at all of our nation\u2019s borders \u2013 and more than 50 percent larger than the entire U.S. Department of Agriculture.\n\n\u201cDemocrats give the IRS a whopping $80 billion in additional funding over 10 years.\n\n\u201cOf that $80 billion, 57 percent goes to enforcement and 4 percent goes to taxpayer services.\n\n\u201cFour percent.\n\n\u201cMr. President, this is an agency that only succeeded in answering about one out of every 50 taxpayer phone calls during the 2021 tax season.\n\n\u201cAnd yet Democrats are focused not on improving the IRS\u2019 responsiveness to taxpayers, but on boosting the number of IRS audits.\n\n\u201cMr. President, I still haven\u2019t mentioned the bill\u2019s socialist-style price controls for prescription drugs \u2013 price controls that would result in fewer new drugs and treatments.\n\n\u201cA study from last November found that Democrats\u2019 price-control plans would result in 135 fewer new drugs through 2039.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s a lot of potentially life-changing \u2013 and lifesaving \u2013 treatments to lose.\n\n\u201cThen of course there\u2019s Democrats\u2019 plan to expand Obamacare subsidies to higher-earning Americans \u2013 a move which would drive up the cost of health insurance.\n\n\u201cI could go on.\n\n\u201cMr. President, most Americans remember the lead-up to Democrats\u2019 American Rescue Plan spending spree last March.\n\n\u201cWe were promised that passing that bill would have big benefits for our economy and American families.\n\n\u201cWell, we know what actually happened.\n\n\u201cDemocrats\u2019 reckless spending spree helped trigger the worst inflation in four decades.\n\n\u201cAnd American families have suffered as a result.\n\n\u201cNow we\u2019re being asked to swallow a similar story about Democrats\u2019 latest spending legislation.\n\n\u201cThis bill will help our economy, we\u2019re told \u2013 even though we know it would make life harder for American businesses and workers at a time when our economy is already contracting.\n\n\u201cIt will help inflation, Democrats claim \u2026 even though a nonpartisan analysis says it would do nothing to help alleviate our current crisis.\n\n\u201cIt will reduce our deficit, Democrats say \u2013 relying on some very shady accounting measures to reach their supposed deficit reduction number.\n\n\u201cIt will help lower energy prices, the president claims \u2026 even though new energy taxes would further inflate near-term energy bills during a season of historic prices.\n\n\u201cMr. President, you would think Democrats might have been chastened by their disastrous American Rescue Plan spending spree.\n\n\u201cBut you\u2019d be wrong.\n\n\u201cApparently Democrats are determined to get in another disastrous spending bill.\n\n\u201cAnd once again the American people will be left to suffer the consequences.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T18:26:22Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=F82CEB98-AF2F-46B2-A8B4-701A8C9C700F"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.4359471388161182, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}