Cruz Statement on Voting Against Schumer-Manchin Tax-and-Spend Bill

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) made the following statement after voting against the Democrats’ so-called “Inflation Reduction Act,” a massive and radical spending bill crafted by Senators Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.):

“The Schumer-Manchin bill will drive up inflation and prices, hammer small businesses and American manufacturing, increase the price of gas, and sic the IRS on Americans, all while raising taxes on Americans in nearly every tax bracket including those who make less than $400,000 a year. 

“This bill is just Biden’s Build Back Broke by another name. It’s a gift to radical environmentalists and to rich, liberal elites. It uses taxpayer dollars to subsidize electric vehicles while imposing even more new taxes to raise the price of gas in the middle of out-of-control inflation and a recession.

“According to expert analysis, it will supercharge the IRS with 87,000 new IRS agents to target Americans with 1.2 million new audits, more than half of which would be for people making less than $75,000 a year.

“This bill is a give-away to the Democrats’ radical leftist base at the expense of middle-class Americans. It’s a betrayal of President Biden’s promise to not raise taxes on the middle class. Make no mistake – this bill will hurt America and hardworking Americans at a time when we can least afford it.”

Sen. Cruz received votes on the following amendments and motions, but Senate Democrats blocked them:

• Amendment to strike the $80 billion dollar slush fund to prevent the hiring of 87,000 new IRS agents. This amendment would remove funding for a new army of IRS agents who will surveil innocent Americans and small businesses with 1.2 million additional audits, half of which will target Americans making less than $75,000 a year.
• Amendment to block Strategic Petroleum Reserve sales to China. This amendment would block the United States from selling our emergency crude oil stockpile to China, following news that President Biden had sold at least two million barrels of American crude oil from our strategic stockpile to the Chinese Communist Party’s state-owned oil and gas company Sinopec.
• Motion to commit to Judiciary Committee to block inappropriate targeting of parents by the FBI. This motion would require the Senate Judiciary Committee to change the bill to make sure that the Department of Justice and the FBI do not use their resources to inappropriately target parents or classify them as “domestic terrorists” based on the parents’ advocacy at school board meetings, as long as their actions are legal. This amendment comes after the Attorney General called on the FBI to target parents for investigation because they dared to speak out against unreported sexual assaults in schools, the harm caused by COVID-19 school closures, vaccine mandates and the teaching of Critical Race Theory.
• Motion to commit to Homeland Security Committee to block funding for DC COVID-19 vaccine mandate for students 12-15 years old. This motion would protect students in Washington, D.C. public schools from the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate that blocks unvaccinated schoolkids 12-to-15-years-of-age, primarily minorities, from attending school in-person, which will have a further detrimental impact on students.

Sen. Cruz filed the following amendments and motions for consideration by the Senate:

• Amendment to prohibit electric vehicle parts from being made in China. This amendment would remove language in the bill that subsidizes electric vehicles that have batteries made by Chinese slave labor through December 31, 2024.
• Amendment to protect American manufacturers and their employees from Democrat tax hikes. This amendment would exempt American manufacturing from the corporate minimum tax and would prevent Democrat tax hikes on American manufacturing that would hurt working families in the form of higher prices, fewer jobs, and lower wages.
• Amendment to uphold the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia v. EPA. This amendment would strike provisions that funded expensive new greenhouse gas regulations for the EPA without explicit authority from Congress. It prevents the bill from eroding the effect of the Supreme Court’s recent landmark decision in West Virginia v. EPA, which limited big government overreach by the EPA.
• Amendment to protect Americans from increased energy and gas costs. This amendment would strike this legislation’s new tax on oil and gas. This new tax is a tax on millions of Americans making less than $400,000 a year, and makes no sense given America’s ongoing inflation, recession, and energy price crises.
• Motion to commit bill to Finance Committee to find and remove provisions that raise taxes on individuals making $400,000 a year or less. This motion to commit would send the legislation to the Senate Finance Committee to evaluate and reform it in order to ensure that no part of the bill raises taxes on Americans who make $400,000 a year or less.
• Motion to commit to Judiciary Committee to block the DOJ from using third-party settlement agreements to fund political allies. This motion would block the Department of Justice from forcing defendants to pay fines to organizations or groups not involved in the case – groups that are typically friends and allies of the Democrats. This practice was banned under the previous administration, but Democrats now seek to revive it. This would keep the DOJ from indirectly funding political, activist organizations or causes.
• Amendment to block illegal immigrants from receiving an electric vehicle tax credit. This amendment would require an individual to have a Social Security number in order to qualify for a clean vehicle credit to purchase an electric vehicle. It would ensure only citizens or nationals of the U.S. could use the tax credit.
• Motion to commit to Finance Committee to keep the IRS from politicizing religious belief and targeting an organization’s tax exemption application due to religious belief. This motion would require the Senate Finance Committee to keep the IRS from classifying religious beliefs as political beliefs and inappropriately screening applicants for tax-exempt status based on religious belief. It would also require the IRS to review and fix any instances of political bias in its nonprofit status determination process.
• Motion to commit bill to Finance Committee to protect taxpayers’ retirement and personal savings by indexing capital gains to inflation and ensuring that if inflation has not been reduced to 1.4 percent, the level at which it was when Biden took office, within one year all tax provisions will be suspended.
• Motion to help America’s students recover from Democrat school closures and COVID-19 pandemic learning loss. This motion would allow eligible taxpayers to treat the costs of remediation of COVID-19 learning loss as qualifying educational expenses and allow a tax credit of up to $500 per qualifying child to pay for materials and services to remediate COVID-19 learning loss in elementary and secondary school children.
• Motion to protect America’s children and to make our schools and communities safer. To ensure the safety of students in elementary and secondary schools, this motion would allow Federal funding to be used to physically secure elementary and secondary school campuses.

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