The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“WORKING ACROSS PARTY LINES” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Labor was published in the Senate section on pages S6443-S6444 on Nov. 17, 2016.
The Department provides billions in unemployment insurance, which peaked around 2011 though spending had declined before the pandemic. Downsizing the Federal Government, a project aimed at lowering taxes and boosting federal efficiency, claimed the Department funds "ineffective and duplicative services" and overregulates the workplace.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
WORKING ACROSS PARTY LINES
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, one of the hallmarks of President-
Elect Trump's campaign was his desire, often stated, to clean up Washington, to lift the dark hand of special interests off of the levers of government and, as he said it in his speeches, to drain the swamp here. I would like to assure the President-elect that on this side of the aisle we are very keen to work with him on a whole variety of reforms to control the role of big special interests, their lobbying apparatus, and their political machinery here in Washington.
I very much hope that President-Elect Trump will indeed choose to work with us. I hope he will bear in mind that although he won the electoral college, it appears now clear that Secretary Clinton actually won the popular vote and that she may have won the popular vote by as many as a million votes.
It is also worth noting that if 2012 is any prologue to 2016, it is likely that Democratic Members of Congress--of the House of Representatives--received more votes than Republican Members of Congress. The shift and the reason for Republican control of the House of Representatives has been the gerrymandering effort that has packed Democrats into very heavily saturated Democratic districts so that Republicans can create strong--but not massive--majority districts for themselves. I believe in the last Presidential election, States such as Pennsylvania and Ohio reelected Democratic Senators statewide, elected a Democratic President statewide, but then sent heavily Republican delegations to the House of Representatives because of that gerrymandering.
It may be a fluke of the way the California vote would have shaken out, but it would not surprise me if it turned out in this election that Democratic Senators and candidates for the Senate received a bigger popular vote than Republican Senators and candidates for the Senate. Those numbers are not in yet.
My point is that I hope President-Elect Trump will recognize that in a divided Nation, it makes more sense and it will bind us together better if we try to work together across party lines rather than try to ramrod a hard-right partisan agenda through. There is no place I can think of--perhaps infrastructure, but few places where we are more willing to hear his ideas and work with him than on draining the swamp.
The environment here in Washington is obviously one that lends itself to very substantial political manipulation. In all of that political manipulation, most of the cards are with the big special interests. Indeed, corporate lobbying of Congress has been reviewed and measured as being more than all other lobbying of Congress combined by a ratio of 30 to 1. So if we are wondering where the power structure comes down here in this building, think about a 30-to-1 advantage for corporate lobbying over all other lobbying combined.
There are issues where I think we can work together if, in fact, President-Elect Trump wishes to drain the swamp. There are substantive issues. One of the things I have been concerned about has been the carried interest loophole, which is a quirk of the Tax Code that allows people who are hedge fund billionaires to pay a lower tax rate than a brick mason or a truckdriver does. That, to me, is not fair.
We have seen some reflections of this in studies that looked at, for instance, an enormous building in Manhattan in New York City. The building is so big that it has its own ZIP Code, and because the Internal Revenue Service calculates tax payments and income by ZIP Code, we can get a general sense of how much money the individuals in that building make and how much they pay in taxes. What we see when we look at that study is that the average income of the inhabitants of that building is well over $1 million, but the tax rate they paid was actually in the low teens in terms of a percentage tax rate. And if you look at what the Department of Labor says about security workers and janitorial workers, we see that they pay more like a 20- to 30-percent tax rate in New York City. So what that leaves us with is a circumstance in which the hedge fund mogul coming back to his luxury apartment building in his limousine, as he steps out into the rain, is paying a lower tax rate than the doorman or the security official or the janitor working in that building. The doorman holding the umbrella over the head of the billionaire is probably paying a higher tax rate than the billionaire.
I can see why Donald Trump raised that issue on the campaign, and I can see why crowds responded to that. It is a disgrace in the Tax Code. We would love to work with him, but then we look at who his transition team is. The chiefs of his transition team are a whole slew of hedge fund and Wall Street billionaires--the people getting out of the limo paying the low tax rates. When it comes time for Donald Trump to keep his promise on carried interest, it will be interesting to see if he can hold his own against the insiders around him who want to preserve this disgraceful tax loophole.
We want to work with him on infrastructure. We think there should be a big infrastructure bill. The civil engineers of this country give our infrastructure a D. Everybody who drives on our roads or crosses our bridges knows we need to invest in infrastructure, but the Koch brothers have already thrown down a gauntlet saying they will challenge the President-elect on that infrastructure plan. Will he have the strength to proceed, or will the insider lobbying political operation of the Koch brothers block him? It is another contest that remains to be seen between insider politics and the President-elect.
Finally, the biggest swamp thing of them all is the fossil fuel industry. The fossil fuel industry has more or less taken over the Republican Party in Congress. What remains of the Republican Party in Congress is a little bit like what remains of that unfortunate farmer in ``Men in Black'' whose body was occupied by the alien, who then walked around in the skin and the overalls of the unfortunate farmer. The fossil fuel industry is a special interest. It is the biggest swamp thing in the swamp. Will the President-elect be willing to take it on in any respect? That, too, remains to be seen.
There are a lot of very powerful creatures in the swamp. It is one thing to say you are going to drain it; it is another thing to actually take them on.
I am here to assure the President-elect that not just I but many Democrats would like to work with him toward responsible climate policies, notwithstanding the nefarious presence of the fossil fuel industry; toward an infrastructure bill, notwithstanding the ideological position of the Koch brothers; and on carried interest, notwithstanding the infiltration already of his transition team by Wall Street special interests.
With that, I yield the floor to my outstanding colleague from Massachusetts.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
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