As the Leader has just said, I come to the floor for the same purpose – to talk about my vote in favor of Mr. Bessent to be Secretary of Treasury.
This cabinet position is one of the most important positions in any administration.
The [Treasury] Secretary is the tip of the spear for a President’s domestic economic agenda.
Moreover, the [Treasury] Secretary is a very key player in international affairs, with responsibilities covering international trade, global finance and foreign sanctions – and that’s just to name a few.
Given the current challenges we face as a nation, the next Treasury Secretary will have a big, full load on their plate.
The U.S. is facing what former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers recently called the “biggest fiscal sustainability problem since the Civil War.”
At the same time, the expansionist ambitions of Russia in Europe and China, particularly China’s pursuit of economic hegemony, threaten the international economic order.
Having met with Mr. Bessent, I am confident he’s up to the task.
He has a depth of knowledge of economic history and, in fact, taught a class on the subject at Yale University.
That, and his decades long career in finance, make him uniquely qualified to be our next Secretary of Treasury.
He is acutely aware of the risks posed to our national economy by our $36 trillion national debt.
He understands that digging ourselves out of our fiscal hole will require spending restraint and, coupled with that, great economic growth.
As he discussed in testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, avoiding the largest tax hike in the history of our country by extending the 2017 tax law is crucial to the health of the American economy.
And we all know in this body, the biggest tax increase in the history of the country can happen to the middle class even without a vote of Congress, because the 2017 tax bill sunsets at the end of this year.
Mr. Bessent also understands that international trade and access to foreign markets are vital to the economic success of the American farmer.
When I spoke with this nominee in my office, I was pleasantly surprised by his knowledge of agriculture, stemming from his ownership of farmland in North Dakota.
As with all nominees, I stressed to Mr. Bessent the importance of responding to congressional letters.
Congress has a constitutional duty to perform oversight of the executive branch.
I intend to hold him to his commitment to respond to all congressional inquiries in a timely and responsive manner.
I also told him that every nominee that comes before any committee is asked that same question: “Will you respond to our letters?”
I say, kind of tongue in cheek, but with some truth to it, that you ought to say ‘maybe,’ because I showed Pam Bondi – our nominee for Attorney General – when she was in my office a whole file of 158 letters in the last four years that I sent to the Department of Justice that remain unanswered, or not fully answered.
So, I hope we can get this Trump cabinet to keep their word, that they’re going to answer our letters.
They need to focus it from the standpoint of the Constitution.
You learn in eighth-grade civics that we not only pass laws here and appropriate money but, under checks-and-balances, we have the responsibility to make sure that the Executive Branch faithfully executes that law, or spends that money appropriately.
Checking up on that requires a lot of communication between us in the Congress and the Executive Branch, and that’s true whether there’s a Republican or Democrat president.
But, I hope this administration is committed to fully cooperating with Congress on our oversight responsibilities.
Now, there’s another item I always stress with Treasury nominees, and that’s the importance of the IRS Whistleblower program that I authored critical updates to in 2006.
To date, this program has brought in over $6 billion to the Treasury, thanks to whistleblowers who often risk their careers to blow the whistle on tax cheats.
This legislation is meant to make sure that the IRS has total information on who’s paying their taxes and who isn’t.
So, if you’re working with some corporation that’s not paying their taxes, and you report that successfully… to the IRS, [you] can get a share of the return.
So far, since 2006, $6 billion has come back to the federal Treasury as a result of that program.
However, in regard to that program, for much of the program’s history there has been an imbedded culture in Treasury and the IRS that has hampered the success of the program.
I look forward to working with Mr. Bessent to turn that culture around, so that the 2006 legislation would be much more productive in not having the federal government cheated out of taxes that people owe.
Based on my discussions with Mr. Bessent, there is no doubt in my mind that he is well qualified to be Treasury Secretary.
I urge all my colleagues to join me in voting in favor of his nomination later today.
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