senator crapo: mr. hennessey? >> many provisions are sound. one additional would be to uniformly classify and define products across states, not just within states. senator crapo: mr. johnson, i am looking at the map on your website of which states are member states. my stay, idaho, is an advisory state, but why are those states that are not members assistant to joining -- not members resistant to joining? >> i can't speak for all the states that are not participating. i can't tell you that we have reached out to states encourage them to join the organization. there is great benefits by having allstate involved in it. some things mr. hennessey mentioned as far as simplification and uniform definitions, that is something we have and we continue to work with business community on uniform definitions when the community -- when the business community brings it to us. that is an important piece, getting input of the business community and realizing what is causing those burdens per the central registration system, we have that. in miss wei's situati

mr. crapo: thank you, madam president. i'd like to start my remarks by going back to near the very beginning of this congress when we were debating what was called the american rescue plan. we were told then by our colleagues on the other side that this was going to save the country. $1.9 trillion of debt-financed spending, they said, was going to fix everybody's concerns in the united states. where are we today? 9.1% consumer price inflation, which we told them was coming. gas prices doubling. economic stagnation, gdp contracted by .9% in the second quarter, we're arguing over semantics over what is a recession. 65% of the people in this country think we're already in a recession and more than 80% of the country think our economy is on the wrong track. the penn wharton budget model has made a comment about what we're looking at today. what are we being told today? another rescue plan. only this time they call it the inflation reduction act. the penn wharton budget model says this bill will if anything raise inflation in t

mr. crapo: reserving the right to object. i appreciate my colleagues' commitment to this issue and to your constituents. as you know, this legislation has been before us for some time now, and there is controversy over it. this bill would retroactively reinstate pension benefits for a small subset of participants whose pensions have already been transferred to the pension benefit guaranty corporation, or pbgc. that would create a precedent other plans would follow. the pbgc exists specifically to cover pension benefits if a plan is terminated, so we should let the system work. this system does not require taxpayer dollars for a bailout or for whatever one would like to call it. that's part of the reason for the objection. we also have an obligation to be delivered in how we spend taxpayer. before we inject more money into the system, we should explore the implications of this bill, which brings me to my final point. the finance committee has not held a hearing, not a single hearing, let alone a markup, on this bill. the finan

cosponsorship on this and certainly senator wyden and senator crapo we have support from both branches of government. but i want to acknowledge the work mr. roberts in his organization has done with regards to developing the legislation. we developed it as a needed to deal with affordable housing. covid-19 has underscored this even greater. inflation has made it even more urgent in this regard and we are talking about the appraisal gap but the cost of building and renovating exceeds the value and therefore cannot be done under the regular commercial circumstances. this leads to the decline of neighborhoods as well as making the wealth gap in america. so, can you just elaborate as to how the current markets which is anything but a predictable and investors willingness to go into communities and how the neighborhood home investment act would help us to deal with that. >> thank you so much for your leadership on this, senator. neighborhood homes provide states with van allocated amount of tax credits. they would set their own strategies and priorities and run a competition among applicants to deploy those credits. once an applicant wins an

the clerk: the senator from idaho, mr. crapo, proposes an amendment numbered 5404 to amendment 5194. mr. crapo: my amendment will guard against squeezing middle-class taxpayers. super sized irs funding will squeeze billions from the middle-class workers and small businesses through ramped-up audits. my colleagues on the other side, the president all say that that is not intended by the bill, and in fact the bill itself says that's not intended. but this is not enforceable language and everyone knows that the targeted money in the bill cannot be achieved unless the middle class, people with incomes under $400,000, are hit with a wave of new audits. we also know that the congressional budget office will score that, showing that there is no way to accomplish the objectives of this bill unless you stop -- unless you audit the middle class. my bill puts in some teeth behind what is admitted bid everyone to be the intention of the legislation, to say that none of the new irs funding may be used to audit those earning below $400,000. i

crapo. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection, so ordered. there's two minutes of debate equally divided. a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the junior senator from vermont. mr. sanders: the american people are sick and tired of being ripped off by the greed of the pharmaceutical industry which makes tens of billions of dollars a year in profit charging us by far the highest prices in the world for our medicines. this bill as currently written allows medicare to negotiate prices with the drug companies but not until four years from now and then for only ten drugs a tiny fraction of the toll. that is a very weak proposal and not what the american people want. they want us to lower prescription drug costs now, not in four years, and they want all drugs covered. the v.a. has been negotiating drug prices for 30 years and pays half, half as much as medicare pays. my amendment is simple. it says that medicare should not pay any more than the v.a. for prescription drugs. if we do that, we will cut the cost of medicare prescription drugs in half and save $900 billion. please support this amendment. mr. graham: madam president. the presiding officer: the senior senat