Ben Sasse: “I know that Senator Grassley is going to join us momentarily, so I will cut in line until he arrives. But I would like…”

“I know that Senator Grassley is going to join us momentarily, so I will cut in line until he arrives. But I would like to thank Senator Crapo for his leadership in organizing this. It is a little odd to be doing this on the Senate floor when we should be having markups and hearings in the Senate Finance Committee, but the Senate Finance Committee has not been considering any of this proposed legislation despite the fact that we are dealing with New Deal-size and -level legislation. Yet the Finance Committee is not considering it, so I thank Ranking Member Crapo for bringing us to the floor. I want to talk about some of these taxing and spending issues, but I want to make it clear that I am not here to talk about this because I am obsessed about the marginal tax rates for the top 1 percent of Americans. I am not. It is not why I ran for office. But I am here today to talk about this because, as a China hawk, I am obsessed with the fact that the American people, the American Government, American technology companies and lots of companies that aren't today thought of as technology companies but will increasingly be technology companies operating in different verticals--I am obsessed with the fact that our firms and our people are going to need to be able to compete with the Chinese Communist Party.…”