[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 100 (Wednesday, June 9, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4013-S4015]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Biden Administration

  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, we have a tendency in this Chamber to 
talk about hindsight being 20/20, and I think that this is what we will 
be doing in 10 or 20 years when we look back on the Biden 
administration. I really expect that we will highlight all of the big 
talk here in DC that has led to some really bad ideas the White House 
has tried to legitimize through legislation and budget requests.
  If you remember, even before the 2020 election, Biden's big talk on 
amnesty welcomed the hundreds of thousands of migrants who are 
currently flooding the southern border. He said: We expect to see these 
migrants at the border.
  So, yes, they heard him say, ``Y'all come,'' and they are coming.
  His big talk on Green New Deal programs got us the boondoggle of an 
infrastructure package that all but ignores roads, bridges, and 
broadband. The people in Memphis, TN, have not appreciated some of this 
talk of other items as infrastructure. They want bridge repairs 
immediately. Then, just before Memorial Day, we got some more big talk 
in the form of his $6 trillion budget request that reads like an 
instruction manual on how to make our country less secure, less free, 
and less competitive.
  Back home in Tennessee, people looked at this thing, and they didn't 
believe what they were seeing. At church last Sunday, I had some 
friends ask me if the budget proposal was supposed to be a joke or if 
this were serious because, when they look around, they see real need. 
They see communities without broadband, small businesses that are 
struggling to get back on their feet, and crumbling roads and bridges.
  Yet what did the administration choose to do with their first budget? 
They turned away from those needs. They decided to throw billions of 
dollars at the environmental lobby to make it happy. They put in money 
to

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abortionists and to an already bloated Federal bureaucracy.
  Tennesseans are looking at their own budgets and thinking about all 
of the ways they have had to make tough choices over the past year, and 
they are wondering why the Biden administration cannot seem to bring 
itself to show some fiscal restraint. Why is it that they just say: 
Crank up the printing press. Let's print more dollars. Let's put more 
money in the system. Let's give everybody a check--and no worries about 
who is going to pay the bill?
  They are used to seeing the Democrats act in a very cavalier manner 
about spending, and they are very much concerned about what they see 
happening in Washington, DC. They know, without a doubt, that this is 
really going to cost them and that it is going to cost their children 
and their grandchildren, and as someone said this weekend, it is the 
great-grandchildren who will bear the brunt of the Biden extravaganza. 
They know better than to nod along with the administration's promises 
that only the rich and the megacorporations will be responsible for 
offsetting this massive spending program
  I will tell you that they know how this works. They have seen it 
before. They know that there are higher taxes at the top and that 
higher taxes at the top of this wish list and on the top earners will 
mean less investment in their communities, which will lead to stagnant 
economic development, which will land them in the exact same place that 
they were during the Obama-Biden years, except there will be the added 
expenses of having to comply with future mandates the administration is 
going to pile on them.
  They know, when you take from the people who create the jobs and make 
the investments and provide the goods that drive our economy, that you 
are taking from the middle class, that you are taking from small 
businesses on every Main Street in this country. You are making opening 
that business too expensive to afford because you have taken those tax 
dollars and you are using those dollars to grow union membership, to 
show favoritism, and to pick winners and losers Washington, DC, style.
  That is exactly how you destroy that competitiveness that makes 
companies want to do business here and to emigrate here, and that makes 
other countries a little nervous to stand toe to toe with us on the 
international stage. This international element is important, and I 
fear the Biden administration has lost that perspective.
  If you look at the budget items related to immigration, it is clear 
that the White House still thinks they can make it out of this border 
crisis without having to admit that their policies have, indeed, caused 
this crisis at our Nation's southern border. Yes, indeed, this is the 
Biden border crisis. Instead of securing the border by investing in the 
technology, infrastructure, and manpower our Border Patrol agents have 
repeatedly asked for, the administration wants to focus on sending 
foreign aid to the Northern Triangle, foreign aid without 
accountability. This is a noble effort, but it will do nothing to 
mitigate the disaster on the border that has since bled into the 
communities that are now playing host to busloads of unaccompanied 
migrant children, like we see in Chattanooga.
  At least they decided to invest in a few more immigration judges. Yet 
what we see them doing through this is making every town a border town 
and every State a border State. They are transferring the costs to our 
States and to our local communities--the costs for education, for 
healthcare, for children's services, for social services, for housing. 
The Federal Government doesn't want to admit they are incurring that 
cost.
  So what are they doing? At taxpayer expense, they are putting these 
over a half-a-million illegal entrants onto airplanes, onto buses, and 
they are sending them to communities around this country. That is what 
they are doing, and that is what millions of Americans, including 
thousands of Tennesseans, are pushing back on.
  I have to tell you, I had a telephone townhall last night. It was 
with some of the counties that are around Chattanooga, TN, in that 
area, and COVID-19 and the immigration policies of the Biden 
administration were the top questions that came up.
  I will tell you that things don't look any better on the national 
security front. If you account for inflation, you find out that the 
topline request for the Department of Defense represents a $7 billion 
decrease compared to fiscal year 2021 funding levels. That is right, a 
$7 billion decrease for defense. Maybe they forgot that what we are 
responsible for, first and foremost, is providing for the common 
defense.
  Talk about misplaced priorities. The Biden administration picked the 
absolute worst time to undercut the military and employ President 
Obama's demand to do more with less. We know from experience that it 
takes between 3 and 5 percent in annual growth to keep our military and 
national security programs competitive, and this budget doesn't even 
come close to hitting that mark. For reference, China increased their 
defense budget by 6.8 percent this year--oh, and who is our main 
competitor when it comes to great power competition? You are right. The 
answer is China, absolutely.
  Biden's budget, on the other hand, asks for $112 billion in R&D 
spending, but it cuts procurement spending. Imagine that. This means, 
as of right now, the administration has no plan to put that R&D to good 
use. Keep doing the research and development, but by the way, we are 
not planning to purchase. Think about that. Think about the message 
that sends to our allies and the message it is sending to our 
adversaries.
  They paid lip service to supporting our nuclear programs, but earlier 
this month, the Secretary of the Navy sent a strategic memo ordering 
the service to defund the development of the nuclear sea-launched 
cruise missiles that are essential for deterring China in regional 
waters. That is right. The Secretary of the Navy sent a strategic memo 
ordering the Navy to defund the development of the missiles that are 
essential for deterring China in regional waters.
  The kicker? All of this is to be done before the Nuclear Posture 
Review is even completed. So don't wait for the report. We need an 
outcome, and the outcome is, Let's make ourselves less competitive.
  This is astounding. Instead of following the directives that have 
clearly been laid out by last year's NDAA and investing in a combat-
credible force, the budget guts and confuses the mission driving the 
Pacific Deterrence Initiative, and this has had bipartisan support. 
Keep in mind that this is the best set of tools we have against Chinese 
aggression in the Indo-Pacific region, and the Biden administration has 
decided to use it like some sort of slush account for projects that, in 
a normal year, would be funded under other categories.
  They are going for an outcome. The outcome is not ``America first'' 
or an America able to defend. Their budget is cutting defense. Their 
budget is cutting these cruise missiles. It makes no sense.
  And I can assure you, as we begin the NDAA negotiations, that this is 
something that will deserve and will get a full review.
  I have said it before and I will say it again: The American people 
understand that elections do have consequences. They knew that some 
priorities would change with President Biden. Even my friends back home 
who voted for President Biden will tell me they liked what they heard 
on the campaign trail from him. But they will also tell you they did 
not vote for this.
  They did not vote for what is happening, for the Executive orders 
that are coming out of this administration, for the ridiculousness that 
they see in this budget. They did not vote for tax plans that will 
stand in the way of local investment with small businesses. They did 
not vote to make things more expensive and scarce at the grocery store. 
They did not vote to fund a bloated and power-hungry Federal 
bureaucracy. They didn't vote to leave our border in shambles, to wreck 
our Nation's sovereignty.
  They certainly didn't vote for a defense strategy that will allow the 
Chinese Communist Party to expand their influence into underdeveloped 
countries and threaten our allies in the Indo-Pacific. No, they did not 
vote for that.
  Our National Guard men and women, our men and women who every day are 
in service there at Fort Campbell--God

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bless them. And we worry about the lack of attention to defense.
  I would remind my Democratic colleagues that any action they take on 
this budget proposal won't exist in a vacuum, and I ask them to 
reconsider their justification for asking the American people, who just 
survived a global pandemic and a near total economic collapse--I think 
they should reconsider their justification for asking them to bankroll 
an activist-driven, radical, fantasy budget that nobody really asked 
for.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Duckworth). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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