[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 164 (Wednesday, September 22, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6603-S6607]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              The Economy

  Ms. ERNST. Mr. President, Democrats in Washington are playing a high-
stakes game with our Nation's finances. Congress just keeps passing 
bill after bill that adds trillions of dollars in spending to 
Washington's credit card.
  First, there was the $1.9 trillion ``Bidenomics'' stimulus bill that 
fanned the flames of inflation and paid people not to work. Then there 
was the $1.2 trillion so-called infrastructure bill that was supposed 
to be entirely paid for, but wasn't. And now the $3.5 trillion budget 
blueprint that paves the way for passing a wish list of progressive 
priorities, like the Green New Deal and other pricey partisan pet 
projects.
  You might think the reckless spending spree would have come to a stop 
after reaching the Nation's debt limit in July. Wrong.
  The Democrats are now plotting to suspend the debt limit in order to 
pass what would be the most expensive bill ever passed by Congress.
  This reckless borrowing and spending is driving up the prices of 
everyday goods as well as our national debt and, if Democrats have 
their way, the taxes of hard-working Americans, too. With the Federal 
fiscal year ending in mere days, another trillion-dollar spending bill 
will probably be rushed through at the last minute to avoid a 
government shutdown because Congress put off doing its work on time yet 
again.
  The Democrats have their hands full with multiple financial crises, 
all of their own making, and their solution to each of these is the 
same--to spend more money we don't have--which only confounds the 
underlying problems. More spending results in higher taxes, increased 
prices, and even more debt.
  The scenario reminds me of this popular meme of a guy playing UNO, in 
which the whole aim of the game is to rid your hand of all of your 
cards. I love this game. I played it as a little girl at my grandma's 
house. I played UNO with all of my cousins.
  OK. So, in the meme, he is seen holding a wildcard that presents him 
with a choice: Perform an action--in this version, to ``cut unnecessary 
spending''--or draw another 25 cards from the deck and, most certainly, 
lose the game.
  In the next frame, the man, who represents the Democrats here, is 
holding a handful of cards because he would rather do anything but what 
the card actually suggests.
  Unfortunately, the consequences of dealing with Washington's budget 
are much more dire than losing a game of UNO. Instead of drawing cards, 
the Democrats are selecting to borrow more to finance totally 
unnecessary and completely indefensible--and often bizarre--
expenditures rather than simply cutting waste out of the budget.
  Just like you can't win UNO without getting rid of the cards in your 
hand, we will never get control of our debt until we discard the waste 
in Washington's bloated budget. It may sound a bit oversimplified, but 
it isn't. To demonstrate the point, I brought my own deck of cards with 
me today.

[[Page S6604]]

  OK. So these are UNO cards, all right? Every one of these cards lists 
a current government expenditure and its cost to the taxpayers. Each 
represents a real choice Congress will make in the coming days. In each 
scenario, the Democrats are likely to choose taxing and borrowing to 
pay for the spending rather than to trim the unneeded expenditure. So 
let's pick a card, any card, and see if that is a good deal for the 
taxpayers.
  So let's see. UNO card No. 1: ``Cut the pork or draw 25.''
  After a decades-long moratorium on congressional earmarks, the House 
of Representatives has revived the corrupt practice of earmarking tax 
dollars for politicians' pet projects. More than 3,300 earmarks, 
consisting of $9.3 billion, have been proposed by Members of Congress 
just this year, which includes purchasing Santa gifts in Indiana and 
building fish markets in the Virgin Islands. We could save billions by 
pulling pork off the menu, but the Democrats are going to go with the 
drawing of 25 more cards instead.
  OK, let's try another one. OK.
  ``End welfare for politicians or draw 25.''
  Every year, millions of taxpayer dollars are diverted into a special 
account that exists solely to subsidize the campaigns of politicians 
running for President. The program has doled out more than $1.6 billion 
for parties and politicians to date, and there is currently $400 
million sitting in the account. We could save the $400 million by 
pulling the plug on this welfare program for politicians, but, once 
again, the Democrats will choose to draw 25 more cards.
  OK. The next card: ``Put the brakes on boondoggles or draw 25.''
  Washington continues to bail out transit boondoggles across the 
country that are billions of dollars over budget and decades behind 
schedule, like, of course, folks, the San Francisco Bay Area subway 
extension to Silicon Valley, California's high-speed rail project, and 
Honolulu's elevated rail line. The Democrats are proposing $10 billion 
more to support the high-speed rail projects alone. We could save tens 
of billions of dollars by canceling these gravy trains that are taking 
taxpayers for a ride, but you can probably guess what the Democrats' 
play will ultimately be: to draw 25.
  So, folks, let's lay the cards on the table. The Democrats' 
borrowing-based budgeting is a real house of cards because you simply 
can't borrow your way out of debt. The bills will eventually come due 
in the form of higher taxes and drastic cuts to government services, 
and it will be the taxpayers who get lost in the shuffle. Because the 
Democrats control both Chambers of Congress and the White House, it may 
seem that the deck is stacked against our taxpayers, but I have a card 
up my sleeve.
  Folks, let's put it in reverse and go in a different direction. 
Instead of just throwing in the cards and going along with the 
Democrats' demand to borrow another penny, let's first go through the 
budget, line by line, and determine what is a priority and what isn't.
  It is time to make Washington start living within a realistic budget, 
just like every other family in America is expected to do. That may be 
a wild idea to the big spenders in DC, but taxpayers know that is how 
to play your cards right. So, instead of picking up more debt, let's 
skip--let's skip--the spending that isn't needed until we are sure 
Washington isn't wasting a single dollar.
  UNO.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Rosen). The Senator from Florida.
  (The remarks of Mr. Scott of Florida pertaining to the introduction 
of S. 2809 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on 
Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. SCOTT of Florida. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, obviously, when you look at what needs to 
be done in the fall and, frankly, if you look at what needs to be done 
in the next few weeks, there are important items ahead of us.
  One of them that my colleague from Florida just did a good job 
talking about is setting the debt limit for how much Federal Government 
debt should the country be able to tolerate.
  One way to do this is to set a limit. Another way that some of my 
colleagues appear to really prefer is just to set a date and say we are 
going to postpone any limit until that date, and we will just see what 
happens. We will see how deep the debt gets between now and then. But 
we really don't want to talk about a limit, and when you look at what 
that limit is likely to be, you would understand why you wouldn't want 
to talk about that.
  We have really seen this coming for some time. It shouldn't be a 
crisis, except, frankly, our friends on the other side seem intent on 
making it a crisis and seeing if they can include all of us suddenly in 
a spending discussion that we haven't been in up until now. How much 
debt can we have? How much can we afford? But what we have seen this 
year is, how much money can one side spend without involving the other 
side in any way?
  We have never approached the debt limit in at least the last 25 
years, that I am aware of, in a way that didn't involve talking about 
spending. In fact, I would argue that there is no real reason to have 
the debt limit if it doesn't force a discussion on spending. Other 
countries don't have it; we have it.
  One reason I have always thought it actually served a purpose was it 
always generated a discussion on spending--not just a discussion on 
full faith and credit but how much money are we going to spend. In 
fact, when President Obama was President and the debt ceiling had to be 
extended, we had a discussion about what our spending caps were going 
to be. We had a decade, because of that, of spending caps. We didn't 
always stick with them, but to not stick with them, you had to change 
the law, so that forced another discussion. We have all heard for a 
decade about the caps deal, the spending caps deal. Well, that was a 
discussion that was had so there would be a bipartisan agreement on the 
debt limit.
  In June of 2019, we saw the debt limit coming again, and by that 
time, Speaker Pelosi, who was the Speaker of the House in charge of a 
majority in the House, said she wouldn't cooperate in doing anything on 
the debt limit unless the administration agreed to spend more money.
  So there you have a spending discussion, but you also have one body 
of the Congress where the leader of the entire majority is saying: We 
are not going to be part of the debt limit unless we have an agreement 
on spending, and we want to spend more. From that moment on, Secretary 
Mnuchin, the Secretary of the Treasury, was up here over and over 
again, negotiating with the Speaker of the House on just how much more 
it was going to take for her to be part of the debt limit.
  Now, here we are in almost October, 9 months through the year. 
Republicans really haven't been asked in any serious way up until now 
this year how to set parameters for government spending. We would like 
to spend less; the other side would like to spend more. But no 
Republicans--zero Republicans--have been involved in a plan to 
eliminate important parts of the 2017 tax bill that clearly were 
producing the kinds of economic results we had hoped for at the 
beginning of the pandemic.
  No Republicans were part of the plan to spend right at $2 trillion in 
the March COVID relief bill even though we really saw our economy 
already coming back.
  By the way--no surprise--when you spend $2 trillion, inflation is one 
of the things you are going to get when you put that much money into 
the economy on top of what we put in in 2020 in a bipartisan way to try 
to stabilize the economy.
  Well, the economy was clearly stabilized by the first of last year, 
and no Republican, again, let me say, was part of how to spend that $2 
trillion.
  No Republican has been part of the discussion of how to spend what 
our friends on the other side say would be a $3.5 trillion, reckless 
tax-and-spending amount. Others estimate that 3.5 really would be 5 
trillion. But, again, the point is not how big it would be; the point 
is, no Republican has been part of that.
  If you look at what is actually in that legislation as it comes out 
of the House, some of the things are pretty amazing. There is $3 
billion on a project called Tree Equity. Now, I don't think that is to 
make all the

[[Page S6605]]

trees the same size. I assume that is a project to be sure that 
everybody has their fair percentage of the trees, whatever that would 
mean and how you describe that.
  There is $200 million for the Presidio, the park in Speaker Pelosi's 
district--$200 million.
  They are talking about $8 billion in that bill for a new Civilian 
Climate Corps and $7 billion to buy electric vehicles for the Postal 
Service.
  Their plan comes to us with $105 million for ``entrepreneurial 
training'' for people who are currently or have just been incarcerated.
  There is even $5 million in that bill for electronic voting systems 
for union elections. I am not opposed to union elections and am not 
opposed to unions having them. It would seem to me that they have up 
until now figured out how to provide their own equipment for their own 
elections or rent it or lease it. It is certainly a new sort of 
government involvement in that activity.
  Frankly, the list goes on and on. At $3 trillion, you are likely to 
have a lot of ideas. Seems to me that a lot of the ideas are, you come 
up with a number, which is what it takes to eliminate the 2017 tax 
cuts, and then start talking about, how many new things do we need to 
do to support that number?
  Well, this shouldn't be an emergency. September is pretty late to 
reach out to the other side and not even now say ``Well, let's talk 
about our spending priorities,'' but say, ``Well, you need to help us 
with this because at some point, there is some money that had to be 
spent that was your responsibility too.''
  I guess we could have said that to Speaker Pelosi in 2019 when she 
said: Not going to do it unless we get more spending. And we wouldn't 
have had an agreement in the Obama years if we hadn't set a cap on 
spending.
  The truth is, this isn't Speaker Pelosi's money, and it is not 
Senator Schumer's money, and it is not my money. We are talking about 
the money that belongs to the American people. They need to have a say 
in this.
  In a 50-50 Senate, one side deciding ``We are going to make all the 
decisions about spending money'' means that one side is likely to wind 
up making all the decisions about how to reach the debt limit.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.
  Mr. MARSHALL. Madam President, with a Democratic President in the 
White House, Democrats controlling the House of Representatives, and 
Democrats controlling the Senate, those on the left have every arrow in 
the quiver they need to raise the debt limit. It is their sole 
responsibility. They own this. It is also their responsibility, having 
control of all the levers of government, to ensure that government does 
not shut down next Thursday at midnight.
  As you have already heard from my colleagues here today, we 
Republicans are united in the fact that we will not assist in passing 
another reckless, Big Government, socialism package designed to reshape 
the Nation and make Americans more dependent on the government from the 
moment they are born to the moment they die.
  FDR once warned of a government dependency when he said that 
``continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral 
disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole 
out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer 
of the human spirit.''
  As elected officials, we are supposed to be good stewards of taxpayer 
dollars. We are supposed to leave this country in better shape for our 
children and grandchildren. But the Democrats' tax-and-spending spree 
accomplishes neither of these things and, in fact, further promulgates 
the government dependency FDR cautioned future generations about.
  What is shocking is that in just one generation the national debt has 
soared from $5 trillion to more than $28 trillion. Think about that for 
a second. In the first 225 years of our Nation's history, the national 
debt was approximately $5 trillion. In the last 20 years, we have 
increased it by nearly another $25 trillion, including accumulating 
more than $7 trillion in just the past 2 years.

  Now, I said this before, but, folks, grab your wallets. Grab your 
wallets because the bill they want to pass for reconciliation is going 
to include massive spending that will put heavy debt on our country. It 
is going to raise your taxes. It is going to cause Medicare to run out 
in 2 years. And it is going to continue to drive up the cost of living.
  The inflation we are seeing now is a double whammy. You have less 
money to spend, and the things you are able to buy cost more. It is 
hurting every hard-working American, but none more than our seniors and 
young families living paycheck to paycheck.
  This looming government shutdown is just another crisis created by 
this administration. They created a crisis at our southern border, in 
Afghanistan, with a labor shortage, and now on the pocketbooks of 
Americans with a multitrillion-dollar socialist spending package.
  While it is true America has seen a number of horrendous financial 
crises before, none have so quickly developed as the pending fiscal 
crisis President Biden created with the trillions of dollars' worth of 
reckless spending and reckless taxing in just the first 9 months of 
control.
  And Democrats are now pointing fingers at Republicans, claiming that 
by refusing to go along with their out-of-control spending and joining 
them to increase the debt limit, that we are the ones who are being 
financially irresponsible.
  Give me a break. If they were serious about getting our fiscal house 
in order, they wouldn't be trying to force through another partisan 
spending bill that is going to bankrupt our country and instead would 
be pursuing budget reforms and debt reduction proposals in exchange for 
increasing the debt.
  This is not a serious political party, and America needs to recognize 
that we have a choice between free enterprise capitalism and a 
socialist economy. Trust me, I heard loud and clear this past weekend 
during my townhall meetings in the Kansas City area about what Kansans 
want, and it is not the socialism that has borne out trillions of 
dollars' worth of spending and taxing that has led to reckless 
inflation, hampered our economy, and killed our jobs.
  Ultimately, if you want strong roads, bridges, high-speed internet, 
good schools, and a strong military, we need a stronger economy. That 
should be our focus right now, not continuing down this 
administration's socialist economic policies.
  Pre-COVID, we had the greatest economy in my lifetime. That came 
about because we lowered people's taxes, we lowered regulations, and we 
lowered energy prices. We need smart, targeted investments, not radical 
spending that leaves the country at a disadvantage.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, since day one of this 
administration, President Biden has made it abundantly clear that he is 
not interested in the opinion of anyone who poses a threat to his so-
called transformative political agenda.
  During his first 3 days in office, he signed 30 Executive orders and 
actions that embraced radical environmental policies, destroyed 
thousands of jobs associated with the Keystone Pipeline, and 
transformed our southern border into a war zone.
  My colleagues on the other side of the aisle jumped on board with a 
reckless plan to borrow and spend their way into economic oblivion. 
They made it clear that despite having no mandate from the American 
people and no meaningful buy-in from Republicans, they are willing to 
do whatever it takes to transform this country into a wasteland defined 
by debt, dependency, and total government control.
  They are alone in this; and for the past 9 months, that is the way 
the Democrats have really wanted it to be, at least until recently, 
when it became, oh, yes, politically inconvenient.
  Lately, my Democratic colleagues have burned a lot of political 
capital, insisting that Republicans must come back to the table to help 
them raise the debt limit and avoid a doomsday scenario.
  That is right. They are the party of party-line votes, and they can't 
find it within themselves to finance the cost of their very own 
reckless spending plan.

[[Page S6606]]

  Why this sudden shift in sentiment?
  The answer is simple. It is because they know that what they are 
doing is indefensible. They don't want to own this. They don't want to 
have to explain to their children and their grandchildren who are now 
stuck with the tab.
  What are they going to say when their grandchild says: Why does the 
Federal Government take most of my money?
  Well, it is because of their spending.
  I don't blame them. If the Democrats have it their way, the national 
debt will hit more than $40 trillion by the end of the decade. That is 
correct, $40 trillion.
  The American people can already feel the effects of this inflationary 
spending every time they go to the grocery store and every time they go 
to the gas pump. It looks like that inflation is going to be with us 
until the end of the Biden Presidency.
  They have also noticed that our supply chains are running thin. As we 
speak, Democrats are negotiating the largest package of tax increases 
in decades. And contrary to the spin from the White House, those tax 
increases will hit small businesses and hard-working taxpayers.
  Now, let's be clear. This all happened according to plan. It is 
intentional. But here is the problem: My colleagues on the other side 
of the aisle are realizing that all those persuadable voters they won 
in 2020 are having buyer's remorse.
  They realize this is intentional by the Democrats. They may have 
voted for President Biden, but, as they tell me, they did not vote for 
this.
  The Democrats have made a mess and, I'll tell you what, they did it 
in record time. The only option that they have left is to find a friend 
to try to share the blame.
  I will play no part in facilitating this radical socialist agenda.
  I would say to my Democratic colleagues: You have known for a long 
time that this day was coming, and yet you were content to squander 
your power on a unilateral, multitrillion-dollar agenda for which you 
have no mandate and you can't pay for. Leader McConnell did not do this 
to you. Donald Trump did not do this to you. This is, indeed, an 
emergency of your own creation. Elections have consequences. As such, 
you control the entire government, and there is no one standing in your 
way. You chose to govern alone, and, fortunately, you have all the 
tools you need to do your duty and address the debt limit right by 
yourselves. The time for manipulation and spin is over.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.
  Mr. YOUNG. Madam President, when I served in the House of 
Representatives, I walked into a lot of meetings back in Indiana full 
of angry conservatives.
  Do you know what they were angry about?
  They were angry about the debt limit in 2011, 2013, 2014, and more.
  And in each of those meetings, I made the argument that raising the 
debt limit was a necessary thing to do, a responsible thing to do, a 
conservative thing to do. I still believe that.
  Defaulting on our Nation's debt will start a dangerous spiral of 
economic turmoil that will rebound to the disadvantage of the least 
among us. Interest rates would rise, the value of the dollar would 
fall, essential government workers might not get paid, and so on and so 
forth.
  Now, back in those days, as a Republican in the House majority, we 
never failed to raise the debt limit--not once. And we also never 
failed to have a say in the spending that necessitated raising the debt 
limit. In 2019, we again raised the debt limit, this time through July 
13 of this year.
  Now it is Democrats. It is my Democrat friends who control the 
majority in both Chambers of Congress. And with that control, the hard-
left has embarked on an unprecedented, reckless spending spree designed 
to remake America in their image in fairly short order--before year's 
end--$1.9 trillion in March; a $4.2 trillion budget authored by Senator 
Bernie Sanders; and now $3.5 trillion on a partisan, human 
infrastructure grab bag, the largest spending bill in American history.
  And so I say to my Democratic friends: You have decided to do all of 
that on your own, and now you want our help. It is unclear to me why 
you need it. You have done so much on your own. You have a number of 
options at your disposal to raise the debt limit all by yourself, just 
as you have gone it alone on this spending spree.
  A farmer back home, over the August recess, came up to me as I was 
traveling the highways and byways of the Hoosier State. And I would 
like to think that the people I represent are blessed with a whole lot 
of common sense, which, for whatever reason, oftentimes doesn't 
permeate this town. And the farmer told me that it seems like in this 
instance the butcher wants to build a new slaughterhouse, and he is 
asking the cows to co-sign on the construction loan.
  It is a pretty good metaphor for what the Democrats are asking of the 
Republican Members.
  If Democrats had treated Republicans as a governing partner in an 
equally divided U.S. Senate these past 9 months, I might feel 
differently about this debt limit vote. Instead, they have treated us 
as an annoyance, an obstacle--adverse to every common interest we might 
have.
  Now, I know we can count on my Democratic friends to ensure that 
America never defaults on its debt. I know we can count on every single 
Democratic U.S. Senator to vote to raise that debt ceiling, to own all 
of this spending they--and they alone--are responsible for.
  I sure hope we can count on them to vote on a specific dollar figure 
in conjunction with the reconciliation bill. I know there has been 
apprehension made public by the budget chairman over in the House of 
Representatives. I suspect that is shared by many of my colleagues. But 
show some courage. Do what Republicans have done. Do what I have done. 
Walk the plank. Own this spending that you are responsible for.
  I will let you know, a vote by Republicans to raise the debt limit at 
this point in time is a vote to co-sign the Democrats' partisan, 
irresponsible, and unprecedented spending spree, and we are going to 
have none of it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor to join my 
colleague from Indiana and to congratulate him on those remarks, which 
would be most certainly well received in Wyoming, and reflect the 
feeling of the people in my State in terms of the reckless tax-and-
spending process in which the Democrats are engaged.
  And I come today to the floor to oppose what the Democrats are trying 
to do in terms of adding money to the debt, additional spending, a bill 
that has been described in so many ways. I read it and, to me, it is 
reckless. It is extreme. It is scary to talk about the sort of things 
that the Democrats are trying to impose on the American people.
  When we take a look at what happens with this national debt, the 
folks on Medicare and on Social Security are concerned they are going 
to get undermined--those wonderful programs that work for so many 
people--because of the growing debt.
  How are we going to address it?
  Well, the suspension of the debt ceiling expired a month and a half 
ago. Less than 2 weeks later, Democrats passed a blueprint for the 
largest spending bill in the history of the United States, over $3.5 
trillion. People looked at it and saw how much it is, and they said: 
Democrats may say it is $3.5 trillion; it is a lot more than that. More 
than America spent in World War II to win the war? This is in addition 
to the $2 trillion already spent and added to the debt by this 
administration on a party-line vote earlier this year.

  So America's debt is now over $28 trillion. We are on our way to $30 
trillion. You divide that out by the number of men, women, and children 
in America, and it is approaching $100,000 per individual. It is going 
to have to be paid back ultimately to Wall Street, to Japan, to China, 
and to those that hold our debt.
  And the problem, when you look at a debt that large, and say, ``How 
do you put that into perspective,'' is how much interest are we paying 
on the loan? People that borrow money for a car or a home know how much 
interest they are paying on the loan, and for the United States, it is 
approaching

[[Page S6607]]

$400 billion in interest on the loan a year. And this is at record low 
interest rates.
  Well, where is that money coming from? You know, you get nothing in 
return for it. But Democrats seem to think we need to just keep 
spending money and borrowing money to pay for the reckless spending. 
They don't want voters to know about it. They don't want voters to know 
how much money. They are asking for an unlimited ability to spend until 
after the 2022 election.
  That is what is coming over from the House. They say: Don't ask us. 
We are not going to tell you. We are just going to keep on spending 
like there is no tomorrow, all the way through a date after the 2022 
election.
  They want to cover all of this spending by suspending what is called 
the debt ceiling so they can borrow as much as they want.
  Well, it is not going to happen. You can't have it both ways. If they 
try to spend trillions of dollars, they are going to be responsible for 
the consequences of that spending. Republicans are not going to give 
Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi a blank check, period. We are not going 
to give them a rubberstamp to their reckless spending. If Democrats 
want to raise the debt ceiling, they have the capacity to do it on 
their own, and they will need to do it on their own. Republicans are 
not going to participate.
  The Democrats have been in charge of Washington now for 8 full 
months. They have complete control--the House, the Senate, the White 
House. During all that time, they haven't raised a finger to lift the 
debt ceiling. Instead, they had the Secretary of the Treasury send a 
letter. She said the Treasury will run out of money in October. It is 
now September 22. The clock is ticking.
  Democrats chose not to raise the debt ceiling when they passed their 
$2 trillion addition to the debt earlier this year. They called it 
COVID relief, but actually 90 percent of the money actually went for 
medical care. They chose not to raise it as part of this over $3.5 
trillion or $4 trillion spending bill that is being proposed as a 
result of Bernie Sanders' socialist budget.
  And Democrats think that the American people can keep spending money 
in such a reckless way. They are playing chicken with our economy. They 
think they can fool the American people. It is not going to work. 
Republicans are not going to be held hostage by the Democrats, and the 
American people should not be either or be put on the hook.
  If Democrats have enough votes to spend trillions of taxpayer 
dollars, then they have enough votes to raise the debt limit. This is 
Democrat debt. It is Biden-Schumer-Pelosi debt. Senate Republicans will 
not vote to burden future generations or to undermine Social Security 
and Medicare today with this kind of reckless spending.
  We are not going to vote for the spending bill--not one of us--and 
not going to vote to raise the debt limit on Democrat terms. If they 
want to go it alone on spending, the Democrats can go it alone on 
raising the debt ceiling.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.