Congressional Record, Volume 167 Issue 164 (Wednesday, September 22, 2021)

[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.

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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.