[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 182 (Monday, October 18, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Page S7024]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Afghanistan

  Madam President, as I have said before, we have seen this playbook 
again and again. Following an objectively chaotic exit from Afghanistan 
because of the President's arbitrary decision date, President Biden 
called the mission an extraordinary success. Well, we know that is not 
true. We can see that with our own eyes. We know that 13 brave 
servicemembers lost their lives in a terrorist attack, including a 
young marine named David Espinoza, whose funeral my wife and I attended 
in Laredo, TX.
  Countless Americans and Afghan allies were left behind. We heard from 
the State Department today that they can't even tell us how many 
Afghans, who qualify for the special immigrant visa, remain in 
Afghanistan, and we know now, with the Taliban in control, that they 
are hunting down people who worked with the United States during the 
last 20 years in order to prevent another terrorist attack like we 
experienced on 9/11/2001. And, no, the new Taliban is not better or a 
kinder, gentler version of the old Taliban.
  So in no way could this be considered a success, let alone an 
extraordinary one.
  And then there is the border. Ever since President Biden became 
President, his administration has either ignored, downplayed, or denied 
the humanitarian crisis at our border. For months, the administration 
wouldn't even talk about it; and when it did, there were very peculiar 
rules that applied, apparently, to how it should be discussed.
  The administration refused to use the term ``crisis'' and came up 
with a range of euphemisms to downplay what was actually happening. 
They called it a challenge, a situation, a mess--all to, apparently, 
deceive the American people into thinking that what you are seeing with 
your own eyes is not really a problem.
  The Secretary of Homeland Security took this deception to a whole new 
level recently. When testifying before a House committee last week, 
Secretary Mayorkas said the border is ``no less secure than it was 
previously.''
  That is demonstrably false. The data tells a very clearly different 
story.
  In the first 7 months of the Biden administration, more than 1.2 
million migrants have crossed our southern border. That is an 
astronomical number, 1.2 million. To provide some context, in 7 months, 
Customs and Border Protection encountered 2\1/2\ times as many people 
as they did in all of fiscal year 2020.
  So it is not getting any better if the Secretary of Homeland 
Security, whose responsibility it is to secure the border, says things 
are no worse off than they used to be. At the same time, he tells us 
that the numbers are unrivalled in the last 20 years. Both can't be 
true.
  So whatever you want to call this--lying, misleading, or 
gaslighting--we have all had to learn a little bit of a new vocabulary. 
``Gaslighting'' basically means creating your own alternative reality 
and trying to sell that as true.
  None of this changes the fact that the Biden administration has 
consistently tried to deceive the American people about each of these 
matters. And the list actually goes on and on. The President and his 
administration won't even admit there is a humanitarian crisis along 
our southern border, let alone take the pretty obvious and necessary 
steps to address it.
  Senator Sinema from Arizona, a Democrat, and I, a Republican from 
Texas, working with Henry Cuellar, a Democrat from Laredo, and Tony 
Gonzales, a Republican who represents the largest border district in 
the country, we presented the bipartisan border security plan, but the 
administration just looks the other way.
  They won't acknowledge their massive failures in Afghanistan either, 
which resulted in the death of 13 servicemembers and left our allies, 
our friends, and their families in a lurch.
  And they refuse to admit that their reckless tax-and-spending-spree 
bill is designed to fundamentally transform America and will drive up 
taxes not just for the wealthy, but for the middle class, and hurt our 
already wobbly postpandemic economy.
  This is not what leadership should look like. The American people 
deserve better than getting scammed by their own President, no less.
  If the administration put half as much energy in trying to solve 
problems as it does in trying to disassemble them or to cover them up, 
our Nation would be far better off.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.