[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 184 (Wednesday, October 20, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7118-S7121]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Biden Administration

  Mrs. CAPITO. Madam President, I rise today to take a step back really 
and evaluate the real-life impacts of President Biden's policies. As 
every incoming administration does, promises were made to the American 
people. That is not surprising. But one of President Biden's first 
promises was to unite the American people. But as we have seen too 
often here, he has chosen a path that follows the lead of the 
Democratic leadership of the House and Senate, which is really a 
solitary path instead of a path of unity.
  So it is fair to ask: Has that agenda resulted in a better life for 
working families? Has it made us more prosperous, more secure? Has it 
made us safer?
  Well, let's take a look. We can start with what is top of mind for 
all of our folks across the country, and that is the rising price of 
everyday goods and services. Every day, men and women go to work, take 
the kids to school, expecting the predictability that filling up their 
car will cost a certain amount or that trip to the grocery store will 
be in the same range. And what do they find? Well, thanks to inflation, 
fueled in part by excessive government spending to the tune of 
trillions of dollars--and I am afraid we haven't seen the end of it--
Americans are paying higher prices for many of the things they just 
can't do without. Over the past year, consumer prices have risen 5.4 
percent, the largest 1-year jump in 13 years.
  So if you are saving up to buy a new or used car or truck, keep 
saving because it costs more under President Biden. Headed out to the 
grocery store? Prepare to see larger numbers at the bottom of your 
receipt, thanks to President Biden. Making monthly rent payments? If it 
seems higher than last year, that is because it is. The national median 
rent went up 17 percent since President Biden took office. Well, those 
numbers don't lie. People see them every day and they are in their bank 
accounts and in their checkbooks and in the strain of trying to make 
those things work. These are the real-life consequences of misguided 
economic policies from the left. Unfortunately, for working-class 
Americans, it means the only thing we have built back better is the 
return to soaring inflation and economic misery that many of us 
remember from the Jimmy Carter years.
  Those years also remind us of another problem facing every family, as 
I mentioned before. That is the rising cost of gas. Digits on the gas 
pump--they tick up faster and faster every time you fill up, and it 
isn't because our tanks have gotten bigger, that is for sure. In West 
Virginia, the average cost of gas compared to this time last year is 
more than $1 per gallon. So not only are those trips to the grocery 
store more expensive, it costs more to get to the grocery store. The 
White House has insisted that they are working on it, and on behalf of 
everyone in my State who drives to work, drops their kids off at 
school, and hops in the car to visit their families, I sure hope they 
are.
  At the same time, it is important to note that on President Biden's 
first

[[Page S7119]]

day of office, he told us all we needed to know about his energy policy 
and that would be: America last. One of his first acts as President was 
to cancel the Keystone XL Pipeline, costing thousands of American 
jobs--union jobs--claiming that it had to be done to combat climate 
change. Compare that to just a few months later, when President Biden 
lifted sanctions--yes, he lifted the sanctions--on a Russian gas 
pipeline, allowing the Nord Stream II project to continue, further 
empowering Vladimir Putin and threatening the national security of 
America and our allies in Europe.
  These are just a few of the backward moves by this White House that 
have left us really scratching our heads. And it has only been 
compounded by Executive action and regulations aimed at stifling the 
production of energy here in this country. We remember the effects--I 
certainly do in West Virginia--the effects of this playbook as it 
originally was created during the Obama years. So it is just a shame 
that this administration doesn't remember that.
  Again, all of this is hitting the consumer--American consumer--hard 
right as we are approaching our winter months. It is expected that 
households will see their home heating bills rise 54 percent compared 
to last winter. And for homes that use natural gas for heat, which I do 
in my home and I would highly recommend it, they will pay about 30 
percent more than they did last year. Families are having to cut back 
basic necessities just to heat their homes and make ends meet.
  Another pledge President Biden made was to build a fair and humane 
immigration system. He gutted many of the deterrent policies that 
effectively kept illegal immigration numbers down, such as eliminating 
the effective ``Remain in Mexico'' policy; stopping construction of the 
border wall; and signaling to the whole hemisphere that if you make it 
to the U.S.-Mexican border, you will be allowed in.
  This was reported today, and this has resulted in the highest numbers 
for a fiscal year that have ever been recorded of border arrests--1.7 
million border arrests--the most ever on record. And again, these 
policies were all done in the name of creating a moral and humane 
system.
  Well, let me tell you, the Senator from Missouri and I took a visit 
to the border just over the last year, and there was nothing humane 
about the conditions we saw with overcrowded migrant children 
facilities in Texas. There was nothing humane about the Haitian 
immigrants living under a bridge in Del Rio. There is nothing humane 
about women giving birth, and I believe at last count it was 11 
children were born in those conditions. This all happened because they 
made that dangerous journey to the border believing that if they made 
it, they would be welcomed in. Well, guess what. They were right 
because about 12,000 of the Haitian refugees that were under that 
bridge are in this country right now.
  I will take it a step further. There is nothing humane about fueling 
the disease of addiction millions of Americans battle as deadly drugs 
flow across our porous border and make their way into our communities. 
Not addressing an overdose crisis that took 93,000 sons, daughters, 
mothers, and fathers last year is not humane. You would say: How is 
this happening? The Border Patrol has got to focus on the human element 
while more and more drugs can pass through.
  As someone representing a State hit hardest by the drug epidemic, I 
am pleading with President Biden and Vice President Harris or whoever 
is in charge of resolving the self-created border crisis to please do 
something different--or at least do something.
  So this is what the first year of Biden's America looks like: failed 
policies, broken promises. Americans were promised prosperity, and we 
have gotten a sampling of socialism. We were promised a secure nation; 
instead, our borders are open and a humanitarian crisis rages on our 
southern border. We were promised a repaired reputation on the world 
stage, and instead we have led from behind and abandoned our own people 
abroad in Afghanistan. We were promised unity, and instead we heard 
divisive rhetoric that demonizes half of our country.
  The better version of America President Biden was selling, as some of 
us had feared, was just too good to be true.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. BLUNT. Well, Madam President, in just a few short months this 
year, we have seen a long list of problems develop in the country. Some 
of them my good friend the Senator from West Virginia just talked 
about. They range from inflation and debt to the hiring crisis, major 
disruptions in the supply chain.
  When I was home in Missouri last week meeting with all kinds of 
employers and all kinds of businesses, big and small, everybody said: 
We can't find workers; we can't get the supplies we need; and we can't 
keep up with inflation.
  What is astonishing to me is the Democrats continue to move forward 
with their $3.5 trillion reckless tax-and-spending spree. And, you 
know, it is easy to take that number and just reduce the length of time 
you are going to try out all these new policies, and we are going to 
have to talk about that because that is going to be a big mistake.
  In fact, the $3.5 trillion reckless tax-and-spending spree, I think, 
easily--if you extend all of the policies through the whole 10 years--
becomes a $5 trillion reckless tax-and-spending spree. If you reduce 
the policies, it is pretty easy to get it to $2 trillion.
  But if you reduce the policies by just saying, ``Instead of 10 years, 
we are going to have this policy for 3 years; instead of 5 years, we 
are going to have this policy for 1 year,'' all you have done is put 
future Congresses in a place where, frankly, Democrats would hope they 
can't say no.
  After a year of the program, they can't say no to the second year of 
the program; or after 3 years of the program, they can't say no. I 
wouldn't take a whole lot of solace in the idea that we are going to 
reduce the number unless we look at the policies behind the number.
  Now, some of my colleagues and some of our colleagues on the other 
side of the aisle--the side of the aisle that the Presiding Officer 
will be sitting on now, the majority side of the aisle--have jumped 
headlong into this for the most part, but some of our colleagues have 
really raised some important questions.
  For instance, one Senator said recently that expanding social 
programs while ignoring the millions of open jobs--this is that 
Senator's quote--``will only feed a dysfunction that could weaken our 
economic recovery.''
  And, of course, that is exactly right. Businesses across the country 
are trying to hire workers for the more than 10 million job openings. 
Half the small businesses say they have jobs that they are struggling 
to fill--one-half of all small businesses.
  I was in Farmington, MO, one day last week, and somebody at that 
roundtable said: I used to say we need to do whatever it takes to get 
skilled labor, and then occasionally I would say we need to do whatever 
it takes to get part-time labor. Now I am saying we need to do whatever 
it takes to get labor.
  Because they can't fill the jobs they have.
  What I was hearing all over our State, and I think every Senator in 
this body is hearing the same thing, which is that people can't find 
the people they need to do the work. Part of the reason that there are 
empty store shelves is you can't get people to keep those store shelves 
stocked, but part of the reason is that they can't get things to the 
stores to put on the shelves.
  Everything from shipyards to trucking routes, to supply chains aren't 
working the way they should right now, and, largely, it is because they 
don't have the help they need to have.
  Now, I am all for looking at our long-term supply chain needs, 
bringing things closer to our shores when we can do that, but that is 
not the problem right now. The problem right now is we can't get the 
things that come to our country to the places that they need to go, nor 
the things that are made in our country to the places they need to go.
  Businesses are trying to keep up with worker demand, but worker 
shortage is making that impossible. Expanding and creating government 
pay--government handouts, I think, was what one of our colleagues on 
the Democratic side had referred to them as--if they are not connected 
to need or to work

[[Page S7120]]

doesn't make sense. We all want to help people who are in need, but we 
all want to do that in a rational way.
  Another Democratic Senator pointed out the danger of all this extra 
government spending the President wants is going to really drive up 
inflation. And that is also correct. You can't put hundreds of billions 
of dollars into the economy and not have that drive up inflation.
  If people have money that they wouldn't have otherwise, particularly 
money we had to borrow to get there or money we had to take out of the 
functioning economy to get there, that money gets spent, but not in the 
way that you would want it to be spent to grow an economy and do the 
best things for individuals and families.
  The big spending spree really began in March with a partisan--a 
totally partisan, one-side-of-the-aisle only--$2 trillion so-called 
COVID-19 relief law.
  But, frankly, it was a recovery plan when a recovery was well 
underway. I think the recovery plan slowed down the recovery and made 
it less likely that people would get back to work. It made it more 
likely that people would have money to spend that they wouldn't have 
otherwise and drive inflation.
  The expert opinion of economists on both sides of the aisle, who said 
that what was done in March of this year would assure inflation would 
rise, it is exactly the same thing they are saying about the bill that 
is being debated right now. It has already happened, and it is 
happening. Americans are paying more for everything from groceries to 
gasoline, to a big purchases, like a new car, or even a used car is 
selling at a new sudden premium.
  Consumer prices have jumped 5.4 percent from 1 year ago. That is not 
the kind of thing that does anything to help families. In fact, 
according to Moody's Analytics, a family earning an average income of 
about $70,000 is spending an extra $175 a month on food, fuel, and 
housing because of what that article referred to as President Biden's 
inflation.
  The White House Chief of Staff the other day, when I asked about 
inflation, said: Well, inflation was really a ``high class problem.''
  I am not exactly sure what a high class problem means. If it means it 
is a big problem, that is right. If it means as I think it means, it is 
a problem that only wealthy Americans have to deal with, that couldn't 
be right. It is not an upper-class problem or a high-income problem. It 
is a problem that hits low-income households the hardest.
  In the University of Michigan's latest survey of consumers said that 
only 70 percent of the people in that survey--that consumer survey, 
only 30 percent of people expect to be financially better off next year 
than they are right now. Seventy percent thought they would either be 
worse off or not make any gains at all.
  That is not what we were seeing in 2018 and 2019 under the other tax 
policies where, for the first time in a couple of decades, the 
distribution of new income was strong at the lowest levels of working 
families.
  The Democratic response is: Let's raise taxes. Let's spend trillions 
of dollars. Let's pile up more debt.
  Or that one theory: No, it won't cost anything because we are paying 
for it.
  Well, obviously, if you are paying for it, it had to cost something.
  And how are you paying for it?
  You are paying for it by taking things out of the economy in one hand 
and shoving them back into the economy with another.
  At one point, one of our friends on the other side of the aisle 
expressed his opinion, as he put it, that ``any expansion of social 
programs must be targeted to those in need and not expanded beyond what 
is fiscally possible.''
  That is, of course, the right position. All of us want to help people 
in need, but we don't want to expand that group beyond what you can 
fiscally deal with and not harm their own opportunities in the economy.
  This reckless tax-and-spending spree includes a number of ways on how 
to expand social welfare programs and to cover people with high 
incomes. They are trying to create permanent, expanded subsidies for 
ObamaCare insurance plans. Now, we clearly have subsidies. They are 
clearly permanent. They are clearly substantial. But the bill wants to 
not only make the subsidies higher, but it wants them to be higher for 
more people who have higher incomes to start with.
  They are also talking about tuition-free community college. Well, 
there is almost no community college in America today that is not 
already tuition-free for those people who we have decided are in the 
greatest need. That is what Pell grants are all about.
  There is no community college in Missouri, and few community colleges 
anywhere in the country, where the full Pell grant doesn't pay all 
tuition, all books, and all fees with a little money left over to 
travel back and forth to the campus.
  I am a big supporter of Pell grants. I worked a few years ago to go 
back to where we have year-round Pell grants. So if you are going to 
school and something is working for you, you can stay in school. You 
don't have to take a summer off and get a different job and then think 
you are coming back in the fall to find out that that just didn't work 
out.
  We have solved this problem. If we haven't solved it adequately, 
well, let's increase the Pell grant amount. And if that doesn't do the 
job, why don't we increase the amount of family income you can have and 
still qualify for the maximum Pell grant or some other portion of the 
Pell grant?
  There is an obvious solution here. As a matter of fact, in the markup 
of the Labor-HHS bill, I think we added $400 to the annual Pell grant 
this year, which is a pretty substantial increase in that grant. The 
government already spends more than $28 billion every year for Pell 
grants.
  If you really want to make higher education expensive, make it free. 
Go to every higher education institution in America, starting with 
community colleges, and say: We are going to make this free.
  I was a university president for 4 years, and we have all seen what 
happens as we increased the government support for higher education.
  I was the first person in my family to graduate from college. I am a 
big advocate for higher education, but everybody needs to have a stake 
in the game. You value what you pay for. You value what you have a 
commitment to. Free usually doesn't get you where you want to get. We 
don't want to duplicate what we are already doing, and we don't want to 
create free programs for people who don't need free programs.
  Finally, obviously, a lot of emphasis and unease on these tax 
increases. One of my colleagues on the other side said our Tax Code 
``should not weaken our global competitiveness or the ability of 
millions of small businesses to compete.''
  That is undeniably true.
  The 2017 Republican-led tax law followed a consensus that we need to 
bring the U.S. in line with our global competitors. Let's not get out 
of line and make it harder for us to compete. We were on an incredible 
trajectory of job creation and pay for all of the working-class 
families that had been left out of the system for too long. We could 
easily wipe out those gains with a corporate tax rate increase that 
loses our competitive advantage to people who we don't want to lose it 
to.
  Democrats are also aiming several of their tax hikes at small 
businesses and family farms. They plan to hike, we hear, those taxes by 
57 percent of the top marginal rate, from 29.6 to 46.4. There are a lot 
of concerns with the legislation that President Biden and his allies in 
Congress are trying to push through.
  The American economy is struggling against the headwinds of an, 
frankly, administration that has done so much to create on its own. 
This terrible legislation would just make everything worse. Let's not 
work on one side only to make everything worse. Let's see what we can 
do to work together to make everything better.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, I so appreciate the remarks of my 
colleague from Missouri, and it sounds as if he is hearing from his 
constituents in Missouri the same thing that I am hearing in Tennessee.
  As a matter of fact, I held a telephone townhall last night. Thirty 
thousand of our citizens from Upper

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East Tennessee were on this call, and to say that they are unhappy 
would be to put it mildly. That really is an understatement. They are 
angry. They are frustrated. They are exhausted with what this 
administration is doing. They are angry with how the Federal Government 
is responding to a host of issues.
  They really took President Biden at his word for his Build Back 
Better. They expected that. But that is not what they have gotten. He 
has made a mess of it, and, indeed, what you have is a ``Build Back 
Broke'' agenda.
  And my colleague from Missouri really laid that out. It is ``Build 
Back Broke.'' That is what they are bringing forward. And that agenda 
of President Biden's and the Democratic Party has really destroyed a 
lot of the hopes and the dreams and some of the renewed prosperity of 
Tennesseans whose job isn't to study the economy but to move it 
forward.
  They do the heavy lift every single day.
  Last night, I spoke with businessowners who feel like they are under 
attack by this administration and their economic policy. The cost of 
doing business is going up. They are bleeding customers because they 
have less disposable income because of inflation, because of the price 
at the pump.
  Supply chains are collapsing around them. It is difficult to get raw 
materials, like lumber and steel. They have no confidence at all in the 
administration's willingness or ability to solve this problem. They 
feel as if the administration does not give the ripping flip about what 
happens to them in Upper East Tennessee. This administration has 
forgotten them.
  On top of everything else, these vaccine mandates--now, we are 
hearing a lot about that, and we are hearing from people who know they 
are going to lose their job. Many times, these are women who are the 
sole source--the sole source--of income for their families. These 
families are very concerned about how they are going to handle 
inflation, collapsing supply lines, how they are going to handle some 
of the broken social policies that this administration and their allies 
are trying to sneak into law.
  So far this year, we have seen our colleagues across the aisle and 
down at the White House try to force through provisions of the Green 
New Deal that would bankrupt your average family and destroy economic 
development opportunities in rural areas.
  We know that it is expected that the cost to heat your home this 
winter is going to increase 30 percent. Now, how do you handle that 
when you have lost your job? Do you just sit there and freeze? And you 
are losing your job because of a Federal mandate that says you have to 
go get a shot in order to keep a job that you love, in order to put 
food on the table to feed your family. This makes no sense.
  I also heard from parents very upset about critical race theory and 
the way this administration is trying to hijack education and force 
this curriculum, force cradle-to-grave socialism--daylight to dark, 24/
7, depend on the Federal Government.
  One of the things that frightens Tennesseans the most and came up 
regularly on our telephone townhall was the broken border policies. I 
have said it before; I will say it again. This fear has nothing to do 
with racism and xenophobia. This administration and my colleagues 
across the aisle need to get that point through their heads.
  Tennesseans are afraid because they look at the border. What they are 
seeing is vulnerability. They see the drugs coming across that border 
because the drugs end up in their streets: fentanyl, meth, heroin.
  Every town is a border town. Every State is a border State because 
Joe Biden's border policy is: Open up the border. Hang out the ``Y'all 
come sign,'' and give everybody a plane ticket to wherever they are 
going in the country. And, oh, by the way, if the commercial flights 
are full, don't worry about it. We will go charter you a jet and send 
you under the cloak of darkness into Chattanooga or into Knoxville or 
into West Chester County. That is what concerns Tennesseans.
  They are seeing what is happening with sex trafficking, with human 
trafficking. They are afraid of what cartels are doing because the 
cartels are saying: Thank you, Joe Biden. The door is open. We were not 
fearful. We are setting up distribution centers on U.S. soils.
  That is right, the cartels, setting up their distribution centers. 
Why? Because Joe Biden is weak and feckless and doesn't stand up to 
protect the southern border.
  There is another thing that they were quite exercised about last 
night, and it is the issue of election integrity. Indeed, I had a 
Tennessean call me at 6:45 this morning, and he said: Marsha, you have 
got to be kidding me. You mean they want to pass a bill that says 
anybody can go vote, that you can go vote the day of the election, that 
you don't have to show an ID to vote?
  He said: You know, I recently had to show not only a vaccine card but 
my ID to prove that was my vaccine card to go sit inside at the In-N-
Out Burger.
  This is why people are so frustrated with Joe Biden. This is why they 
are so frustrated with the Democrats.
  What are they looking for? They are looking for legislators to have 
some backbone, to stand up and stand for freedom, not to kowtow to a 
socialist agenda, because they know if the Democratic leadership and 
Joe Biden had their way with one vote, they would take one vote, and 
they would push to a socialist agenda.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Ossoff). The Senator from Minnesota.