[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 26 (Wednesday, February 9, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S594-S596]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Biden Administration

  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, folks in Texas and across the country 
are looking to their elected officials for sound leadership. Family 
budgets are being clobbered by the worst inflation in 40 years. From 
gas stations to grocery stores and everywhere in between, people are 
spending significantly more money on their basic expenses. Inflation 
has outpaced wage growth, giving the average worker a pay cut. That is 
what inflation does. It erodes and undermines your standard of living 
by charging more for basic goods and services.
  Families aren't just stressing about their finances; they are also 
worried about their safety. The shocking surge in violent crime that 
began in 2020 hasn't just continued. In many places, it has 
accelerated, and last year several major cities had their deadliest 
year on record.
  With the safety and well-being of their families at the forefront, 
our constituents want to know what is being done to address these 
problems. They are pretty basic.
  What types of solutions do their representatives have in the Senate 
and the House? What actions are the White House contemplating and how 
long will it be before they can experience some relief? Unfortunately, 
when the voters gave Democrats the leadership of the White House and 
both Houses of Congress, the responsibility has largely been up to them 
to provide that leadership when it comes to the agenda.
  Unfortunately, the real problems that my constituents in Texas are 
experiencing, like inflation and crime, those were the last things for 
our leaders here in Washington to consider. Forget real problems and 
real families; Democrats' governing strategy was dictated by partisan 
ambitions.
  Our colleagues tried to give the Internal Revenue Service the 
unprecedented authority and manpower to snoop on the finances of 
virtually every single American. Now, we are accustomed to the fact 
that the IRS knows how much you make; that is how you calculate your 
taxes. But our Democratic colleagues went so far as to inquire for 
every family: How much money do you spend and what do you spend it on? 
That sort of invasion of privacy is unprecedented.
  Then our colleagues on the other side of the aisle tried to get 
involved in the childcare business and dictate what sort of childcare 
and where you would be able to get that childcare and how much it would 
cost. Basically, saying to those who are motivated to help support 
families when it comes to childcare, that if you are a faith-based 
organization, you are not going to qualify. And because of the huge 
influx of money that the Democrats were planning to put into childcare, 
excluding a huge segment of the childcare providers was going to result 
in scarce supply and run up the price, further exacerbating inflation.
  Then we saw when it comes to the wealthy--our Democratic colleagues 
like to be the party of the average working person and complain about 
Big Business and millionaires and billionaires. But what do they do 
when it comes to tax proposals? They propose to give millionaires and 
billionaires a tax cut by eliminating the cap on deductibility of State 
and local taxes in high-tax jurisdictions like New York and California. 
Who would have to pick up the responsibility or deficit? Well, you 
guessed it; it would be the middle class.
  Then we saw our colleagues on the left use the last year to attempt a 
Federal takeover of State-run elections. Some even proposed to blow up 
the rules of the Senate and eliminate the filibuster, the one thing 
that forces us to do what doesn't come naturally, which is to work 
together and build bipartisan consensus.
  There were proposals from the majority leader himself and others 
saying we are going to blow up the Senate because we cannot get our 
way, and the main reason we can't get our way is because we are 
unwilling to work with the other side of the aisle. Thank goodness two 
of our colleagues, the Senator from West Virginia and the Senator from 
Arizona, tapped the brakes, and we have not yet found ourselves in that 
situation.

  So every one of these examples I mentioned has been tried and failed 
in this last year. But there is, of course, what economists call 
opportunity costs. We can't take back the last year that we wasted on 
these partisan efforts. A lot of the damage has been done. Invaluable 
time has been wasted on partisan legislation that was sure to go 
nowhere, while the most basic responsibilities of governing had been 
tossed aside.
  Last year, our Democratic colleagues nearly dropped a debt bomb on 
our economy. We had to spend a lot of money during the COVID pandemic. 
And during the last year of the Trump administration, we did that on a 
bipartisan basis. But even after the imminent need for that help was 
subsiding, our colleagues decided to spend another $2 trillion in the 
first months of the Biden administration. Only 10 percent of that was 
COVID-19 related and

[[Page S595]]

less than 1 percent had to do with people getting access to 
therapeutics and vaccine.
  Our colleagues allowed the National Defense Authorization Act to sit 
on the shelf, to linger on the calendar for months, leaving it until 
the very last minute. And then we find ourselves just 9 days away from 
a shutdown of the Federal Government. Our colleagues in the majority 
have yet to pass a single appropriations bill on a regular basis. And 
unless Congress takes action here in the next week and a half, the 
American people can add a government shutdown to the list of crises 
that we are facing.
  Unfortunately, this is a familiar story. We found ourselves in this 
position on more than one occasion over the last several months. 
Congress's deadline to pass funding bills doesn't just pop up out of 
nowhere. It hits at the same time every year, September 30. Back in 
September, it was clear that a yearlong funding bill was nowhere in 
sight, and so our colleagues in the majority kicked the can down the 
road for 2 months. Rather than use that time to try to pass annual 
appropriations bills, they wasted week after week on unserious, 
partisan bills.
  By the time the new deadline rolled around, nothing had changed, and 
so our colleagues had to punt again, setting up a new deadline of 
February 18. And based on the way things look right now, it doesn't 
appear that we are any closer to an annual funding agreement than we 
were last September or last December. There is some rumor of a top-line 
funding level agreement but no real progress on the underlying 
substance of these appropriations bills.
  So you can't help but wonder, how has it taken so long to accomplish 
so little? Our colleagues are steering the ship of state, both Chambers 
of Congress, and the White House, and still we can't seem to come up 
with a way to do the basic function of governing, which is to fund the 
government. We managed to avoid government shutdowns, to be sure, but 
that is a pretty low bar to clear.
  The Democratic majority has introduced yet another short-term funding 
bill that would carry us through March 11. I sincerely hope that 
progress can be made before then. I am just not sure how long the 
conversation should continue when we know what the job is that remains 
to be done and what the sticking points are.
  But that is where we are. Our colleagues haven't just punted critical 
responsibilities. In some cases, they have ignored them completely.
  In 2021, for the first time on record, there were more than 2 million 
people who attempted to enter the United States without a visa, a 
passport, or legal immigration papers--2 million people--and those are 
just the ones that the Border Patrol encountered. It doesn't count the 
so-called ``got-aways,'' which is what the Border Patrol calls the drug 
smugglers and other criminals who come across the border at the same 
time.
  Two million people is larger than the population of a dozen 
individual States. That is how many new people have come into the 
United States during a pandemic, without being vaccinated, without 
proof of a negative COVID test, and at a time when people are concerned 
about their jobs.
  The Biden administration has allowed this crisis to grow and grow and 
grow without any substantial action. As a matter of fact, the Secretary 
of Homeland Security and other members of the President's Cabinet have 
actually made it worse. Border Patrol will tell you there are two main 
things that they look for when it comes to illegal immigration. They 
look for the push factors, which are things like violence and poverty 
in some of the states and places people are coming from. We all get 
that. We understand those being the push factors, but they also talk 
about the pull factors, which puts a big sign out that you are free to 
come to the United States without any real consequence. You don't need 
to get in line. You don't need to comply with our immigration laws. You 
can just come as fast as you can get here.
  One of the biggest pull factors is the misguided guidance from the 
Secretary of Homeland Security himself. I call it nonenforcement 
guidance. Basically, Secretary Mayorkas has said Border Patrol will not 
detain anyone whose only offense is entering the country illegally.
  That sends a big welcome sign to anybody who wants to come to the 
United States without going through our legal immigration system. And 
the transnational criminal organizations that benefit from this 
financially make millions and millions--including billions--of dollars 
by smuggling people and drugs into the United States.
  And while an open border's message may appeal to some elements on the 
left, it is creating serious burdens for law enforcement in border 
communities.
  Over the last year, I have spent a lot of time listening to my 
constituents and the professionals in the Border Patrol about the many 
challenges that this crisis has created. Border Patrol agents are 
pulling double duty as childcare providers because our laws incentivize 
unaccompanied minors to come to the United States.
  Now, nobody actually believes they get here on their own, but once 
they are here, under our current laws, they have to be placed with the 
State, with a sponsor, and told to show up for a hearing--for your 
asylum hearing--months, maybe years, in the future. And nobody is 
surprised when as many as half of those individuals don't show up for 
their asylum hearing--same thing for the adults in the family units.
  But while you may think that this is primarily a problem for border 
States like Texas and Arizona, California and New Mexico, and others, 
it actually extends throughout the country. One of our colleagues from 
Montana tells me that his sheriff in one of his major cities said that 
one of the biggest problems they have is methamphetamine that is 
smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border.
  You can't get much farther north, and you can't get much farther away 
from the southwestern border than the State of Montana, but that is 
what the ripple effect of this uncontrolled illegal immigration, along 
with the drugs being smuggled across the border--those are the 
consequences of those failures by the administration.
  Leaders in my State have constantly sought for the administration to 
take some action. This is a Federal responsibility, not a State 
responsibility. They have asked for more staff, better resources, and 
better policies to put an end to some of these pull factors.
  But the Biden administration has done nothing to make it better. I 
would argue that they have actually made it worse with policies like 
the nonenforcement policy that Secretary Mayorkas issued months ago.
  Senator Sinema--a Senator from another border State and a Democrat--
and I offered the Bipartisan Border Solutions Act, along with a 
Democrat and a Republican House Member, with the idea that if maybe we 
came up with a bipartisan, bicameral proposal, the Biden administration 
would say: Well, why don't we start there? Why don't we start the 
discussions there?
  Well, the Biden administration refused to take any action, and the 
chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee here in the Senate has 
refused to even hold a hearing on that bill.
  Now, our Democratic colleagues may control all levers of government, 
but, for sure, that is a far cry from actually governing. Our 
colleagues can't seem to accomplish the bare minimum, let alone craft 
policies that address the needs of families.
  Our colleagues seem to think that these partisan victories are the 
only way they can prove to voters that they know how to govern, but 
they got it backward, and they don't have much to show for it. The 
reality is, our colleagues' burning focus on partisan legislation has 
kept them from achieving much of anything at all.
  Our colleagues have been so distracted by their own partisan 
ambitions that they have allowed the Senate to skate from crisis to 
crisis without meaningful action.
  I can only hope that our colleagues will recognize that what they 
have been doing is not working and engage in some sort of midcourse 
correction in the coming months.
  The truth is, our country deserves a government that works for the 
American people, not for just one political party or for any 
constituency within that political party, like the progressive left.
  I yield the floor.

[[Page S596]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from New Hampshire.