[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 60 (Tuesday, April 5, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Page S1959]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            Budget Proposal

  Mr. THUNE. Madam President, if a budget is a set of priorities, here 
are the President's: an expanded Federal Government, a diminished 
national defense, higher gas prices, and an open border. Those are the 
priorities reflected in the budget the President released last week, 
which contained pretty much what you would expect--more taxes, more 
spending, more borrowing, and, in all likelihood, more inflation as a 
result.
  Big taxes and big spending have been the agenda for President Biden 
since he took office. After signing a $1.9 trillion spending spree in 
March of 2021 that helped create the worst inflation in 40 years, 
President Biden spent much of last year pushing for still more spending 
to fund his vision of an expanded Federal Government.
  In his 2023 budget, it is just more of the same. The President's 
budget would increase average yearly spending by 66 percent as compared 
to the average of the last 10 years. Sixty-six percent--that is a 
staggering spending increase. Yearly Federal spending under the Biden 
budget would average $7.3 trillion. To put that in perspective, the 
total average spending in 2019 was $4.4 trillion.
  How is the President going to pay for this, if he even can? Taxes, a 
lot of taxes--``the biggest tax increase in history in dollar terms,'' 
according to Bloomberg.
  The President, of course, attempts to sell the tax hikes he is 
proposing as something that won't affect ordinary Americans. That 
couldn't be more wrong.
  That corporate tax hike that he keeps pushing--one study estimates 
that 31 percent of the corporate tax is borne by consumers. Another big 
portion of it is borne by labor, otherwise known as ordinary, hard-
working Americans.
  Higher prices, fewer jobs, lower salaries--we can expect to see all 
that and more if the President hikes taxes on companies. And I haven't 
even mentioned the fact that a corporate tax hike may end up hurting 
private pensions in the value of American's 401(k)s.
  Then there are the tax hikes on conventional energy companies, the 
companies that produce the oil and gas that Americans use to heat their 
homes and to drive their cars. Increasing taxes on fossil fuel 
companies to the tune of tens of billions of dollars is pretty much 
guaranteed to discourage the additional energy production we need to 
drive down gas prices. Ironically, the proposals to go after 
traditional American energy production come from the same 
administration that is releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum 
Reserve to deal with high gas prices. You can't make this up.
  Then there is inflation. Democrats helped create our current 
inflation crisis by sending a lot of unnecessary government money into 
the economy via the so-called American Rescue Plan. The President's 
budget would essentially do the same thing, which means our already 
serious inflation crisis could get even worse.
  I mentioned the big spending increases in the President's budget. But 
what I actually meant are the big nondefense spending increases 
because, while on paper it may look like the President is hiking 
defense spending, his supposed funding increase would be effectively 
canceled out by inflation.
  When you take into account Democrats' historic inflation, it turns 
out President Biden's supposed defense spending increase could actually 
turn out to be a spending cut. Even in the best-case scenario, his 
budget would leave defense spending essentially flat, which would leave 
our military dangerously underfunded. That is a big problem.
  In a rapidly evolving threat environment, the last thing we can 
afford is a self-inflicted defeat from underfunding our military. Given 
Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine and threats to NATO, an 
increasingly aggressive China, Iran's nuclear ambitions, North Korea's 
uptick in missile tests, and the Taliban taking over in Afghanistan, 
among other things, President Biden should be taking national defense 
spending at least as seriously as domestic spending, but he is not.
  The Biden budget proposal would leave the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, 
Air Force, and Space Force underequipped and undermanned and put our 
defense planning on a dangerously insufficient trajectory.
  The President's budget also fails to adequately address border 
security and immigration enforcement.
  Almost since the day the President took office, we have been 
experiencing an unprecedented flood of illegal immigration across our 
southern border. In fiscal year 2021, the Border Patrol encountered 
more than 1.7 million individuals attempting to cross our southern 
border, the highest number ever recorded. We have had 12 straight 
months of border encounters in excess of 150,000, and the surge is 
likely to even get worse now that the President has rescinded the title 
42 border policy to immediately deport individuals illegally attempting 
to cross the border.
  What is the President's answer?
  Well, $150-million cut to the U.S. Immigration and Customs 
Enforcement next year. That is right. We are experiencing an 
unprecedented surge of illegal immigration, and the President's budget 
would cut funding to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
  Perhaps the most outrageous thing about the President's budget is the 
way he misrepresents it. He is now trying to portray himself as 
somewhat fiscally responsible, as if a 66 percent higher yearly average 
spending than the last 10 years could be considered fiscally 
responsible. The President is talking a lot about deficit reduction--
both the deficit reduction he has supposedly created and the deficit 
reduction his budget will supposedly produce.
  But the actual numbers will, again, tell a very different story. The 
deficit reduction the President would like to take credit for is partly 
the result of the end of temporary COVID spending measures, which were 
scheduled to end whether the President lifted a finger or not. Our 
current deficit would have been a lot lower if the President hadn't 
decided that we needed a partisan $1.9 trillion spending spree last 
year, a spending spree entirely--entirely--made up of deficit spending.
  When it comes to the President's 2023 budget, the administration 
claims ``deficits under the budget policies would fall to less than 
one-third of the 2020 level the President inherited.''
  The key phrase there is ``the 2020 level the President inherited.'' 
And 2020 saw a huge but temporary surge in government spending to deal 
with the onset of the COVID crisis.
  As a result, it is grossly deceptive to take the 2020 deficit as a 
baseline. A more honest assessment of the prospects for deficit 
reduction under the President's budget would look at pre-COVID deficits 
as a baseline and compare the President's future deficits to those, but 
that wouldn't suit the President's purposes.
  Now that it has become apparent that the American people are not, in 
fact, thrilled by far-left Democratic governance, the President is 
eager to portray himself as a moderate--hence his inflated claims of 
deficit reduction.
  It is the same reason the President is touting his supposed spending 
hike on national defense while conveniently omitting the fact that when 
you figure in real inflation, the spending hike may actually be a 
spending cut.
  No matter how the President tries to dress it up, his fiscal year 
2023 budget is more of the same far-left priorities--more taxes, more 
unnecessary spending, and more economic pain for the American people.
  And I hope, I hope my Democratic colleagues will think twice before 
foisting this budget onto hard-working Americans.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.