[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 25 (Tuesday, February 7, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S249-S250]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                       State of the Union Address

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, this evening, President Biden will deliver 
his second State of the Union Address.
  Presidents, of course, typically use the speech as an opportunity to 
claim credit for all the ways Americans' lives have improved under 
their leadership. Former Presidents have touted everything from 
economic growth to progress battling the opioid epidemic.
  In this case, President Biden hasn't given his speech writers much 
material to work with. Families in Texas and across the country are 
still being battered by inflation. I know there are hopes for inflation 
to abate, but yet the Federal Reserve has shown no indication that they 
will fail to increase the discount rate--in other words, interest 
rate--meaning that, more and more, they are concerned still about the 
impact of inflation.
  Inflation, as we have seen, means that people's standard of living is 
decreased because their earned income does not go as far as it used to, 
and we know high prices have wiped out wage gains, giving most workers 
a pay cut.
  We also know that public safety remains a matter of serious public 
concern, and starting from the impact of the ``defund the police'' 
movement to now the difficulty law enforcement has actually recruiting 
and retaining an adequate number of officers, we know crime continues 
to be a matter of widespread public concern.
  Then there are the failed policies at the border, which have led to a 
humanitarian and public health crisis.
  The humanitarian part is evidenced, obviously, by the millions of 
people who show up at the border with every expectation they will be 
admitted to the United States.
  The public health crisis comes from the 108,000 Americans who died 
from drug overdoses, where those drugs almost exclusively transited the 
U.S.-Mexican border into the United States. We know the chaos of mass 
migration has helped make the drug runners' job easier, and we know of 
the devastating impact it is having across the country.
  I don't know how much of this the President will actually talk about, 
whether it is inflation, whether it is crime, or whether it is the 
border, but these are the kitchen-table issues most American families 
care deeply about--the cost of groceries, the ability to put gas in 
your tank, and living in a safe neighborhood and raising your family.
  I don't know whether the President will dwell on any of those topics 
at all, but just to recapitulate, inflation now is the highest it has 
been in 40 years. We know that many cities have broken their alltime 
homicide records, and we are still in the midst of a completely 
unprecedented crisis on the southern border.
  We have seen some pretty big missteps on the world stage too. For 
example, the Biden administration led a deadly and disastrous 
withdrawal from Afghanistan that resulted in the loss of 13 
servicemembers and countless Americans stranded in Taliban territory.
  The administration continues to try to revive the failed Iran nuclear 
deal and to give Tehran even more resources to pursue its nuclear 
ambitions.
  Just last week, the administration hit an embarrassing new low when 
the People's Republic of China flew a surveillance balloon across the 
United States, spying on the U.S. military and on all civilians. It 
took 7 days before the administration finally gave the green light to 
shoot it down off the coast of South Carolina. To be specific, it 
wasn't just the administration; it was the President of the United 
States who gave that instruction 7 days after it began its transit 
across U.S. territory.
  During his first 2 years in office, President Biden had a pretty big 
advantage: His party held the majority in both Houses of Congress. He 
had the golden opportunity to enact his agenda and address the biggest 
problems facing American families. Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot of 
overlap between the Biden agenda and the American agenda.
  While people were struggling to keep up with high gas prices, the 
administration waged war on American energy. While parents questioned 
what was being taught in their kids' classrooms, the administration 
threatened to unleash the FBI on concerned parents who spoke out at the 
school board meetings. While inflation raged, Democrats poured even 
more fuel on the fire by spending an additional $2\1/2\-plus trillion 
on purely partisan spending bills; namely, the American Recovery Act 
and the so-called Inflation Reduction Act--all passed without a single 
Republican vote but which added easily $2.5 trillion to our national 
debt. So it doesn't come as a surprise, I guess, that voters decided to 
change the direction of the country in the last election by electing a 
Republican majority in the House.
  Tonight, for the first time, President Biden will deliver his State 
of the Union Address before a divided Congress--a Democrat-controlled 
Senate, a Republican-controlled House, and a President who ran on the 
promise of governing from the middle and bringing us together but who 
hasn't shown a willingness to do that so far.
  I think we are all eager to know how President Biden will broach all 
of these topics this evening. Will he simply try to gloss over his 
claimed successes and ignore his failures? Will he try to blame 
Republicans for the current state of our country even though Democrats 
controlled all the levers of government for the last 2 years? Or will 
he finally acknowledge the many problems that proliferated under his 
leadership and get serious about solutions?
  One of the most critical areas where we need to see real leadership 
is the current border crisis, which has been raging since President 
Biden took office 2 years ago. Day after day, month after month, 
migrants have crossed our border in unprecedented numbers. Over the 
years, we have seen plenty of migration surges but nothing like this.

  Last fiscal year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection logged nearly 
2.4

[[Page S250]]

million border crossings, shattering the previous record. In December, 
Customs and Border Protection encountered more than a quarter of a 
million migrants at the southern border--a quarter of a million people 
in a single month, which is a new record.
  The President has not offered a single serious plan to address this 
crisis. Secretary Mayorkas keeps saying: Well, this is something 
Congress needs to weigh in on. But they have engaged in zero outreach 
or any visible indication that they actually do want a congressionally 
passed solution to this problem, one that the President would have to 
sign into law.
  The only policy changes that the President has offered will do 
nothing to stop people from coming because they just parole them 
faster. In other words, they show up at the border, and they are given 
a piece of paper and told: Go to the closest Immigration and Customs 
Enforcement office in wherever it is you are locating in the interior 
of the United States--with no followup and no real assurance that they 
will actually go to an ICE office and ultimately end up in front of an 
immigration judge.
  We know that is part of the game, too, because if the human smugglers 
flood the zone with people, they can overwhelm the capacity of our 
immigration court system to actually deal with these asylum cases. 
Those who ultimately end up before an immigration judge are only 
successful in roughly 10 to 15 percent of the cases, but if you flood 
the zone with enough people, you can overwhelm the capacity of the 
court system, and you can basically succeed in living permanently in 
the United States even though you have not complied with our 
immigration laws to do so.
  We know that for 2 years, the men and women on the frontline of the 
border have been pleading with the administration to do something. Law 
enforcement are understaffed and overwhelmed by the workload they are 
expected to shoulder.
  Nonprofit organizations and local governments are trying to mitigate 
the humanitarian crisis that has landed on their doorstep, and 
legitimate trade and travel have taken a big hit. Mexico was our single 
largest trading partner. Yet legitimate trade and travel are hampered 
by this flood of humanity coming across the border as well.
  So I hope the President will be candid with the American people 
tonight and acknowledge not only what he views as his successes but 
where more work needs to be done. Now that he no longer enjoys a 
majority in the House and the Senate but now has a divided Congress, I 
hope he is candid enough to acknowledge that the only way we are going 
to be able to solve some of these problems is to finally work together 
to do so.
  We know that what the President shouldn't say is that he will somehow 
use his Executive powers to create new categories of immigrants or 
microscopic pilot programs. It needs to center on the basic idea of 
enforcing our immigration laws and reforming our asylum system. That is 
the only way to restore order and get this crisis under control.
  Legal immigration has, to my mind, been one of the greatest successes 
America has to show to the rest of the world--legal immigration, 
orderly, humane, and legal--but what we are seeing now is the 
antithesis of orderly, humane, or legal. It is just the opposite.
  We know our country is facing a diverse set of challenges in our 
homes, schools, workplaces, and along the border, and on the world 
stage, democracy itself continues to be under attack by hostile 
autocrats and dictators. The American people deserve to hear the 
President explain his plan to address each of these looming challenges, 
and I hope he does so tonight.
  Once the State of the Union concludes, Arkansas Governor Sarah 
Huckabee Sanders will deliver the Republican address. She is a champion 
for workers and families who have been left behind. I look forward to 
hearing her response to President Biden's speech, and I expect to see a 
stark contrast between the cloistered unrealities of the Biden 
administration and the reality that American families are facing.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Tennessee.