[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 27 (Thursday, February 9, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S274-S275]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                       State of the Union Address

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, on Tuesday, President Biden delivered his 
State of the Union Address to Congress, and in this time of divided 
government, I was glad to see the President making more than one nod to 
bipartisanship. I do think this moment, with power split between 
Democrats and Republicans, provides a real opportunity to work 
together, to move away from the extreme partisanship of the past couple 
of years and make some real progress on some of the issues facing us.
  But the President's speech also left me concerned because the 
President demonstrated almost no awareness of what actually happened as 
a result of his policies. Indeed, at times, it seemed as if the 
President had lived through a different reality from the one most 
Americans have been experiencing over the past 2 years.
  The President rattled off a list of his supposed economic 
achievements, and I say ``supposed'' because he left out some vitally 
important context. He claimed credit for the historic job creation 
while leaving out the essential detail that a lot of that job creation 
was simply a result of the economy naturally adding back jobs 
temporarily lost during the pandemic. He talked about wage growth while 
leaving out the fact that real wages have declined--have declined--
because of inflation over his Presidency. And he appeared to take 
credit for the fact that inflation has declined somewhat in recent 
months while neglecting to mention that it was his administration and 
congressional Democrats who helped create our inflation crisis with 
their American Rescue Plan spending spree.
  Nor did the President spend any time discussing just how bad 
inflation still is and how much Americans are still suffering. 
Inflation in December was 6.5 percent. The last time inflation was that 
bad was in 1982--1982--40 years ago. I am glad inflation has declined 
somewhat, but I don't think the President has a lot to be 
congratulating himself about. Even if prices stopped increasing 
tomorrow, Americans would still be paying thousands of dollars more 
over the next year to achieve the same standard of living that they had 
when the President took office.

  Again, the President and congressional Democrats and their American 
Rescue Plan spending spree bear a huge part of the responsibility for 
this situation. Or to quote former Obama economic adviser, Jason 
Furman:

       The original sin was an oversized American Rescue Plan.

  Another of the supposed economic achievements the President talked 
about Tuesday night was cutting the deficit. Yes, cutting the deficit. 
Well, let me just quote CNN on that claim. This is a quote:

       Independent analysts say Biden's own actions, including his 
     laws and executive orders, have had the overall effect of 
     adding to current and projected future deficits, not reducing 
     those deficits.

  Let me just repeat that:

       Independent analysts say Biden's own actions, including his 
     laws and executive orders, have had the overall effect of 
     adding to current and projected future deficits, not reducing 
     those deficits.

  The President failed to meaningfully address the economic crisis that 
his policies have helped to create. Instead,

[[Page S275]]

he spent considerable time calling for spending proposals that would 
cost taxpayers trillions of more dollars.
  He also failed to meaningfully address another crisis that has been 
raging over the past 2 years, and that is the security and humanitarian 
crisis at our southern border. It is a crisis that the President has 
spent 2 years ignoring. On Tuesday night, he essentially ignored it 
again. In a speech that was notable for being the most wordy State of 
the Union speech in the past 6 decades--clocking in at 9,191 words--the 
President devoted just 120 words, approximately 1 minute, to 
immigration. He spent a good chunk of that minute attempting to suggest 
that it is Congress and not he himself that needs to act. In fact, the 
President's brief 120 words on immigration managed to convey the 
impression the President had been trying to secure the border all 
along, instead of reflecting the reality that the President ignored 
this crisis--a crisis, I might add, that he, himself, triggered--for 2 
years and only began to somewhat acknowledge it a mere month ago.
  The President's speech was also strikingly light on a vision for our 
national security in spite of a war of aggression from Russia, which 
has made its imperial ambitions very clear, and continued troubling 
activity from China. There wasn't even a mention of Iran, which 
continues to be the leading state sponsor of terrorism, or North Korea, 
which just unveiled an alarming quantity of ICBMs.
  The President devoted just nine words to the importance of 
modernizing our military, even though the past year and, indeed, the 
past week, has underscored the necessity of making sure our military is 
the top fighting force in the world so that we can deter and, if 
necessary, confront any threat.
  While the President's speech was light on immigration and national 
security solutions and on any recognition of the economic crisis the 
President's policies helped create, the one thing his speech was not 
light on was the Democratic playbook on taxes and spending. The 
President kept bringing up and encouraging Congress to ``finish the 
job.'' It quickly became clear that was code for ``spend more taxpayer 
dollars'' or maybe ``expand government,'' even though it was excessive 
government spending that helped get us into this inflation crisis in 
the first place.
  But if there was one thing that became clear Tuesday night, it was 
that the President wants to have it both ways. He wants to cut the 
deficit but simultaneously expand and grow government. He celebrates 
``Made in America,'' but in nearly the same breath, demonizes 
businesses. He wants to boost American innovation, but he also wants to 
raise taxes and impose price controls.
  Perhaps no example of this wanting to have it both ways was more 
telling than the President's clear belief that oil companies should 
increase domestic oil production, despite the fact that the President 
campaigned on eliminating fossil fuels. The President recounted an 
exchange with oil industry representatives who told him that they were 
reluctant to invest because they were concerned the President would 
shut down oil wells and refineries. The President clearly intended the 
anecdote to illustrate the selfishness of Big Oil or Big Business, but 
the anecdote did a much better job of illustrating just how outrageous 
it is that the President assumes he should be able to get as much oil 
production as he wants while simultaneously working to sunset--to get 
rid of--oil companies.
  The President might like to have it both ways, but he can't because 
policies have consequences; spending has consequences; taxation has 
consequences.
  And the result of the Big Government tax-and-spend policies the 
President laid out Tuesday night would not be the prosperous future he 
imagines, but more economic pain for American families and businesses. 
And any bipartisan work that we do over the next 2 years needs to move 
away from the failed policies of the past 2 years and toward a more 
fiscally responsible future.
  The upcoming debt limit debate represents an outstanding opportunity 
to take a good, hard look at government spending and see how we can 
handle taxpayer dollars more responsibly.
  I was disappointed that despite his calls for bipartisanship, the 
President decided to call for a ``clean'' debt limit increase Tuesday 
night. In other words, an increase in the Nation's credit card limit 
unaccompanied by any effort to stop adding to our bill. The President's 
attitude was all too reminiscent of Democrats' partisan ``my way or the 
highway'' approach over the past 2 years. I sincerely hope he will 
rethink that position.
  I was also disturbed by the President's attempt to suggest falsely 
that Republicans are interested in paying for the debt limit increase 
by cutting Medicare and Social Security. I suspect the President is 
well aware that is not the position of the Republican Party. And his 
scaremongering was not reflective of the kind of bipartisanship I hope 
we can achieve over the next 2 years.
  What Democrats and Republicans should be doing is working together to 
put Medicare and Social Security on a more secure financial footing 
going forward, and that would be greatly helped by addressing excessive 
government spending and working to rein in our national debt.
  I appreciated, as I said earlier, the fact that despite trotting out 
far too many of the tax-and-spend policies Tuesday night, the President 
did make a real nod toward bipartisanship. I truly believe that we can 
do a lot together over the next 2 years from passing a farm bill to 
reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration and improving our 
Nation's air traffic control system to creating new market access for 
American producers and securing more transparency and accountability 
from Big Tech. I hope that the President's words in support of 
bipartisanship will be borne out by his actions in the coming months 
and that working together, we can build a record of achievement that 
will help make life better for the American people.
  I yield the floor.