[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 45 (Thursday, March 9, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Page S731]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                           Government Funding

  Mr. President, later today, the President of the United States will 
release his budget. We haven't seen the details of it yet so I am not 
prepared. I will have more to say about that next week when I have an 
opportunity to drill down.
  But I think what we do know about it--and I can predict this because 
it is pretty easy to predict that the President's budget will include a 
lot more spending, a lot more taxing and that after the last 2 years 
here where, through a budget reconciliation process, the President and 
the Democrats here in Congress passed almost another $3 trillion in 
spending and taxing and debt outside of the normal appropriations 
process at a time when revenue--last year's revenue--was at a 20-year 
high. In fact, the revenue coming to the Federal Government in the last 
fiscal year, as a percentage of our entire economy, was higher than it 
has been with three exceptions in history. One was in the late nineties 
at the end of the dot-com bubble and two times in World War II.
  It is a record level of revenue as a percentage of GDP, and yet the 
President in his budget is going to propose a whole lot more spending 
and a whole lot more taxing and a whole lot more government--expanding, 
growing government.
  That is what we expect his budget to do, and like I said, I will have 
more to say about that next week.
  (The remarks of Mr. Thune pertaining to the introduction of S. 734 
are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')