Congressional Record, Volume 169 Issue 48 (Wednesday, March 15, 2023)

[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 48 (Wednesday, March 15, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S786-S791]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

Government Funding

Mrs. CAPITO. Madam President, I rise today with great concern to talk
about the bloated budget that President Biden has put forward and,
really, what it says about his vision for the future of our country,
because a budget is a vision.
As my Republican colleagues and I will highlight today, this budget
is the latest edition in his tax-and-spend agenda. It also fits the
standards my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have set by
passing inflation-causing, deficit-raising legislation, like the
Inflation Reduction Act and the American Rescue Plan.
Let me make one thing perfectly clear. This budget has no chance of
becoming law. And that is the good news here and great news for our
constituents back home because this misguided proposal would saddle
American families with more taxes, more waste, more debt, and more
government intrusion that our constituents just do not deserve. The bad
news is--at least for this administration--that the unveiling of this
budget shines a spotlight on the priorities of the President, his
administration, and his party.
This should alarm all of us. Case in point, this $6.8 trillion
proposal has been released at a time when so many Americans are
struggling to afford basic necessities, interest rates are soaring, our
national debt is climbing at an alarming rate, and small businesses are
struggling to make ends meet.
While the Biden administration and our Democrats on the other side of
the aisle expect families to make concessions in their everyday lives--
like spending less at the grocery store, putting off buying your first
home, or purchasing an electric vehicle to avoid rising gas prices--
they are attempting to spend nearly $7 trillion, with a ``t'', of hard-
earned taxpayers' dollars, pile on to our national debt, and massively
expand the scope and authority of Federal Agencies, like the IRS, which
they massively expanded just several months ago.
What exactly is President Biden's tax-and-spend proposal? Let's dig
in just a little bit. President Biden makes his priorities clear with
his proposed changes to base discretionary funding for Federal
Agencies. That is the baseline.
The Environmental Protection Agency--I have a lot to do with this
Agency because it comes right into my Committee on Environment and
Public Works--gets a staggering--the most of any other Agency--19-
percent increase in funding year to year. But the Department of
Homeland Security, the Department of Transportation--remember, Homeland
Security is the one that deals with immigration and the crisis at the
southern border and the flow of drugs and other things--and the Small
Business Administration--where in my State, if you don't grow as a
small business, you are not growing--they are all facing budget cuts.
The White House priorities could not be clearer. And when it comes to
taxes under this budget proposed by the President, Main Street mom and
pop businesses would feel strained like never before.
We just lowered the taxes in our State. It is the biggest tax cut
ever in the State of West Virginia. Yet we are looking at taxes on
small businesses and capital gains taxes. The corporate tax rate goes
up. Taxes on American energy would increase. Retirement taxes go up.
The Medicare tax would increase, and the personal income tax would go
up to the highest level in decades.
What President Biden fails to realize is that the brunt of his tax
hikes would be felt by those who own, invest in, or operate small- and
medium-sized businesses. Maybe, that is why he doesn't put any extra
money in the Small Business Administration.
This is a direct violation of his pledge to not raise taxes on small
businesses.
The National Federation of Small Businesses issued a statement last
week warning that the tax increase--and it is called the National
Federation of Small Businesses. They are small businesses. They say
that this ``would further harm Main Street.'' It would ``crush Main
Street's ability to grow and create jobs.''
The National Federation of Small Businesses believes that the Biden
administration should increase focus on policies that will ``provide
certainty and promote economic growth to allow our small businesses to
create jobs and raise wages.''
My Republican colleagues and I could not agree more. It is my hope
that the President and congressional Democrats will continue working on
previously bipartisan tax issues that spur innovation and are pro-
growth.
Just last week, as I said, our State passed historic tax cuts that
signed into law by our Governor, Governor Justice, in the Mountain
State. I wish our Federal Government was following this example.
Instead, President Biden has chosen a different path that an analysis
from the Tax Foundation found would create negative effects on savings,
investments, and have economy-wide repercussions. The
analysis continues that this brazen increase in taxes would ultimately
harm our workers, international competitiveness, and domestic
investment.

We talk about international competitiveness all the time. Why are we
trying to move in a direction where our competitiveness would be less
effective? In short, moving top tax rates in the United States beyond
international norms reduces our economic growth.
You might ask yourself: Does the spending ever stop under President
Biden and this budget?
Well, ironically, it does when you look at our own Department of
Homeland Security, which secures the interior of our Nation. It is
facing a budget cut under this proposal.

[[Page S787]]

The President has consistently said that his budget is a reflection
of his priorities. You see millions of people coming across our
southern board with no deterrence. But nothing runs more true than that
this is his priority--to continue that practice. And the refusal and
inability to secure our border and stop the scourge of illicit drugs
from entering our communities is not the priority of this
administration.
The President's budget requests 350 new border agents, less than a 2-
percent increase in our agents, while our border runs rampant with
illegal crossings, and policies like title 42 move closer to sunset.
This budget proposes a contingency slush fund--there is nothing
taxpayers like better than a slush fund--a slush fund for surge
capacity at the border. In other words, give me the money now because I
know we are going to have more people coming over, and I want to have
the money to pay for it in advance because I don't want to come back to
Congress to pay for it because Congress knows we have a problem and
they won't give me the money to pay for it in an emergency. So I am
going to get it up front.
It would be impossible for DHS to use this funding to mitigate our
crisis at the border because, by the time they receive these dollars,
these illegal crossings would have occurred.
We all have priorities, and President Biden made his clear. Securing
our southern border is just not one of his priorities.
We see, clearly, President Biden's priorities yet again when it comes
to military spending. We just had a drone shot down yesterday, I
believe, by the Russians in the Black Sea. The President's budget
shortchanges defense for more reckless spending. It is just a 3-percent
increase--a 3.2-percent increase--in our military and national
security. This comes at a time when inflation in the President's
economy is high and our dollars are stretched thinner and thinner.
We hear about the supply chain. We hear about different materials we
can't get, how much more expensive they are, and how much longer the
wait is. So adversaries overseas increase their defense budgets. Now is
not the time for us to delay that much needed modernization and
reinforcement that we have put ourselves on a pathway for the last
several years. Now is the time to invest in the advanced capabilities
and the industrial base capacity that we expect and need for future
generations and make our national security a priority.
According to the President's budget proposal, our addiction epidemic
doesn't seem to be a top priority either. The President's proposed
budget summary lacks a sense of urgency around this epidemic and the
fentanyl crisis. This is a crisis in my State and in the Presiding
Officer's State, as well, and in all States. My State has been
disproportionately impacted by this. In the budget summary, fentanyl is
only mentioned twice, opioids are mentioned 4 times, and climate change
is mentioned 42 times--42.
In 2022, West Virginia lost 1,135 West Virginians to fentanyl
overdoses. What we lost to overdoses, many of those were fentanyl
overdoses--a large majority.
President Biden, I implore you to put more emphasis on the
communities facing our streets every day that deserve to be our
national priorities.
This budget proposal from the Biden administration makes obvious the
motivations and priorities of the White House and the Agencies. In
Washington, clarity comes at a premium price. So I will give them
credit for that.
But by touting this budget proposal and claiming that it cuts the
deficit by raising taxes shows that, no matter what, the Democrats
aren't interested in cutting spending.
I mean, put yourself in the country's shoes, as a family. What do you
do when you see your credit cards maxing out and times are getting
tough? What do you do? You pull back. You stop spending however you can
do that in your own home.
My Republican colleagues and I stand in direct opposition to what the
President is doing with his budget. So through my remarks on the floor
today and the subsequent speeches by my fellow Republicans, we will
continue to highlight the errors in the President's budget. We will
also stress the need to strike balance, restraint, and regular order.
What does regular order mean to people who are watching this? That
means we go through committees and we compromise, and we talk to
Republicans and Democrats and get together.
The Presiding Officer and I are on the Appropriations Committee. She
is a chair, and I am a ranking member. We do a lot of talking during
this process. That is what we need to do.
I intend to fulfill my obligations on the Appropriations Committee
and, hopefully, we can get this to regular order. Right now, we need to
set priorities in a budget and spending plan that reflect the real
needs we see every day on every street in this country.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Tennessee.
Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, I so agree with my colleague from
West Virginia and her comments about this budget.
Here it is. I would encourage our citizens to pick it up and give it
a read and look at some of the things that they are going to find in
here. I think they are going to be aghast at what they find in here--
$477,000 to the IRS for equity training so that they can put an
emphasis on equity. These are just some of the porked-up things that
you are going to find in this left-leaning, radical, unrealistic wish
list of a budget that this administration has brought forward. It
really is a blueprint to socialism. Let's put the government in charge
of everything, your life from daylight to dark every time you are out
and about. Let's have control over your gas stove, over your washing
machine, over your showerhead, over your toilet flusher. That is what
my colleagues on the left see. That is their goal--control over the
people, governing by the elite for the elite. That is what they are all
about. But I am going to drill down a little bit on this funding
request for the Internal Revenue Service.

Now, President Biden is expecting the IRS to go to work, getting not
just a few dollars but getting $4.7 trillion in new taxes. Imagine
that. Tennesseans do not want to pay the government more of their hard-
earned paycheck. They don't want to give it up to a government that is
wasting that money because they realize it is our children and our
grandchildren, our precious ones, who are going to have to pay the cost
for this. It is compromising their futures on programs they don't want,
with money we don't have.
Why are you seeing all these tax increases? You are seeing them
because the spending is out of control--a $6.9 trillion budget; $4.7
trillion in new taxes; a budget that in year 1--year 1--the deficit for
year 1 is $1.8 trillion. That is how far out of balance this budget is.
That is why this thing is a wish list. It is a wish list of programs.
If you want to see how the left views the world, pick it up and give
it a read. If you want to read in those words how little respect they
have for the American people, for hard-working taxpayers, pick it up.
They want your money.
Now, on the IRS, the IRS--in this fiscal year, 2024, they will
increase their appropriations to $14.1 billion. That is a $1.8 billion
increase from the 2023 enacted level. And we know that in the Inflation
Reduction Act--what did the IRS get? Oh, $80 billion. How about that?
So the IRS now is going to have $94.1 billion to spend.
Well, let's just ask the question: What do we think the IRS is going
to use this money for? Do we think they are going to use it to make the
Agency more user-friendly? Do we think they are going to use it to have
people pick up the phone and say: Hi, I am your friendly IRS agent. How
may I help you today?
We know that is pipe-dreaming. That is not what they are going to do.
Eighty billion dollars, plus a record $14.1 billion in an
appropriation. They are going to use this money for what? More audits.
Because why? President Biden wants $4.7 trillion--with a ``t,''
trillion--in new taxes.
Where do we think he is going to get this money? Oh, they like to
say, it is going to come from corporations. It is going to come from
extremely wealthy individuals and billionaires. But you know what,
there is a problem with the math on that. The numbers just don't work.
It doesn't add up.
Where are they going to get it? They are going to get it from small
business manufacturers, from Main Street merchants, from the
restaurants in your community. They are going to go get it

[[Page S788]]

from the manufacturing plant in your community. How about the HVAC
contractor? How about the plumbing company? This is where they are
going. Sound familiar? Of course it does because it is the middle-
income earner who gets hit every single time. Every single time without
fail, they are the ones who get hit by the tax increases the Democrats
are wanting to push forward.
Now, we know the IRS is not going to make that Agency more friendly.
We know it is not going to be there to protect you, the hard-working
taxpayer. But we do know that what they will do is wallop you upside
the head and say: You owe this money. We are going to audit you.
It is going to happen time and again.
On top of all of this, inflation is soaring. Grocery prices are up
about 20 percent; gasoline prices, 45 percent; natural gas prices, 43
percent. Electricity prices have increased 24 percent, and clothing
prices are up 12 percent. But in this budget, there is nothing
addressing inflation. There is nothing that is going to bring inflation
down.
There is not a lot of attention paid to crime in the streets or gangs
who are coming across the border or the fact that the chief of the
Border Patrol said today that they do not have--the United States does
not have operational control of the border. There is not a cent there
to build that wall, but there is money in there to pay for attorney
fees for illegal immigrants.
It is the wrong set of priorities, not what the American people are
wanting, certainly not what Tennesseans are wanting to see, and not the
accountability and transparency the American people expect from their
government.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Utah.
Mr. LEE. Madam President, there is a sales tactic known as throwing
spaghetti at the wall, where the salesperson suggests an outrageously
high price to see if it sticks. More often than not, the price is dead
on arrival. It is intended to be; that is part of the trick.
See, the element of shock allows the salesperson to create an
illusion of a spectacular discount by slashing the initially
artificially high price. The customer then leaves feeling like they
stumbled onto an incredible deal, too good to pass up, even though they
left with a product they either didn't want or couldn't afford or, at a
minimum, a product for which they paid too high a price.
When I read President Biden's budget request, it felt more like I was
trapped at a kiosk in the middle of the mall or being sold a used car
by a predatory, unscrupulous salesman, not reading a serious budget
proposal from the President of the United States. So I would suggest
the President try again because the spaghetti didn't stick. We are not
buying what the President is selling, and his budget is dead on
arrival.
When the President reached the end of his sales pitch, he told us the
price: a whopping $6.9 trillion. It would create a $1.8 trillion
deficit in the first year alone. Then by 2027, we would break the
record for the most debt held by the public as a percentage of U.S. GDP
since World War II.
Utahns are already pinching pennies as a result of this approach to
budget.
In August, I stood where I stand now, as this body was on the cusp of
passing the $1.7 trillion omnibus package, and read letters I received
from Utah constituents. They explained how difficult life has become
under Biden's recordbreaking inflation. They described the daily
choices they were forced to make because of how expensive life had
become under this administration.
Jennie from Salt Lake City wrote:

My annual income is about $30,000 a year. I'm panicking.
The price of groceries and other goods has increased so much,
I'm struggling financially. I understand my utility bills
could double or even triple. I don't know how I can afford to
live.

Since Democrats started their reckless spending 2 years ago, prices
have risen more than 15 percent. Groceries are up nearly 20 percent.
Kevin from Murray, UT, wrote:

This morning, I filled up my work . . . truck. It cost
$149. I'm a small business [owner], and the price of fuel is
a major challenge for our company of 5 vehicles traveling to
our various projects.

President Biden's energy policies caused gas prices to reach $5 and
energy costs to skyrocket. Gas is up 45 percent, and Biden's budget
will crush American energy with $31 billion in new taxes.
I said during that speech that if the definition of ``insanity'' is
doing the same thing and expecting different results, then spending
more money and increasing taxes to reduce inflation certainly meets
that definition.
This approach is insane, and the President is doubling and then
tripling down. Rather than address the spending driving inflation, the
Biden administration continues to blame inflation on everything from
the pandemic to Putin. We know why. The President won't address
inflation because he wants to spend even more. He wants to create the
biggest government we have ever had and make it more and more
expensive.
We have to get this monkey off our back, but that can't be done in
darkness. That has to be done while acknowledging the problem that we
have and addressing it head-on, not obscuring it.
I want to be clear that the Constitution tasks Congress with
determining annual spending and revenue levels, not the President's
annual budget proposal, and clearly this is for good reason. We have a
constitutional duty here to protect our constituents from the snake oil
salesman hell-bent on taking the American people for all they are
worth, who will leave the American people with junk they don't need and
a payment they can't afford.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Murphy). The Senator from North Carolina.
Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I am here to join some of my colleagues to
talk about President Biden's budget proposal. I have heard a lot of the
floor speeches today, and I hear a lot of facts and figures that are
all very important, but sometimes it is kind of hard to translate that
down to what it means around a kitchen table.
I am actually speaking with a very vivid memory of the life I lived
as a teenager back in the seventies when my mother and father, with six
kids, were always on the economic bubble based on what happens in
Washington.
The challenges of working families are significant, and the
challenges this budget presents make them even more so.
I will start off with a couple of facts and figures because I think
it is important. We have had inflation go up at about 15 percent since
President Biden was in office. I am going to talk a little bit about
that in a minute.
If you go on Bloomberg or you read the Wall Street Journal, they use
words like ``CPI'' and ``PCE'' and all these things. That won't
necessarily make a lot of sense to folks who haven't studied it, but it
does matter that grocery prices are up by 20 percent since President
Biden took office.
That is a 40-year high. And it also matters that rent prices--
something that my family in the seventies, depending upon what Congress
did to us, very seldom for us, we would either be in a house that my
parents owned or a house or a trailer that my parents rented. And when
rents go up like that, the choices get fewer and fewer.
These interest rates--these numbers are hurting the American people,
but I want to go back to the interest rate discussion.
The fact of the matter is, we found ourselves in a once-in-a-century
challenge with the global pandemic in COVID. And in this body, I joined
the vast majority of Democrats and Republicans to do everything we had
to do to make things meet. That is why we did the Paycheck Protection
Plan, which saved hundreds, if not millions, of jobs. We did a number
of things on a bipartisan basis.
So I think that we have to look at that overall inflation number and
see how much of that was just necessary so that, in our judgment, we
could weather a storm that could have created a global economic
disaster. There are some of my Members who say we shouldn't focus on
that, but I think we need to be honest with the American people.
However, what we have seen since President Biden came into office was
something that really disappointed me, as somebody who has worked
across the aisle a number of different times, and that was two partisan
bills: one that was $1.9 trillion shortly after President Biden took
office; another

[[Page S789]]

one, the so-called--I call it the ``Inflation Production Act'' because
it has very little to do with reduction. Its official title is the
Inflation Reduction Act.
So we are talking about $3 trillion in spending, after we had all
decided that the money that we put out there to weather the storm for
the global pandemic needed to be spent. We even raised questions about
whether or not that money should be spent for what we originally
intended. The point to that is the government had spent enough, and
then these partisan bills took place, and these partisan bills are
absolutely one of the root causes and primary reasons why we are seeing
inflation today.
As a matter of fact, the rising inflation is one of the root causes
behind what we are seeing, and with that interest rates, because when
inflation goes up and the Federal Reserve wants to get inflation back
down to 2 percent--we are at 6 percent now. There are some people high-
fiving over that. I don't know why. Yes, it is down from 7 percent or
so, but we are nowhere near where we need to be.
And inflation happens when government spends too much. That is what
we are seeing happen, and, in fact, because of inflation and the need
to raise interest rates, now we have banks that have failed, largely
based on the inflation rate exposure and what they are having to do
when their debts come due.
So we have a budget that even the additional spending--I think the
top-line number is $6.8 trillion. Now, to be fair, in the COVID
timeframe, it was a little over 4 trillion--I think maybe even a little
bit north of that but certainly not at this level. We are spending too
much. And the American families, and working families, in particular,
people on that economic bubble, are the ones who are going to suffer
the most if we don't figure out how to get it right.
So we have got a deficit, a deficit in this budget. We have got new
debt in this budget. We have got new taxes in this budget. And we have
invalid assumptions about where we are today.
How on Earth can we be making an optimistic assumption about
inflation that is somewhere near 2 percent? Does anybody here honestly
believe that we are going to be high-fiving and being at 2 percent
inflation over the next year and a half or 2 years? I don't believe
that that is true. But how can you make that an underlying assumption
in the budget--because the President is smart, his advisers are smart;
they know that that is a false premise for a budget.
So it is even worse than it may seem. And what makes me sad about
this is it is really worse for the people who are already getting 80
cents on the dollar for groceries, for the people who are only getting
90 cents on the dollar for rent today. It all comes back to the people
who are struggling the most.
We should talk about some of the other taxes that are in this
legislation. Energy. Generally speaking, most people have to buy gas;
they have got to heat their homes. Energy taxes are going up. I think
the estimate that we have right now is about $20 billion in additional
energy taxes.
I don't know about you all, but virtually every time I see a tax
increase, if you wait long enough, you will see how that translates
into a tax burden on working families. It is inevitable. Corporations
ultimately don't pay taxes.
When you are going to increase a corporate tax by 30 percent, who
ultimately pays for that? Yes, they may be able to work around the
edges and absorb some of that, but what they are going to do is find a
way to get the consumer--working families--to pay for that. That is how
this works.
That, incidentally, is how the bailout of Silicon Valley Bank is
going to work. It is fair, and it would pass a fact check, that the
plan that was agreed to over the weekend to resolve Silicon Valley Bank
isn't a tax in the way that we describe a tax. It is that tax you get
from the IRS, for example. It is that tax you get--sales tax at a
register.
Why is this also a hidden tax? Because do you honestly believe that
some community bank that is struggling to keep a branch open in an
underserved area in rural North Carolina--they are going to make one of
two choices. They are either going to make that banking service more
expensive or they are simply going to leave that bank. And now we get
to unbanked and underbanked areas that are most hard hit, the ones that
actually have working families who need banks to serve them.
The other thing--I am not going to get into details, but I am also
very concerned with the signal that President Biden has sent on
defense.

There is a plus-up in defense spending, but the President's proposed
budget--in the worst possible time with all the conflicts that we are
dealing with--the Ukraine conflict, the threat from China, the
continuing threat in the Middle East. Is this really a time to send the
signal that we are going to spend less on national defense?
We have been trying to get to a 355-ship Navy for almost a decade--at
least 8 years, as many years as I have been here. I have been on the
Senate Armed Services Committee for those 8 years, and we were always
talking about how are we going to get to 355? We are just under 300
now.
This budget is suggesting that we may even have a smaller Navy than
we have today, when China has one of the largest navies that has ever
existed--actually, probably the largest navy that has ever existed in
the history of the world.
So we are prioritizing domestic spending; we are turning our back on
national security; and all the net increase in spending is based on
assumptions that they are making that will ultimately--if they don't
believe it, they need to believe it--it is going to hurt working
families the most.
Well, the good news about President Biden's budget is that it gives
us a real, I think, understanding of what his priorities are.
The better news is that that budget is not going to pass through
Congress because we are going to have to work on something that is more
responsible, that is not inflationary, that tries to get taxes in line
so that people can afford the bill that you will ultimately have to
pay.
And I hope that over the next--in the coming months that we can have
a discussion about let's start with the people who are hurt most. Let's
look at the policies that channel directly into making that burden
greater, and let's do something good for the United States and the
hard-working families across this country.
And for that reason, I will do everything I can, Mr. President. You
are somebody I have worked with on a bipartisan basis. I hope that we
can get the Senate and the House to recognize that it is time for us to
stand up and produce something that puts working families at the
forefront.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. HOEVEN. Mr. President, I would like to join the good Senator from
North Carolina as well as my colleagues in bringing Senate attention to
the President's fiscal year 2024 budget.
At the outset, I want to say I support a balanced budget amendment
and have done so since I first came to the Senate. I think that is
something that we need to pass. We need a balanced budget amendment.
But with that, I do want to comment on the Biden administration's
budget released last week, which goes in the wrong direction.
President Biden's $6.9 trillion proposal is full of the same tax-and-
spend policies that do not balance a budget, do not help reduce
inflation, and instead they levy taxes on hard-working Americans and
spend money that we don't have.
In total, the budget proposes $4.7 trillion--let me repeat that, $4.7
trillion--in new taxes on the American people.
We need to get our fiscal house in order, and we do that by
controlling spending, not again raising taxes on hard-working
Americans. It is time that we come together to reduce our debt and
deficit and enact responsible policies that will reduce inflation and
lift the burden that our American taxpayers currently face.
The President's budget calls for increasing the corporate tax rate to
28 percent. This is higher than the average corporate tax rate in
Europe, which is currently 21.7 percent, and it is even higher than the
tax rate in China, if you can believe that, which is 25 percent.
This policy neglects the fact that tax increases like these are
ultimately passed through to consumers in terms

[[Page S790]]

of higher prices for goods and services. That is just the reality.
We know this because in 2021, the nonpartisan Joint Committee on
Taxation scored a similar corporate tax increase proposal and very
clearly came back and demonstrated that that tax increase would be
borne by hard-working taxpayers and certainly taxpayers making less
than the $400,000 per year that President Biden has talked about.
Because of this administration's past tax-and-spend policies, just
yesterday, the updated CPI--Consumer Price Index--indicated that prices
for goods and services in this country continue to rise.
We have seen historic levels of inflation, and a big part of
controlling and reducing that inflation is controlling and reducing
overall spending.
With the latest numbers, unless you have gotten at least a 15-percent
raise since the Biden administration took office, you have effectively
suffered a pay cut because the rate of inflation has gone up faster
than your rate of pay.
During the previous administration, we took a different approach,
cutting the top corporate rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. This
approach led to economic growth and businesses coming back to America,
and it also led to higher wages for American workers.
Of particular concern in my State of North Dakota are the proposed
tax increases on energy production, including oil, gas, and coal. In
fact, the Biden budget proposes to increase taxes by $31 billion on
fossil fuel companies.
What the budget fails to recognize is that these taxes are borne by
consumers in higher prices at the pump--when they pull up to the gas
station, higher prices at the pump, higher electric bills, and higher
costs when they go to the grocery stores. That is where they are
ultimately paid.
We need to produce more energy. We need to create incentives to
produce more energy in this country to bring down the cost of energy.
There is an energy component in almost every product that you can think
of, and we need to find ways to produce more energy to help increase
supply and reduce the cost of energy. That will help with inflation
across the board.
Furthermore, taxes like these only help oil-producing countries like
Russia, Iran, and Venezuela--countries that have far inferior
environmental standards to those here in the United States. That makes
no sense--no sense at all.
My colleagues and I worked with the last administration to put in
place policies that made our country not only energy independent but
energy dominant--energy dominant. More energy, more supply helped
reduce the cost of energy. That benefited consumers in their
pocketbook. It also created more jobs and increased the wages in the
jobs we have. That benefited the American worker.
Energy security is also a national security issue, making us less
dependent on our adversaries and helping our allies--helping our allies
so that they don't have to depend on energy from our adversaries. Look
at what is going on in Europe right now, with our support and Western
Europe's support for Ukraine at the same time Europe is looking to get
energy from Russia, a country which has invaded Ukraine. Yeah, that
makes no sense.
We need to return to policies that incentivize energy production in
this country, not tax the very energy producers that produce more
energy in this country with better environmental stewardship than
anywhere else in the world.
Also, on defense, the budget falls short on defense. While on paper
the budget proposes increased defense spending in 2024, it fails to
take into account the incredible inflation costs which have been
generated by this administration's tax-and-spend policies.
Our current threat, obviously, not only with what we see in Europe
but globally, we can only respond to with a position of strength--
strength. This budget would result in just the opposite--a smaller
Army, fewer Navy ships, fewer Air Force aircraft. We need to support
our men and women in uniform by providing them with the resources they
need to address the global threats posed by our adversaries.
In conclusion, the President's budget is the wrong proposal at the
wrong time. Congress must work to find savings, reduce our debt and
deficit, and responsibly fund our priorities without increasing taxes
on hard-working American taxpayers.
As a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and the ranking
member of the Ag Appropriations Subcommittee, I look forward to working
on the fiscal year 2024 appropriations bills and enacting commonsense
legislation that meets our country's needs while facing our fiscal
realities and working to get our debt and deficit under control.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.
Mrs. HYDE-SMITH. Mr. President, I rise today to also express my
disappointment in the fiscal year 2024 budget submitted to Congress by
President Biden. As a fiscal conservative, I have serious concerns
about the direction this budget proposes to take our country. It fails
to address the real needs of our Nation and instead doubles down on
failed policies.
Americans continue to suffer from the worst inflation since the
Carter administration--inflation set off by President Biden's reckless
tax-and-spend agenda. Consumer prices have risen 15 percent since Biden
took office. These are real numbers. People in my home State of
Mississippi and across this country continue to see their hard-earned
savings dwindle and their paychecks stretched thin by higher prices for
everything from groceries to gasoline and basic utilities.
After 2 years of trudging through this economy, Americans truly need
help. However, President Biden's budget will do anything but help. The
President's $7 trillion budget for 2024 will result in massive spending
increases that will further exacerbate our already significant debt and
deficit problems. Remember, reckless spending is the major reason
prices took off in the first place.
We simply cannot afford to spend at this level and continue passing
on the burden of our current and growing debt to future generations.
What is more, this proposal includes $4.7 trillion in new or
increased taxes--the largest tax hike since the 1960s. These tax hikes
would stifle economic growth, discourage investment, and ultimately
harm the very people the President's budget is supposed to help.
The President is asking Congress to hike the individual Federal
income tax rate up from 37 percent to 39.6 percent, not including the
surtaxes with that. This proposal would push tax increases on even more
hard-working Americans. Make no mistake, this proposal does not ``tax
the rich,'' as my colleagues across the aisle love to say; it raises
taxes on middle-class Americans.
The President's proposed tax increases may raise revenue in the short
term to support his big spending, Big Government schemes, but they
amount to distraction and to only gimmicks.
There is little chance these massive tax increases will see the light
of day, but even if they did, the Biden tax hikes would not address the
underlying issues of our ballooning national debt.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that the Federal
Government will spend over $10 trillion on interest alone in the next
10 years. Think about that for a moment--$10 trillion on interest
payments alone. Unbelievable. As we pay more and more on debt interest
payments, there will be less available to use on critical and important
priorities like Senator Hoeven mentioned: national defense,
infrastructure, healthcare, or education.
I recently reintroduced a constitutional balanced-budget amendment
because I am very concerned about the future of this great Nation. In
contrast, President Biden's 2024 budget plan sends a clear signal that
he and his administration are not serious about controlling the
national debt or even reducing annual deficit spending. He may talk
about it, but this budget says otherwise.
It is our responsibility as elected officials of the American people
to strengthen our Nation, not to leave it saddled with unsustainable
debt that puts everything at risk, including entitlement programs that
hard-working Americans have paid into their entire lives.
President Biden's budget is a disappointment and falls short in
addressing serious challenges, such as getting our fiscal house in
order, securing the border, unleashing American energy, and so much
more.

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We all know the President's budget was received dead on arrival, but
it signals the starting point to the annual budget process. It is my
hope that wiser minds on both sides of the aisle will prevail as
Congress embarks on the 2024 budget and appropriations process.
Americans are already pinching pennies, taking on debt, and
struggling to pay their bills, and they deserve much, much more. They
deserve relief, and our Nation needs relief in the form of tried-and-
true just pure fiscal responsibility.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.