[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 99 (Wednesday, June 7, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Page S1989]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Biden Administration

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, last week, Congress successfully passed 
legislation, the Fiscal Responsibility Act, to raise the debt ceiling 
and avert a default. I am pleased that the final legislation paired an 
increase in the debt ceiling with real spending reforms, but I don't 
need to tell anyone that things came down to the wire.
  President Biden wasted months refusing to negotiate on a debt ceiling 
deal before finally yielding to the political realities of divided 
government and coming to the negotiating table. And while we got about 
as good of an agreement as we could have hoped for in this situation--
again, including meaningful spending reforms the Democrats initially 
rejected--things didn't need to come to this crisis point. Had 
President Biden come to the negotiating table sooner, we might not have 
been passing the Fiscal Responsibility Act just days before our Nation 
would have defaulted.
  This isn't the first crisis of inaction in this Presidency. President 
Biden has made a habit of ignoring or failing to meet crisis 
situations, with predictably problematic results. The border crisis is 
one notable example. It took 2 years of recordbreaking numbers of 
illegal crossings at our southern border before the President made any 
real move to even begin to address the crisis--2 years--2 years in 
which he mostly pretended the border crisis didn't even exist.
  The President didn't want there to be a border crisis, presumably 
because he knew it would serve as an indictment of his open border 
policies. So he simply ignored the reality.
  Unfortunately, Border Patrol agents and our Nation's overwhelmed 
border communities didn't have that option. They had to spend 2-plus 
years now dealing with all the ramifications of unchecked illegal 
immigration at our southern border.
  While it is a good thing that the President has finally made some 
moves to address the crisis, his inaction has taken a terrible toll on 
Border Patrol agents and our border communities and on migrants 
themselves.
  We have seen a similar situation with inflation. Even as it became 
clear the Democrats' so-called American Rescue Plan had helped set off 
a serious inflation crisis, the President and his administration 
dismissed the problem. And they didn't just dismiss the problem; they 
doubled down on the strategy that got our country into this mess in the 
first place.
  While the President was eventually forced to, at least halfheartedly, 
acknowledge our inflation crisis, he still can't bring himself to 
acknowledge what caused it, and that is the Democrats' big spending 
priorities. And he has continued to pursue new government spending, 
from his nearly trillion-dollar student loan giveaway to a budget that, 
in a few short years, would have us spending $10 trillion annually.
  Perhaps the most devastating example of the President's failure to 
recognize and act on the realities of the situation came with his 
disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Even as it was becoming 
appallingly clear that Afghanistan was headed for takeover by the 
Taliban, the President delayed or simply failed to take the necessary 
steps to withdraw American citizens and the Afghan allies who aided us. 
The result was a chaotic evacuation that saw the deaths of 13 U.S. 
servicemembers and scores--literally scores--of Afghan civilians and 
left both U.S. citizens and thousands of our Afghan allies behind as 
the Taliban took over the country.
  It is fortunate that the months President Biden spent refusing to 
acknowledge the need to negotiate on a debt ceiling agreement did not 
result in serious consequences for our country. Things were not looking 
good for a while, but the President ultimately recognized that divided 
government requires negotiation and compromise.
  But a lot of his other leadership failures have had serious and 
permanent consequences. The President's failure to acknowledge and 
address the reality of the border crisis has allowed hundreds of 
thousands of individuals to evade law enforcement and enter our country 
illegally, left border communities and American cities struggling to 
provide for the mass influx of migrants, and, undoubtedly, facilitated 
the flow of cross-border criminal activity like fentanyl trafficking.
  As I said, the President's failure to recognize and acknowledge the 
reality of the situation in Afghanistan, including by ignoring the 
State Department dissent cable, resulted in the deaths of American 
servicemembers and Afghan civilians.
  Meanwhile, the President's persistent failure to fully recognize the 
realities of inflation and its roots and Democrats' reckless spending 
continues to leave our economy and American families vulnerable to more 
of Democrats' big spending policies.
  There are around 18 months left in the President's current term and a 
lot of challenges for our Nation to address. I hope that the debt 
ceiling negotiations mark the start of a new era, one in which the 
President spends more time dealing with things as they are and less 
time pursuing an agenda divorced from the reality of the economic and 
security challenges that our Nation faces, because our country and the 
American people cannot afford a repeat of the first 2 years of this 
President's administration.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.