[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 41 (Thursday, March 7, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Page S2252]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                           National Security

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, tonight President Biden will come to 
Congress to deliver his State of the Union Address. It is a natural 
time to look at a President's legacy. And if one thing is certain, it 
is that the Biden Presidency hasn't done much for the state of our 
union.
  Yesterday, I came down to the floor to talk about the national 
security crisis we are facing at our southern border. It is a crisis we 
have been facing almost since the day the President took office.
  The President marked his inauguration by taking measures that 
weakened our Nation's border security, including halting construction 
of the border wall, rescinding the declaration of a national emergency 
at our southern border, and pausing deportations except under certain 
conditions. The effect was to declare to the world that the U.S. 
borders were effectively open, and the number of migrant encounters at 
our southern border ticked up accordingly.
  And the surge has never stopped. President Biden has presided over 3 
recordbreaking years of illegal immigration at our southern border. And 
if we continue on our current track, he will likely be presiding over a 
fourth. The first 4 months of fiscal year 2024 saw nearly 1 million 
migrant encounters at our southern border--1 million in just 4 months. 
These kinds of numbers not only represent a logistical and humanitarian 
crisis, they represent a gaping hole in our national security.
  There is no question that the kind of numbers we are seeing smooth 
the way for dangerous individuals to enter our country. Last year, 169 
individuals on the Terrorist Watchlist were apprehended attempting to 
cross our southern border, and we are on track to exceed that number 
this year.
  And those numbers only reflect individuals who were actually 
apprehended. With around 1.8 million known ``got-aways'' since 
President Biden took office and an untold number of unknown ``got-
aways,'' I think we can safely assume that there are plenty of 
dangerous people making their way into our country without being 
stopped.
  And President Biden's border crisis is not the only way in which he 
has jeopardized our national security. His disastrous withdrawal from 
Afghanistan weakened our standing with our allies, and his failure to 
prioritize ensuring our military is equipped to meet and defeat current 
and future threats sends a dangerous signal to bad actors around the 
world.
  Then, of course, there is the fact that the President is setting us 
up for a future energy crisis that will jeopardize our Nation's 
security by jeopardizing our energy security, not to mention 
jeopardizing American's pocketbooks. The President's hostility to 
conventional energy production and his determination to push us into a 
Green New Deal regime that our current energy system simply cannot cope 
with is setting us up for long-term instability in our Nation's energy 
supply.
  That threatens our national security, which depends on stable access 
to energy; and it threatens America's financial security as an unstable 
supply will almost unquestionably result in higher prices. The steep 
rise in energy prices so far under the Biden administration could look 
small compared to the energy prices Americans could see under the Green 
New Deal regime President Biden envisions for the future.
  Speaking of higher prices, perhaps the defining feature of the Biden 
administration is the inflation crisis the President helped create when 
he signed the so-called American Rescue Plan Act and flooded the 
economy with unnecessary government spending. Three years in, inflation 
is still well above the Federal Reserve's target rate.
  Americans continue to suffer. Today, it costs the typical family 
$1,000 more per month to maintain the standard of living it had when 
President Biden took office--$1,000 more per month, just to tread 
water.
  Grocery prices are up 21 percent under President Biden, and the cost 
of food now takes up a larger share of Americans' disposable income 
than it has at any point in more than 30 years.
  Then there is the 31 percent increase in energy costs, as I alluded 
to earlier, the 19 percent increase in housing costs, the 27 percent 
increase in the cost of car repairs, and the list goes on.
  The President likes to talk about giving American families breathing 
room. Well, President Biden has eliminated the breathing room for a lot 
of American families. Along with higher prices--much higher prices--on 
everything from groceries to gas, Americans are also dealing with the 
high interest rates the Federal Reserve has had to impose to deal with 
President Biden's inflation crisis.
  Those interest rates have helped to drive up mortgage rates and 
credit card rates, compounding hardship for a lot of Americans.
  It is no wonder that, in a recent poll, just one in three voters said 
the economy was on the right track, or that 57 percent of respondents 
in another recent poll rated the economy as ``fairly bad'' or ``very 
bad.'' Sixty-six percent of respondents in that same poll said that 
things in America are going ``somewhat'' or ``very'' badly.
  The inflation crisis, the national security crisis at our southern 
border, and the potential energy crisis--it is no wonder that Americans 
aren't feeling very optimistic about the state of our Nation. It would 
be nice if the President spoke to their concerns tonight, but I expect 
that his speech tonight will involve more blame shifting than solutions 
to the crises that he has helped create, along with, of course, a host 
of election-year handouts designed to attract voters. If Americans are 
looking for relief, they are not going to find it from President Biden 
in his speech tonight on the state of the Union.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.

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