[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 44 (Tuesday, March 12, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Page S2353]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                        President Biden's Budget

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, yesterday, President Biden released his 
budget request for the next fiscal year. Here is the top line: He wants 
the American people to take on more than $16 trillion in cumulative 
deficits over the next decade. The President who told the Nation last 
week that he was cutting the deficit just put out a budget request that 
would do the exact opposite.
  Unfortunately, this is hardly the only pledge that President Biden's 
request would break. After repeatedly promising not to raise taxes on 
households making less than $400,000 a year, the President is now 
selling a plan that would heap $5 trillion in new and expanded taxes on 
American workers and job creators.
  Let's put this in perspective. The Biden administration's budget 
proposal would raise taxes as a share of the U.S. economy to levels our 
Nation hasn't seen since World War II.
  Let me say that again. President Biden wants to bring taxes as a 
share of GDP higher than they have been since the middle of the fight 
against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
  Now, I have been pretty frank in my assessment that the threats 
America is facing today are as dangerous as we have seen since the Cold 
War, if not the era of the Axis Powers. But here is the rub: The 
President apparently only wants to tax the American people at wartime 
levels. By contrast, he shows no interest in the sort of defense 
investments that were needed to squeeze the Soviets in the 1980s, let 
alone to liberate Europe and Asia in the 1940s.
  It is far more expensive to fight wars than to deter them. American 
defense spending during World War II spiked at 37 percent of GDP; 
during the Korean war, 14 percent of GDP; Vietnam, 9 percent of GDP. By 
contrast, the Reagan buildup that helped end the Cold War hit only 6 
percent of GDP in 1986. But today, in a renewed era of major power 
competition, the Biden administration appears to lack the will even to 
sustain such credible deterrence.
  Here lies another broken promise: After engaging in political 
hostage-taking over the debt limit last year, the Biden administration 
apparently doesn't intend to honor their own agreement on spending 
limits. The latest budget request uses accounting gimmicks to blow 
clear through agreed-upon limits for domestic discretionary spending. 
Yet, at the same time, administration officials insist it should ``not 
have been a surprise'' that the President sees spending caps on 
national defense as sacrosanct.

  Of course, this reckless behavior follows a predictable pattern. 
Under this Commander in Chief, U.S. military faces the same historic 
inflation as everyone else in our country. As gas and groceries get 
more expensive, so do the capabilities our servicemembers need.
  Yet this is the fourth straight time the Biden administration has 
turned in a defense budget request that amounts to a net cut after 
inflation. Apparently, the President hadn't yet learned the lessons of 
Bidenomics; instead, for more than 3 years, a global superpower has 
responded to growing coordination amongst its major adversaries, a 
restored haven for terrorists in Afghanistan, the first major land war 
in Europe since 1945, the deadliest slaughter of Jews since the 
Holocaust on October 7 in Israel, and breakneck military spending and 
modernizations from our top strategic rival but cutting our own 
military strength.
  In a budget request full of gross excess in all the wrong places, 
neglecting the national defense is the takeaway that history will 
remember as the most alarming.