Mr. President, I know there is a lot going on in Washington, DC, these days given the speed and the aggressiveness with which President Trump and his administration have attacked his agenda, and I…
Mr. President, I know there is a lot going on in Washington, DC, these days given the speed and the aggressiveness with which President Trump and his administration have attacked his agenda, and I use that in a very positive way. It gets a little confusing to figure out what is important and what is maybe not quite so important.
But I would like to talk about one thing that has been very top of mind for a lot of us here in the House and the Senate; and that, of course, is the process to implement President Trump's ``America First'' agenda.
This is what the election was about, just on November 5. And, of course, a lot of ink has been spilled on the mechanics of the process, talking about budget resolutions, reconciliation instructions, and things that are gibberish to most Americans, but this is the process by which we do the job of implementing President Trump's ``America-First'' agenda.
Last week, my Senate colleagues and I were here late into the night and into the early morning voting on amendments to the budget passed out of the Senate Budget Committee on which I serve.
Our colleagues in the House voted to pass their version last night, so now we find ourselves at a critical juncture with a different budget resolution in the House from that passed by the Senate.
And, of course, as I said, we have been spending a lot of time and energy talking about procedural questions up to this point. Questions over whether the Republicans will enact President Trump's agenda in one bill or two, whether the bill that eventually reaches the President's desk would originate in the House or the Senate. A great deal of discussion and debate has been ongoing about all of these details and more.
But what is most important is to keep our eye on the prize, what we are actually trying to accomplish. As I mentioned at the beginning, last November, millions of Americans went to the polls and elected President Trump and to turn the page on the last 4 years of the Biden administration's disastrous inflationary policies.
We finally reached a point where, as Admiral Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff about 10 years ago, when asked what our biggest threat to our national security was, he said it was the debt. And at the time, I think many of us, me included, thought, well, that is kind of an interesting take. Well, we have finally come to a point where Admiral Mullen's statement and reality have converged, where we are now paying more interest on the national debt than we are on defense of our Nation, in a dangerous world which seems to be getting more dangerous all the time.
We spend about 2.8 percent of our gross domestic product on national defense, and there is no question in my mind that we are going to have to up that figure substantially, but we can't do it by continuing to borrow against our Nation's credit card and to crowd out other investment and to pass that debt on to our children and grandchildren. That is just flat immoral.
So now the task at hand is to enact the policies that the American people voted for. And what are those policies? Well, first and foremost, we have to secure the southern border. I represent a State of about 31 million people with a 1,200-mile common border between the United States and Mexico.
We know in Texas what the price that we have had to pay--not just at the border, not just in Texas, but throughout the Nation--for the open border policies of the Biden administration. Customs and Border Protection encounters with illegal migrants increased more than 40 percent from fiscal year 2021 to fiscal 2023, totaling more than 10 billion encounters nationwide.
And when we say this is an encounter, this is people showing up, claiming asylum, only to be released into the interior of the United States and given a
court date that may be 10 years off or simply paroled, which means released into the United States, given a work permit. In other words, in the words of the Border Patrol when I asked them, what do you think the best solution is to deal with this flood of humanity coming across the border, they used one word. They said ``consequences.'' There have to be consequences to coming to the United States outside of legal immigration channels.
And during the Biden administration, there simply were no consequences. It was like having a big, green traffic light on the border telling people from anywhere around the world: Come on in.
And, of course, the people who facilitated that are these criminal organizations, the cartels that have now been designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the Trump administration. And, oh, by the way, not only did they traffic in human beings for all sorts of purposes--including human trafficking of children, young girls, young boys--these were the same people who facilitated the movement of drugs across the border in massive quantities that took the life of more than 100,000 Americans last year alone. About 70,000 of those were from fentanyl, a word that has become more common lately because it is ubiquitous; it is everywhere. It is in States like Montana, States like Texas. And many of my colleagues have said: Well, as a result of the disastrous border policies of the Biden administration, every State is now a border State.
Well, on top of all the people who were simply released--basically enriching the cartels, who charge by the head, and making it easier for them to smuggle drugs into the United States--more than 1.7 million ``got-aways'' evaded Border Patrol. What that means, basically, is they were seen on a camera or some sort of sensor, but by the time the Border Patrol showed up, they were gone.
And, of course, these are the people who, frankly, are up to no good. Whether they have criminal records, whether they were carrying drugs, whether they had some other reason to evade law enforcement, these are not honest, hard-working people who just simply wanted a better way of life--1.7 million ``got-aways.''
The human and drug trafficking facilitated by the Biden administration's open border policies have caused immeasurable suffering to the people of Texas and the people of the Nation. The fentanyl manufactured with Chinese precursors smuggled through the open borders has taken tens of thousands of American lives. It is a shocking statistic to me that, out of the 70,000 or so--young people, mainly-- who died as a result of ingesting fentanyl, unbeknownst to them, they thought they were actually consuming something else--a Percocet, some other relatively innocuous drug--only to find out the hard way that it was contaminated with fentanyl, a deadly drug, which is now the leading cause of death for young people between the ages of 18 and 45.
We know where it comes from. The chemicals come from China. We know where it goes to be manufactured and made to look like relatively innocuous pills that are then taken by our young people. It comes across the border from Mexico. And yet the Biden administration's open border policies made it easier, not harder, for that to happen, and the results, as I said, have been disastrous.
Well, now it is up to us to right the ship by enacting President Trump's border security agenda, but we also have other work to do. We have to extend the expiring tax provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, a bill that we passed in 2017. And after 5 years, many provisions of that tax bill expire.
If Congress fails to extend the tax cuts championed by President Trump in his first term and passed by Republican majorities in the House and Senate, Americans will face the highest tax increase in recent history. A family of four making around $80,000 a year will see a $1,700 a year tax hike if these provisions expire.
Let me say that again: A family of four making $80,000 a year will see a tax increase of $1,700 next year if these provisions expire.
Now, the reason why I emphasize that is because to listen to our Democratic colleagues, you would think it is all about billionaires and millionaires. But, no, 62 percent of American taxpayers would pay more taxes if we experience a multitrillion-dollar tax increase as a result of the expiration of these provisions in 2025.
Well, after 4 years of the highest inflation we have had in the last 40 years, families have struggled to keep up. In fact, many of them have been stuck with an effective pay cut and a reduction in their standard of living because the same dollars in their pocket have had less purchasing power than they used to, as a result of this insidious, secret, or invisible tax known as inflation.
So now is not the time to slap these American families with a tax increase. That would be insult to injury. After Washington Democrats eroded the purchasing power of American families, it would only add insult to injury to go back to those same families in Texas and elsewhere and insist that the government needs to take even more of their hard-earned paycheck come tax day.
I was proud to work with President Trump in 2017, along with all of my colleagues. I happened to be the chief vote counter back then, as majority whip, when we passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and made sure that it had the necessary support to get across the finish line. It wasn't easy, but it was important. And it had a huge impact on the quality of life and the standard of living of millions and millions of Americans.
And so I look forward to working with my colleagues here in the Senate to extend those expiring provisions, now during President Trump's second term.
Last but not least, we have to begin the process of getting our spending and debt under control in order to get a grip on the historic, runaway inflation caused by President Biden and Washington Democrats' reckless spending spree, and I also mentioned the impact it has on our ability to provide for the common defense and our national security. Ronald Reagan famously said: Peace--which is something we all aspire to--peace comes through strength. Weakness is a provocation and an invitation to the world's tyrants and bullies--people like Vladimir Putin, people like President Xi in China. If they sense weakness, they will take advantage of it. And what we would need to do in America and with our allies is to reestablish deterrence. That is what ``peace through strength'' means, and we can't do it by continuing to spend borrowed money and racking up debt on our Nation's credit card.
We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to address not only discretionary spending--which is what we do on an annual basis, which is about 28 percent of what the Federal Government spends--but mandatory spending. The Federal Government spends an enormous amount of money each year. It is in excess of $6.5 trillion.
Now, I don't have the brain capacity to conceive of what $6.5 trillion is, and I doubt anybody does. But it is a lot of money, and there is no way we are going to be able to get our spending problem and our debt problem under control by addressing 28 percent of what the Federal Government spends.
So we need to look not only at the discretionary spending; we need to look at the so-called mandatory spending, which is on auto pilot. And, yes, Medicare and Social Security are off the table. We are not going to be talking about those. We need to address those at some point, but we can only do that with bipartisan support.
And then there are things like the Tax Code, which is more than just deductions and credits. Our Democratic colleagues have now turned the Tax Code into a welfare benefit scheme. The child tax credit and the earned income tax credit are refundable tax credits, which means it is not a credit against income. It is not a deduction. It is a check that is handed out. And there are $200 billion worth of refundable tax credits paid out on an annual basis by the Federal Government--$200 billion. We need to get ahold of that. We need to get that under control.
We also need to return to commonsense requirements that were bipartisan back in the days of Bill Clinton, which is meaningful work requirements for means-tested programs. We need to help people who need help. But if people are able to help themselves by working and providing for their family
and they don't need to be a burden on the taxpayers, then they should be contributing like everybody else and not living off of the American taxpayer.
Americans across the country voted to end the reckless policies of the Biden administration. So now it is up to us to deliver. We have kicked the can down the road so far, we have run out of road, and now we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity, with President Trump and Republican majorities in both Houses, to do something about it.
The House and the Senate have the same goal. The American people have given this administration a mandate, and the clock is ticking. At the end of the day, what matters is not whether the talking heads in the media or people across the country see this as a Senate bill or a House bill. That is inconsequential. What matters is that it is President Trump's agenda that we are implementing, as mandated by the American people last November 5.
We need to get this across the finish line to secure the border, to provide for the common defense, to avoid a massive tax increase on middle-class families, and to get our national debt under control once and for all. That is what Texans voted for on November 5, and I believe that is what Americans voted for on November 5. That is our mandate, and we have no option but to get this job done.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
