Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. Mr. President, last Tuesday, President Biden was asked why he wasn't taking the opportunity to visit the border while traveling to Arizona. His reply?…
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
Mr. President, last Tuesday, President Biden was asked why he wasn't taking the opportunity to visit the border while traveling to Arizona. His reply? ``Because there [is a] more important [thing] going on.''
``[A] more important [thing] going on.''
Mr. President, no offense to new investment, but if President Biden thinks that visiting a plant to celebrate new investment is more important than the security and the humanitarian crises raging at our southern border, then his priorities are seriously out of order, but, of course, we already knew that.
This is hardly the first time the President has made it clear what he thinks of the crisis at our southern border--as just an annoying distraction from what he would rather be doing as President. In fact, he has shown a remarkable ability throughout his Presidency to ignore or minimize crises that he isn't interested in dealing with.
``There [is a] more important [thing] going on.''
I venture to suggest that for overwhelmed border communities struggling with an apparently never-ending influx of illegal immigration, there isn't anything--anything--more important going on, and the President's
trivializing of our border crisis is a serious betrayal of the responsibility he owes to these Americans and to all Americans.
The situation at our southern border is out of control and has been that way for most of the President's administration. Over this past weekend alone, Customs and Border Protection encountered more than 16,000 individuals attempting to cross our southern border illegally. That is an average of 8,000 per day--higher than the daily average in May, which posted the highest number of attempted illegal crossings ever recorded. October saw a staggering 230,678 attempted illegal crossings along our southern border.
All told, U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered nearly 2.4 million individuals attempting to cross our southern border illegally during fiscal year 2022. That is the highest number ever recorded, exceeding the previous record set the year before by roughly 640,000. Of course, these numbers just refer to individuals the Border Patrol actually apprehended. There have also been almost 1 million known ``got-aways'' over the past 2 fiscal years and an untold number of unknown ``got-aways.''
President Biden's comment doesn't just trivialize the scope of this crisis; it also trivializes the human misery that has resulted. At least 853 migrants died crossing the southern border in fiscal year 2022--the highest number ever recorded. It is hard to imagine that that number wouldn't have been smaller if President Biden had gotten serious about addressing this border crisis instead of inviting illegal immigration with his lax border policies.
I mentioned overwhelmed border communities. I should also mention the incredible strain the past 2 years have placed on the Border Patrol, which has been forced to divert agents from border enforcement to the overwhelmed humanitarian mission. Then, of course, there is the very real danger represented by unchecked illegal immigration, including the risk of dangerous individuals entering our country undetected and the potential for increased drug trafficking.
Illegal drugs are flowing across our southern border and contributing to violent crime not just in border communities but in communities around the Nation. And that is not even to mention our Nation's fentanyl crisis, which is being fed by drugs that are trafficked across--where else?--our southern border. Our current border crisis is an open invitation to increased illegal drug activity, but the President has more important places to be than the southern border even though, I should point out, he has never actually visited the southern border--not once. The closest he got was literally driving by the border on the way to a campaign rally in 2008.
For border communities and strained Border Patrol agents, I venture to say that there is nothing more important than getting our Nation's border crisis under control, but I guess we will just have to keep waiting. After all, the President has more important things to do.
Inflation
Mr. President, in other tone-deaf comments from the Biden administration last week, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said:
Fiscal responsibility is very important to us in the Biden
administration. We're very well aware that we have to stay
within our means economically. I think . . . you see that in
everything we've tried to do these past two years.
That was from the President's Chief of Staff.
Well, when I read that, I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry or just be angry on behalf of the millions of Americans who are currently suffering as a result of the Democrats' lack of fiscal responsibility over the past 2 years. We are currently in the midst of the worst inflation crisis in 40 years. My daughters, who are married and have their own children now, weren't even alive the last time inflation was this bad.
November's inflation numbers came out this morning, and they just confirmed what we already know: that we are still very much in the midst of this crisis. Currently, inflation is up 13.8 percent since January of 2021, when President Biden took office. Even if our inflation crisis ended tomorrow, the inflation we have already experienced will cost the average household more than $9,000 over the next 12 months--$9,000. Now, for a lot of families, that is the difference between prosperity and just getting by. For many others, it is the difference between just getting by and not being able to get by at all.
How did we get here? Well, in substantial part, it is thanks to the President's and Democrats' fiscal irresponsibility.
When Democrats took office in January 2021, Congress had just passed a fifth bipartisan COVID bill that met essentially all of the current pressing COVID needs, but the Democrats just wanted to keep spending. So, despite being warned that the size of the package they were contemplating risked overheating our economy, under the guise of COVID relief, the Democrats passed a massive and partisan $1.9 trillion spending bill filled with unnecessary spending and payoffs to the Democrats' interest groups. The economy, not surprisingly, overheated as a result. Inflation began climbing and climbing and climbing again.
But what is almost worse and what makes the White House's claim that they care about fiscal responsibility so incredibly ludicrous is what the Democrats and the President did next. Even as it became clear that their massive spending spree had helped set off a serious inflation problem, the Democrats and the President kept pushing for more spending. In fact, their goal, which they were, fortunately, prevented from achieving, was passing another massive spending spree in the neighborhood of $5 trillion.
Even after that plan was foiled, the Democrats and the President kept right on pursuing more fiscally irresponsible legislation. In August, the Democrats passed legislation, their so-called Inflation Reduction Act--again filled with hundreds of billions of dollars in Green New Deal spending, partially financed by tax hikes that will raise energy prices and slow job creation.
Democrats tried to clothe the bill in an aura of fiscal responsibility by claiming--dubiously, I might add--that it would reduce the deficit by $300 billion.
Do you want to know how long that purported deficit reduction lasted once the bill was signed into law? Eight days. Eight days. That is how long it took for President Biden to completely wipe out any deficit reduction of the bill by implementing his massive student loan giveaway--a giveaway that not only wipes out any possible deficit reduction but will also, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, ``meaningfully boost inflation.'' Yet we are supposed to believe that the Biden administration values fiscal responsibility.
When it comes to fiscal responsibility, the Biden administration has demonstrated that it could not care less. The Biden administration is interested in implementing the big-government priorities of the far left, no matter how much they cost. And, unfortunately, the American people are the ones paying the price.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), the Senator from Alaska (Ms. Murkowski), and the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Sullivan).