Floor Statements

Mr. President, there are a few, quote-unquote, winners under Democrats' $3\1/2\ trillion tax-and-spending spree--unions, for example, and electric vehicle manufacturers.

But there are a lot more losers, like middle-class families, who have to stretch their paychecks to cover higher inflation and higher energy bills; workers, who will see jobs and opportunities shrink; and farmers and ranchers.

Agriculture is the lifeblood of my home State of South Dakota, and so ag issues are pretty much always on my mind. And I am deeply concerned by what Democrats' tax-and-spending spree will mean for South Dakota farmers.

For starters, I am worried that the Democrats' bill could mean the end of some farms, thanks to the bill's expansion of the death tax.

Now, I have long crusaded against the death tax. Death should not be a taxable event, and there should be limits on how many times the government can tax the same money over and over and over.

But I get particularly fired up when talking about the death tax when it comes to farmers and ranchers, because the death tax can threaten the existence of family farms and ranches.

You ask why.

Because farming and ranching are often cash-poor operations. Farmers' and ranchers' money is tied up in their land, not the bank. So a farmer could have land worth as much as several million dollars and still struggle to break even in years where the harvest has been poor.

So when that same farmer dies, the IRS will come in, demanding a substantial portion of his or her estate. But since most of that money is tied up in the land, there is a good chance that the family will not have enough money in the bank to pay the IRS, and so they will have to start selling off the land--the lifeblood of their farming operation.

So give that a couple of generations and the death tax can drive a family farm right out of existence.

I am proud that the tax reform bill we passed in 2017 included death tax relief. We successfully doubled the estate tax exemption, which lifted the specter of the death tax for most farmers and ranchers and helped reduce the need for costly estate planning efforts to try to keep the farm or ranch in the family.

Unfortunately--unfortunately--we were not able to make this relief permanent, which is why I have continued to push for eliminating the death tax. But at least family farms and ranches were set to have relief through the year 2025.

Well, not anymore. Democrats are set to return the death tax exemption to its pre-2017 level starting in January, which means that more family farms and ranches will once again be in the tax's crosshairs.

As I said, death should not be a taxable event. The IRS should not be coming in to see you at the same time as the undertaker. But the government--and the government, I should say, should not be in the business of shuttering family farms and family businesses.

But thanks to Democrats' tax-and-spending spree, a lot of farmers are going to have to start worrying about whether they will be able to hand their farm on to their children or whether a government tax bill will mean the end of an enterprise the family has cultivated, literally, for generations.

The icing on the cake, of course, is that at the same time Democrats are planning to expand a tax that threatens family farms, they are also planning to include tax relief for their millionaire contributors in blue States.

That is right. Despite the fact that Democrats are scrambling for money to fund some of their spending spree, they are preparing to provide tax relief for wealthy Democrat donors.

I am disturbed by the fact that Democrats are willing to jeopardize family farms and ranches to help fund their spending spree. But I am not all that surprised because it is clear from the bill that farmers and ranchers are not high on Democrats' priority list.

The bill's spending on rail, for example, emphasizes passenger rail, which will benefit Amtrak and a handful of east coast cities, but it means little to most Americans.

The rail that matters to Americans in the heartland is freight rail, particularly short line railroads, which carry farmers' and ranchers' corn and wheat and beef to markets around the United States. But short line rail gets short shrift in this bill.

Biofuels also get short shrift. As this bill makes clear, Democrats have picked their preferred winner in the clean energy stakes, and that winner is electric vehicles. Biofuels take a back seat in Democrats' legislation despite the essential role they played in making American energy cleaner and despite the significance of biofuels to the rural economy.

Every few years, Congress passes a major farm bill. For decades, that legislation has been the product of bipartisan collaboration and a lengthy hearing and fact-finding process that allows for extensive input from farmers and ranchers and other ag stakeholders. It is one of the last, I would say, truly bipartisan things that we regularly do around here.

But Democrats have decided to use their tax-and-spending spree to circumvent the bipartisan farm bill process. Democrats are extending farm programs without bipartisan input and without real involvement from many in the agricultural community. And, of course, they are not expanding all farm bill programs.

They are not, for example, extending or providing money for the farm safety net. Instead, they are targeting money at programs that they feel will allow them to advance their climate agenda.

Farmers are not Democrats' main interest when it comes to the agricultural provisions in this bill. Democrats' climate agenda is the priority.

If I am not here in Washington for Senate business, I can usually be found back home in South Dakota, where I spend a lot of time talking to farmers and ranchers. Most of them haven't shown a lot of interest in tax breaks for union dues or electric vehicle tax credits. But I have heard from a lot of farmers and ranchers who are worried the Democrats' proposed tax policies may threaten their livelihood. And, unfortunately, they are right to be worried.

Speaker Pelosi suggested that this tax-and-spending spree was about Democrats' values, but based on what we have seen, I am not too sure those values align with those of rural Americans. Democrats' tax-and- spending spree is a bad deal for rural America and for working families around the country, and I will continue to do everything I can to protect Americans from the dangers of Democrats' socialist fantasies.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I came down to the floor to talk about President Biden's mishandling of Afghanistan.

Today, I want to talk about another situation the administration has mishandled and perhaps, more accurately, failed to handle; and that is the crisis at the southern border.

I say ``failed to handle'' because, by and large, the Biden administration has completely failed to take any meaningful action in response to this crisis. Sure, they occasionally made half-hearted stabs at the problem--usually when the media starts noticing things like thousands of migrants and their children residing in a squalid refugee camp under a bridge in Del Rio, TX. Mostly, they seem content to ignore it.

More than 6 months into this crisis, there are no signs the President plans to travel to the border to get a look at the problem firsthand. In fact, it is not clear whether President Biden has ever visited the border at any point during his political career.

The President seems to have adopted an ``if I pretend the problem doesn't exist, it will go away'' attitude. It is kind of like earlier this year, when Biden administration officials refused to call the situation a crisis, despite overwhelming evidence border influx has reached crisis proportions. It is like they believed that if they didn't use the word, they could somehow avoid the reality.

Unfortunately for the administration, there is no way to avoid the fact we are facing a border crisis.

Last month, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered 208,887 people attempting to cross our southern border illegally, a 318-percent increase from August of 2020.

Madam President, let me repeat that. In August, Customs and Border Protection encountered 208,887 people attempting to cross our southern border, a 318-percent increase from prior August.

For context, that number is bigger than the population of Sioux Falls, SD, the largest city in my home State--in a single month--in a single month.

At this point, the situation at the border is beyond a crisis. It is completely out of control. The situation will soon deteriorate further with one outlet reporting yesterday that tens of thousands additional Haitian migrants are set to head to our southern border.

Illegal immigration across the southern border tends to slow down during the heat of the summer. Not under the Biden administration. Under the Biden administration, the numbers this summer just got worse. Encounters along the southern border in July were up 420 percent from July of 2020--420 percent.

Of course, these numbers only reflect individuals Customs and Border Protection has been able to apprehend. There are, undoubtedly, individuals who are successfully evading apprehension and illegally taking up residence in our country.

Then there are the individuals being detained and released into the country with orders to appear at an immigration court. This so-called catch-and-release approach is notorious because the individuals released into the country often never show up to immigration courts as directed. In spite of this, the administration is using this strategy and is apparently employing it to deal with the surge of migrants from Haiti. Despite having committed to deporting these individuals, the administration is releasing thousands of Haitian immigrants into the United States.

The situation at the border is a crisis. It is a security crisis, it is a logistics crisis, and it is a humanitarian crisis. Attempting to cross the border illegally is a dangerous enterprise. Migrants face the risk of death, injury, heat exhaustion, and disease, to say nothing of the risk of exploitation from smugglers and traffickers, who are profiting to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars by conveying people across the border illegally.

By failing to stem the flow of illegal immigration, the President is perpetuating this humanitarian disaster, and Democrats in Congress are helping him. My colleagues across the aisle have been trying to add amnesty for illegal immigrants into the tax-and-spending spree that they are considering. That is a policy that is pretty much guaranteed to further encourage individuals to make the dangerous and illegal journey across our southern border.

Most people are familiar with the expression ``fiddling while Rome burns.'' It is an expression I am forcibly reminded of when I consider the actions of my Democratic colleagues and the Biden administration on the crisis at the border. Our country is, as I have discussed, facing a massive security and humanitarian crisis at our southern border.

On top of that, we just completed a disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal that has put our country at greater risk from terrorists, damaged our standing among our allies, and condemned the Afghan people to Taliban tyranny.

Meanwhile, on the economic front, we are facing a serious inflation problem, and it doesn't look like it is going to go away anytime soon. Americans are seeing their purchasing power shrink as they face higher prices on everything from groceries to gas. The Democratic response? Essentially sticking their fingers in their ears and humming or checking their watches to see if the unpleasantness is over yet.

If you were just going by the Democrats' legislative priorities, you would be forgiven for thinking that none of these problems I have discussed even exist. Rather than addressing our border crisis or our inflation problem, Democrats are, right now, attempting to tee up a massive--massive--reckless tax-and-spending spree to vastly expand the reach of government into Americans' lives. Our border is in crisis, our country is at risk, American families are struggling with inflation, and the Democrats' top priority is advancing socialism.

Not only does their bill fail to address any of the major challenges I have outlined, it is pretty much guaranteed to make them worse. Dumping trillions of additional government dollars into an economy already struggling with inflation is pretty much guaranteed to send our already high inflation rate even higher.

As I mentioned, the Democrats are frantically working to circumvent Senate rules and insert some type of amnesty into their spending bill, which will only aggravate the crisis at the border. Although, at this point, I am wondering if Democrats will even be able to pass their tax- and-spending spree. The Democratic Party is in disarray, and the story changes so often, I think reporters are starting to get whiplash. I certainly am.

One minute, the Democratic leaders are united; the next minute, the Senate leader doesn't know what the Speaker is doing. One minute, the House is going to consider the tax-and-spending spree and the infrastructure bill together; the next, it is going to consider them separately. Democratic leaders announce an agreement on a framework for their tax-and-spending spree; their rank-and-file Members report they have never seen it. Their spending spree is going to cost $3.5 trillion. No. Wait. It is going to cost zero.

Democratic progressives and Democratic moderates are at each other's throats. The House Speaker is chewing out centrist Democrats, and Democrats can't agree on a host of issues from Iron Dome funding, to prescription drug measures, to infrastructure. The Democratic Party is unraveling fast, and it is deeply unfortunate that Democrats can't seem to rise to the challenges of governance.

President Biden's administration was supposedly going to usher in a new era

of domestic tranquility and international respect. The professionals, we were told, were back in charge. Well, instead, it looks like Democrats and the President are going to leave our country a lot worse off than they found it, burdened by tax hikes and government spending-- that is, if they can ever manage to agree on a bill--in greater danger from terrorism, and with a never-ending crisis at our southern border.

If Democrats don't change their focus and get their act together, a weakened country is likely to be their legacy.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn) and the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn) and the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul), and the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Tuberville).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Inhofe), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul), the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio), and the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Tuberville).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Blunt), the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Crapo), and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran).

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, yesterday's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing gave us disturbing new information on the President's Afghanistan debacle. Thanks to yesterday's

hearing, we now know that President Biden pulled troops from Afghanistan against the advice of his military commanders and was less than truthful after the fact when asked about their recommendations.

General Milley and General McKenzie's testimony made clear that they had both recommended that the United States leave a small contingent of U.S. troops in the country--advice that the President ignored.

Thanks to President Biden's ill-considered withdrawal from Afghanistan, here is the situation we now find ourselves in. The Taliban is once again in control of Afghanistan, and just in case anyone thinks this is a kinder and gentler Taliban, let's look at the facts.

The Taliban has stocked its government with terrorists, including former inmates of Guantanamo Bay and members of the Haqqani Network, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization with a number of members on the U.N. Security Council's sanctions list. Many of the members of the new Taliban Cabinet are on the U.N. Security Council's sanctions list, and the government is well stocked with pre-9/11 Taliban leaders, the same leaders who allowed Afghanistan to serve as a refuge for al- Qaida.

So that is the new Taliban government. What is it doing? Well, in mid-September the Taliban announced that secondary schools would reopen for boys. There was no mention of girls. The Taliban official announced that women would not be allowed to play any sport that might show their bodies. Women are being excluded from the workplace.

In Helmand province, barbers have been barred from shaving or trimming beards.

In one city, the body of an alleged criminal was hung from a crane in the city square, while in Kabul, Taliban members brutally flogged a man accused of stealing a phone. And a senior Taliban leader announced the return of executions and the cutting off of hands as punishment.

A kindler, gentler Taliban this is not.

And this formerly somewhat ragtag group is now the possessor of a significant amount of U.S. military equipment, including weapons, combat vehicles, aircraft, and surveillance equipment, much of it acquired from the Afghan National Security Forces.

And while the President might like to blame the Afghan forces for disbanding, the truth is he bears part of the responsibility for their collapse. For years, the United States trained and equipped Afghan troops to fight the way that we do, including a reliance on close air support and a sophisticated intelligence-gathering operation. And the limited number of U.S. troops still in the country were playing an essential role--providing intelligence, logistics, and air support the Afghan military needed.

Then the President pulled all remaining U.S. support almost overnight. It is no surprise that in the wake of that, the Afghan military quickly collapsed. There is no question that there were preexisting problems in the Afghan forces, including fraud and corruption. But the Afghan military was playing a key role in combating the Taliban and terrorist activity in Afghanistan, and it was the abrupt withdrawal of U.S. support that precipitated its collapse.

Thanks to the President's withdrawal, our ability to combat terrorist activity in Afghanistan and the region has been significantly degraded, as General Milley's testimony yesterday made clear. As the Washington Post reported:

Al-Qaeda remnants are in Afghanistan and interested in

growing, Milley said, but the United States no longer has

military or intelligence assets on the ground to keep tabs on

the militants.

The withdrawal makes it ``much more difficult for us to

conduct intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance,'' Milley

said, including missions to locate militants.

That, again, is from the Washington Post.

In short, there is every reason to expect that Afghanistan will once again become a haven for terrorists. In fact, because of the huge number of weapons and equipment we left behind, it is probably more accurate to say that Afghanistan will likely become a terrorist superstate. Meanwhile, as I said, our ability to effectively detect and defend against emerging threats in Afghanistan has been significantly diminished. There is no intelligence or counterterrorism strategy that will fully offset the loss of American boots on the ground.

U.S. military and intelligence personnel still in the country, in coordination with our local partners, were playing a critical role in providing intelligence on evolving terrorist threats in Afghanistan and throughout the region. That intelligence network is now gone. We no longer have human intelligence on the scene.

We no longer have any bases in-country from which to conduct operations. Future missions will have to be staged from distant bases or seaborne assets, complicating the mission and significantly increasing our response time.

That is not just an inconvenience. By compromising our ability to respond to terrorist activity, this withdrawal is endangering our country. For 20 years, we have managed to prevent another major terrorist attack on U.S. soil. How long is that going to last when Afghanistan is once again a haven for terrorists and our intelligence and response capabilities have been permanently weakened?

I haven't even mentioned the damage that the President's bungled withdrawal has done to our relationships with our allies. The President, who, supposedly, was set to restore America's standing in the world, is instead presiding over a national embarrassment that has left our allies wondering whether or not we will keep our commitments. We have damaged our credibility with our allies. It is clear that Russia and China are enjoying our humiliation on the world stage, not to mention the way that our withdrawal has empowered our terrorist enemies.

Ceding Afghanistan to the Taliban and its terrorist allies has not exactly made us look like an intimidating foe. It wouldn't be surprising if terrorists are thinking that all they have to do in future battles is wait us out until we give up and withdraw.

I am sure the President would like to put his chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal behind him, but there is a big problem with that--namely, the fact that his administration still has U.S. citizens left behind in Afghanistan. The administration has been hazy on the details, either because it is not sure how many American citizens are left or because administration officials don't want to give a number. But it is clear that there are still a number of Americans stuck in Afghanistan.

And then there are the tens of thousands of Afghans we abandoned-- Afghans who were affiliated with the U.S. Government or worked with the U.S. military and whom we promised to protect. These individuals and their families are currently in grave danger.

My office continues working to evacuate a number of green card holders and at-risk Afghans to safe countries in the region, and several of the individuals we are working with have received death threats from the Taliban.

And while there are dedicated State Department and Defense Department personnel coordinating with veteran-led groups to evacuate Afghan citizens, the administration is still--still--struggling to develop a clear path for getting them out of the country.

We still need to learn more about the chaotic U.S. evacuation, which resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. servicemembers and scores of Afghan civilians. But one thing is very clear: President Biden made an ill- considered and disastrous decision when he chose to withdraw our troops on an arbitrary timetable, and the Afghan people are currently suffering the consequences.

And should Afghanistan once again become a terrorist haven, as seems likely, our country could also pay a deadly price. We have to make sure it doesn't come to that.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Crapo), and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Crapo) and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Cotton), the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Crapo), and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran).

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, last night's vote was an exercise in futility, as Democrats knew would be the case.

For months now, Republicans have made it clear that we will not help Democrats raise our Nation's debt limit to finance Democrats' partisan tax-and-spending spree. If Democrats want to pass a massive, partisan tax-and-spending bill without Republican input, they can raise the debt limit without Republican input.

Democrats, of course, have complained they can't raise the debt limit by themselves. The truth is that they don't want to do it by themselves. Democrats want the credit for their social policies and the government handouts they are planning, but they don't want to own the pricetag.

Democrats are talking about engaging in a wild, reckless spending spree that will worsen our inflation problem, threaten economic growth, and substantially increase the government's control over Americans' lives. Republicans can't support that kind of legislation, and we are not going to help Democrats increase the credit card limit to pay for it. If the Democrats want to raise the debt limit, they have to do it by themselves.

I have come down to the floor more than once to talk about the reckless spending and the massive tax hikes the Democrats are planning. I could spend the rest of my time here on the floor today talking about the irresponsible amount of money Democrats want to spend and the tax hikes they are proposing, but today, I want to look at things a little differently.

Last week, House Speaker Pelosi had this to say in reference to the Democrats' $3.5 trillion spending bill. She said:

It's not about a price tag. It's about values.

It's not about a price tag. It's about values.

Mr. President, she is partially right because while the pricetag does matter, this is about more than just the pricetag. This is about values and visions--specifically, Republicans' and Democrats' different visions of government.

The Democrats' bill isn't just about spending money, even though it does spend money--a lot of it. It is about a

specific vision of government, one where the government is intimately involved in nearly every aspect of your life from, to quote the New York Times article on the Democrats' bill, ``cradle to grave.''

Someone once said to me that the difference between Democrats and Republicans is the Republicans believe in less government and more freedom; Democrats believe in less freedom and more government. I think that is a pretty accurate description of what we are seeing here.

Republicans oppose Democrats' tax-and-spending spree because it spends an irresponsible amount of money, but more than that--more than that--we oppose it because it moves us further and further away from the American idea of limiting government.

Our Founders established a limited government for a reason--because they respected individual liberty, and they knew that the heavier the hand of government, the less liberty Americans would enjoy. That is why our Constitution is as much about what government cannot do as what government can do.

Democrats might protest that they are not restricting individual liberty, that they are just providing a helping hand or redistributing wealth, but when you expand the reach of government, the diminishment of liberty is inevitable. When government gets involved in a new area of life, it rarely, if ever, just comes with the benefits; it comes in with rules and regulations and mandates.

Take Democrats' childcare benefit. Democrats are preparing to offer childcare subsidies to parents around the country, but it is not as simple as just taking some money from the government and going out and purchasing childcare because it turns out the Democrats are changing decades-old childcare funding programs to favor secular childcare providers who provide care at daycare centers. If you prefer to choose a faith-based provider for your child, you may be out of luck.

A 2020 Bipartisan Policy Center survey found that among parents who used center-based childcare, 53 percent used a faith-based center--53 percent. They reported that they chose these providers for a variety of reasons, from the quality of the caregivers, to the cleanliness of the facility, to the values of the provider. That number may change when Democrats' tax-and-spending plan goes into effect, not because parents are changing their childcare preferences but simply because Democrats have set up their benefit to favor secular center-based childcare providers.

With government benefits come government control and government picking the winners and the losers. Secular childcare providers win under Democrats' massive government expansion; faith-based providers and parental choice, not so much. Electric vehicle manufacturers win; the natural gas and biofuels industries, not so much, despite the fact that both have been key to producing cleaner American energy. Unions win under this bill; Americans making charitable donations, not so much. Democrats are allowing the charitable deduction to expire but adding a new tax break to pay for union dues. When government is in charge, government dictates your choices and picks winners and losers.

Government also gets a lot more involved with overseeing the details of your personal life. Democrats are planning to add a provision that would force banks and credit unions to report the details of your financial activity to the IRS, including certain deposits, withdrawals, and other transactions. Democrats are apparently still discussing the amount that would trigger the new reporting requirement, which has been proposed at $600 or $10,000, but whichever number they settle on, a lot of ordinary Americans are going to end up having their bank or credit union forced to report their private information to the IRS. Talk about Big Brother.

Probably the biggest reason that Republicans believe in limited government is because we believe in individual liberty, and we know that the more government expands into your life, the more your choices and liberties are curtailed. But there are other reasons that we believe in limited government.

One big reason is that we know that the Federal Government simply isn't the best way of delivering many services. There are some things that the Federal Government is well-suited to do--handling our national defense, for example. If our country is invaded or attacked, it is a lot more effective for our national military to respond rather than for each State to respond on its own. But there are a lot of other things that are better handled at the State level or at a local level or in some cases not by government at all.

Our State government in South Dakota is a lot more familiar with the needs of South Dakotans than the bureaucrats at Washington Agencies. The city government in Sioux Falls or Rapid City or Pierre or Box Elder is even more familiar with or more able to respond to the needs of individual residents. That is why a lot of things are better handled at the State or local level or, as I said, at times not by government at all.

Big Government is impersonal and inflexible. It is not familiar with and can't take into account particular and sometimes opposing needs of each State or each community. Big Government is one-size-fits-all.

Big Government is also inefficient. Anyone who thinks the Federal Government would do a good job running Americans' healthcare hasn't dealt with a Federal Agency very recently.

Big Government is unaccountable. Think about it. If you have a company that offers a bad product, what is going to happen? People are not going to buy your product, and you are probably going to go out of business quickly. It doesn't work that way with the Federal Government. The Federal Government is not going to go out of business because it isn't doing a good job delivering the services that are promised.

If the government is in charge of your healthcare and it isn't delivering quality healthcare, you have little recourse. Sure, you can try to vote in new Members of Congress to reform things, but even then, change can take a very long time. Real reform of an existing government program is rare. Elimination of a bad government program? Even rarer. As Ronald Reagan used to say, the nearest thing to eternal life that we will ever see on this Earth is a government program.

I could go on. I could talk about how Big Government tends to stifle the innovation that leads to economic growth or ask why Democrats think that a group of bureaucrats in Washington are the best decision makers for American families. But I want to touch on one other point before I close, and that is that Democrats believe in government dependence as the goal. They might dispute that characterization, but you only have to look at the tax-and-spending package that they are putting together to know that is their vision.

They envision a future where Americans rely on the government for everything from childcare, to education, to healthcare, and on and on. That is a vision with which Republicans fundamentally disagree. Our vision is not a future of government dependence because government doesn't bring prosperity. Government doesn't bring the American dream. At best, government is going to help you survive. It is not going to help you thrive.

Yes, government can be an important backstop in difficult situations or national emergencies, like the COVID crisis, but the goal should always be to get people to a place where they don't have to rely on government. Permanent government dependence robs people of the purpose and pride that comes with work and personal achievement, and, as I said, it denies them the opportunity for prosperity. No one ever became prosperous on government benefits.

If you asked most Americans what the American dream means to them, I am pretty sure you would hear things like a ``good job,'' a ``rewarding career,'' the ``chance to pursue my ambitions,'' or the ``chance to improve my circumstances and make life better for my children.'' That is what Americans envision, not a future of government dependence and government subsidies.

People are looking to achieve the kind of prosperity where they don't need government involvement in every aspect of their lives and can choose their paths for themselves instead of having to follow the rules and regulations that come with government benefits.

That is a vision that Republicans share, and it is what we are committed to fighting for on behalf of the American people. That is another reason we are committed to maintaining limited government, because the bigger government grows, the more that vision of opportunity and prosperity shrinks.

And so Speaker Pelosi is partially right. She is wrong to dismiss the bill's pricetag, because it is profoundly--profoundly--irresponsible to mortgage our children's and grandchildren's futures with a massive government spending increase, but she is right in that it is about values.

Now, Republicans aren't opposing Democrats' tax-and-spending spree simply because it spends a lot of money, but because it advances a vision of government with which we profoundly disagree. We don't believe that the American dream is government dependence; we don't believe in an ever-expanding role for the Federal Government; and we don't believe that bureaucrats in Washington are a good substitute for the judgment of the American people.

That is why every Republican in the Senate will be voting against the Democrats' reckless spending legislation, not just because it spends too much money, but because it fundamentally undermines the American tradition of liberty and limited government. It is about values, and it is about visions, and Republicans do not share the Democrats' vision of a future of Big Government and Big Brother.

I yield the floor.

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran).