Democratic Agenda

Floor Speech

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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, it seems that for the past month Senate Republicans have watched as our Democratic colleagues send up one partisan test balloon after another.

They threatened a battle over a so-called equal pay bill, which turned out to be chum in the water for the trial lawyers but really not much else. Then they, once again, threatened the Second Amendment, but they couldn't find a friend across party lines to join them in that fight. So that trial balloon was popped.

And who could forget their promise to bring the improperly named Equality Act to the floor for a vote? Well, that balloon didn't take flight either. And, yesterday, the Democrats' democracy-destroying election takeover bill almost survived, but it too came crashing back to Earth after failing to clear a procedural hurdle.

Still, they have made the most of their time over the past month, holding up their string of failures as evidence that it is the filibuster and not the radically partisan nature of their agenda that is thwarting their progress.

As the Republican leader said at the beginning of this month, it was an agenda that was designed to fail. It failed to bring them the power that they are craving to have over the lives of millions of Americans. It failed to kill the filibuster, and it certainly failed the millions of Americans who have been forced to watch, dumbfounded, as this circus played out in realtime on their television screens.

It was a complete waste of our time. It is what one of my Tennesseans said this weekend, talking about these trial balloons, talking about this lurch to the left--and Madam President, this was a friend of mine who is a Democrat--as he said, it was a complete waste of our time, the American people's time. He added: It was a complete waste of my dime-- for the tax dollars that he sends to Washington, DC. He went on to say: Think about the problems you could have solved if you had been focused on making some progress instead of creating chaos.

Yesterday, the Commerce Committee held a hearing on achieving broadband resiliency. As you well know, this is one of the most important infrastructure problems that not only faces our committee but also faces this body. We had a great discussion, and I thanked Chairman Lujan for that hearing. But I can't help but wonder how much more progress we would have been able to make on this issue if the 14 million unserved rural Americans--yes, unserved; they have nothing-- think about the progress we could have made if those 14 million unserved Americans had taken precedence in the minds and in the agenda of our friends across the aisle. It would have been great to focus on that.

Speaking of infrastructure, perhaps we could have focused more energy on giving the needed authority to our local officials so they can fix crumbling roads and bridges and getting regulations out of their way so they can go to work helping people get to work and helping children get back to school. Certainly, I know a few officials in Memphis who would love to see us start thinking long term about practical infrastructure support that doesn't include the Green New Deal fantasies that are favored by this White House.

The American people have noticed this lack of focus and this freewheeling attitude when it comes to spending taxpayers' money. When they look around, they see real need. There are businesses and families who are still struggling to pull themselves out of the ashes of the pandemic. Policies that are favored by the Democrats would be policies that would bankrupt their businesses, that would drive up the debt, and that would cause massive inflation. Tennesseans know these policies are not going to help them. What it does do is to frustrate them. Neither will the Democrats' continued failure to manage President Biden's border crisis.

In April, Customs and Border Protection apprehended 178,000 people attempting to illegally cross our border. Fourteen thousand of these were unaccompanied alien children. It is a record year for drug runners, for the cartels, for bootleggers, for human traffickers, and for sex traffickers. We caught the Department of Health and Human Services actually finishing the work of the cartels, trafficking many of those unaccompanied minors through the Chattanooga Airport without the knowledge or the involvement of local officials.

Meanwhile, my Democratic colleagues are treating this humanitarian crisis as if it is nothing more than a logistics challenge. But perhaps if we had spent more time on this in the past month, we could have convinced them that until they get this crisis under control, they would have to admit, in this country right now, every town is a border town; every State, a border State. Just ask your local law enforcement. They will tell you. Perhaps they didn't want to put the time there because they had been busy putting a show on for the cameras and their friends on the left.

Tennesseans noticed what went on here this month. They are not happy about it. They have been reaching out. They don't have the luxury of playing political games. They don't have the spare resources to gamble on woke politics. They are trying to keep the doors of their businesses and their churches and their schools and their factories open.

We did a lot of talking this month, but the friends on the left chose not to take action to solve problems. I would encourage them to do a little soul-searching over the next couple of weeks and address the agenda that the American people would seek to have addressed.

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