Business Before the Senate

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, in just a moment, I want to talk a little bit about the situation in Afghanistan. But before I do that, I just wanted to speak to something that the majority leader said earlier regarding some of the upcoming business that we have to deal with this fall.

We have a whole series of deadlines in front of us. The fiscal year ends on September 30, meaning that we have to at some point fund the government, which presumably would be in the form of a continuing resolution. We are told that the House of Representatives, when they move that and send it over here, will include a debt-limit increase.

The debt limit does run out, and we will hit that at some point. There are varying estimates of when exactly that would be--some say as early as mid-October; some say perhaps mid-November--but inevitably that will be upon us. There has been a discussion here about how that ought to be lifted and who ought to deliver the votes to get that done.

I just want to make the point that the majority leader, as he was down here making his remarks earlier, indicated that this was all debt that was accumulated during the previous administration. Certainly there was some debt because, obviously, during the coronavirus pandemic, all of us responded in a very bipartisan way. Most of the debt was at that point in time. It was the votes that we made in March of 2020 and subsequently to that.

Of course, there was another $2 trillion earlier this year in February, which no Republican voted for--that was all Democratic votes--most of which had nothing to do with the virus; most of which had to do with other elements of their agenda, including expanding the government.

But, nevertheless, when the debt limit hit its expiration at the end of July, it reset, and it covered everything up until that point. What we are talking about now is raising the debt limit to accommodate trillions and trillions of new spending proposed by the Democrats here in Washington and by the President and his administration.

It strikes me, at least, that that being the case, if the Democrats on their own, without a single Republican vote--and there won't be any Republican votes for the $3\1/2\ trillion bill they are talking about, which the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says really isn't $3\1/2\ trillion; it is $5\1/2\ trillion--$5\1/2\ trillion of new spending, massive expansion of the government, financed some with tax increases but inevitably some with adding to the debt--that it would make sense, since the Democrats are going to do that through reconciliation, which is a purely partisan exercise, with only their votes, that it could accommodate an increase in the debt limit to pay for all of that spending.

I think that is a fair--very fair way to look at this. It strikes me, at least, that since the Democrats have embarked upon this one-party- rule approach, that if they are going to spend another $3\1/2\ to $5\1/ 2\ trillion, that they ought to raise the debt limit to accommodate all that additional spending. I think that is a reasonable way to approach this, and I, frankly, think it is consistent if you look at what has happened in the past.

The last time we raised the debt limit was in the summer of 2019. That was a bipartisan deal, and it was a bipartisan deal that actually put caps on spending. We were limiting spending as we were raising the debt limit. Republicans and Democrats joined together at the time to do that.

The spending that I referenced in March of 2020, the $4\1/2\ trillion or thereabouts that was spent on the response to the pandemic, was also bipartisan. In fact, it was so bipartisan, it passed in the Senate 96 to 0. Does anybody here ever remember anything around here passing 96 to 0, particularly of that consequence? Clearly--clearly--there was strong bipartisan support for doing something that needed to be done in response to the worst pandemic we have seen in this country in a century.

Those were things that were done in a bipartisan fashion. Now, this is an entirely different scenario. And I don't think anybody can dispute the fact that the Democrats, as they embark upon this $3\1/2\ trillion reckless tax-and-spending spree, and, again, other estimates-- the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says it is not $3\1/2\ trillion; it is actually $5\1/2\ trillion when you look at the spend out in the various budget windows and timelines.

But let's just say for the sake of argument that it is $3\1/2\ trillion to $5\1/2\ trillion. It is still a massive amount of spending, none of which is related to the coronavirus, all of which is part of a dramatic expansion of government, which I have referred to before here on the floor as the ``free everything'' bill--literally cradle to grave, the government, the Federal Government, will take care of you-- in addition to a lot of other leftwing agenda priorities like green energy provisions and all sorts of things in this that are Democratic priorities with no buy-in from Republicans, no attempt to reach out to Republicans or to do anything in a bipartisan way.

This is a strictly, purely partisan exercise in which the Democrats are trying to include things that have absolutely no relationship to spending, debt, or revenues, which is what the reconciliation process is designed for.

They are talking about doing immigration--immigration--major, major policy that needs to be done on a bipartisan basis that affects this country in a profound way, as we can see from the crisis at the border. Already in the month of July of this year, there was a 420-percent increase over the previous year in the number of illegal crossings. Two hundred and twelve thousand people came across the border illegally just in the month of July. It is a major, consequential crisis. The Democrats are going to try to do something to legalize people who are here illegally without addressing the other elements of the immigration debate on a strictly partisan basis as a part of the reconciliation bill. This is a purely, purely partisan exercise done without any input from Republicans.

I don't think there is a single Republican who ought to be pushed into or feel like they in any way need to support the massive expansion of government we are talking about here, the trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars in new spending.

That is what the debt limit is about. It is about raising the amount of debt, the amount that this country can borrow, to pay for a massive expansion--massive expansion, reckless expansion--of our government that moves us more in the direction of a Western European social democracy rather than the American country that I think we all know and love.

We have a heritage in this country. It is built around freedom. It is built around individual responsibility. It is built on the need to protect our country and maintain a strong national defense. I think that is one thing I hope that, as we look at spending, we can agree upon.

But this massive expansion of what they call social or human infrastructure is nothing more and nothing less than the biggest expansion of government that we have seen literally in decades, and it will be financed--some--with tax increases, which I could spend a lot of time talking about, which will harm the economy, but also with additional debt.

And that debt, the debt that is acquired for the huge runup in spending that will be supported purely by Democrats through reconciliation, a procedure that is a partisan procedure, that ought to be paid for--that ought to be done by Democrat votes. And it can be done. There is a way in which the reconciliation procedure can be used to raise the debt limit to pay for all of the new spending that the Democrats have in this bill.

So when they get down here and talk about how important it is to be bipartisan, well, it would be one thing if there was actually any kind of a bipartisan negotiation going on, but there isn't. And the last time the debt limit was raised, there was, in 2019, and at that time it was about caps. It was about reducing spending. There was a bipartisan agreement to reduce spending as the debt limit was being increased.

The other thing I would mention in response to what the majority leader said earlier is that the debt that was accumulated in the previous administration, much of which was done on a bipartisan basis in response to the biggest pandemic that this country has seen in a hundred years, in March of 2020--$4.5 trillion of that debt was put on the bill because of a bipartisan agreement that was reached, as I said earlier, 96 to 0. Ninety-six to 0 was the vote here in the U.S. Senate.

So Democrats want to go down this path. If they want to spend, spend, spend like there is no tomorrow and tax, tax, tax like there is no tomorrow and borrow, borrow, borrow like there is no tomorrow, then they ought to pay, pay, pay with their votes when it comes to raising the debt limit and, unfortunately, handing the bill for that to our kids and grandkids.

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