Motion to Discharge

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Madam President, Democrats' push to pass their tax-and- spending spree continues to throw into sharp relief the difference between Republicans' and Democrats' vision of government. And it is about a lot more than just the amount of money we want to spend. Of course, the amount of money we are spending matters, but it is also about what that money represents.

In general, more money means more government. And more government usually means less freedom. Republicans don't oppose Democrats' tax- and-spending spree just because it would cost a lot of money or drive up our national debt.

It would do both of those things, of course, with negative consequences for our economy and the prosperity of American families. And the negative economic consequences alone are sufficient reason to oppose Democrats' ``Build Back Bankrupt'' plan. But it is a lot more than just about excessive spending.

With their ``Build Back Bankrupt'' plan, Democrats envision a society which government is intimately involved in nearly every aspect of Americans' life--from, to quote a New York Times article, ``cradle to grave.'' And that is not a vision Republicans share, primarily because a government that is intimately involved in nearly every aspect of your life is a government that is going to exert control over your life. More government inevitably means more government control.

Take Democrats' childcare plan in their Build Back Better legislation. To hear Democrats talk about it, you might think this plan involves nothing more than cutting checks to American parents to help with their childcare bills, but that is not the case.

First, of course, Democrats take the opportunity to add a lot of new childcare mandates and regulations. According to one estimate, Democrats' childcare subsidy measure could drive up the cost of daycare by somewhere around $13,000 per child. Good luck working that into your family budget.

Democrats' government subsidy program is set up to favor certain kinds of childcare and childcare providers. It is set up to favor institutional childcare, rather than home care or other models like neighborhood co-ops, and it is set up to place religious providers at a disadvantage.

That is right. Despite the fact that a majority of working families who use center-based care opt for faith-based centers, Democrats' program is set up to put these providers at a disadvantage. It denies them facilities funding that is granted to secular providers.

And it would disqualify--I should say, it could disqualify many providers with traditional religious beliefs like those shared by millions upon millions of Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim families around the country.

It could even disqualify a provider simply because the provider gave placement preference to families of its own faith. So if you are a Catholic Church with a childcare program and you give preference to families who attend your church, you could be accused of discrimination and disqualified from receiving government subsidies.

And if you are a parent who can't afford that program without those government subsidies--thanks to government mandates and regulations that have hiked up the childcare bill--you are out of luck. If you need those government subsidies, you will have to send your child to one of the providers the government prefers.

The childcare program in the Democrats' tax-and-spending spree provides a perfect example of what happens when government gets involved. And it is about a lot more than how much money the government is spending.

With government money comes government control. The decision is no longer just in the individual's hands. And the more substantial the government involvement, the larger the government's role in decision making is likely to be--whether the issue is childcare, healthcare, education, or anything else.

In his 1967 inaugural address as Governor of California, Ronald Reagan said:

Freedom is a fragile thing and it's never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.

Freedom is a fragile thing.

Here in the United States, we have enjoyed an unprecedented degree of individual liberty--a liberty that it is very easy for us to take for granted. But that liberty is not guaranteed. It is something that must be fought for and protected.

And that doesn't involve simply safeguarding our liberty from external threats from foreign powers; it involves ensuring making sure that our government doesn't start to exceed its proper role.

The loss of freedom can come dramatically or it can come quietly through a steady increase of government encroachment.

And it is important to remember that freedom can be eroded or taken away by the well-meaning, and not just those who are actively hostile to it.

I believe that my Democrat colleagues likely do not see their ideas for dramatic government expansion as threatening Americans' personal freedom. The problem is that when you expand the reach of government, the diminishment of liberty is inevitable. Expand the reach of government into Americans' lives, and it is inevitable that you are going to transfer some of Americans' decision-making power over to politicians and bureaucrats in Washington.

Democrats' tax-and-spending spree--and its major expansion of government--is far from the only threat to Americans' liberties that we are seeing from the Democratic Party.

I am increasingly disturbed by Democrats' tendency to play fast and loose with religious liberty and the First Amendment--whether that involves disadvantaging religious childcare providers, threatening individuals' right to live according to their conscience, questioning judges' fitness for office based on religious belief, or, as we learned recently from a courageous whistleblower FBI agent, even opening the door for the FBI to collect information on parents voicing their opposition to local school policies during school board meetings.

I am also disturbed by Democrats' clear belief that Americans should defer to government and Democrat-approved experts, as spectacularly evidenced in the Virginia Governor's race, which was unquestionably decided based partly on the Democrat candidate's repeatedly expressed belief that parents shouldn't be involved in the content of their children's education.

I am puzzled as to why Democrats are so convinced--so convinced--that Washington elites or Democrat-approved experts are better at making decisions than ordinary Americans.

As Ronald Reagan said in that same speech:

[I]t's hard to explain those among us who even today would question the people's capacity for self-government. I've often wondered if they will answer, those who subscribe to that philosophy: if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?

I believe that the American people are capable of governing themselves--of making their own decisions--and that they are actually generally going to be better at it than a bunch of bureaucrats in Washington.

And I strongly oppose efforts to substitute the judgments of Washington bureaucrats--or Democrat politicians--for the judgment of individual Americans.

It states in the Declaration of Independence that governments are instituted to preserve our unalienable rights, including the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Preserving liberty is a fundamental purpose of government, but, of course, before you can enjoy liberty, you have to enjoy the right to life. For a long time now, the Democratic Party has consistently denied the right to life to a whole segment of the American population: unborn Americans.

There is no better example of their aggressive pro-abortion extremism than the so-called Women's Health Protection Act the Democrats in the House passed in September. This legislation, which would more accurately be termed the ``Abortion on Demand Act,'' would eliminate almost every democratically passed State abortion restriction, no matter how mild. It would endanger the religious and conscience rights of doctors and nurses, and, of course, it ignores the clear position of the American people, a strong majority of whom support restrictions on abortion.

Apparently, Democrats are not content with joining repressive regimes like China and North Korea as one of a tiny handful of nations that allow elective abortion past 20 weeks of pregnancy. No, they want to remove even the mildest and most widely supported restrictions on abortion. That is yet another example of Democrats' tendency to think they know better than the American people.

The Republican vision--the conservative vision, the vision that I share--is a vision that foregrounds liberty, not government; that believes individuals acting freely generally tend to do a better job of making decisions than a small handful of politicians and bureaucrats in Washington.

We believe in government as a backstop, not Big Brother. A system of permanent government dependence erodes individual liberty, to say nothing of the ways in which it undermines prosperity, robs individuals of the purpose and pride that comes with work and achievement.

Government should create the conditions in which freedom, opportunity, and prosperity can flourish, not attempt to secure particular outcomes or to dictate the paths that Americans should take.

We are privileged to live in the freest country the world has ever known. It is not a privilege we can or should take for granted, and it is a privilege that we can all too easily lose. Our liberty is, as Ronald Reagan said, ever only one generation away from extinction.

I will continue to make safeguarding that liberty that we have been given one of my most cherished priorities, whether that involves fighting for the right to life of unborn Americans, opposing attempts to restrict religious liberty, or fighting against an expansion of government that would push out parents and put the government in the driver's seat on way too many issues.

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