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Floor Speech

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Mr. LEE. Madam President, there is a sales tactic known as throwing spaghetti at the wall, where the salesperson suggests an outrageously high price to see if it sticks. More often than not, the price is dead on arrival. It is intended to be; that is part of the trick.

See, the element of shock allows the salesperson to create an illusion of a spectacular discount by slashing the initially artificially high price. The customer then leaves feeling like they stumbled onto an incredible deal, too good to pass up, even though they left with a product they either didn't want or couldn't afford or, at a minimum, a product for which they paid too high a price.

When I read President Biden's budget request, it felt more like I was trapped at a kiosk in the middle of the mall or being sold a used car by a predatory, unscrupulous salesman, not reading a serious budget proposal from the President of the United States. So I would suggest the President try again because the spaghetti didn't stick. We are not buying what the President is selling, and his budget is dead on arrival.

When the President reached the end of his sales pitch, he told us the price: a whopping $6.9 trillion. It would create a $1.8 trillion deficit in the first year alone. Then by 2027, we would break the record for the most debt held by the public as a percentage of U.S. GDP since World War II.

Utahns are already pinching pennies as a result of this approach to budget.

In August, I stood where I stand now, as this body was on the cusp of passing the $1.7 trillion omnibus package, and read letters I received from Utah constituents. They explained how difficult life has become under Biden's recordbreaking inflation. They described the daily choices they were forced to make because of how expensive life had become under this administration.

Jennie from Salt Lake City wrote:

My annual income is about $30,000 a year. I'm panicking. The price of groceries and other goods has increased so much, I'm struggling financially. I understand my utility bills could double or even triple. I don't know how I can afford to live.

Since Democrats started their reckless spending 2 years ago, prices have risen more than 15 percent. Groceries are up nearly 20 percent.

Kevin from Murray, UT, wrote:

This morning, I filled up my work . . . truck. It cost $149. I'm a small business [owner], and the price of fuel is a major challenge for our company of 5 vehicles traveling to our various projects.

President Biden's energy policies caused gas prices to reach $5 and energy costs to skyrocket. Gas is up 45 percent, and Biden's budget will crush American energy with $31 billion in new taxes.

I said during that speech that if the definition of ``insanity'' is doing the same thing and expecting different results, then spending more money and increasing taxes to reduce inflation certainly meets that definition.

This approach is insane, and the President is doubling and then tripling down. Rather than address the spending driving inflation, the Biden administration continues to blame inflation on everything from the pandemic to Putin. We know why. The President won't address inflation because he wants to spend even more. He wants to create the biggest government we have ever had and make it more and more expensive.

We have to get this monkey off our back, but that can't be done in darkness. That has to be done while acknowledging the problem that we have and addressing it head-on, not obscuring it.

I want to be clear that the Constitution tasks Congress with determining annual spending and revenue levels, not the President's annual budget proposal, and clearly this is for good reason. We have a constitutional duty here to protect our constituents from the snake oil salesman hell-bent on taking the American people for all they are worth, who will leave the American people with junk they don't need and a payment they can't afford.

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