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Floor Speech
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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, before I begin my remarks, just a quick observation.
I know that the majority leader comes down on a fairly regular basis and attacks Republicans, particularly House Republicans, for not producing a budget. Obviously, for the House Republicans, it is their prerogative over there. If there is going to be a budget, it is probably going to be a budget that is put together by the House majority.
But I think it kind of misses the broader point, and that is that, at least here in the Senate, which is our domain, our realm of responsibility, it is up to the majority to put a budget forward. They control the floor. They have all control here. They determine what comes to the floor and what doesn't, and if they want to put together a budget, they certainly could. One place to start, obviously, would be the President's budget.
The President submitted a budget, which, by any estimation, is a massive expansion of the Federal Government, with lots of new spending--$5 trillion in new taxes, mostly on job creators and small businesses. At the end of the budget period, he would add $17 trillion to the Federal debt. Budget periods cover a window, typically, of 10 years. The President's budget, as put forward, at the end of that 10- year period, would add $17 trillion to the Federal debt and dramatically increase spending.
Now, spending prepandemic, as we went into the pandemic, was about $4.4 trillion a year--all in Federal spending. Of course, during the pandemic, that increased. In a bipartisan way, there were some decisions made to support and increase spending in some areas that were designed to combat and deal with a lot of the adverse impacts of the pandemic. Now the pandemic is behind us, and a lot of that spending should have been temporary. A lot of that spending really shouldn't have been incorporated into the baseline.
What the Democrats have done is incorporated that into the baseline so that, this year, the amount of spending in the President's budget-- about $6.9 trillion--is about 55 percent more than the baseline spending back in 2019, prepandemic, at a time when the population of the country has only increased by 1.8 percent. Now, you could argue, I suppose, if you had a massive increase in population--a lot more people in the country--that Federal spending would increase with it, but increasing Federal spending 55 percent at a time when you only have a 1.8-percent population growth in the country seems like a lot of excessive spending spent on expanding and growing the size and the footprint of the Federal Government.
Interestingly enough, at the end of that 10-year period--again, the budget window covers 10 years--spending under the President's budget would be $9.9 trillion--$9.9 trillion; in 2019, $4.4 trillion; at the end of the 10-year window covered by the President's budget, $9.9 trillion--more than double, way more than double the amount of spending that we had prior to the pandemic in 2019 and where some additional spending that was added at the time was and should have been temporary.
So those are kind of the contours of the President's budget. That is his plan. The Senate Democrats, obviously, could put that on the floor or they could come up with a different budget. But the point, very simply, is they are the majority. That is their responsibility. If they want to put a budget out, if they want to vote on a budget, put a budget on the floor. We are happy to vote on it. We would be happy to offer amendments to it, and they would be amendments that would reflect the priorities that we have on our side, which call for less spending, less government, a lighter regulatory touch, and not the massive tax increases contemplated by the President's budget.
So that is just a point I wanted to clarify. As we have this conversation around the budget of whose responsibility it is to advance a budget here in the U.S. Senate, it is the job of the majority, and so far the majority has not wanted to undertake that task. Perhaps, more importantly, I don't think it probably wants to vote on the President's budget, which, as I said, adds $17 trillion to the debt, which makes the debt at the end of that 10-year period--the 10-year window, by the way--$50 trillion; $50 trillion. That is what the President's budget would have us at in total debt, cumulative debt, at the end of that 10- year period, but it adds $17 trillion during that 10-year window and increases spending from $4.4 trillion prepandemic in 2019 to $9.9 trillion. It is pretty stunning, really, but that isn't what I came to talk about here today.
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