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Floor Speech

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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, for almost 3 years now, the American people have watched the Biden administration and their Democratic allies in Congress burn through trillions of dollars of their hard- earned money.

Early on in the administration, when one of their radical proposals made its way to the Senate floor, I would hear from Tennesseans wanting to know whom the Democrats expected to actually pay the bill for these programs. But as time has gone by, the Democrats confirmed, as they have every time they have been in power, that their plan was to keep squeezing taxpayers for as much money as possible, for as long as possible. Indeed, the Federal Government has a ceaseless, nonending appetite for taxpayers' money.

I don't think I have to tell you how discouraging this is for Tennesseans. It is confirmation that their President knows what is happening to them but he just does not care. They are in pursuit of a goal. They see this as a means to an end.

Now, when I am at home in Tennessee, as I was this weekend, people don't ask me where all the money went because they know the Democrats have wasted it on handouts and Green New Deal schemes--trillions of dollars down the drain. All they want to know is when is this going to stop.

They can't plan ahead. They can't save for special occasions. Even something as simple as a holiday cookout has slipped out of reach for so many families. Independence Day is coming up, but what should be an exciting time for everyone has turned into a source of stress because, in 1 year--1 year--the price of a bag of chips, up 7.9 percent; ice cream and popsicles, 8 percent more; potato salad will cost 7.1 percent more this year, and that is only accounting for the cost of the potatoes. Hot dogs and hamburgers have gone up, but when you account for the almost 16-percent hike on ketchup and mustard, a 9.4-percent hike on lettuce, the 13-percent hike on pickles, and a ridiculous 12.5- percent hike on the bun to put it all on, you can cross your main course off the menu also.

There is no reason why a meal like this should suddenly be out of reach of many families, but it is, and it is not just due to the price of the hamburger bun. That is just something that really is adding insult to injury.

Since Joe Biden became President, grocery prices have increased 20 percent, which is something every single person serving in Congress has seen in action. You cannot deny this. Any trip to the grocery store tells the story.

Energy bills have gone up 36 percent since Joe Biden and the Democrats took power. Rent is up 15 percent; clothes, 12 percent more. A tank of gas is up 51 percent, and a used car to put that gas in is going to cost you 33 percent more today than it did last June.

To counteract all of this, the Fed has raised interest rates at the fastest pace since the 1980s, which has in turn destroyed access to consumer credit and made it harder for small businesses to take out the loans they need to grow.

The problem isn't limited to a holiday celebration; our President and the Democrats have made life too expensive to afford every single day of the year.

Needless to say, spending has been out of control for over a decade. Regardless of what this administration believes, we cannot spend our way to prosperity. It does not happen. But we can directly trace this crippling inflation back to the reckless spending policies of this administration. So let's take a look at some of the things they have chosen to prioritize over the good of the country and the good of the people.

They used the 6,825-page Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 to set a new precedent for wasteful spending that, frankly, continues to baffle most Tennesseans. This bill, which no one had the opportunity to read, included billions in pure waste and authorized over $1.82 trillion in total discretionary spending authority.

To make matters worse, the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed last August, gave the Internal Revenue Service $80 billion for--guess what-- more IRS agents. They estimate that the resulting increase in harassment will take $204 billion from hard-working taxpayers who are already struggling to make ends meet.

The IRA also included $386 billion for Joe Biden's radical climate agenda, including $27 billion for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, the sole purpose of which is to increase the power of the EPA; $3 billion in environmental and climate justice block grants; and an extension of the Affordable Care Act's premium tax credits.

This is hundreds of billions of dollars going to pet projects of the left, while Americans are struggling to put food on the table.

But the spending won't stop there. Earlier this year, President Biden released a pledge to make things worse. It is in the form of his 2024 budget request. This exorbitant wish list proved that he has no desire to get our national debt under control. It included annual budget deficits ranging between 4.6 and 6.8 percent above the baseline. He also included trillions in tax increases and added even more funding to the IRS. He doubled the tax on capital gains; increased the corporate income tax rate to 28 percent, which is the second highest rate in the developed world; and then made sure the IRS could find ways to take even more money--not exactly a taxpayer-friendly approach.

This path is not sustainable and will only lead to our children and grandchildren bearing the full brunt of our massive national debt burden. In my opinion, this is immoral.

This is why every Congress I introduce legislation to cut spending by 1, 2, and 5 percent all across the board. These small changes would make a big difference and help us return to a path of fiscal stability and fiscal sanity.

The Consumer Price Index rose 4 percent in May. Incredibly enough, the Biden administration celebrated this as a win, which leads me to believe they are still counting on the American people somehow ignoring what a mess they made in continuing to fork over the money.

Let's be clear. Four percent inflation is still double the target rate. This is not a win. It is not normal. The day Joe Biden came into office, inflation was at 1.4 percent.

Now, what this does do, it does guarantee that Tennesseans will face yet another month of groceries that are too expensive to afford and unsustainable spending on programs they did not vote for and do not want.

If we were to pass a 1-percent across-the-board cut to Federal spending, then there is a chance we can reverse this trend and ease the impossible burden that the Biden administration has placed on the American people. But if we continue to ignore the problem and spend even more money, that will lead us even further down the path to economic collapse.

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