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Floor Speech
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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, back in May, I was in Shelby County to visit with 100 members of the Tennessee National Guard. They were heading off on yet another deployment to the southern border.
These are some of the bravest and most capable people that you will ever meet. Tennesseans depend on them to keep us safe during natural disasters, to rescue lost hikers in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, and to defend the country from our adversaries overseas. Yet there they were on their way to what many would call a war zone in their own country to do the job that Joe Biden refuses to do.
They shouldn't have had to go, but they went because they knew that no matter who was to blame for all this chaos, our Border Patrol agents and local law enforcement needed help controlling it.
When I think back on my conversations with those servicemembers, I can't help but notice the stark contrast between their focus on service and sacrifice and the Biden administration's lack of regard for the welfare of this country.
Over the past several years, the relationship between the American people and their government has changed, but not for the better. At the beginning of Biden's term, they were just baffled by what they were seeing. All they could do was shake their heads in disbelief. But as the months wore on, that disbelief gave way to genuine fear that this President was digging a hole that they wouldn't be able to claw their way out of no matter how hard they worked.
As it turns out, those fears were well-founded, and now, 3 years into this administration, that fear has given way to outrage because this President has made it abundantly clear that when it comes to pursuing his radical agenda, he simply doesn't care whom it hurts.
The President may be happy to ignore the mess he has made, but Tennesseans don't have that luxury. If they ignore the problems they see, they suffer real consequences. If local law enforcement officers just ignored the drugs flooding into their communities, even more people would die from fentanyl overdoses and drug-related crime.
Every year, I meet with local leaders in each of our State's 95 counties, and the conversation turns to the border crisis every single time. It is an unmitigated disaster, and they just don't understand why the President refuses to do something about it.
If you talk to law enforcement in East Tennessee, they will tell you that they are recording record levels of drug seizures. What they once would apprehend in ounces they now measure in pounds.
Chief Jason Owens at the Border Patrol gave a ``week in review'' from June 22 to 29. Here is some of what they apprehended. They know they had 28,339 apprehensions. They also had an additional 6,100 ``get- aways.'' They apprehended 116 pounds of marijuana, 50 pounds of fentanyl, and 2,056 pounds of cocaine. Where does much of the drugs that are coming across with those ``got-aways'' end up? It ends up in our communities.
A judge in Rhea County told me that 80 percent of the crime he sees is drug-related. If they could get a handle on the drugs, they could take care of much of the court cases and the prison population, but they can't get a handle on it because the local dealers are not the root of the problem. For every drug smuggler the Border Patrol manages to catch and every pound of drugs they apprehend, you have that handful of ``got-aways'' who escape into the country with drugs and contraband.
In Overton County, they said they haven't busted a local meth lab in 5 years. Here is why. The drug dealers have outsourced their entire supply to the cartels because it is easier and cheaper to smuggle it in than it is to make it themselves. The police can trace that supply chain down I-75 to Atlanta and then right across the border into Mexico.
Now when they respond to an overdose death, local officials have to implement fentanyl protocols because they know it is the likely culprit. The cartels add this to the drugs to make them that much more addictive. Everything is laced with fentanyl. It is also very lethal in small amounts. In Marion County, they are spending an astronomical amount of money on autopsies because of this. As of May, they have spent $80,000, and almost all of those deaths are fentanyl-related.
These local officials are desperate for help. They know this is this administration's fault because the situation escalated when the Biden administration moved into the White House.
Here is what the President did: He terminated ``Remain in Mexico.'' He terminated title 42. He terminated DNA testing at the border. And his rhetoric made it clear that he would rather pander to the left than admit that Trump-era border policies were working. Then he left local law enforcement to fend for themselves.
They need our support. When title 42 ended, I introduced the Make the Migrant Protection Protocols Mandatory Act. That would reinstate the successful ``Remain in Mexico'' policy. I also introduced the End Child Trafficking Now Act, which would reinstate DNA testing at the border and thwart the child trafficking rings that President Biden has allowed to flourish. If we passed these two bills, we could give Border Patrol and local law enforcement a fighting chance against the cartels.
But the problem goes much deeper than just preventing illegal entry into the country. When Joe Biden took office, he threw the rule of law out the window. Since then, we have watched Biden and his supporters ignore the Constitution, attack our most important institutions, ignore the law, enable corruption, and slander their fellow countrymen as violent racists.
Tennesseans take issue with that and with the judges and the bureaucrats whom President Biden has nominated to write this partisan rhetoric into law. Over the past several years, this body has considered nominees to some of the most critical positions in government who were little more than political activists, and that is putting it mildly.
We have questioned judicial nominees who are unfamiliar with the Constitution, potential Agency heads with almost no experience in the industries they seek to regulate, and Cabinet nominees who have demonstrated their commitment to burning down institutions and norms that conflict with their radical views. But the one thing they all have in common is they have agreed to rubberstamp the Biden agenda.
The local leaders I see in my county tours see the chaos this is causing. They see two tiers of justice at work, and they are very concerned about it, especially when they see administration officials egging on leftist fanatics seeking to undermine the rule of law at any cost.
For example, Federal law makes it clear that it is illegal to protest outside of a judge's home with the intent of influencing a ruling. It is common sense. But after the Supreme Court's Dobbs opinion leaked, far-left protesters immediately began demonstrating outside of the Justices' homes. The Biden DOJ has yet to arrest a single protester, which means that the Biden DOJ has in effect endorsed the intimidation of Supreme Court Justices who refuse to rubberstamp the Biden agenda.
Earlier this year, I introduced the Protecting Our Supreme Court Justices Act, which significantly increases the maximum jail time for any individual who violates this law. I am sure that under a future administration, it will serve as an effective deterrent to this disgusting behavior.
But imagine being a law enforcement officer in Tennessee and seeing this complete breakdown of law and order in our Nation's Capital at the highest levels of government. How much faith do you think they have in this administration to help them control the flow of drugs and violent criminals into their communities? How seriously do you think they take the Democrats' promises to fight for safe streets when this body continues to confirm judicial nominees who promise to undermine the rule of law? Unlike the Biden administration, they can't change the rules whenever they feel like it, they can't use the bureaucracy to stack the deck in their favor, and they can't put their friends in charge to cover for them if they get caught breaking the law.
Our local law enforcement officials deserve better. Tennesseans deserve better. The American people deserve better. But right now, they have to do the best they can fighting a losing battle on two fronts-- against criminals trying to exploit them and against a President who knows exactly what is happening but just doesn't care enough to do something about it.
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