John Thune

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, talks on the debt ceiling continue, and the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate are meeting with President Biden again today. I hope that is a positive sign because, if the President's Treasury Secretary is correct, we could be 2 weeks away from the United States beginning to default on its debts, something that would have very serious consequences for our economy and for our Nation's financial standing. If we are going to get a debt limit increase, the President is going to have to negotiate with Speaker McCarthy and House Republicans-- really negotiate, Mr. President--which means that President Biden is going to have to accept some real spending reforms because, otherwise, a debt limit increase is not going to make it through the House of Representatives. Those are the just the facts. Democrats, of course, have been kicking and screaming at the idea of spending reforms. You can witness their frantic campaign to portray the responsible reforms in the House Republicans' bill as extreme. Apparently, suggesting that we should return to 2022 discretionary spending levels for 2024 is an extreme position, despite the fact that we were clearly doing just fine at those levels mere months ago. The Senate Democratic leader came down to the floor last Thursday and suggested the Republicans were attempting to pair a debt ceiling increase with ``unrelated partisan priorities''--``unrelated partisan priorities.'' Well, let that just sink in for a minute because, according to the Senate Democratic leader, spending reform is a partisan priority that has nothing to do with increasing our Nation's credit card limit. If a discussion over increasing our Nation's credit card limit isn't a good time to have a discussion about spending, I don't know what is. And if spending reform is just a Republican priority, then there is something seriously wrong with the Democratic Party because, with a national debt like ours, spending reform should be a priority for everyone. Our national debt currently stands at more than $31 trillion--$31 trillion. Our debt has already exceeded the size of our economy. Within a few short years, we are going to be spending more just meeting the interest on our Nation's debt than we will on national defense. How do Democrats not realize that a national debt of that size has serious consequences? By 2044, we will be spending more on interest than on Medicare. By 2050, we will be spending more on interest than Social Security. That is barely going to leave enough money for the government to meet its most basic obligations, much less invest in all the new or expanded government programs Democrats would like to implement. Yet Democrats are apparently content to simply ignore this reality. It is like they think that we are going to find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow to rescue us once we have spent the Federal Government into the ground. But there is no magic pot of gold. And before Democrats suggest it, let me just say that taxing the rich will not provide enough money to dig us out of the hole that we are in. We have to find a way to rein in Federal spending; otherwise, the size of our national debt is going to crush our economy and seriously limit the Federal Government's ability to meet even its most basic responsibilities, like funding Social Security and national defense. Democrats would like Americans to believe that the ``clean'' debt limit bill they are calling for is the standard when it comes to raising our Nation's credit card limit; but, in fact, that is very far from being the case, as the Democratic leader should know from his own experience in using the debt limit as leverage in negotiations. As Democrats should be well aware, 7 of the last 10 debt limit increases have included some mix of policy or budgetary changes rather than just a clean increase, and, historically, spending reform has frequently gone hand in hand with debt ceiling legislation. Indeed, one expert recently noted in testimony before the Senate Budget Committee that ``of the eight largest deficit-reduction laws since 1985, all eight were attached to debt limit bills.'' Let me repeat that. And this is from an expert who recently provided testimony before the Senate Budget Committee. This was his quote. Of the eight largest deficit-reduction laws since 1985, all eight were attached to debt limit bills. Now, Mr. President, I am getting a little tired of hearing Democrats dance around the facts or suggest that if Republicans just agree to the ``clean'' debt ceiling increase that Democrats want, Democrats would be ready to talk about spending once we move on to the budget. Does anybody really seriously believe that if Democrats won't consider spending reforms now that, somehow, they will develop a serious enthusiasm for reining in spending once we get to the budget? Somehow it doesn't seem likely. Democrats and the President have spent a lot of energy over the past couple of weeks tearing down Republican proposals. If they had spent half that time coming up with spending reforms of their own, we might already have a debt ceiling agreement. And I hope that the meeting at the White House later today is a sign that the President is actually getting serious about negotiating because, if he isn't, he will have only himself to blame if our Nation defaults on its obligations. Democrats have already spent us into an inflation crisis. Let's hope that they don't push us into a default crisis as well. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: The Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Cotton), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Risch), the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio), and the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Budd), the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), the Senator from North Dakota (Mr. Hoeven), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Marshall), and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Budd) would have voted ``nay'' and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Marshall) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, at a press conference on Tuesday, President Biden was asked if the United States was ready for the surge of people expected to come across the border after title 42 COVID-19 restrictions are lifted. His answer? It is going to be chaotic for a while. It is going to be chaotic for a while. Well, that, unfortunately, could describe the situation at the border during his entire Presidency. The Biden administration has been defined by chaos at the border for 2 long years and counting--2 years of recordbreaking numbers of individuals attempting to cross our southern border illegally; more than 5 million attempted illegal crossings in total, an average of 6,300-some individuals per day--6,300 individuals per day. To put that number in perspective, during the last administration, the average number of illegal crossings per day was approximately 1,800. All of these numbers just refer to individuals who were actually apprehended. There have been well over 1 million known ``got-aways'' during the Biden administration--individuals the Border Patrol saw but was unable to apprehend. In fact, one in five border crossers is a ``got-away,'' meaning that huge numbers of people are entering our country illegally, without our knowing who they are or what their purpose is in coming here. The fact that we have seen 80 individuals on the terrorist watch list attempt to enter our country illegally via the southern border since just October is a powerful reminder that not everyone trying to enter our country illegally is simply looking for a better life. And it is profoundly troubling that so many unknown individuals are evading the Border Patrol and making their way into our country. It is a problem that has been compounded as scores of Border Patrol agents have been pulled off the frontlines to provide humanitarian assistance. So we have had 2 years--2 years--of chaos at our southern border, 2 years of chaos that has exacted a tremendous cost. Our border communities are overwhelmed. Our Border Patrol agents are overwhelmed. And the chaos at our border is unquestioningly facilitating illegal cross-border activity, including the smuggling of deadly drugs like fentanyl into our country. We didn't get here by accident. President Biden hasn't just happened to have presided over a recordbreaking influx of illegal immigration at the southern border. No, sir. The chaos we have been experiencing is a direct result of the President's policies. From his campaign on, President Biden was focused on distancing himself from the immigration policies of his predecessor and satisfying the open borders caucus that makes up a huge part of today's Democratic Party. On his very first day in office, President Biden rescinded the declaration of a national emergency at our southern border. He halted construction of the border wall. He revoked a Trump administration order that called for the government to faithfully execute our immigration laws. His Department of Homeland Security issued guidelines pausing deportations except under certain conditions. And that was all on his first day. Needless to say, the effect of all of this was to declare to the world that U.S. borders were effectively open, and the President's policies since that day have done little to correct that impression, which brings us to today. Today, the Biden administration is ending the use of pandemic-era title 42 authorities, which have enabled U.S. Customs and Border Protection to quickly turn back at least some illegal immigrants at the border. Title 42 has played an essential role in preventing the crisis at our border from becoming a full-blown catastrophe, and with its end, the flood of illegal immigrants coming across our border is expected to become a torrent. I mentioned that during the Biden administration, we have seen an average of 6,300 migrants a day attempting to illegally cross our southern border. Well, get this: The administration is expecting that number to possibly double once title 42 is lifted, to as many as 13,000 illegal crossings per day--13,000 per day. If border communities and the Border Patrol were overwhelmed before, it is difficult to even conceive how things will be for them now. The Biden administration is busy putting eleventh hour policy changes in place in an attempt to stem the expected surge, but how much of it will be too little, too late remains to be seen. The President's prediction that things at the border will be chaotic for a while does not exactly inspire confidence that the administration is on top of this situation nor did the NBC article yesterday morning noting that the Biden administration is preparing to release the migrants into the United States with ``no way to track them''--``no way to track them''--as a way to deal with the overcrowding at the border. We're already breaking and we haven't hit the starting line. That is a quote from a Department of Homeland Security official in that story. We're already breaking and we haven't hit the starting line. So, as I said, the Biden administration is not exactly inspiring confidence, especially since the President continues to reject commonsense measures that could actually help keep numbers down, like reinstating the Migrant Protection Protocols, often referred to as ``Remain in Mexico,'' which will require illegal immigrants to stay in Mexico while their asylum cases are adjudicated. We have already seen an early surge in anticipation of title 42 ending, with the Border Patrol's apprehending more than 11,000 individuals at our southern border on Tuesday. And I am deeply concerned about the border communities and the Border Patrol agents who will have to deal with what the lifting of title 42 brings--and not just about border communities because, while border communities have to deal with the greatest immediate challenges, the consequences of unchecked illegal immigration at our southern border are felt all over the country. New York City has seen a flood of illegal immigrants as a result of President Biden's border crisis, and New York City Mayor Eric Adams recently stated that his city is ``being destroyed by the migrant crisis.'' It seems that the Biden border crisis is even too much for the sanctuary cities that helped stoke it. Our current fentanyl crisis is also a good reminder that illegal activity at our southern border affects every State in the Nation. I have talked to sheriffs in South Dakota--about as far from our southern border as you can get--who are dealing with fentanyl that has been trafficked across the border from Mexico; and as I said earlier, that trafficking is undoubtedly being facilitated by the chaos at our southern border. Mr. President, this has been a grim speech, but it is a grim situation. It has been 2 years of crisis at the southern border under the Biden administration, and we are well on our way to catastrophe. President Biden has the power to do something about this, but after 2 years of ineffective or, simply, absent leadership from the President, my hopes that he will take the steps necessary to secure our border aren't high. We will see what the coming days will bring. I yield the floor.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Budd) and the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Tuberville). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Budd) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Tuberville).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, it is May 10--May 10. If the President's Treasury Secretary is correct, in 3 weeks, the United States could reach the limit of its borrowing capacity, and--and, absent an agreement between the President and Congress to raise the debt ceiling, begin to default on its debts. But if you think that means the President has gotten serious about reaching a debt ceiling agreement, you would be wrong. The President did invite the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate to the White House yesterday, presumably, one would think, to finally begin negotiating. But as it turned out, the meeting was apparently a little more than an occasion for the President to reiterate his position that he won't negotiate. Here is the political reality: The President can't raise the debt ceiling by himself. He has to work with Congress, and, more specifically, he has to work with Speaker McCarthy and the Republican- controlled House of Representatives. That is just the reality. The American people sent divided government to Washington last November, and divided government requires compromise. It requires negotiation. Frankly, it is the height of arrogance for the President and the Senate Democratic leader to think that they are somehow the exception to that, to think that they should be able to simply decree what they want--in this case, an increase in the debt ceiling with no spending reforms--and have everyone else just fall in line. That is not the way our system of government works. I get that the President would like things to work that way, but they don't, and the sooner he accepts that fact the better because the fiscal stability of our country is hanging in the balance here. Unless the President comes to the negotiating table for real, he is going to be responsible for the United States defaulting on its debts. Let's talk for a minute about why the President doesn't want to negotiate, why he is insisting on a clean debt limit bill. Well, it is really quite simple. House Republicans want to pair any increase in the debt ceiling with spending reforms, and the President doesn't want anything that will restrain his ability to spend. He is intent on expanding the size and reach of the Federal Government, and spending reforms would get in the way. What President Biden does not seem to realize, however, is that our Nation is on an unsustainable spending trajectory. Spending under the Biden administration has reached staggering levels. The total Federal budget for fiscal year 2023 is up approximately 40 percent from 2019, the last budget before the pandemic--40 percent. And under the President's budget, over the next decade, the Federal budget would reach a staggering $10 trillion, a 125-percent increase from its prepandemic level. Think about it--a 125-percent increase in the cost of government from the prepandemic level. Our country and our economy cannot take that level of spending. Between October and March, the Federal Government borrowed $6 billion a day--a day. That is more than the entire 2023 budget for my State of South Dakota. The amount of money that the Federal Government borrows in a single day is more than the entire budget for the State of South Dakota for the entire year. Debt at that level threatens economic growth. It jeopardizes our national security and leaves us excessively dependent on other countries who hold our Nation's debt, and it sucks money away from essential government spending on things like Social Security and Medicare and our national defense. Just paying the interest on our debt is taking a toll on our Nation's budget. According to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, 50 cents of every dollar our country borrows in the next 10 years will go just toward paying interest on our national debt. By 2028, we will be spending more on interest than on national defense. By 2044, we will be spending more on interest than on Medicare. And by 2050, we will be spending more on interest than on Social Security. How in the world are we going to be able to pay for these programs and other essential government functions if we are spending that much money just meeting the interest--the interest alone--on that massive, going-on-$32-trillion debt? Negotiating over the debt ceiling is hardly new. Seven of the last ten debt limit increases have included some mix of policy or budgetary changes rather than a simple, clean increase. And the Democrat leader of the Senate, the same Democrat leader who is now insisting on a clean debt limit increase, is on the record during the last administration talking about using the debt ceiling as leverage to achieve Democrat priorities. So the President and the Democrat leader's outrage that they might have to yield to the realities of divided government and actually have to negotiate over the debt ceiling is a little hard to swallow. And it is profoundly disturbing that, with a national debt in excess of $31 trillion and growing every day, the President and the Democrat leader can't be brought to consider even the mildest spending reforms. House Republicans have proposed reasonable spending reforms. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget--where the President's own Treasury Secretary used to sit on the Board, I might add--called the Republican bill ``a serious package'' and a ``realistic and extremely welcome first step.'' But if the President doesn't like the House's proposed spending reforms, he should put forward his own spending reforms. What he should not do, however, and cannot responsibly do is continue to refuse to engage in negotiations. If he continues to reject compromise, if he continues to insist that it is his way and no other, then, come June, he will be responsible for our Nation defaulting on its debts. The President has already spent us into an inflation crisis. Let's hope he can see his way to negotiating before he plunges us into a default crisis as well. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Tuberville).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from North Dakota (Mr. Cramer).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Tuberville).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from North Dakota (Mr. Hoeven), the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul), and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from North Dakota (Mr. Hoeven) would have voted ``nay'' and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis) would have voted ``nay''.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Johnson), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott), and the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Tuberville).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Johnson) and the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Tuberville).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Johnson) and the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Tuberville).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, as I begin, I want to talk about another subject here in a moment, but I also want to react to what the Senator from Illinois said with regard to the debt limit. I think it is important to point out, as folks on the other side and the White House talk about the need for a ``clean debt limit''--in other words, a debt limit that increases the amount of borrowing without anything whatsoever attached to it--that in 7 of the last 10 debt limit debates, there were budgetary or policy items that were negotiated and attached--in 7 of the last 10 debt limits. Many of those were insisted upon by the Democrats at the time. In fact--I pointed this out yesterday--President Biden, when he was Vice President back in 2011, made statements that he couldn't understand how anybody could not understand the importance or the need to negotiate on a debt limit increase and other policy matters related, hopefully, to spending and debt. It seems to me, at least, that a debt limit debate presents an opportunity to actually do something about the debt and to address the issue of spending. There have been a number of good suggestions made in a bill that has been sent over to us from the House of Representatives about how to do that--about how to save money, how to make government more efficient, reallocate, reprioritize how we spend money, and, hopefully, reduce the amount of debt that we actually have going forward and, perhaps, the need to again raise the debt limit. It seems like every time we have this conversation, everybody laments the fact that we have to do this and that we have this huge debt. Well, one way to address that would be to actually have a conversation about what we might do to reduce the debt in the form of spending reforms and budgetary changes that could address both the spending and the debt issue. So 7 of the last 10 times, that has happened, and in many cases, it has been instigated by the Democrat leaders, including Senator Schumer. One other observation about that--because I think it is important--is you talk about spending and debt. Think about just the absolute aggregate levels that we are now dealing with in terms of debt. I make this point because, back in 2010, the amount that we spent annually on interest on the debt was a little under $200 billion; and in 2022, last year, the amount that we spent on interest on the debt--in other words, just to finance the debt, to pay the interest on the amount of borrowing that we have in this country--was $475 billion. So, in that time period from 2010, we went from paying a little under $200 billion a year in interest on the debt to $475 billion a year in interest on the debt. That is a 142-percent increase. That is going to go up dramatically, as we all know, because interest rates are going up. So now the cost of borrowing is increasing dramatically. In fact, over the next 10 years, the estimate is that 50 cents out of every dollar that we borrow will go toward nothing but paying the interest on the debt. So, when you are $31 trillion in the hole--$31 trillion in debt--it seems logical to me--and I think it does to most Americans because they have weighed in on this, if you believe any of the polls--to address the issue of the debt as you are raising the debt limit, which is precisely what the House leadership in the House of Representatives did when it passed a bill last week and sent it to the Senate for consideration, including a number of spending reforms that would reduce not only the amount of spending that we have but also the amount of debt significantly. It would reduce the amount of debt over that time period by about $500 billion. It is actually significantly higher than that--several trillion dollars over the next 10-year period. That is a significant amount of money. The amount of interest saved is about $500 billion. The total amount of savings on the debt is about $4.5 trillion. So they are making an earnest effort at addressing what is a highly colossal problem for our country if we don't start reining it in and getting it under control. And I think it behooves the U.S. Senate to consider--and the President as well--what we might do to address spending and debt instead of declaring, as the Democrat leader did about the House bill, that it is dead on arrival in the Senate. There are a number of ideas in there that, I think, should be supported by both sides and that are meaningful in terms of what they do, obviously, by the amount that they would save. But 50 cents out of every dollar borrowed over the course of the next 10 years--in each of the next 10 years--would be used for nothing more than to pay interest on the debt, which today--or as of last year, 2022--is already $475 billion each and every year. There are 55 percent of the American people, including 58 percent of Democrats, who think that, before we raise the debt limit, we ought to do something to put some restraints in place--some budgetary restraints--that control the amount of spending in this country and, therefore, the amount of deficit and debt that we rack up.