Filibuster
Floor Speech
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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, I tell you, I am going to follow right along with the comments that my colleague from Texas has made, because, in Tennessee, whether someone is a Republican or a Libertarian or an Independent or a Democrat, they have very high expectations of what this Congress is going to be able to accomplish, and they also have high expectations for this administration. What they are doing is looking there, and they are saying: Politics and politicians are not what this is all about. They don't necessarily matter. Policies matter.
And, as my colleague is saying, maintaining the filibuster rule in the Senate allows robust, respectful debate so that we arrive at a sense of compromise and we do what is best for the American people.
Today, I was talking with one of our Tennesseans, and they were talking about that it doesn't matter what is being said on social media--on Twitter or Facebook or Parler or any of the social media platforms--that when you strip it all away, good policy is good policy, and that is what matters. Good policy is good policy. It is good for the people, and that is where the emphasis should be.
So when I say they have high expectations, I don't only mean that they want good policies; they want this to focus on them. They want it to focus on their concerns, their communities, their schools, their right to feel secure, their right to enjoy free speech, their right to pursue their happiness, their American dream, and their right to celebrate and protect life. It is about them, not politicians, not politics. It is about the American people.
From their perspective, we can spend hours debating the budget or immigration reform or data privacy--which I will talk more about later this week--as long as at the end of the day, whatever compromise we reach not only meets their needs but recognizes that the people are the most important part of this entire equation--the people.
Every Member of this body understands that when the balance of power shifts, sometimes that means that the guy across the aisle is going to get the upper hand. Things change, but it would be a mistake for my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to assume that that means we are willing to set our priorities and our principles aside.
It doesn't mean that we are going to submit to their agenda. It doesn't mean we are going to conform to their agenda. It means we are going to stay true to our principles, represent our States, and work-- work diligently--for what is going to be best for the people.
We may have had a changing of the guard here in Washington, but it doesn't mean that any of us has set aside the promises that we have made to the people we represent, and that is why I came out so strongly against the Biden administration and the President's Executive order that really crushed the jobs and the potential for energy security that came with the building of the Keystone XL pipeline.
This was a project that had achieved bipartisan support, and what are we seeing now? Lost jobs, lost livelihoods, more money being taken out of the taxpayers' pocket.
For similar reasons, I came out in opposition to rejoining the Paris climate accords and reversing our course on the departure from the World Health Organization.
For me, this is isn't about politics. It is about the policies this new administration has decided to unilaterally say yes to--without consulting Congress, without including the people in the discussion.
And just so we are all aware, President Biden said yes to more unilateral policy changes on day one than any President in our Nation's history--more than any President in our Nation's history.
The Biden administration looked at those new policies and decided that the result--achieving that outcome--was worth whatever it would cost the American people to get it.
So over the next few weeks, we will also be examining the President's Cabinet picks to get a sense of the tradeoff they will be willing to make.
Safety is at the forefront of everyone's mind back home in Tennessee--not just safety from COVID but from the bad actors and the foreign adversaries who continue to show us just how far they are willing to go to undermine us on the world stage. Back in Tennessee, we have a saying: When somebody shows you who they really are, you better believe them.
And I will tell you that they are paying attention, and I will tell you that they are not very impressed right now with some of the so- called soft talk that they are hearing on proposed policies toward Iran and the communist regime in China.
This is why I chose not to support the confirmation of our new Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines. I also had some pretty tough questions to ask Secretary of State Nominee Blinken about some of these same issues dealing with Iran, dealing with China. Many of the proposals that I am hearing from them have sounded strangely familiar from years gone by.
We don't have to look overseas to find some very real policy differences between what Tennesseans have said they expect and what the Biden administration is signaling that they want to deliver.
In his hearing before the Commerce Committee, Transportation Secretary Nominee Pete Buttigieg signaled to the panel that he would put the administration's environmental goals ahead of some very basic changes to Federal policy that would lighten the regulatory load on the county and city mayors trying to get their transportation projects off the ground.
As I told him, many times the regulations at issue don't just slow the projects down, they kill the project and that town's prospects for growth, for a better life, for people in the community. Hopefully, he is going to keep in mind what it means to these mayors the next time he is asked to consider the benefits of removing unnecessary redtape.
These tradeoffs many times are just too destructive to say yes to. I would encourage all of my colleagues to look at the compromises the President is asking each and every one to make, not just in terms of what we stand to gain but what is going to be the cost.
What is the monetary cost?
What is the cost of freedom?
What is the opportunity cost that will be delivered to the American people in order for the administration to have their way, to get their income? That is the question we should each ask: What is the cost to the American people in order to protect them, in order to meet the expectations that they have? We should be listening to the people. These policies are about them.
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