Biden Administration

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor to talk about the growing list of disasters that is occurring in this country and around the world as a result of the actions of President Biden.

The most recent disaster is President Biden's surrender of Afghanistan to global terrorists. For two decades, Americans fought and died in Afghanistan, and they did it to keep our country safe and free. On Thursday, August 26, the United States lost 13 servicemembers in Kabul, Afghanistan. It was the deadliest single day for our military in more than a decade. One of those fallen heroes, 20-year-old Rylee McCollum, was from Wyoming.

Despite heroic sacrifice by our servicemembers, the Taliban, today, is stronger than ever. The Taliban controls more territory than it did on September 11 of 2001, 20 years ago. Afghanistan is, once again, a safe harbor for terrorists.

This disaster happened because President Biden paid more attention to the calendar on the wall than he did to the conditions on the ground. President Biden wanted symbolism. Well, we got symbolism. We got the symbol of terrorists. It is the one they wanted. It is the symbol of helicopters flying, leaving the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan--something that President Biden promised the American people they would never see, but there it was for the world to see.

The entire world also witnessed desperate Afghan citizens. They were plummeting to their deaths as they tried to hang onto planes that were leaving from the airport. President Biden was so eager to pull our troops out of Afghanistan by an arbitrary date that he left hundreds, if not thousands, of American citizens trapped--hostages behind enemy lines. President Biden abandoned the strategically located Bagram Air Base. It is the one base that could have evacuated people safely.

The Biden administration even gave the Taliban a list of American citizens. I mean, can you imagine that? The administration gave the Taliban--the terrorists--a list of American citizens, green card holders, Afghan allies, people we wanted to get out of the country. To me and many Americans who heard that this happened, we saw it as a kill list--a list that the terrorists would use against American citizens and our allies on the ground--and we may never know how many are captured or tortured and are killed.

We could have left Afghanistan with our honor intact. Instead, our enemies are now emboldened, and our friends are furious--furious at us. Billions and billions of dollars' worth of American military equipment and military secrets are now in the hands of the Taliban. Joe Biden has armed the Taliban beyond its wildest dreams. The Taliban has seized more than 600,000 American weapons. This includes over 2,000 armored vehicles, like Humvees, MRAPs, and even American tanks. They also have at least 40 aircraft, including Black Hawk helicopters and drones. The Biden administration has no plan either to get these weapons back or to destroy them where they sit on the ground.

President Biden has surrendered America to the terrorists, and now I believe they are coming for us.

Yet Afghanistan is just one of President Biden's many failures. On issue after issue, this President has displayed complete incompetence.

For instance, President Biden has displayed gross incompetence and mismanagement at our southern border. On President Biden's first day in office--on the very first day--he flipped on a green light at the border, and he laid out the welcome mat. He shut down the construction of the border wall even though it had been fully paid for. He illegally ended the very successful ``Remain in Mexico'' policy, and he stopped all deportations. Ever since then--ever since that day 1 of his administration--illegal immigration has been at an alltime high.

Over the last week, we have seen more than 10,000 illegal immigrants crowding under a single bridge in Del Rio, TX. Since President Biden became President, more than a million illegal immigrants have crossed into our country. That is more than twice the population of Wyoming. Some of these illegal immigrants carry deadly disease; others carry illegal weapons. Since Joe Biden became President, our border agents have seized enough fentanyl--it is a deadly drug--to kill every American man, woman, and child.

The Joe Biden border crisis is--and the word is important to hear here--``unprecedented.'' That is not my word. It is a direct quote from the Secretary of Homeland Security. Joe Biden's Secretary of Homeland Security, a few weeks ago, was caught on tape. He told our Border Patrol officers that the border situation ``cannot continue.''

He went on to say:

If our border is our first line of defense, then we are going to lose. . . . This is unsustainable.

Again, this is coming from President Biden's Secretary of Homeland Security.

Yet Democrats in Washington want to double down on this open border policy. Senate Democrats have tried to give amnesty to over 8 million illegal immigrants. Now, they have failed, but if they had been successful, it would have been the largest amnesty for illegal immigrants in our Nation's history. Well, that sends a very loud message to people all around the world. It says, if you come here illegally, the Democrats are sure going to try to give you government benefits and maybe even citizenship. This message from this White House and the Democrats only strengthens the magnet for people to come here illegally.

Under President Biden, we have chosen chaos on the border, and we have chaos also in Democratic-governed cities. Over the past year and a half, we have seen an unprecedented rise in murders, in shootings, and in violent crime in Democratic-run cities. Last year, the murder rate went up by a third. This year, it is up again. Nearly all of the increases are in cities run by Democrats.

Last year, in Democratic cities, what did they do? Well, they cut more than $1 billion off the funding for our police, for law enforcement--for the people who are there to keep the cities and the streets safe. As a result, crime is out of control, and working families are scared.

There is also something else that is worrying families all across America, and those are the skyrocketing costs they have to pay every time they fill up their tanks or when they go to the grocery stores. At a time when our economy should be booming, the purchasing power of people's paychecks is getting eaten away. Gasoline is now nearly a dollar more a gallon than it was when Joe Biden took office. Now it costs about $25 more to fill up your vehicle. It costs about $25 more for a weekly trip of shopping at the grocery store. So $25 for gas and $25 for groceries is $50 a week. That is over $2,000 a year in lost buying ability--lost power of the paycheck--for American families.

Inflation is happening because of excessive Democratic borrowing and spending. Gas prices are also rising because President Biden is restricting American energy. He has killed thousands of good energy jobs. He took an ax to the Keystone XL Pipeline. He stopped all new oil and gas leases on Federal land. It is no surprise to Americans that the price of energy is going up.

And what is President Biden's solution to this? Well, he wants to raise taxes on energy produced in America. He doesn't want Americans to explore for energy and oil in the United States. No. His National Security Advisor, last month, actually asked foreign oil-producing countries, including Saudi Arabia and Russia--this is the National Security Advisor--to pump more foreign oil to lower the price of gas. And you say: How do you know that? Well, it was on the White House's website, right there for the world to see. The President would prefer for us to buy energy from our enemies rather than produce it here at home.

Under the last President and the previous administration, the United States became energy dominant. President Biden seems very determined to make us energy dependent once again.

I could go on. There are so many failures of the Biden administration to discuss. Every single one of these crises could have been avoided. Each one was predictable and could have been preventable. They could have been avoided with competent leadership in the White House. They could have been avoided if Democrats had stopped their mad dash to the left.

The American people gave us a 50-50 Senate. They didn't ask for a leftwing agenda. No wonder recent polls show Americans, overwhelmingly, say the country is headed in the wrong direction. The American people know what they want: safe communities, secure borders, higher wages, lower prices. It is what I hear in Wyoming, and it is what I heard this past weekend. The incompetence of this administration over the last 8 months cannot be allowed to continue. The American people deserve better.

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