Government Funding
Floor Speech
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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, last night's vote was an exercise in futility, as Democrats knew would be the case.
For months now, Republicans have made it clear that we will not help Democrats raise our Nation's debt limit to finance Democrats' partisan tax-and-spending spree. If Democrats want to pass a massive, partisan tax-and-spending bill without Republican input, they can raise the debt limit without Republican input.
Democrats, of course, have complained they can't raise the debt limit by themselves. The truth is that they don't want to do it by themselves. Democrats want the credit for their social policies and the government handouts they are planning, but they don't want to own the pricetag.
Democrats are talking about engaging in a wild, reckless spending spree that will worsen our inflation problem, threaten economic growth, and substantially increase the government's control over Americans' lives. Republicans can't support that kind of legislation, and we are not going to help Democrats increase the credit card limit to pay for it. If the Democrats want to raise the debt limit, they have to do it by themselves.
I have come down to the floor more than once to talk about the reckless spending and the massive tax hikes the Democrats are planning. I could spend the rest of my time here on the floor today talking about the irresponsible amount of money Democrats want to spend and the tax hikes they are proposing, but today, I want to look at things a little differently.
Last week, House Speaker Pelosi had this to say in reference to the Democrats' $3.5 trillion spending bill. She said:
It's not about a price tag. It's about values.
It's not about a price tag. It's about values.
Mr. President, she is partially right because while the pricetag does matter, this is about more than just the pricetag. This is about values and visions--specifically, Republicans' and Democrats' different visions of government.
The Democrats' bill isn't just about spending money, even though it does spend money--a lot of it. It is about a specific vision of government, one where the government is intimately involved in nearly every aspect of your life from, to quote the New York Times article on the Democrats' bill, ``cradle to grave.''
Someone once said to me that the difference between Democrats and Republicans is the Republicans believe in less government and more freedom; Democrats believe in less freedom and more government. I think that is a pretty accurate description of what we are seeing here.
Republicans oppose Democrats' tax-and-spending spree because it spends an irresponsible amount of money, but more than that--more than that--we oppose it because it moves us further and further away from the American idea of limiting government.
Our Founders established a limited government for a reason--because they respected individual liberty, and they knew that the heavier the hand of government, the less liberty Americans would enjoy. That is why our Constitution is as much about what government cannot do as what government can do.
Democrats might protest that they are not restricting individual liberty, that they are just providing a helping hand or redistributing wealth, but when you expand the reach of government, the diminishment of liberty is inevitable. When government gets involved in a new area of life, it rarely, if ever, just comes with the benefits; it comes in with rules and regulations and mandates.
Take Democrats' childcare benefit. Democrats are preparing to offer childcare subsidies to parents around the country, but it is not as simple as just taking some money from the government and going out and purchasing childcare because it turns out the Democrats are changing decades-old childcare funding programs to favor secular childcare providers who provide care at daycare centers. If you prefer to choose a faith-based provider for your child, you may be out of luck.
A 2020 Bipartisan Policy Center survey found that among parents who used center-based childcare, 53 percent used a faith-based center--53 percent. They reported that they chose these providers for a variety of reasons, from the quality of the caregivers, to the cleanliness of the facility, to the values of the provider. That number may change when Democrats' tax-and-spending plan goes into effect, not because parents are changing their childcare preferences but simply because Democrats have set up their benefit to favor secular center-based childcare providers.
With government benefits come government control and government picking the winners and the losers. Secular childcare providers win under Democrats' massive government expansion; faith-based providers and parental choice, not so much. Electric vehicle manufacturers win; the natural gas and biofuels industries, not so much, despite the fact that both have been key to producing cleaner American energy. Unions win under this bill; Americans making charitable donations, not so much. Democrats are allowing the charitable deduction to expire but adding a new tax break to pay for union dues. When government is in charge, government dictates your choices and picks winners and losers.
Government also gets a lot more involved with overseeing the details of your personal life. Democrats are planning to add a provision that would force banks and credit unions to report the details of your financial activity to the IRS, including certain deposits, withdrawals, and other transactions. Democrats are apparently still discussing the amount that would trigger the new reporting requirement, which has been proposed at $600 or $10,000, but whichever number they settle on, a lot of ordinary Americans are going to end up having their bank or credit union forced to report their private information to the IRS. Talk about Big Brother.
Probably the biggest reason that Republicans believe in limited government is because we believe in individual liberty, and we know that the more government expands into your life, the more your choices and liberties are curtailed. But there are other reasons that we believe in limited government.
One big reason is that we know that the Federal Government simply isn't the best way of delivering many services. There are some things that the Federal Government is well-suited to do--handling our national defense, for example. If our country is invaded or attacked, it is a lot more effective for our national military to respond rather than for each State to respond on its own. But there are a lot of other things that are better handled at the State level or at a local level or in some cases not by government at all.
Our State government in South Dakota is a lot more familiar with the needs of South Dakotans than the bureaucrats at Washington Agencies. The city government in Sioux Falls or Rapid City or Pierre or Box Elder is even more familiar with or more able to respond to the needs of individual residents. That is why a lot of things are better handled at the State or local level or, as I said, at times not by government at all.
Big Government is impersonal and inflexible. It is not familiar with and can't take into account particular and sometimes opposing needs of each State or each community. Big Government is one-size-fits-all.
Big Government is also inefficient. Anyone who thinks the Federal Government would do a good job running Americans' healthcare hasn't dealt with a Federal Agency very recently.
Big Government is unaccountable. Think about it. If you have a company that offers a bad product, what is going to happen? People are not going to buy your product, and you are probably going to go out of business quickly. It doesn't work that way with the Federal Government. The Federal Government is not going to go out of business because it isn't doing a good job delivering the services that are promised.
If the government is in charge of your healthcare and it isn't delivering quality healthcare, you have little recourse. Sure, you can try to vote in new Members of Congress to reform things, but even then, change can take a very long time. Real reform of an existing government program is rare. Elimination of a bad government program? Even rarer. As Ronald Reagan used to say, the nearest thing to eternal life that we will ever see on this Earth is a government program.
I could go on. I could talk about how Big Government tends to stifle the innovation that leads to economic growth or ask why Democrats think that a group of bureaucrats in Washington are the best decision makers for American families. But I want to touch on one other point before I close, and that is that Democrats believe in government dependence as the goal. They might dispute that characterization, but you only have to look at the tax-and-spending package that they are putting together to know that is their vision.
They envision a future where Americans rely on the government for everything from childcare, to education, to healthcare, and on and on. That is a vision with which Republicans fundamentally disagree. Our vision is not a future of government dependence because government doesn't bring prosperity. Government doesn't bring the American dream. At best, government is going to help you survive. It is not going to help you thrive.
Yes, government can be an important backstop in difficult situations or national emergencies, like the COVID crisis, but the goal should always be to get people to a place where they don't have to rely on government. Permanent government dependence robs people of the purpose and pride that comes with work and personal achievement, and, as I said, it denies them the opportunity for prosperity. No one ever became prosperous on government benefits.
If you asked most Americans what the American dream means to them, I am pretty sure you would hear things like a ``good job,'' a ``rewarding career,'' the ``chance to pursue my ambitions,'' or the ``chance to improve my circumstances and make life better for my children.'' That is what Americans envision, not a future of government dependence and government subsidies.
People are looking to achieve the kind of prosperity where they don't need government involvement in every aspect of their lives and can choose their paths for themselves instead of having to follow the rules and regulations that come with government benefits.
That is a vision that Republicans share, and it is what we are committed to fighting for on behalf of the American people. That is another reason we are committed to maintaining limited government, because the bigger government grows, the more that vision of opportunity and prosperity shrinks.
And so Speaker Pelosi is partially right. She is wrong to dismiss the bill's pricetag, because it is profoundly--profoundly--irresponsible to mortgage our children's and grandchildren's futures with a massive government spending increase, but she is right in that it is about values.
Now, Republicans aren't opposing Democrats' tax-and-spending spree simply because it spends a lot of money, but because it advances a vision of government with which we profoundly disagree. We don't believe that the American dream is government dependence; we don't believe in an ever-expanding role for the Federal Government; and we don't believe that bureaucrats in Washington are a good substitute for the judgment of the American people.
That is why every Republican in the Senate will be voting against the Democrats' reckless spending legislation, not just because it spends too much money, but because it fundamentally undermines the American tradition of liberty and limited government. It is about values, and it is about visions, and Republicans do not share the Democrats' vision of a future of Big Government and Big Brother.
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