Biden Administration

Floor Speech

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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, I so appreciate the remarks of my colleague from Missouri, and it sounds as if he is hearing from his constituents in Missouri the same thing that I am hearing in Tennessee.

As a matter of fact, I held a telephone townhall last night. Thirty thousand of our citizens from Upper East Tennessee were on this call, and to say that they are unhappy would be to put it mildly. That really is an understatement. They are angry. They are frustrated. They are exhausted with what this administration is doing. They are angry with how the Federal Government is responding to a host of issues.

They really took President Biden at his word for his Build Back Better. They expected that. But that is not what they have gotten. He has made a mess of it, and, indeed, what you have is a ``Build Back Broke'' agenda.

And my colleague from Missouri really laid that out. It is ``Build Back Broke.'' That is what they are bringing forward. And that agenda of President Biden's and the Democratic Party has really destroyed a lot of the hopes and the dreams and some of the renewed prosperity of Tennesseans whose job isn't to study the economy but to move it forward.

They do the heavy lift every single day.

Last night, I spoke with businessowners who feel like they are under attack by this administration and their economic policy. The cost of doing business is going up. They are bleeding customers because they have less disposable income because of inflation, because of the price at the pump.

Supply chains are collapsing around them. It is difficult to get raw materials, like lumber and steel. They have no confidence at all in the administration's willingness or ability to solve this problem. They feel as if the administration does not give the ripping flip about what happens to them in Upper East Tennessee. This administration has forgotten them.

On top of everything else, these vaccine mandates--now, we are hearing a lot about that, and we are hearing from people who know they are going to lose their job. Many times, these are women who are the sole source--the sole source--of income for their families. These families are very concerned about how they are going to handle inflation, collapsing supply lines, how they are going to handle some of the broken social policies that this administration and their allies are trying to sneak into law.

So far this year, we have seen our colleagues across the aisle and down at the White House try to force through provisions of the Green New Deal that would bankrupt your average family and destroy economic development opportunities in rural areas.

We know that it is expected that the cost to heat your home this winter is going to increase 30 percent. Now, how do you handle that when you have lost your job? Do you just sit there and freeze? And you are losing your job because of a Federal mandate that says you have to go get a shot in order to keep a job that you love, in order to put food on the table to feed your family. This makes no sense.

I also heard from parents very upset about critical race theory and the way this administration is trying to hijack education and force this curriculum, force cradle-to-grave socialism--daylight to dark, 24/ 7, depend on the Federal Government.

One of the things that frightens Tennesseans the most and came up regularly on our telephone townhall was the broken border policies. I have said it before; I will say it again. This fear has nothing to do with racism and xenophobia. This administration and my colleagues across the aisle need to get that point through their heads.

Tennesseans are afraid because they look at the border. What they are seeing is vulnerability. They see the drugs coming across that border because the drugs end up in their streets: fentanyl, meth, heroin.

Every town is a border town. Every State is a border State because Joe Biden's border policy is: Open up the border. Hang out the ``Y'all come sign,'' and give everybody a plane ticket to wherever they are going in the country. And, oh, by the way, if the commercial flights are full, don't worry about it. We will go charter you a jet and send you under the cloak of darkness into Chattanooga or into Knoxville or into West Chester County. That is what concerns Tennesseans.

They are seeing what is happening with sex trafficking, with human trafficking. They are afraid of what cartels are doing because the cartels are saying: Thank you, Joe Biden. The door is open. We were not fearful. We are setting up distribution centers on U.S. soils.

That is right, the cartels, setting up their distribution centers. Why? Because Joe Biden is weak and feckless and doesn't stand up to protect the southern border.

There is another thing that they were quite exercised about last night, and it is the issue of election integrity. Indeed, I had a Tennessean call me at 6:45 this morning, and he said: Marsha, you have got to be kidding me. You mean they want to pass a bill that says anybody can go vote, that you can go vote the day of the election, that you don't have to show an ID to vote?

He said: You know, I recently had to show not only a vaccine card but my ID to prove that was my vaccine card to go sit inside at the In-N- Out Burger.

This is why people are so frustrated with Joe Biden. This is why they are so frustrated with the Democrats.

What are they looking for? They are looking for legislators to have some backbone, to stand up and stand for freedom, not to kowtow to a socialist agenda, because they know if the Democratic leadership and Joe Biden had their way with one vote, they would take one vote, and they would push to a socialist agenda.

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