The Economy

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, for Washington Democrats, 2021 will have one major theme: ramming through inflationary spending on a partisan basis that hurts American families and actually helps China. That is how this all-Democratic Government began the year, jamming through a wasteful excuse for a stimulus bill that drove up prices and made supply chain problems even worse. Not a single Republican supported it, and Democrats now want to end the year with another massive spree that would make it even worse.

The whole country understands that Democrats own this mess. They have seized one-party control of the economy. So you better believe that they will have one-party accountability for the resulting nightmare.

The President and his allies are badly upside down in overall approval ratings, upside down on the generic ballot, upside down on the economy. And the more the men and women of this country learn about the reckless taxing-and-spending spree that Democrats are planning next, the less they want it or anything close to it.

Democrats have wanted to transform the country alone. They want to print and borrow trillion after trillion on their own. They want to create even more inflation on their own. So, as the Republicans have made clear for months, they will have to own a debt ceiling increase as well. This week, the House and Senate have reached a bipartisan agreement to make that happen. As the Democratic leader said yesterday, the Democrats are ``willing to carry the burden.'' And so they will.

We have reached an agreement on a one-time, one-shot statutory process that will enable Democrats to raise the debt limit at a fixed dollar amount, which they will specify. Much like the vote on an arms sales resolution that occurred yesterday and the Congressional Review Act vote that will occur today, this will be a standard expedited process, at a simple majority threshold, established by law. Democrats will get one shot at this. They won't be able to add any other amendments. And every single Senate Democrat will have to put their name to the gigantic dollar amount of debt they are prepared to pile on the American people.

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