-9999
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, last week's midterm elections reconfirmed something that has been clear for a number of years: When it comes to politics and to policy, we are a closely divided nation.
For the third straight election, our closely divided nation saw a closely fought election go all the way down to the wire. And as the dust settles, for the third straight time, the American people have chosen a very closely divided government.
Though several races for the House of Representatives remain uncalled, it appears the likeliest outcome would mean the American people have put a stop to 2 years of Democrats' disastrous one-party government and placed the House in Republican hands.
Senate Republicans have spent 2 years working to check and balance reckless policies; it will be an outstanding thing for the country to have a set of new reinforcements arriving on the other side of the Capitol.
Now, while this election underscored some of our country's close divisions, it also highlighted areas where the people are speaking overwhelmingly with one voice. The American people are not divided over what Democrats' reckless policy decisions have done to our economy and to their families' budgets. Exit polls show three-quarters of voters say the economy they are facing is ``poor'' or ``not good.''
Americans are not divided over whether the current trends in inflation, crime, open borders, and drug addiction are acceptable outcomes for the greatest country in the history of the world; everyone knows they are not.
And Americans are not especially closely divided about whether they want President Biden to keep governing like he has been or actually change course. At this point in their presidencies, every one of the last 13 Presidents dating back to Truman had higher approval ratings than the Biden administration.
One State where Democrats' policy failures have hit especially hard is the State of Georgia. Georgia families have seen cumulative inflation of 14.7 percent since January of 2021. Both of their Senators cast the deciding vote to rubberstamp the spending that made that happen. Now households in the Peach State are paying a hidden Democratic inflation tax that adds up to thousands of extra dollars per year.
The nationwide breakdown in law and order has hit Georgia hard as well. The city of Atlanta now has per capita rates of homicide and assault that are even actually worse than Chicago.
And the people of Georgia saw their State attacked, called racist, called Jim Crow 2.0 by the sitting President of the United States, and boycotted by major corporations over a voting law that just facilitated--listen to this--historic ballot access, record turnout, and low wait times for Georgia voters.
So where do Georgia taxpayers and small businesses go to get their money back after the liberal smear campaign that led to the boycotts? But the day after the election, President Biden took to the podium and triumphantly promised that he plans to learn no lessons and change nothing at all. Here was the quote:
I'm not going to change the direction.
Thirteen-plus percent inflation over 2 years, historic levels of dissatisfaction at Americans' kitchen tables, and President Biden says he will keep doing precisely what he has been doing: more inflation, more crime, more chaos, more open borders.
If Washington Democrats do not want to pivot to sanity and common sense, if they will not help us address the ways their policies are hurting families, they will encounter stiff resistance from the sizable Senate Republican Conference that half the country has elected to be their voice, to be their champions, to fight for them.
So to sum it up, we are going to fight hard for the American families this administration is leaving behind.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source