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Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, 13 percent of the American people believe the state of our Union is strong--13 percent. Just 16 percent say they are better off financially today than they were 2 years ago. But on Tuesday night, it took President Biden the most words in the history of the State of the Union to declare that everything is actually going swimmingly and he doesn't plan to change a thing.

To working families, who have been crushed by historic inflation because of his policies, President Biden offered to cut a few dollars off the fees of concert tickets and hotel stays they can't afford anyway. To Americans who are worried that he just let a Chinese spy balloon surveil our country from coast to coast, the President described his slow and unsteady reaction as a big success. To a country that is already teetering on the brink of recession because of him, President Biden proposed even more gigantic new tax hikes. To the American people who are frightened and curious about surging violent crime, President Biden took aim at the Second Amendment rights of law- abiding citizens and implied that taxpayers need to pay for even more welfare spending before we can expect people not to commit murder.

The President paid lip service to the obscene quantities of foreign fentanyl that flow across our open borders and kill our people, but his main border proposal was to dangle the prospect of amnesty for people who come here illegally.

He repeated his broken promise not to sign tax hikes that hit the middle class when he has already hiked taxes on American jobs and American energy.

The country got to hear a lecture about treating political opponents with respect from the President who lied about State voting laws and compared half the country to Bull Connor and Jefferson Davis and a lecture about our democratic institutions from the President who endorsed permanently breaking the Senate so that his party could grab more power.

President Biden expressed not one ounce of contrition or accountability for the failures that have hurt families, cost his party the House, and left only 16 percent of Americans better off financially now than they were on Inauguration Day.

And the President's thin and paltry discussion of his failing foreign policy was downright alarming. Europe is in the grip of the continent's worst violent conflict since World War II. China is gaining as the largest strategic threat to American security since the Soviet Union. The Taliban has reinstated their oppressive regime and safe terrorist haven that America and our allies chased out more than two decades ago.

North Korea continues to modernize its nuclear and missile programs, making steady progress toward the leader's goal of being able to deliver Armageddon to our doorstep.

The Iranian regime continues to advance its own WMD programs while sponsoring terror campaigns all across the Middle East. Make no mistake, this radical regime is willing and eager to kill Americans if it is not deterred. And while the Iranian people protest nationwide against a brutal theocracy, President Biden couldn't even muster one mention of their struggle.

This is the state of the world on President Biden's watch. This is the state of America's interests under his leadership. But President Biden did not even mention the grave and growing challenges we face from abroad until the tail end of his lengthy remarks.

The President downplayed the threat posed by the People's Republic of China and claimed without any evidence that the United States was in its strongest position to compete with China in decades. I am not sure in what universe those remarks apply. Here in the real world, China's intelligence services just got a closeup look of the entire U.S. mainland. Reports indicate Chinese hypersonic weapons and land-based ICBM launchers exceed our own. And President Biden's last budget proposal tried to cut our national defense funding after inflation. The Commander in Chief seems more preoccupied with hidden ``resort fees'' than hidden Chinese malware in our phones, computers, and high-tech infrastructure.

Then there is Ukraine. President Biden said Putin's invasion of Ukraine has been a test of America's and our allies' resolve. That is certainly true, but, like the Chinese balloon, the Ukraine crisis was also a test of the Biden administration's response time, and they fell quite short.

Republicans tried to push the administration to better equip Ukraine to defend itself before the tanks rolled and to act more quickly and decisively in the early weeks to try to prevent a protracted stalemate. The indecision, hand-wringing, and sluggishness have carried a heavy price indeed. The President can't even get the bully pulpit right.

There is an overwhelmingly persuasive case that aiding Ukraine strongly and directly serves our core American national interests, but President Biden seems incapable of articulating any of it. It is top Republicans who are filling the leadership vacuum, connecting the dots, and making the case. Yet again, Presidential leadership is missing in action, and it is Republicans filling the void. So let's hope President Biden's upcoming defense budget request will treat our national security challenges more seriously than his speech did on Tuesday night.

With fewer than one in five Americans calling the state of our Union strong, President Biden needed to pivot, but he failed to. He spent the wordiest State of the Union in American history making excuses, doubling down, and spinning alternate realities. But if Washington Democrats will not pivot, the American people will pivot away from them. It is already starting.

Seated behind the President Tuesday night was the new Republican Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, and following him on the airwaves was the youngest Governor in America, Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas--part of a whole wave of Republican Governors who are laser- focused on fighting crime, improving education, and lifting more working families into prosperity.

The American people know which principles and solutions will bring our country back, and they are seeing which party actually provides them.

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