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Floor Speech

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Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor today to talk about the threat posed by China.

On February 4, our Air Force shot down a Chinese spy balloon. They did it over the coast of South Carolina. The balloon had spied upon the United States for up to a week. One of the places that it monitored and hovered over was my home State of Wyoming.

Now, Joe Biden did absolutely nothing until the balloon had already crossed thousands of miles of the United States. To me, this is another national failure from a President who already brought us surrender in Afghanistan.

People in Montana could see the balloon from the ground. That is the way America found out about it. It wasn't from the administration. It wasn't from the military. It was from a reporter on the ground with a telephoto lens. The man took a picture from his driveway.

I am not convinced that Joe Biden would have done anything if that photographer in Montana hadn't published those pictures online.

It is hard to imagine any other President letting a spy balloon fly over our country for nearly a week. Imagine John F. Kennedy allowing a Soviet spy plane over the United States. To me, it is unimaginable. No President, Republican or Democrat, would tolerate this, until Joe Biden.

On Thursday, the Senate received a classified briefing on the spy balloon. I am not alone when I say I was disturbed and disquieted about what we learned. To me, Joe Biden did too little, too late, and then he did what he always does. He bragged about it. He said he had done everything right. To quote him, he said:

We did the right thing.

No, Joe Biden did the weak thing, as usual. He had to be shamed into shooting down the balloon--way too late.

On Thursday, Joe Biden defended himself again. He said the balloon was ``not a major breach''--``not a major breach.'' It reminds me when Joe Biden signaled he would let Vladimir Putin make a minor incursion into Ukraine. President Biden is defending the indefensible.

Just days after the balloon incident, he gave his annual State of the Union address. We were there. There were a number of bizarre moments in the President's speech, and one of the most bizarre to me was when he talked about China.

He said no world leader would want to be Xi Jinping--no world leader would want to be Xi Jinping. He actually yelled it several times.

What was he trying to say? Does he still think that China is not a threat?

Communist China is our No. 1 geopolitical threat. They are our rival. They have the second largest economy in the world. They have over 2 million active military personnel. They have the largest navy in the world, and China plans to build more than 100 new ships, 300 new missile silos, and hundreds of nuclear missiles by the end of this decade.

China is working day and night to get stronger. China is working to challenge the United States as the world's superpower.

And Joe Biden seems to be doing the opposite. He is making our own country weaker and poorer and less prepared.

China isn't the one opening the border to the whole world to come in. China isn't the one spending themselves into bankruptcy. China isn't the one shutting down their energy production. It is Joe Biden who is doing those things--a President who is soft on China.

Now, he has been soft on China his entire career. When he was in the Senate, he helped China join the World Trade Organization. He helped China pay low tariffs under Bill Clinton. This helped China flood our country with cheap, poorly made consumer goods.

By the time Joe Biden was Vice President, the threat from China was obvious, but he was still soft on China.

When he was Vice President, Joe Biden said ``The growth of China is overwhelmingly in our interest.'' That was Joe Biden as Vice President.

He should tell that to the factory workers who lost their jobs all across America. He should tell that to the families who have buried their children because of Chinese fentanyl.

When he was running for President, Joe Biden repeatedly downplayed any threat from China. He said of China, in his announcement to run for President, he said China is ``not bad, folks.''

Now, he should tell that to the 1 million Uighurs who are living as slaves and forced to work in the west of China.

As a candidate, Joe Biden said China is ``not competition for us.''

Well, I have got news for Joe Biden. China's economy has grown 12- fold in the last 20 years. China now has more missile launchers than we do. It is painfully obvious that China is trying to compete with us. Joe Biden is the only one who doesn't get it.

On Friday, former Senator Max Baucus, who I served with, from Montana, revealed that China wanted Joe Biden to be President.

Now, Senator Baucus was a Member of this body, and then he was tapped to be President Obama's Ambassador to China. So Senator Baucus knows a lot about China, knows a number of Chinese officials. And on Friday, he admitted Chinese officials told him that China wanted Joe Biden to be elected President.

Of course they did. In recent weeks, we found out that Joe Biden kept classified information at his home and in his private office.

So where was this private office? Well, the office was at something called the Penn Biden Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The university paid Joe Biden nearly $1 million to do virtually nothing. Joe Biden says he was a professor yet never taught a single class. And he left classified documents at the Penn Biden Center.

Now, reportedly, these documents were related to Iran and Ukraine. I haven't seen the documents, but those are the reports.

And what is the relationship with China and this center? Well, Chinese donors gave $61 million to the university between 2017 and 2020.

Both the House and the Senate need to investigate whether these donations were legal, and we need to know if Chinese money is influencing the Biden administration's policies.

On Thursday, I came to the floor and spoke about how Joe Biden's energy policies are helping China. Later that day, we found out yet another connection between Joe Biden's energy policies and China. We found out that the White House and the Secretary of Energy met with an environmental group with ties to China.

The group is, interestingly, called the Rocky Mountain Institute, and the group was paid by the Chinese Government to study green energy.

Now Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm wants their advice too.

Enough is enough. It is time to act with strength against China. The sanctions that the administration announced are just a slap on the wrist.

The House passed a resolution condemning China for violating our airspace. The vote was unanimous. Every Republican voted for it and every Democrat voted for it. Why aren't we taking it up here in the Senate?

There is a whole host of legislation we need to pass here in the Senate to stand up to China.

I have introduced legislation to ban administration officials from going to work for China.

The top lawyer today--the top lawyer today in our intelligence community used to work for China. Before that, he worked in the Obama White House. Revolving door--Democrat administration, China, Democrat administration.

He worked for the Obama White House. He worked for Huawei--of course, we know Huawei is a telecommunications company controlled by the Chinese Government. Now he is one of the top lawyers on the payroll of Joe Biden.

There is much more that needs to be done in relation to China. China is going to try to spy on us again. China is going to keep challenging us. It is time for us to stand up to the challenge.

Now, what happened with this spy balloon can never be allowed to happen again. America cannot afford Joe Biden's policies of weakness.

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