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Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, with the new session of the Senate and a new majority in the House and the Senate--actually, the House had the majority but the Senate has a new majority--and President Trump in the White House, one of the first things that Members of the Senate had to do is to choose which committees to serve on.

I have been proud to serve on the Senate Judiciary, Finance, and Intelligence Committee in previous Congresses. This Congress, I will be joining the Budget Committee for the 119th Congress. I was particularly interested in joining the Budget Committee because one of the biggest challenges we have is to get our budget under control. With approaching $36 trillion in debt, we are paying more interest on the national debt than we are on defense. At a time when President Trump asked NATO to up their investment in their own defense to up to 5 percent of GDP, we stand about 2.7 percent of GPD here at home.

Clearly, we need to rightsize our spending and our debt and reprioritize what it is we are trying to do here. National security, I believe, is the preeminent responsibility of the U.S. Congress.

We will have the opportunity to pass a budget with reconciliation instructions. I am not sure how much the American people care about the process. We care about the process because we have to deal with it. But the first thing we do have to do is pass a budget. That is something we haven't done since 2017. I remember in 2017, right after President Trump was sworn or even before he was sworn into office, we passed a budget resolution from which we got the ability to then pass the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, one of the most significant tax reform bills in 25 years.

But we got that budget passed before President Trump even took office because, as a resolution between the House and the Senate, it doesn't require a Presidential signature. It is already January 8. We have 12 days until President Trump puts his hand on the Bible and is sworn into his second term of office, and we don't have any time to waste.

The reason why a budget is so important is for a variety of reasons. But one reason is because it allows us to pass budgetary legislation using the majority threshold, which would allow Republicans alone-- hopefully, Democrats will join us, but with 53 Republicans and everybody on the same page, hopefully, we will be able to pass legislation addressing our budgetary challenges.

We do have unique rules here in the Senate. One is called the Byrd rule, which tries to make sure we don't use the reconciliation process and the budgetary process to pass substantive legislation as opposed to budgetary legislation. That is something we are going to have to work out with the House because I know the House has different rules. They don't have any constraint on the types of things that they can do using reconciliation like the Senate does. But that is the reason why it is so important for the House and the Senate to get on the same page.

There is some discussion here on Capitol Hill about whether we want to pass one budget or two budgets or more--actually, even one budget with multiple reconciliation bills. Frankly, I don't think the process is as important as it is to get the job done. We need to save the American people a multitrillion-dollar tax increase which will occur unless we can renew the expiring provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

As I indicated earlier, we need to deal with our rising debt and our funding for our national security purposes. The goal, of course, for national security funding is to establish deterrence and to deter-- whether it is Iran that has aspirations for nuclear weapons that has created so much havoc and misery in the Middle East; whether it is North Korea that is testing hypersonic missiles along with nuclear weapons; or whether it is Russia, which has aspirations to restore the former Soviet Union or Russian Empire currently by the means of taking Ukraine back. Then, there is China, which--as the Presiding Officer knows with all of his experience in Asia--is a huge challenge for the United States.

President Xi has stated he wants the People's Liberation Army to be prepared by 2027 to take Taiwan by whatever means necessary. We are not ready, and we have to be ready to maintain and reestablish deterrence so that does not happen; so that President Xi wakes up day after day and he says to himself, ``Not today.'' And tomorrow he wakes up and says, ``Not today.''

That is what deterrence is about.

And we, again, need to deal with our budgetary challenges because we are not spending the amount of money we need to spend on defense and deterrence, nor are we spending the money we do spend in, I believe, the wisest and most appropriate manner given the current circumstances.

So whether we pursue a single reconciliation bill or multiple bills, we can't lose sight of the goal, and that is to pass President Trump's agenda for the American people. That is what the November 5 election was all about. And we are in lockstep with President Trump, I believe-- the majority in the House and the Senate--to accomplish that goal. But we can't do it unless we work closely together, which is why we need to be on the same page.

We need to quickly arrive at that agreement so we can act swiftly to implement the solutions that will help improve the day-to-day lives of our constituents, the people we represent--in my case, 31 million people in the State of Texas. President Biden's policies have been a disaster for my State and for the American people. Texans have been suffering under open borders and high prices for the last 4 years. Those who run businesses are facing burdensome regulations from the out-of-control regulatory regime.

On top of this, as I mentioned, if Republicans fail to act swiftly to extend the expiring tax cuts, 62 percent of taxpayers will experience a tax increase--62 percent. We can't let that happen. It would be insult to injury on top of a 40-year-high inflation for the American people to have to experience a tax cut increase if we are unsuccessful.

So while we have important conversations and healthy debates over what budget reconciliation ends up looking like, we need to keep our eye on the prize in order to deliver on these critical priorities for the American people.

Now, in addition to border security, abundant American energy, regulatory reform, permitting reform, and avoiding this multitrillion- dollar tax increase, there is one more thing that I would like my colleagues to remember as we deliberate the contents of this package.

I believe we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to deal with some of the biggest challenges that face America, and we can't squander that opportunity. We have to address not only our discretionary spending, which is about 28 percent of what the Federal Government spends each year, but also our mandatory spending programs outside of Social Security and Medicare. We are not going to touch Social Security or Medicare absent some bipartisan agreement.

But there is still about $700 billion of mandatory spending that the Federal Government spends each year that is, essentially, on autopilot. We can address these mandatory spending programs by implementing commonsense reforms to programs like SNAP--otherwise known as food stamps--that have grown unchecked for years. By simply reducing payment errors for the SNAP payments, for example, we could save an estimated $100 billion.

By implementing a real work requirement for means-tested programs like Congress did back during the Clinton Presidency, we could save an incredible amount of money for the American people and help ease inflation so that the Federal Reserve can bring down interest rates. Or we could repeal the controversial 2021 Thrifty Food Plan that would save as much as $300 billion.

We are talking about real money.

But it is not just programs that got plus-ups during the pandemic. Let's take a look, for example, at the IRS. By rescinding the remaining unspent Inflation Reduction Act funds that were directed to the IRS during the Democrats' massive spending spree, we could save an additional $40 billion.

Now, think about that for a minute. We could save taxpayers $40 billion just by sending less money to the Agency when it comes to process their tax payments. That seems like a no-brainer if I ever heard of one. This money has not been spent.

If there are other demands in the future that Congress needs to address, then we are prepared to act on those. But to simply leave $40 billion unspent and act as if there is nothing we can do about it at a time of sky-high inflation and reckless spending, I think would be irresponsible on our part.

Here is another idea. By repealing Davis-Bacon, a law that requires Federal construction projects that are carried out that applies to them that requires payment of a prevailing wage--which isn't necessarily a market wage at the location you are talking about--the Department of Transportation alone could save $400 million.

Turning to our Federal workforce. Our Federal workforce does, by and large, great work. They do important work on behalf of the American people. But by reforming the pension system for Federal employees to bring the benefit calculation in line with the private sector standard, the government could save $5 billion over the next decade. We could reform the structure of the Federal employee health benefit program and save an additional $18 billion.

These are just a few examples of what I would call low-hanging fruit of the opportunities for us to save taxpayer money and to begin to reverse the reckless spending policies of the last 4 years. These are just some examples of the longer list that could save taxpayers as much as $1 trillion over the next 10-year period.

And, of course, I think we ought to put it all on the table--the money we spend through discretionary spending, the money we spend through mandatory programs, the money that is spent through the tax code. The child tax credit and the earned income tax credit alone represent $200 billion in spending. And this is using the tax code to basically create or supplement our welfare system because it is a refundable tax credit, which means people get a check--get cold, hard cash--using the tax code.

We need to restore the Tax Code to its original purpose and not hijack it for purposes of expanding the welfare state. We can have healthy debates about what the priorities should be. I think the child tax credit is very important, and we can talk about the appropriate levels of all of these various programs, including those included in the Tax Code. But we have to start somewhere, and we have to start soon.

Little things do add up. Over the past 4 years, families back home in Texas have had to reevaluate their budgets. So why shouldn't the Federal Government have to make the hard choices that folks back home are making on a daily and weekly basis? They have had to tighten their belts as a result of high inflation and the highest interest rates that we have had in a long time, which have eaten away at their monthly incomes. They have figured it out, and we can figure it out here, too, for the American people and for the Federal Government.

I think it is only fair that the U.S. Congress, which holds the purse strings for the U.S. Government as a whole, should have to do the same thing that families all across Texas, all across Tennessee, and all across the country are having to do on a regular basis. It doesn't seem fair to me to have the folks back home have to make these tough choices while the Congress has been spending away under Democratic majority control and with President Biden in the White House.

This is another reason I am excited about the great work the Republicans are going to do on the DOGE Caucus, the Department of Government Efficiency, alongside our friend Elon Musk and his partner in crime Vivek Ramaswamy. I say that tongue in cheek, Mr. President. But they have volunteered their efforts and raised the visibility and profile of some of the massive inefficiency in Federal spending in a way that, I think, will be able to galvanize the attention of the American people and enable us to get the political courage to do what we need to do to cut out waste, fraud, and abuse.

This Republican-led Congress can make an impact in reducing our spending, and I know we are all excited about the opportunities to do so. We are chomping at the bit. We just need to all get on the same page so we can get down to work. So I would urge all of my colleagues to remember budget reconciliation not only allows us to allocate resources to places like the southern border, which have been flatout ignored by the Biden administration, but it is also a tool to reduce spending--inefficient, wasteful spending--and to right-size our priorities.

You know, budgets are all about priorities. We have things we must have; we have things we would like to have; and we have things we want but that we can't afford. Those are decisions families have to make on a regular basis and so do small businesses all across the country. Why not the Federal Government? There is no good reason the Federal Government shouldn't have to operate under the same rules.

While we can notch some big wins in the coming weeks, we need to eat our spinach too. You know, we have been kicking a lot of these issues down the road until now, when we have run out of road. So it is up to us, the elected Representatives of the American people. This is our responsibility. It is not always going to be fun. It is not necessarily always going to be popular, but I believe that, if we explain to the American people the necessity of doing what I have been talking about here, they will understand it, and they will respect it and accept it. After all, this is something I propose that we do--that we have to do-- because of what the American people told us that they want, which is a change in direction for the country, in their vote of November 5 of this last year.

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