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Floor Speech

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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, 2 months ago, the American people gave Republicans a clear mandate. It is a mandate to get America back on track. Senate Republicans won 53 seats. In the House of Representatives, Republicans are in the majority. And President Trump won a historic victory. He won all seven of the battleground States, and he won the popular vote. The victory was decisive. Starting this week, Republicans are going to begin to deliver on the mandate.

You just heard the minority leader in the Senate talk about what Republicans are going to do to help the American people. I want to talk about that because I want to contrast it to what the outgoing President is doing right now in his final days in office.

The Democrat President who is leaving is trying to put in place leftwing, dangerous policies--policies that have been rejected by the American voters and policies that are going to make it more expensive for American voters to live their lives. These policies will make America less safe, less prosperous, and more vulnerable. These aren't policies the American people voted for.

It seems that the lameduck President is working overtime to undermine the American values and the demands and the wishes of the American people. The outgoing President has actually had his administration sign contracts with government unions so government workers have the right to stay home from work, maybe pretending that they are working, while still getting paid for a job that they are supposed to be doing.

To make matters worse, this past Monday, Joe Biden banned American energy production on 625 million acres of Federal waters. The Democrat leader says: Well, we need to do things to lower prices for the American people. That is not going to do it. That is going to make it more expensive for the American people when they use energy to heat their home and to drive their vehicles.

Joe Biden and the Democrats are using an obscure law to sabotage American energy independence and American energy production. In the process of doing this, all in the name of the environment and climate, they are going to make it much harder for the American people to make ends meet at the end of the month.

In my home State of Wyoming, the Biden administration issued a midnight rule that limits agriculture production and oil and gas leasing in Wyoming on public lands. He did this over the objections of the people of Wyoming. This is one more insult from this outgoing administration to the families and the workers in my home State.

So it is not surprising that Joe Biden continues to do more damage as he shuffles out the door. Under his administration, punishing regulations have replaced common sense. His war on American energy independence has hurt us strategically and has caused prices to go up dramatically. On the whole, he has been the most anti-American energy President in the history of this country.

Sadly, there are plenty more examples of malicious sabotage by this lameduck President. In December, what did we learn? We learned that the Biden administration was selling off materials purchased to build the wall at our southern border. It sold the materials for pennies on the dollar. Bidding began at $5. This is vindictive and an illegal violation of U.S. law.

Joe Biden and Democrats let more than 10 million illegal immigrants cross our border illegally into our country. Among them, we know, were over 300 individuals on the Terror Watchlist.

So this morning, when the Democrat leader says ``What are the Republicans doing? What are you starting out doing?'' Well, this week, we are going to be voting on the Laken Riley bill. She was a young woman--an innocent young woman--murdered by an illegal immigrant who came across into this country illegally. She was murdered. It is a bill that has been sponsored and cosponsored by every Republican in the Senate, and now I am happy to report that there are several Democrats who have also signed on to that legislation.

We are now talking about something that should have been done in a bipartisan way earlier, but we have an opportunity this week to get a bill passed in the Senate that is absolutely bipartisan and would make a huge difference in trying to protect American citizens from illegal immigrants who are in this country. We are talking about a group of at least 10 million, some of whom are members of criminal cartels, drug dealers, people on the Terrorist Watchlist. Yet, by Joe Biden's actions of selling off materials that taxpayers have paid for--pennies on the dollar--he is now making it harder and more expensive for President Trump to do the job at the border that he was elected to do and for which Joe Biden and his party were rejected at the ballot box.

This week, we also see that Joe Biden is rushing to release terrorists from American custody. One week after the New Orleans terrorist attack, this President has set free 11 terrorists from Guantanamo Bay--terrorists connected to the 9/11 attacks on America.

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Joe Biden wants to give back a dangerous terrorist and close friend of Osama bin Laden.

Here at home, we are seeing another type of Joe Biden jailbreak. Last month, the President pardoned 39 convicts and commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 more--more commutations in a single day than the last three Presidents combined. These people are hardened criminals. They include murderers, child abusers, fraudsters, con artists, and corrupt public officials.

This ugly action was a disregard for the victims, for their families, and for the facts, and a slap in the face of every law-abiding citizen. This abuse of power undermines our justice system and the power of the Presidency.

This week, Joe Biden continued his march of shame by giving America's highest civilian honor to George Soros. Soros is a pro-crime activist. He is a supporter--an active supporter--of defunding the police. George Soros spent $50 million to elect soft-on-crime prosecutors, including the partisan New York City district attorney Alvin Bragg. Biden rewarded Soros for funding the lawyers who launched the legal attacks against his political opponent, President Trump.

In his final days in office now, Joe Biden is making America less safe, less prosperous, and more vulnerable. This is the opposite of what the American people voted for in November.

There was a column in the opinion page of yesterday's Washington Post Magazine. This is a reflection, an opinion of individuals on what legacy there is going to be for Joe Biden. Presidents are concerned about their legacy. This is by Matt Bai, called ``Biden's legacy: A bridge to nowhere.'' And pulled out on the big line is: Joe Biden ``will be chiefly remembered . . . as a man who didn't know when to leave''--``a man who didn't know when to leave.'' Joe Biden's shelf life has expired. It is time for him to go.

In our first days in office, Republicans have started to get America back on track. Working with President Trump, we will put our focus on what the American people care about: stopping the chaos at the border, taking the handcuffs off of American energy production, and putting the safety and the security and the future of all Americans first.

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