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Floor Speech

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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, I think everyone so enjoyed listening to the State of the Union Address last night, and for so many Tennesseans--we have heard from them today--they were excited, they felt hopeful, and they also are watching very closely what the actions of the House and the Senate are going to be.

Now, many of them have mentioned that they know we have that March 14 funding deadline coming up, and so, in 9 days, the Federal Government would be running out of money. And they have heard my colleagues from across the aisle talk about shutting the government down and making that choice to shut the government down because they don't want to pass a budget.

But if you shut the government down, then you are not going to be able to move forward on President Trump's agenda. We know they are not for that agenda, but what they are missing is that the American people are for President Trump's agenda. They want to see the border secure. They want inflation to come down. They want crime in the cities to be dealt with. They want our standing in the world to be returned. They support President Trump.

And we know that when President Trump was returned to the Oval Office, he was given a powerful mandate from the American people, and he deserves to have his agenda shape government spending. But we know there is little time left, and so we begin to hear those conversations that we usually hear about having a continuing resolution.

Now, the reason conservatives like me oppose that is because it continues the current spending, and that is a Joe Biden budget. And we know that, under the Biden administration, they literally ran the numbers off the government credit card. They were spending so much money. They have driven this Nation's debt to $36.5 trillion.

This pandemic and post-pandemic spending has left every single American spending $1,060 more per month to buy the same basket of goods and services they were buying in 2021. Now, think about that. That is the result of Bidenflation: $1,060 more a month to buy the same basket of goods and services you could buy 4 years ago--because we know what has happened with Bidenflation. We know the true rate of that inflation is, cumulatively, over 20 percent.

It is not what they wanted to say--core inflation is only 3 percent or it is only 4 percent. Anybody that buys milk and eggs knows that is not right. And, of course, it is going to take a while to get those numbers down, to look at the prices of gas and groceries and rent and utilities.

And we know that the Biden budgets are what have fueled this growing debt, this annual deficit that we have seen, and the fact that now, when you look at every single American, their portion of our Nation's debt is now $107,000--$107,000.

I was talking to a friend this week who has a new baby--just arrived, brandnew--and they are so excited to once again have a little baby in their family. And as we were talking about politics and all that was going on and the excitement of the baby, I said: And when you look at the Federal debt, their share, their ``welcome to the world'' present from the U.S. Federal Government: You now, as a U.S. citizen, share in this $36.5 trillion debt to the point of $107,000.

I think the American people know that our fiscal path would lead us to disaster if we do not change what we are doing, if we do not look at where we are spending this money.

Thank goodness that President Donald Trump has taken the time to look seriously at what the Federal Government spends and, yes, to work toward moving us to a balanced budget.

Now, one of the ways that he is doing this--and, yes, there have been Executive orders and there has also been the implementation of the Department of Government Efficiency. We refer to this as DOGE.

Today, some of us have had the opportunity to listen to Elon Musk and his team who are carrying out the work at the Department of Government Efficiency.

DOGE, so far, has found $105 billion of inefficiencies in the Federal Government--$105 billion. They are finding about $4 billion a day. The President went through a list last night of some of the waste that is there for projects that maybe really do not yield a result that will benefit the hard-working taxpayer.

We also heard about fraud and people that are receiving Social Security checks that maybe don't exist, people that might be 125, 150, 160 years old, even over 300 years old. That is fraud. And we all are very hopeful that we are going to be able to close that loop, find out who these individuals are, and make certain that they are prosecuted and that money is returned to the U.S. taxpayer.

This is a huge step toward getting our fiscal house in order. Yet these savings that we are finding are only going to be made official and permanent when we put them into the congressional budget.

Now, we all know that this requires us to go through the rescission process. This requires us to codify these reductions so that they are removed from the budget in future years.

We know that that is going to require us to get back to regular order on the budget as we go through this process, as we work through reconciliations, making certain there is a clear path to end continuing resolutions, return to regular order, return to a budget document, and be able to deliver.

I will tell you this: When I talk to Tennesseans, they want transparency. I think one of the things they have so appreciated about DOGE is that they have a website. They are putting all of this information on the website. They are putting it on their X account, but they are showing the American people what they are doing, where they are finding waste, where they are finding fraud, and how they are being able to address this.

This means that as we work through this, we are going to have to take our actions. We are going to have to return to that regular order. We are going to have to bring these spending bills to the floor, and we are going to have to insist and vote for and support a balanced budget so that we begin to reduce, first, eliminate our deficit for the year, and then target balancing our Federal budget and beginning to reduce our debt.

I am so pleased that President Trump talked about this last night in his State of the Union Address because it is important not only for today, tomorrow but for our children and grandchildren's future. He mentioned this--the sovereignty, the stability of our Nation.

What we want is to make the tough choices today, to make the spending reductions today, so that in the future, our children have a nation that is firmly sovereign and is able to stand whatever comes our way.

I think it is so interesting that in 2010, the summer of 2010, Admiral Mullen was asked the question: What keeps you up at night; what worries you the most; what is our greatest threat to our Nation's freedom?

His response was our Nation's debt, and we all know that debt has doubled since that point in 2010 when he made that comment.

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