McConnell On The State Of The Union: President Failing Most Basic Responsibilities Of Government
‘For three years, the President who campaigned as a moderate has governed like an activist from the furthest fringe of the Democratic Party. The Biden Administration’s agenda has meant pain at home and weakness abroad. It didn’t have to be this way.’
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding the state of the union:
“Tonight, President Biden will deliver the last State of the Union address of his term.
“For the past three years, these speeches have served as mile markers, but not of any meaningful progress toward a more perfect union. Instead, each year, the American people tuned in to see just how far the President’s own version of his record is from the reality of their lives.
“For three years, the President who campaigned as a moderate has governed like an activist from the furthest fringe of the Democratic Party. The Biden Administration’s agenda has meant pain at home and weakness abroad.
“It didn’t have to be this way. President Biden took office amid strong tailwinds – from an economic recovery that was already restoring the record-setting prosperity we saw before the pandemic to an historic modernization of our military that was well underway.
“He inherited everything he needed to point our nation toward further security and prosperity. But he chose weakness and invited danger instead.
“Today, nearly two thirds of voters today say our economy is worse than it was four years ago. Not even one in four think our country is on the right track. Barely a quarter of the country expects our economy to improve in the coming year.
“But that hasn’t stopped President Biden from trying to convince working Americans to take his word for it – and ignore their own shrinking paychecks. He’s literally taken a victory tour to tout his disastrous economic record. His Administration has declared Bidenomics ‘the word of the year’!
“Meanwhile, American consumers are shelling out a bigger portion of their income on groceries than at any point in the last 30 years. A food pantry in northern Kentucky is reporting, ‘more and more demand for… enough food to make people’s income stretch.’
“Across the board, consumer prices are nearly 18% higher today than they were when President Biden took office. This is what ‘Bidenomics in action’ really means?
“At kitchen tables tonight, working families will probably wonder whether the President has any regrets…
“Whether he wishes he hadn’t ignored his party’s top economists, rammed through trillions of dollars in left-wing spending, and brought on the worst inflation in 40 years…
“Or whether he wishes he hadn’t declared total war on our most affordable sources of domestic energy, along with the jobs these American industries support. On President Biden’s watch, overall energy prices are up nearly a third.
“Time after time, when given the choice to lead or to outsource his work to left-wing activists, President Biden has chosen the latter. He’s handed his base a blank check for a wish list of social engineering, and left the American people to foot the bill.
“Meanwhile, he’s poured gasoline on the fire of left-wing pro-criminal, anti-police rhetoric across the country. The Biden Administration has packed its Justice Department full of left-wing activists working overtime to tear serious crimes right out of the criminal code.
“A couple years back, a district attorney in Massachusetts declared she wouldn’t prosecute crimes like breaking and entering or drug possession with intent to distribute. President Biden rewarded this behavior by making Rachael Rollins one of his first United States Attorneys.
“Across the country, on this President’s watch, left-wing prosecutors have turned repeat offenders onto the streets – repeatedly. In President Biden’s America, violent criminals have learned that they won’t face serious consequences. And they’re acting accordingly.
“At the same time, left-wing activists bent on attacking the federal judiciary have found an ally in the Biden White House. The President has tried to give life tenure to a judicial nominee who identified himself as a ‘wild-eyed leftist’… Another with a history of supporting terrorist sympathizers… And even one who had worked to undermine a teenage girl’s claim of sexual assault.
“President Biden hasn’t just tried putting the wrong people in our nation’s institutions. He’s spent three years undermining institutions, themselves.
“His Attorney General slow-walked urgent security measures to protect Supreme Court Justices and their families from angry mobs. And his Administration even stood up a commission to explore court-packing – a terrible idea that hasn’t gotten any less terrible since it was killed back in the 1930s.
“Mr. President, the rule of law is less stable on President Biden’s watch. The streets of our major cities are less safe. And of course, our borders are less secure.
“Three years ago, illegal immigrants arrived at our southern border in shirts bearing his campaign logo insisting, as one put it, that, ‘Biden promised us that everything was going to change.’
“Well, they were absolutely right. Since President Biden took office, nearly 10 million people have crossed our southern border illegally. His Administration has abandoned CBP and ICE to contend with the highest daily, monthly, and yearly totals of illegal arrivals on record.
“As soon as he took office, this President tore up commonsense authorities he could have used to maintain a secure border. Instead, he spent years pretending that functionally open borders didn’t amount to a ‘crisis’.
“The only campaign promise President Biden appears to have kept is the one he made on the campaign trail to people hoping to cross our borders illegally. ‘We immediately surge to the border, all those people who are seeking asylum.’
“By contrast, it’s difficult to think of a pledge the President abandoned more completely than his campaign promise to restore respect for America on the world stage. Today, the credibility of our commitments is in serious doubt.
“The West is confronting the most dangerous moment since the fall of the Berlin Wall. But our Commander-in-Chief’s first instincts appear to be hesitation and self-deterrence.
“President Biden’s failures pose embarrassing questions for America and our allies and partners:
“Are we safer after his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan? Do allies still take our word?
“Did the President’s self-proclaimed fear of escalation force Putin to back down from his own brutal escalation in Ukraine, or give the Ukrainians the critical weapons they needed when they needed them most?
“Does America’s closest ally in the Middle East feel like it can count on America’s total support in its existential fight against genocidal terrorists?
“Did the world’s most active state sponsor of terror think twice before targeting Americans – like the Georgia Guardsmen killed and Kentucky soldiers injured in the Tower 22 attack in Jordan? Does Iran hesitate to sic its proxies on Israel or threaten commercial shipping?
“Did the Biden Administration’s ‘climate diplomacy’ with Beijing close any meaningful gaps in strategic competition with our top adversary? Did it reassure our allies and partners in the region that we understood the importance of hard power?
“The answer to all of these questions is a resounding ‘No.’
“President Biden’s three years in office have left American leadership a weaker brand and our resolve a less fearsome asset.
“And we’ll be dealing with the consequences of his failures for years to come.
“Around the Biden Administration’s 100-day mark, I warned the President that it wasn’t too late to change course and start governing as the moderate he promised he’d be. Needless to say, he didn’t take my advice.
“And he didn’t take the American people’s sterner counsel, either, when they demanded change at the ballot box the following year. Well, this fall, the voters have a chance to issue a further course correction – one with a bit more finality.
“Tonight, we’ll hear from a President who’s failed in the most basic responsibilities of government. He’ll come to the Capitol with a record of historic inflation, surging crime, open borders, and weakness on the world stage.
“Then, of course, the American people will witness a stark contrast. They’ll hear our colleague, Senator Britt, tell her story and offer a very different assessment of this moment in American history – one that embraces what makes our nation great.
“I’ll be glad for the nation to hear directly from the youngest Republican woman ever elected to the Senate and one of our conference’s brightest stars.”
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Related Issues: State of the Union
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