Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2015--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. PERDUE. Mr. President, tonight President Obama will deliver his final State of the Union Address, a closing argument for his Presidency. This President, who promised change, will attempt to point to his administration's accomplishments, as many Presidents have done in the past. However, this will prove to be difficult because Georgians and Americans have seen change but in the wrong direction.

When President Obama took the White House, he promised fiscal responsibility, but right now he is on track to more than double the debt in his tenure. He promised to work together in a bipartisan way, but he used the Democratic supermajority in those first 2 years to force through ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank on the American people. He promised to bring us together, but he has served to divide us as a country. He promised to focus on defeating terrorism, but he created a power vacuum in the Middle East for others who wish to do us harm. There is no denying it, under this President's failed leadership, the American people have had a tough several years.

Today more Americans have fallen into poverty under this Presidency. Too many individuals and families have seen their health care premiums and their deductibles rise to points where they can no longer afford them. Our national debt is almost $19 trillion, which is well past any reasonable tipping point, and we have a global security crisis on our hands that makes the world possibly more dangerous than at any point in my lifetime. These are all symptoms of the President's failed economic policies as well as a lack of leadership in foreign policy.

Even by his own accord, the President has saddled our country with an irresponsible amount of debt which he described in the past as unpatriotic. Before he took office, then-Senator Barack Obama reviewed President Bush's tenure in office saying:

The way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents--number 43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back--$30,000 for every man, woman, and child. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic.

Those are the words of this President, Barack Hussein Obama.

Let's be clear, under this President, our national debt has ballooned to almost $19 trillion from $10 trillion. That means that President Obama has added almost $9 trillion already and is on track to more than double this debt before he is through.

Before President Obama leaves office, he will have nearly added as much debt as all of the other Presidents before him. This is even more outrageous when you factor in how much revenue or tax dollars the Federal Government has collected.

In 2015, we collected over $3.4 trillion in taxes for our Federal Government. This is more than any year in our history. Washington does not have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem, and it is focused on the wrong priorities.

Equally concerning, this massive debt isn't interest free. If interest rates were to rise to the 30-year average of only 5.5 percent, the interest on this debt would amount to over $1 trillion each year. That is more than twice what we spent on all nonmilitary discretionary spending. It is more than twice what we spend on our military and defending our country. It is totally out of control and this is unmanageable.

In reality, this debt crisis will only get worse because this President and Washington have not tackled the government's largest expense--mandatory spending programs such as Social Security and Medicare. This debt crisis does not only present a fiscal problem, it is inextricably linked to the global security concerns we are seeing today.

In order to have a strong foreign policy, we have to have a strong military, but to have a strong military we have to have a vibrant and growing strong economy. There is no secret that down through history the countries that have had the strongest militaries, and therefore the most secure foreign policy, are those that had the most vibrant economies of their day. Under this President's foreign policy decisions, he has created a power vacuum and put the country in a much weaker position.

Today our enemies don't fear us and our allies don't trust us. Just three decades ago we brought down the Soviet Union with the power of our ideas and the strength of our economy. Look at the world today. Over the past 7 years, we have seen the rise of a global security crisis that is unrivaled in my lifetime. We have seen the rise of traditional rivals such as China and Russia grow more aggressive. We have seen North Korea and Iran actually collaborate on nuclear proliferation. We have seen Syria cross red lines and terrorism fill power vacuums in the Middle East and around the world.

Last week North Korea claimed to have successfully completed its fourth nuclear weapons test with a much more powerful weapon than they possessed before. This is a sobering and stark reminder of the true consequences our country faces when our President shows weakness in the face of these radical regimes. And not only have we witnessed weaknesses, but we have also seen this President naively trust a country like Iran, the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism today.

Since President Obama announced his dangerous Iran deal in July despite strong bipartisan opposition, Iran has actively accelerated its ballistic missile program and continued financial support for terrorism in the region, in violation of the very sanction we just heard on this floor.

Iran has fired rockets near U.S. warships, fomented unrest in Yemen, taken more Americans hostages, refused to release an American passenger who has been held for 3 years, convicted an American journalist of spying, banned American products from being sold in Iran, and renewed its support for Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists.

From the beginning, President Obama didn't listen to military advice and prematurely pulled our troops out of Iraq, creating another power vacuum. ISIS, of course, we now know, grew into that power vacuum and sprouted influence not only in the Middle East but in Africa and Asia as well.

Last November, this President told the American people in a news interview:

We have contained them. They have not gained ground in Iraq. And in Syria if they'll come in, they'll leave. But you don't see this systematic march by ISIL across the terrain.

Well, we now know ISIS is not being contained in their ability to wage war against the West and will stop at nothing to deliver terrorism even to the shores of America. The President's plan has failed, it is plain and simple, and we sit here today with no strategy to defeat ISIS.

The world needs to see decisive action from the United States, not empty rhetoric that can't be backed up. We need a new leader who takes every threat of any size seriously. Moving forward, nothing can go unchecked and unmet without relentless American resolve.

No matter how we measure it, President Obama's economic and foreign policies have indeed failed. Time and again, he has refused to change course when his policies didn't work, when they didn't help the American people, whom he claims to champion. Instead, this President has created the fourth arm of government--the regulators--and they are sucking the very life out of our free enterprise system today. Now, fewer people are working, wages are stagnant, incomes aren't growing, the debt is soaring, and the world is much more dangerous than it was 8 years ago.

But tonight we will also hear from this President about his optimism for the future. Well, I get that. I share that optimism but only because I believe we can do better. We can do a lot better. We can tackle our national debt crisis. We can save Social Security and Medicare. We can defeat terrorism once and for all. We cannot do it without bold leadership, however. We cannot do it without a sense of urgency or responsibility. We cannot do it unless the political class in this town--Washington, DC--finally puts national interests in front of self-interests. We cannot do it without the will and support of the American people.

I believe in America. Georgians believe in America. Americans believe in America. Americans have always risen to the crisis of the day, and I believe we will rise to this crisis. But Washington needs to really listen to the American people, focus on solutions they support, and unite our Nation to make sure our best days are indeed ahead of us. We owe it to our children and our children's children, and the time to move is right now. The time for rhetoric has ended.

We need to face up to the two crises we have today: the global security crisis and our own debt crisis, which are interwoven together.

Thank you, Mr. President.

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