Biden Administration Failing to Lead

Floor Speech

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Mr. FEENSTRA. Madam Speaker, I rise today to discuss the President's complete and utter failure to lead our country effectively over the last 9 months.

Despite the optimistic vision he portrayed in his inaugural address, President Biden has created crisis after crisis--from our economy and energy independence to national and border security.

Back in February my Republican colleagues and I warned Democrats' reckless spending would have a devastating inflationary effect. In fact, many experts at the time, including former President Obama's top economist, warned spending trillions more would devalue our dollar and cause prices of goods and services to increase.

Sure enough, just one month later, we learned that the Consumer Price Index had its highest monthly jump in nearly 10 years. The Producer Price Index has also skyrocketed by 8.3 percent, which is also a record.

While the Biden administration continues turning a blind eye to inflation, top economists are warning inflation is here to stay for years to come, and it will only get worse if the Democrats pass over $5 trillion in additional spending.

This is a hidden tax hike on every American family, on top of their historic tax increases that are part of the $4.2 trillion tax-and- spending spree that we will be discussing over the next several days. This is completely reckless for our businesses, our farmers, and our families.

Instead of reining in spending, President Biden and his Democrat colleagues are leaning into the economic crisis they have created. In fact, the President has attempted to gaslight the American people by making the false claim that their $5.5 trillion so-called infrastructure package will cost zero dollars. Even the leftists at The Washington Post aren't buying it, calling the claim truly misleading.

The crisis at our southern border, which the Biden administration has gone to great lengths to ignore, has continued raging on.

In May I went to Texas with Congressman Gonzales to see the border firsthand. I received an aerial tour of the Big Bend sector, a remote part of the border where apprehensions of drugs, weapons, and other contraband are at record levels.

Law enforcement on the ground told us directly that they needed more support from the administration. Sadly, several months later, it is still clear that no help has been on the way.

In August, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced that they have made over 200,000 apprehensions of drugs, up 317 percent from just a year ago.

Biden's failure to lead and take control of this situation has created a devolving humanitarian crisis, a national security crisis, and a public health crisis at our southern border.

Biden has also failed to lead on our world stage. Our tragic and disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan is the sole responsibility of President Biden and his colossal failure to lead as Commander in Chief.

The administration still owes the American people answers. Why were billions of dollars of military equipment left behind for the Taliban? Why did we cave to the Taliban's timeline? Why did we fail to evacuate every single American before leaving?

Just this week we learned Biden lied to the American people regarding the advice he received from his top military generals. The commander of the U.S. Central Command testified under oath that he recommended keeping a small force of 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, yet Biden previously told the American people that no one recommended keeping this limited troop presence.

Biden has been silent as the far left wing of his party has attacked Israel and their right to defend themselves. Abandoning our allies, abandoning and lying to the American people, this seems to be the Biden leadership doctrine.

Under the President's leadership, we are no longer energy independent. On his first day of office, Biden killed the XL pipeline, eliminating 11,000 great jobs. He put Paris over Paullina, Iowa, and other communities in my district by rejoining the climate accords, which will cause electricity to skyrocket.

Yet this same woke progressive administration that pretends to care so much about the climate is about to give a huge win to the oil industry. They are undermining clean-burning biofuels by attacking the renewable fuel standard, leaving crop growers and my biofuels producers behind in the dust.

It seems the Biden leadership doctrine in a nutshell has been to ruin this economy and is undermining our independence.

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