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Floor Speech

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Mrs. CAPITO. Madam President, this past Saturday, January 20, marked 3 years since President Biden took his oath of office. Since then, President Biden has had nearly 1,100 days in the White House to enact the policies that he campaigned on.

I can tell you what has been clear to me. The lives of Americans are not better now than they were 3 years ago. Our country is not safer than it was 3 years ago, and the state of the Union is not stronger than it was 3 years ago.

Time and again, President Biden has let his tenure be defined by weakness, as opposed to strength. This lack of leadership has had negative implications across a variety of sectors of American life and left millions of people across the country and the world in situations that were unavoidable.

It just really doesn't have to be this way, President Biden.

Perhaps, none of the Biden administration failures is as glaringly obvious as the one at the southern border, which I have talked about numerous times from this desk, and the continued fallout we are seeing as a result of a President who is, basically, asleep at the switch on this issue or ignoring it or maybe encouraging it.

There have been 6.7 million illegal encounters at the southern border on his watch. It is hard to imagine the scope of what 6.7 million human encounters really mean. But think of it this way: Only 17 U.S. States have a population higher than 6.7 million. Mine, of course, is not one of those. This massive flow of humanity is the equivalent of adding another State to our country that is nearly four times the size of my home State of West Virginia.

But President Biden's border failure just doesn't stop there. Since fiscal year 2021, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has seized 536,000 pounds of meth, 250,000 pounds of cocaine, and 56,000 pounds of the deadly substance fentanyl. With hundreds of thousands of admitted ``get-aways''--those people who aren't in these statistics--it is impossible to know the amount of narcotics that made it across the border into our homeland.

When it comes to the southern border, the only thing President Biden has improved, in my opinion, is the business of the cartels, which are receiving cover to continue their crimes every day, whether it is drug peddling or human smuggling, every day we do not respond to this crisis.

The list of consequences as a result of President Biden's inaction on the border is long and has led to everything from violent crimes committed by individuals not lawfully in this country, to our hospitals and health clinics being pushed to the brink, to our children being forced to vacate their schools and remote learn to make room for migrate shelters; and even calls from the leaders of blue States who sent a letter on Monday asking for Federal assistance to handle this crisis. Rather than properly defending our homeland, President Biden has incentivized a crisis that urgently needs a solution.

Unfortunately, for this administration, when it comes to failures, the border is just the beginning. Let's look at the economy or where the unrelenting pursuit of Bidenomics--which, by the way, I don't think the President uses that term anymore. President Biden and his supporters want the American public to believe that the same positive trends are signs that his policies are working. But if you spent any time in middle-class America over the past 3 years or in the grocery store, you would know our families are continuously being squeezed by high prices, and businesses are being taxed and regulated out of existence.

The quality of life for American families is designed by their ability to put food on the table, to earn an honest living, and to put a roof over their heads, not by these broad microeconomic indicators-- arrow going up, arrow going down.

Unfortunately, there is no relief in sight for American families under Bidenomics. Cumulative overall prices since January of 2021 have risen 17 percent. Food prices have increased 20 percent, energy prices have increased 32 percent, and rent prices have increased 19 percent, all while average weekly earnings for all employees have decreased by 4.5 percent. The basic truth is that under the President, Americans are spending more and getting less.

Additionally, these policies defined by Bidenomics are failing our small businesses and manufacturers, as well. Small and medium manufacturing companies continue to have historically low levels of optimism about their future, and 23 percent of small business owners report that inflation was the single most important problem to their business operations. I would say the supply chain and the workforce-- all are contributing.

Another area in which this administration continues to fail is our national security and the standing of our country on the world stage. The same President who vowed that ``America is back'' in one of his first addresses has instead come to own a foreign policy record that is marred by botched withdrawals, open displays of weakness, and regretful decision making.

Look no further than the United States' disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, which undoubtedly has damaged the trust between our allies, broadcasted weakness on the world stage, and displayed a lack of resolve that emboldened our adversaries.

When it comes to Iran and the Middle East, President Biden has made disastrous decisions, like the decision to delist the Houthis as an FTO, the same Iranian-backed terror group that has perpetrated more than 30 attacks on vessels transiting the Red Sea; or the administration's willingness to be strung along by Iran with fruitless nuclear negotiations.

Today, it is clear that these negotiations were a waste of time. They are attacking our bases. They are providing dollars for all of these terror attacks in that region. And Iran now is rapidly increasing their production of highly enriched uranium.

And how could we forget the decision to unfreeze $6 billion in assets to Iran--and to do so on 9/11, of all days.

The foreign policy of President Biden has been defined by skyrocketing attacks on U.S. troops by foreign adversaries, a large- scale ground war in Europe, and the unprecedented buildup of China's military, amid concerns about the health of our own defense industrial base here at home.

While there is an undeniable lack of American leadership in our executive branch, we must remind ourselves that it is not too late ever to reverse course. While the congressional Republicans didn't create the issues that we have at hand, we accept the responsibility of trying to solve them. That is why Republicans stand for solutions that change the border policies--policies, not money--that have allowed this crisis to thrive, rein in our Washington spending, support our small businesses and manufacturers and middle-class families, unleash American energy, and then prove that the true strength and standing of the United States in the world is as good as it could ever be.

Our country cannot--cannot--continue to accept the level of failure that this administration has made normal over the past 3 years.

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