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Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, President Biden released his budget on Monday, and, predictably, it was filled with the same old, tired, tax- and-spending proposals--so much spending and so many taxes.

All told, the President's budget raises taxes by a staggering $5 trillion. You heard that right--$5 trillion. His corporate tax hike and capital gains tax proposals would both raise rates higher than those in communist China.

Many small businesses would see a hefty tax hike under the President's proposal, and most Americans would see an income tax hike, as his budget would allow current income tax rates to expire after 2025--so much for the President's commitment to not raising taxes for anyone making under $400,000.

Something President Biden and Democrats never seem to understand is that raising taxes has consequences. The corporate tax hike that President Biden would like you to believe will be borne by CEOs and CFOs--in fact, that tax hike would hit working Americans hard.

Studies have shown that workers bear a huge percentage of the burden of corporate income taxes. Impacts aren't just limited to workers employed by corporations. Corporate tax hikes can hit all Americans in the form of higher prices for goods and services.

Or take President Biden's proposed tax hike on gas and oil, which would be on top--on top--of the energy tax hikes he has already imposed. Taxing energy can drive up the cost of Americans' energy bills and make it more expensive every time Americans have to fill up their cars--not exactly a desirable outcome when Americans have already seen huge increases in energy prices under President Biden.

As I said, all of those tax hikes are accompanied by a lot of new spending proposals as President Biden continues his mission to increase the size--and the intrusiveness--of the Federal Government. His budget includes massive new spending programs and big increases for government departments and Agencies like the IRS.

Yet even as the President uses budget gimmicks and accounting tricks to blow through the nondefense spending cap for 2025, he makes no attempt to use any of his budgeting sleight of hand to address the serious readiness problems facing our military.

The President spent ample time in his State of the Union Address talking about the dangerous world in which we live, and he is right. Yet his budget makes little attempt to ensure that our military is equipped to meet that dangerous world. We have military services well below their recruitment targets. We are behind on shipbuilding and ship maintenance. There is a persistent pilot shortage. In a number of cases, we have too few mission-capable aircraft. And we are not doing an adequate job of maintaining the kind of supply we need of munitions. Yet President Biden is happy to blow through the nondefense spending cap but can't find an extra dollar in his budget for our military. It says a lot about the President's priorities.

It is also worth noting that the President's budget makes absolutely no attempt to ensure that Social Security is protected for current and future retirees. With Social Security on track to run out of money to pay full benefits in 2033, you would think that the President would be focused on safeguarding this program rather than creating new government programs that have to be funded. But, clearly, you would be wrong.

This year, the interest on our national debt is projected to cost more than any government expenditure except Social Security. Let me just repeat that. This year, the interest on our national debt is projected to cost more than any government expenditure except Social Security. That is just the interest on our debt. When the interest alone on your national debt is the second highest line item in your budget, you know you are on an unsustainable fiscal path. And it is the height of fiscal irresponsibility for the President to be proposing massive new government programs when we are going into debt just to afford the ones we already have.

I could go on. I could talk about the President's request for $8 billion to hire an additional 50,000 Americans for his Climate Corps, like so-called ``climate resilience workers,'' or I could talk about the President's attempt to force American taxpayers to pay for abortions or the eye-wateringly large funding increase the President wants for the IRS.

But I will stop here. And I hope--I hope--my colleagues will agree that, for the sake of the American people, the President's budget should be dead on arrival here in the Congress.

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