{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.lgraham.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=805DCD02-1B4F-47CA-AC93-FFAC0E8CBA97", "Graham, McMaster Slam Democrat Spending Bill: \"Nightmare for South Carolina\"", "2022-08-11", "2022", "2022-08", "Republican", "Senate", "SC", "Lindsey Graham", "G000359", "www.lgraham.senate.gov", "graham", "https://www.lgraham.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases", "scraper", "WASHINGTON \u2013 U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster today spoke in a press conference on the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act and the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago.\n\nOn Inflation Reduction Act:\n\nGRAHAM: \u201cThis bill is a nightmare for South Carolina. It\u2019s a nightmare for the American economy\u2026The bottom line is that this bill raises taxes and creates new federal government programs at a time that we're in a recession. The best way to get out of a recession is limit federal government spending and incentivize growth in the private sector.\u201d\n\nMcMASTER: \u201cThis is dangerous. There's never a good time to raise taxes \u2013 we are taxed enough. What we need to do is spend the money on the right things. This is going in the wrong direction.\u201d\n\nGRAHAM: \u201cThis would harm South Carolina's economy. It would deepen the recession. It is a power grab in the name of climate change. It is a tax and spend bill at a time we can least afford it. And every Republican from Susan Collins to Ted Cruz to Lindsey Graham voted no. The reason that we voted no is that we understood in March 2021 when [Democrats proposed] the American Rescue Plan it would not work.\u201d\n\nMcMASTER: \u201cThe Biden Administration is saying, and the Democrats in the Senate are saying, \u2018well it is going to be paid for, it\u2019s going to cut inflation,\u2019 and all that. That is the same rhetoric that we've been hearing year after year from the people on the Left, and what has it gotten us? It has gotten us a $30.59 trillion national debt, which means it is not paid for. It does not cut inflation. It does not create business. It does not spur the economy. It does exactly the opposite.\u201d\n\nGRAHAM: \u201cThe same people who are telling you this bill will lower inflation are the same people in March 2021 who passed a $1.9 trillion bill along party lines that has wrecked our economy. In March 2021, inflation was 2.6% in this country. It is now 9.1%. The massive spending and taxes in the American Rescue Plan led us to where we are today, and this new bill will make everything worse.\u201d\n\nOn FBI Raid of Mar-a-Lago:\n\nGRAHAM: \u201cI know doing this 90 days before an election reeks of politics. I know this is a dangerous precedent to set. At the end of the day, there's a tremendous burden on the Department of Justice, in my view, to explain their actions, and I hope they will.\u201d\n\nGRAHAM: \u201cCan you imagine if the roles were reversed here? If this happened in the Trump world against a prominent Democrat?\u201d\n\nGRAHAM: \u201cYou don't do things before an election unless you have to. I want to know what led to this. I think every Republican believes that the FBI and other organizations have lost their mind when it comes to Trump. The FBI protects us against child pornography, against terrorism, against crime. My problem is not with the FBI writ large, but I have lived through this. I have seen the Mueller investigation and their work product. What I saw was a system trying to get somebody no matter what the evidence told them.\u201d\n\nWatch Full Press Conference Here\n\n#####", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T18:26:22Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.lgraham.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=805DCD02-1B4F-47CA-AC93-FFAC0E8CBA97"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.938973855227232, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}