{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=28DA34E9-9D9B-41D6-9C78-C7A5E55AD80E", "Thune: Democrats Are in Disarray", "2021-09-30", "2021", "2021-09", "Republican", "Senate", "SD", "John Thune", "T000250", "www.thune.senate.gov", "thune", "https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases", "scraper", "U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) today spoke about Democrats\u2019 disastrous, out-of-touch policies that would significantly expand the federal government\u2019s reach into South Dakotans\u2019 everyday lives. Thune also discussed the ongoing disarray within the Democrat Party, and he noted that the Biden administration\u2019s self-inflicted border crisis is a direct result of its own failed policies.\n\nThune\u2019s remarks (as prepared for delivery):\n\n\u201cMr. President, yesterday I came down to the floor to talk about President Biden\u2019s mishandling of Afghanistan.\n\n\u201cToday I want to talk about another situation the administration has mishandled \u2013 or, perhaps more accurately, failed to handle \u2013 the crisis at our southern border.\n\n\u201cI say failed to handle because by and large the Biden administration has completely failed to take any meaningful action in response to this crisis.\n\n\u201cSure, they occasionally make half-hearted stabs at the problem.\n\n\u201cUsually when the media starts noticing things like thousands of migrants and their children residing in a squalid refugee camp under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas.\n\n\u201cBut mostly they seem content to ignore it.\n\n\u201cMore than six months into this crisis, there is still no sign that the president plans to travel to the border to get a look at the problem firsthand.\n\n\u201cIn fact, it\u2019s not clear whether President Biden has ever visited the border at any point during his political career.\n\n\u201cThe president seems to have adopted an \u2018if I pretend the problem doesn\u2019t exist it will go away\u2019 attitude.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s kind of like earlier this year, when Biden administration officials refused to call the situation a crisis \u2013 despite overwhelming evidence that the border influx had reached crisis proportions.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s like they believed that if they didn\u2019t use the word, they could somehow avoid the reality.\n\n\u201cUnfortunately for the administration, Mr. President, there is no way to avoid the fact that we are facing a border crisis.\n\n\u201cLast month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered 208,887 people attempting to cross our southern border illegally \u2013 a 318 percent increase from August of 2020.\n\n\u201cLet me just repeat that.\n\n\u201cIn August Customs and Border Protection encountered 208,887 people attempting to cross our southern border \u2013 a 318 percent increase from the prior August.\n\n\u201cFor context, that number is bigger than the population of Sioux Falls, South Dakota \u2013 the largest city in my home state.\n\n\u201cIn a single month.\n\n\u201cAt this point the situation at the border is beyond a crisis; it\u2019s completely out of control.\n\n\u201cAnd the situation may soon deteriorate further, with one outlet reporting yesterday that tens of thousands of additional Haitian migrants are set to head toward our southern border.\n\n\u201cMr. President, illegal migration across the southern border tends to slow down during the heat of summer.\n\n\u201cNot under the Biden administration.\n\n\u201cUnder the Biden administration, the numbers this summer just got worse.\n\n\u201cEncounters along the southern border in July were up 420 percent from July of 2020.\n\n\u201c420 percent.\n\n\u201cAnd of course, these numbers only reflect individuals Customs and Border Protection has been able to apprehend.\n\n\u201cThere are undoubtedly individuals who are successfully evading apprehension and illegally taking up residence in our country.\n\n\u201cThen there are the individuals being detained and then released into the country with orders to appear at an immigration court.\n\n\u201cThis so-called \u201ccatch and release\u201d approach is notorious because the individuals released into the country often never show up at immigration courts as directed.\n\n\u201cIn spite of this, the administration is using this strategy and is apparently employing it to deal with the surge of migrants from Haiti.\n\n\u201cDespite having committed to deporting these individuals, the administration is releasing thousands of Haitian migrants into the United States.\n\n\u201cMr. President, the situation at the border is a crisis.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a security crisis.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a logistics crisis.\n\n\u201cAnd it is a humanitarian crisis.\n\n\u201cAttempting to cross the border illegally is a dangerous enterprise.\n\n\u201cMigrants face the risk of death, injury, heat exhaustion, and disease \u2013 to say nothing of the risk of exploitation from smugglers and traffickers who are profiting to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars by conveying people across the border illegally.\n\n\u201cBy failing to stem the flow of illegal immigration, the president is perpetuating this humanitarian disaster.\n\n\u201cAnd Democrats in Congress are helping him.\n\n\u201cMy colleagues across the aisle have been trying to add amnesty for illegal immigrants into the tax-and-spending spree they\u2019re considering.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s a policy that\u2019s pretty much guaranteed to further encourage individuals to make the dangerous and illegal journey across our southern border.\n\n\u201cMr. President, most people are familiar with the expression \u2018fiddling while Rome burns.\u2019\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s an expression I\u2019m forcibly reminded of when I consider the actions of my Democrat colleagues and the Biden administration.\n\n\u201cOur country is, as I\u2019ve discussed, facing a massive security and humanitarian crisis at our southern border.\n\n\u201cOn top of that, we just completed a disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal that has put our country at greater risk from terrorists, damaged our standing among our allies, and condemned the Afghan people to Taliban tyranny.\n\n\u201cMeanwhile, on the economic front, we\u2019re facing a serious inflation problem that doesn\u2019t look like it\u2019s going to go away any time soon.\n\n\u201cAmericans are seeing their purchasing power shrink as they face higher prices on everything from groceries to gas.\n\n\u201cAnd the Democrat response?\n\n\u201cEssentially sticking their fingers in their ears and humming.\n\n\u201cOr checking their watches to see if the unpleasantness is over yet.\n\n\u201cIf you were just going by Democrats\u2019 legislative priorities, you\u2019d be forgiven for thinking that none of the problems I\u2019ve discussed even exist.\n\n\u201cRather than addressing our border crisis or our inflation problem, Democrats are right now attempting to tee up a massive, reckless tax-and-spending spree to vastly expand the reach of government into Americans\u2019 lives.\n\n\u201cOur border is in crisis, our country is at risk, American families are struggling with inflation, and Democrats\u2019 top priority is \u2026 advancing socialism.\n\n\u201cAnd not only does their bill fail to address any of the major challenges I\u2019ve outlined, it\u2019s pretty much guaranteed to make them worse.\n\n\u201cDumping trillions of additional government dollars into an economy already struggling with inflation is pretty much guaranteed to send our already-high inflation even higher.\n\n\u201cAnd, as I mentioned, Democrats are frantically working to circumvent Senate rules and insert some type of amnesty into their spending bill \u2013 which will only aggravate the crisis at our southern border.\n\n\u201cAlthough at this point, Mr. President, I\u2019m wondering if Democrats will even be able to pass their tax-and-spending spree.\n\n\u201cThe Democrat Party is in disarray.\n\n\u201cAnd the story changes so often I think reporters are starting to get whiplash.\n\n\u201cI certainly am.\n\n\u201cOne minute the Democrat leaders are united; the next minute the Senate leader doesn\u2019t know what the speaker is doing.\n\n\u201cOne minute the House is going to consider the tax-and-spending spree and the infrastructure bill together; the next it\u2019s going to consider them separately.\n\n\u201cDemocrat leaders announce an agreement on a framework for their tax-and-spending spree; their rank-and-file members report they\u2019ve never seen it.\n\n\u201cTheir spending spree is going to cost $3.5 trillion. No, wait, it\u2019s going to cost $0.\n\n\u201cDemocrat progressives and Democrat moderates are at each other\u2019s throats.\n\n\u201cThe House speaker is chewing out centrist Democrats.\n\n\u201cAnd Democrats can\u2019t agree on a host of issues, from Iron Dome funding to prescription drug measures to infrastructure.\n\n\u201cThe Democrat Party is unraveling fast.\n\n\u201cMr. President, it\u2019s deeply unfortunate that Democrats can\u2019t seem to rise to the challenges of governance.\n\n\u201cPresident Biden\u2019s administration was supposedly going to usher in a new era of domestic tranquility and international respect.\n\n\u201cThe professionals, we were told, were back in charge.\n\n\u201cInstead, it looks like Democrats and the president are going to leave our country a lot worse off than they found it \u2013 burdened by tax hikes and government spending (if they can ever manage to agree on a bill), in greater danger from terrorism, and with a never-ending crisis at our southern border.\n\n\u201cIf Democrats don\u2019t change their focus and get their act together, a weakened country is likely to be their legacy.\n\n\u201cMr. President, I yield the floor.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:17:01Z"]], "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.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=28DA34E9-9D9B-41D6-9C78-C7A5E55AD80E"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8468111045658588, "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"}