{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=AA639539-8E33-4CCD-BEF5-371A1BE438E1", "Thune: Democrats Prioritize Socialist Spending Spree, Turn Blind Eye to Biden\u2019s Crises", "2021-10-19", "2021", "2021-10", "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 on the Senate floor about the glaring disconnect between Democrats\u2019 reckless tax-and-spending spree and the needs of South Dakotans. Thune noted that while Democrats push for a massive expansion of government that will result in historic tax hikes, Republicans will continue to fight against them and work to protect individual liberties. Thune also discussed the impact of inflation on the economy and called out Democrats for misleading the American people about the cost of their radical spending bill.\n\nOn rising inflation (excerpts):\n\n\u201cThe inflationary impact is being felt all across this country.\n\n\u201cEnergy costs are up, gasoline costs are up by huge amounts, food costs are up in this country, housing costs are up.\n\n\u201cThere isn'thardly any area of our economy where people aren't being impacted by inflation, meaning that the dollars that they earn are stretching less further all the time.\n\n\u201cAnd that is not a fake thing. It's not a temporary thing. It's a real thing, [and] people are experiencing it in their economic lives on a daily basis.\u201d\n\n\u2026\n\n\u201cIf you put more dollars out there, which is what's being talked about by our Democrat colleagues, another $3.5 trillion that would flood the economy, I think the expectation is a very real one that you're going to see that inflationary pressure accelerate [and] intensify because when you have got that much money, that many dollars chasing too few of goods, inflation is an inevitable result.\n\n\u201cAnd the idea that we need to spend another $3.5 trillion and that somehow that's going to be a solution right now also is not consistent at all with the facts and the data.\u201d\n\nOn Democrats\u2019 reckless tax-and-spending spree (as prepared for delivery):\n\n\u201cMr. President, the Biden border crisis continues unabated.\n\n\u201cIn August, U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered 208,887 people attempting to illegally cross our southern border \u2013 a 318 percent increase from August of 2020.\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\u201cMr. President, at this point \u201ccrisis\u201d is too mild a description.\n\n\u201cThings at the border are out of control.\n\n\u201cAnd there\u2019s little to suggest that things will improve anytime soon, as the Biden administration continues to permit an influx of migrant entries and has sought to install appointees who have lax views about enforcing our immigration laws.\n\n\u201cIn yet another sign of how bad things are, dozens of National Guard members from South Dakota recently deployed to our southern border.\n\n\u201cI know these South Dakotans are always ready to serve whenever and wherever they are needed, and I am grateful for their service.\n\n\u201cMr. President, you\u2019d think the border crisis would be at the top of Democrats\u2019 priority list here in Washington.\n\n\u201cBut you\u2019d be wrong.\n\n\u201cIn fact, the border crisis seems like barely a blip on Democrats\u2019 radar.\n\n\u201cAnd it\u2019s not the only crisis they\u2019re ignoring.\n\n\u201cOur national security situation has taken a giant step backward with the president\u2019s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal and the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.\n\n\u201cAnd here at home inflation is rapidly becoming a serious and long-term problem.\n\n\u201cAmericans\u2019 purchasing power is shrinking as they have to stretch their paychecks to cover increases in everything from the price of groceries to the price of gas.\n\n\u201cBut none of that really seems to matter to Democrats.\n\n\u201cTheir main priority seems to be forcing through a $3.5 trillion, partisan tax-and-spending spree that would permanently expand the reach of government into Americans\u2019 lives.\n\n\u201cMr. President, where to start when it comes to Democrats\u2019 tax-and-spending spree?\n\n\u201cThere are the tax hikes that would put American businesses at a disadvantage on the global stage and shrink jobs and opportunities for American workers.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s the death tax expansion that could put a lot of family farms and businesses in jeopardy.\n\n\u201cThere are the major new entitlements \u2013 free college, free preschool, subsidized daycare, paid leave.\n\n\u201cYes.\n\n\u201cOne of our major existing entitlement programs, Medicare, is rapidly heading toward insolvency, yet instead of shoring up this program, Democrats are expanding entitlements and putting the government on the hook for an unsustainable level of spending.\n\n\u201cThen there are items that get less attention but are just as troubling.\n\n\u201cMr. President, traditionally in the United States individuals have picked the winners and losers through the free market.\n\n\u201cBut the more you insert government into economic and family life, the more government ends up being the one making the decisions.\n\n\u201cGovernment ends up picking the winners and losers.\n\n\u201cTake Democrats\u2019 child care benefit.\n\n\u201cA 2020 Bipartisan Policy Center survey found that among working families who used center-based child care, 53 percent used a faith-based center.\n\n\u201c53 percent.\n\n\u201cBut now Democrats are coming in with their child care subsidies and in the process changing decades-old child care funding programs to favor secular child care providers who provide care at day care centers.\n\n\u201cSo if you\u2019re one of the 53 percent who chooses a faith-based provider for your child, you could be out of luck \u2013 not because you\u2019ve changed your child-care preferences, but simply because Democrats have set up their benefit to favor secular, center-based child care providers.\n\n\u201cAnd Democrats are repeating this pattern of picking winners and losers throughout their bill.\n\n\u201cLabor unions win under this bill.\n\n\u201cDemocrats have included a special benefit that would expressly allow union members to deduct their union dues on their taxes.\n\n\u201cMeanwhile, non-union workers can expect to pay their usual tax bills.\n\n\u201cYou only get special privileges if you\u2019re a union member.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s not clear why the 90 percent of American workers who don\u2019t belong to a union should subsidize the dues of those who do.\n\n\u201cBut I guess Democrats want to make sure they get those union votes come election time.\n\n\u201cAnd of course that\u2019s not the bill\u2019s only benefit for unions.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s funding for electronic voting systems for union elections.\n\n\u201cAnd incentives to purchase an electric car from a union factory.\n\n\u201cUnions of course are not the only winner.\n\n\u201cElectric vehicle manufacturers, for one, also win.\n\n\u201cThe bill clearly endorses electric vehicles as the climate change solution for the transportation sector.\n\n\u201cOther clean energy technologies \u2013 notably biofuels \u2013 take a back seat in this bill.\n\n\u201cMr. President, I could go on all day when it comes to the spending priorities in this bill.\n\n\u201cLike the fact that the bill dedicates more than $200 million \u2013 $200 million \u2013 to urban agriculture.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s right.\n\n\u201cUrban agriculture.\n\n\u201cMr. President, I\u2019m not saying that you can\u2019t have a garden if you live in a city.\n\n\u201cBut urban gardens are never going to produce the volume of food needed to feed our country.\n\n\u201cAnd anyone who thinks they will doesn\u2019t know much about agriculture \u2026 which may be the problem.\n\n\u201cDemocrats\u2019 tax-and-spending spree reads like the product of too much socialist daydreaming and not enough time spent learning about how things like agriculture, energy, and economies actually work.\n\n\u201cSpeaking of which, I haven\u2019t mentioned the Democrats\u2019 tree-equity measure.\n\n\u201cYes. Tree equity.\n\n\u201cDemocrats have allotted $3 billion prioritized for what they were recently referring to as tree equity.\n\n\u201cMr. President, I support \u2013 and encourage \u2013 planting trees.\n\n\u201cBut I don\u2019t think the federal government can afford to spend $3 billion on tree equity.\n\n\u201cEspecially when Democrats are planning to spend $200 million\u2013 yes, $200 million \u2013 for a park in House Speaker Pelosi\u2019s district that features luxury housing and a golf course.\n\n\u201cAnd provide tax benefits for Ivy League universities and other well-funded colleges \u2013 including a new tax credit for higher education institutions for teaching \u201cenvironmental justice\u201d programs.\n\n\u201cThen there are the tax credits for electric bicycles \u2013 bicycles that can cost up to $8,000.\n\n\u201cIt may just be me, but if you can afford an $8,000 bicycle, I\u2019m not sure you need a tax credit for it from the federal government.\n\n\u201cThen of course Democrats are planning to provide billions of dollars to fund a Civilian Climate Corps to provide government jobs for climate activists.\n\n\u201cAnd $20 billion for the creation of a National Climate Bank to fund Democrats\u2019 pet environmental projects.\n\n\u201cAnd the list goes on. And on.\n\n\u201cMr. President, the more you read Democrats\u2019 bill \u2013 with its massive expansion of government, its historic tax hikes, and its payoffs to liberal constituencies \u2013 the more you realize that there is pretty much no area of life that Democrats think wouldn\u2019t be better run by the federal government.\n\n\u201cBut my fellow Republicans and I still believe in a vibrant private sector \u2013 and in the right of individuals and families to run their lives as they see fit.\n\n\u201cAnd so we will continue to oppose Democrats\u2019 socialist spending spree and continue to fight to secure a future of prosperity, opportunity, and freedom for each and every American.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:24:51Z"]], "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=AA639539-8E33-4CCD-BEF5-371A1BE438E1"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.4619359280914068, "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"}