{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=E36AC76F-CCC9-4A83-9207-1BCB700CF120", "Thune: Reckless Tax-and-Spending Spree Highlights Democrats\u2019 Big-Government Vision for the Future", "2021-12-16", "2021", "2021-12", "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 discussed how the radical proposals in the Democrats\u2019 reckless tax-and-spending spree highlight the massive difference between the two parties when it comes to their vision for the future of America. Thune noted that preserving liberty is a fundamental purpose of government, and the Democrats\u2019 policies would transfer some of Americans\u2019 decision-making power over to politicians and Washington bureaucrats.\n\nThune\u2019s remarks below (as prepared for delivery):\n\n\u201cMr. President, Democrats\u2019 push to pass their tax-and-spending spree continues to throw into sharp relief the difference between Republicans\u2019 and Democrats\u2019 vision of government.\n\n\u201cAnd it\u2019s about a lot more than just the amount of money we want to spend.\n\n\u201cOf course the amount of money we\u2019re spending matters.\n\n\u201cBut it\u2019s also about what that money represents.\n\n\u201cIn general, more money means more government.\n\n\u201cAnd more government usually means less freedom.\n\n\u201cAnd Republicans don\u2019t oppose Democrats\u2019 tax-and-spending spree just because it would cost a lot of money, or drive up our national debt.\n\n\u201cIt would do both of those things, of course, with negative consequences for our economy and the prosperity of American families.\n\n\u201cAnd the negative economic consequences alone are sufficient reason to oppose Democrats\u2019 Build Back Bankrupt plan.\n\n\u201cBut it\u2019s about a lot more than the excessive spending.\n\n\u201cWith their Build Back Bankrupt plan, Democrats envision a society in which government is intimately involved in nearly every aspect of Americans\u2019 life \u2013 from, to quote a New York Times article, \u2018cradle to grave.\u2019\n\n\u201cAnd that\u2019s not a vision Republicans share.\n\n\u201cPrimarily because a government that is intimately involved in nearly every aspect of your life is a government that is going to exert control over your life.\n\n\u201cMore government inevitably means more government control.\n\n\u201cTake Democrats\u2019 child care plan in their Build Back Better legislation.\n\n\u201cTo hear Democrats talk about it, you might think this plan involves nothing more than cutting checks to American parents to help with their child care bills.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s not the case.\n\n\u201cFirst, of course, Democrats take the opportunity to add a lot of new child care mandates and regulations.\n\n\u201cAccording to one estimate, Democrats\u2019 child care subsidy measure could drive up the cost of day care by somewhere around $13,000 per child.\n\n\u201cGood luck working that into the family budget.\n\n\u201cDemocrats\u2019 government subsidy program is set up to favor certain kinds of child care and child care providers.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s set up to favor institutional child care, rather than home care or other models like neighborhood co-ops.\n\n\u201cAnd it\u2019s set up to place religious providers at a disadvantage.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s right.\n\n\u201cDespite the fact that a majority of working families who use center-based care opt for faith-based centers, Democrats\u2019 program is set up to put these providers at a disadvantage.\n\n\u201cIt denies them facilities funding that is granted to secular providers.\n\n\u201cAnd it could disqualify many providers with traditional religious beliefs \u2013 like those shared by millions upon millions of Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim families around the country.\n\n\u201cIt could even disqualify a provider simply because the provider gave placement preference to families of its own faith!\n\n\u201cSo if you\u2019re a Catholic church with a child care program and you give preference to families who attend your church, you could be accused of discrimination and disqualified from receiving government subsidies.\n\n\u201cAnd if you\u2019re a parent who can\u2019t afford that program without those government subsidies \u2013 thanks to government mandates and regulations that have hiked up the child care bill \u2013 you\u2019re out of luck.\n\n\u201cIf you need those government subsidies, you\u2019ll have to send your child to one of the providers the government prefers.\n\n\u201cMr. President, the child care program in Democrats\u2019 tax-and-spending spree provides a perfect example of what happens when government gets involved.\n\n\u201cAnd it\u2019s about a lot more than how much money the government is spending.\n\n\u201cWith government money comes government control.\n\n\u201cThe decision is no longer just in the individual\u2019s hands.\n\n\u201cAnd the more substantial the government involvement, the larger the government\u2019s role in decision-making is likely to be \u2013 whether the issue is child care, health care, education, or anything else.\n\n\u201cMr. President, in his 1967 inaugural address as governor of California, Ronald Reagan said, and I quote, \u2018Freedom is a fragile thing and it's never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.\u2019\n\n\u201cFreedom is a fragile thing, Mr. President.\n\n\u201cHere in the United States, we have enjoyed an unprecedented degree of individual liberty \u2013 a liberty that it is very easy for us to take for granted.\n\n\u201cBut that liberty is not guaranteed.\n\n\u201cIt is something that must be fought for and protected.\n\n\u201cAnd that doesn\u2019t involve simply safeguarding our liberty from external threats from foreign powers, it involves making sure that government doesn\u2019t start to exceed its proper role.\n\n\u201cThe loss of freedom can come dramatically.\n\n\u201cOr it can come quietly, through a steady increase of government encroachment.\n\n\u201cAnd it\u2019s important to remember that freedom can be eroded or taken away by the well-meaning \u2013 not just those actively hostile to it.\n\n\u201cI believe that my Democrat colleagues likely do not see their ideas for dramatic government expansion as threatening Americans\u2019 personal freedom.\n\n\u201cThe problem is that when you expand the reach of government, the diminishment of liberty is inevitable.\n\n\u201cExpand the reach of government into Americans\u2019 lives, and it\u2019s inevitable that you\u2019re going to transfer some of Americans\u2019 decision-making power over to politicians and bureaucrats in Washington.\n\n\u201cMr. President, Democrats\u2019 tax-and-spending spree \u2013 and its major expansion of government \u2013 is far from the only threat to Americans\u2019 liberties that we\u2019re seeing from the Democrat Party.\n\n\u201cI am increasingly disturbed by Democrats\u2019 tendency to play fast and loose with religious liberty and the First Amendment \u2013 whether that involves disadvantaging religious child care providers, threatening individuals\u2019 right to live according to their conscience, questioning judges\u2019 fitness for office based on their religious beliefs, or, as we learned recently from a courageous whistleblower FBI agent, even opening the door for the FBI to collect information on parents voicing their opposition to local school policies during school board meetings.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m also disturbed by Democrats\u2019 clear belief that Americans should defer to government and Democrat-approved experts \u2013 as spectacularly evidenced in the Virginia governor\u2019s race, which was unquestionably decided based partly on the Democrat candidate\u2019s repeatedly expressed belief that parents shouldn\u2019t be involved in the content of their children\u2019s education.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m puzzled as to why Democrats are so convinced that Washington elites or Democrat-approved experts are better at making decisions than ordinary Americans.\n\n\u201cAs Ronald Reagan said in that same speech, \u201c[I]t's hard to explain those among us who even today would question the people's capacity for self-government. I've often wondered if they will answer, those who subscribe to that philosophy: if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?\u201d\n\n\u201cI believe that the American people are capable of governing themselves \u2013 of making their own decisions \u2013 and that they\u2019re actually generally going to be better at it than a bunch of bureaucrats in Washington.\n\n\u201cAnd I strongly oppose efforts to substitute the judgments of Washington bureaucrats \u2013 or Democrat politicians \u2013 for the judgment of individual Americans.\n\n\u201cMr. President, it states in the Declaration of Independence that governments are instituted to preserve our unalienable rights, including the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.\n\n\u201cPreserving liberty is a fundamental purpose of government, but of course before you can enjoy liberty, you have to enjoy the right to life.\n\n\u201cAnd for a long time now the Democrat Party has consistently denied the right to life of a whole segment of the American population \u2013 unborn Americans.\n\n\u201cAnd there\u2019s no better example of their aggressive pro-abortion extremism than the so-called Women\u2019s Health Protection Act that Democrats in the House passed in September.\n\n\u201cThis legislation \u2013 which would more accurately be termed the Abortion on Demand Act \u2013 would eliminate almost every democratically passed state abortion restriction, no matter how mild.\n\n\u201cIt would endanger the religious and conscience rights of doctors and nurses.\n\n\u201cAnd of course it ignores the clear position of the American people, a strong majority of whom support restrictions on abortion.\n\n\u201cApparently Democrats are not content with joining repressive regimes like China and North Korea as one of a tiny handful of nations that allow elective abortion past 20 weeks of pregnancy.\n\n\u201cNo, they want to remove even the mildest and most widely supported restrictions on abortion.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s yet another example of Democrats\u2019 tendency to think they know better than the American people.\n\n\u201cMr. President, the Republican vision \u2013 the conservative vision \u2013 the vision I share \u2013 is a vision that foregrounds liberty, not government.\n\n\u201cThat believes that individuals acting freely generally tend to do a better job of making decisions than a small handful of politicians and bureaucrats in Washington.\n\n\u201cWe believe in government as backstop, not Big Brother.\n\n\u201cA system of permanent government dependence erodes individual liberty \u2013 to say nothing of the ways in which it undermines prosperity and robs individuals of the purpose and pride that come with work and achievement.\n\n\u201cGovernment should create the conditions in which freedom, opportunity, and prosperity can flourish \u2013 not attempt to secure particular outcomes or dictate the paths Americans should take.\n\n\u201cWe are privileged to live in the freest country the world has ever known.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s not a privilege we can or should take for granted.\n\n\u201cAnd it\u2019s a privilege we can all too easily lose.\n\n\u201cOur liberty is, as Ronald Reagan said, ever only one generation away from extinction.\n\nI will continue to make safeguarding that liberty we\u2019ve been given one of my most cherished priorities \u2013 whether that involves fighting for the right to life of unborn Americans, opposing attempts to restrict religious liberty, or fighting against an expansion of government that would push out parents and put the government in the driver\u2019s seat on too many issues.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:37:48Z"]], "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=E36AC76F-CCC9-4A83-9207-1BCB700CF120"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.0448521245270967, "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"}