Democrats’ Reckless Taxing and Spending Spree Designed to Reduce Employment and Undermine Work

U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding Democrats’ reckless tax and spending spree:

“In recent years, Washington Democrats have shown an alarming willingness to invent crises to justify radical ideas.

“They’ve tried to vilify our independent judiciary and exhume the concept of court-packing from the ash heap of history.

“They’ve tried to sell a 50-state federal takeover of election laws by fearmongering about mainstream and reasonable state decisions.

“And when it came to an actual crisis – a once-in-a-century pandemic – Democrats didn’t even try to conceal their intentions. As the House Majority Whip put it back in March of 2020, it was all, ‘a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.’

“With unified control of government, they bragged this spring about passing the most progressive legislation in American history.

“This first spending spree expanded federal supplements to unemployment insurance so massively that the best choice for huge numbers of skilled American workers was to simply stay home.

“The whole thing was an avalanche of cash that stunted our economic recovery and accelerated inflation.

“Now Washington Democrats are behind closed doors again, assembling an even bigger reckless taxing and spending spree.

“It’s meant to be a Trojan horse for permanent socialism. Conclusive proof the radical left is calling the shots in today’s Democratic Party.

“I’ve talked about the laundry list of left-wing boondoggles that our colleagues are packing into this plan. At the heart of it all is one simple and dangerous assumption: that American families ought to be more reliant on the federal government.

“Democrats’ plans would chase more Americans off of the private health insurance plans they’ve chosen and onto government rolls.

“They would shred a decades-old consensus about the importance of work and massively expand cash grants to families without any employment requirements.

“They want to re-implement welfare without welfare reform.

“There is giveaway after giveaway that aren’t even means-tested. Their plans have literally proposed to have taxpayers fund free school lunch for the kids of millionaires and billionaires — no means testing whatsoever.

“In addition, Washington Democrats want to insert themselves into the middle of the most personal family decisions about childcare and family structure, redistributing huge amounts of money only to households that arrange their lives the way Democrats want.

“In area after area, Democrats want to implement far-left policies that would make the economy worse for working families, but then clumsily try to make it up to citizens with socialism that’s disconnected from work.

“This is a frontal assault on the nature of employment and work itself in American life. They are out to, as one economist put it, ‘fundamentally change the relationship between the state and its citizens.’

“Even the New York Times last month called what Democrats are hammering out ‘a cradle-to-grave reweaving’ of the government’s role.

“Lower wages… Fewer jobs… At least American workers will have cradle-to-grave socialism.

“It’s one vision for the future, all right.

“But it’s not one that Americans want.

“And it’s one that Senate Republicans will fight at every step.”