Senator Marsha Blackburn Opines on Inflation, The Southern Border, and Reckless Government Spending

WASHINGTON DC, June 9 — Senator Marsha Blackburn [R-TN] says if President Biden thinks he has inflation under control he has another think coming. In a recent interview on the Better For America podcast she told host Rebecca Weber, CEO of the Association of Mature American Citizens, as one of her constituents put it: “if people in D.C. think we’ve only got 5% or 6% or 7% inflation, they need to go to the grocery store with her and they need to go shop for clothes for the kids with her. They would see very quickly that you’re talking about escalation rates of 20, 25, 30% in some products. I had a county commissioner out in the east part of the state say, look, I drive 30 miles a day to work, I can’t fill up the gas tank and the grocery cart in the same week.”

But Senator Blackburn went on to say that it is not just inflation that is “hurting communities; the southern border, the open border and the gangs coming into our state are driving up crime. Look at what is happening with fentanyl and the fentanyl poisonings that are taking place. One pill of that fentanyl can kill you and our kids. We’re losing a lot of Americans to fentanyl poisoning. We lost 4,000 Tennesseans last year to fentanyl. It’s all coming across the southern border. Every town is a border town. Every state is a border state … our governor in Tennessee decided last week to send troops to the southern border to help Texas defend the border and to keep some of these drugs and gangs and sex traffickers and human traffickers out of our country and out of our state.”

The Senator went on to opine that it would be great if we could go back to a time when there was a measure of bipartisan cooperation in Congress but these days we can’t count on it. She noted that the legislative branch of government has the responsibility of oversight. “We cannot try anybody. We cannot indict anybody. We cannot prosecute anybody. That is not our role. And so it’s up to us to highlight these issues. The House is continuing to do investigations. And, of course, they’re required to give that information to DOJ. But we know this DOJ is most likely not going to do anything with the information. So we’ll have to wait until we have Republicans in control and then we’ll be able to hold some people accountable.”

Asked if President Biden is going to wake up, exercise fiscal responsibility and stop overspending, Senator Blackburn said she has her concerns. “I give the House, Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Leader Steve Scalise credit for pulling together some concessions from the Biden White House when it comes to the debt ceiling deal.” But, she added, “I do have a lot of concerns about that deal, about its lack of enforcement capabilities. I wanted to see more done with cuts and keeping caps on those cuts. This administration does not want to do anything that would curb spending. When you look at our nation’s debt, if you go from George Washington all the way through to George W Bush, our nation acquired $10.6 trillion. So then George W Bush hands the keys to the Oval Office to Barack Obama. Obama and Biden were in charge for eight years. They doubled that debt and you end up at about $22 trillion. President Trump comes in, he adds to it. COVID happens. We end up adding a couple more trillion dollars to it. Trump hands the keys to Joe Biden, and in two years, Biden has added $6 trillion to our nation’s debt. That is where we stand right now. I’m one of those Republicans that does not want to give this administration the ability to burden future generations with untold amounts of debt. When you are sitting under that much debt, which amounts to about $95,000 per citizen, what you are doing is capping opportunity for future generations. I think it’s immoral to pass on this much debt. I want to see some cuts. I want to see some reforming in the way our government works, using technology and making certain that we’re achieving efficiencies.”

In conclusion, the Senator pointed out that what’s needed is pro-growth strategies, keeping in mind that government doesn’t create jobs. “It is the private sector’s goal and responsibility to create those jobs. Government creates the environment in which jobs growth can take place.”