WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) gave remarks on the Senate floor about Biden's reckless agenda.

To watch Senator Blackburn’s speech, click below or here.

You can read the transcript below or in the Congressional Record.

I so appreciate the remarks of my  colleague from Missouri, and it sounds as if he is hearing from his 

constituents in Missouri the same thing that I am hearing in Tennessee.

  

As a matter of fact, I held a telephone townhall last night. Thirty 

thousand of our citizens from Upper

East Tennessee were on this call, and to say that they are unhappy 

would be to put it mildly. That really is an understatement. They are 

angry. They are frustrated. They are exhausted with what this 

administration is doing. They are angry with how the Federal Government 

is responding to a host of issues.

  

They really took President Biden at his word for his Build Back 

Better. They expected that. But that is not what they have gotten. He 

has made a mess of it, and, indeed, what you have is a ``Build Back 

Broke'' agenda.

  

And my colleague from Missouri really laid that out. It is ``Build 

Back Broke.'' That is what they are bringing forward. And that agenda 

of President Biden's and the Democratic Party has really destroyed a 

lot of the hopes and the dreams and some of the renewed prosperity of 

Tennesseans whose job isn't to study the economy but to move it 

forward.

They do the heavy lift every single day. 

Last night, I spoke with businessowners who feel like they are under 

attack by this administration and their economic policy. The cost of 

doing business is going up. They are bleeding customers because they 

have less disposable income because of inflation, because of the price 

at the pump.

  

Supply chains are collapsing around them. It is difficult to get raw 

materials, like lumber and steel. They have no confidence at all in the 

administration's willingness or ability to solve this problem. They 

feel as if the administration does not give the ripping flip about what 

happens to them in Upper East Tennessee. This administration has 

forgotten them.

 

On top of everything else, these vaccine mandates--now, we are 

hearing a lot about that, and we are hearing from people who know they 

are going to lose their job. Many times, these are women who are the 

sole source--the sole source--of income for their families. These 

families are very concerned about how they are going to handle 

inflation, collapsing supply lines, how they are going to handle some 

of the broken social policies that this administration and their allies 

are trying to sneak into law.

  

So far this year, we have seen our colleagues across the aisle and 

down at the White House try to force through provisions of the Green 

New Deal that would bankrupt your average family and destroy economic 

development opportunities in rural areas.

  

We know that it is expected that the cost to heat your home this 

winter is going to increase 30 percent. Now, how do you handle that 

when you have lost your job? Do you just sit there and freeze? And you 

are losing your job because of a Federal mandate that says you have to 

go get a shot in order to keep a job that you love, in order to put 

food on the table to feed your family. This makes no sense.

 

I also heard from parents very upset about critical race theory and 

the way this administration is trying to hijack education and force 

this curriculum, force cradle-to-grave socialism--daylight to dark, 24/

7, depend on the Federal Government.

  

One of the things that frightens Tennesseans the most and came up 

regularly on our telephone townhall was the broken border policies. I 

have said it before; I will say it again. This fear has nothing to do 

with racism and xenophobia. This administration and my colleagues 

across the aisle need to get that point through their heads.

  

Tennesseans are afraid because they look at the border. What they are 

seeing is vulnerability. They see the drugs coming across that border 

because the drugs end up in their streets: fentanyl, meth, heroin.

 

Every town is a border town. Every State is a border State because 

Joe Biden's border policy is: Open up the border. Hang out the ``Y'all 

come sign,'' and give everybody a plane ticket to wherever they are 

going in the country. And, oh, by the way, if the commercial flights 

are full, don't worry about it. We will go charter you a jet and send 

you under the cloak of darkness into Chattanooga or into Knoxville or 

into West Chester County. That is what concerns Tennesseans.

  

They are seeing what is happening with sex trafficking, with human 

trafficking. They are afraid of what cartels are doing because the 

cartels are saying: Thank you, Joe Biden. The door is open. We were not 

fearful. We are setting up distribution centers on U.S. soils.

  

That is right, the cartels, setting up their distribution centers. 

Why? Because Joe Biden is weak and feckless and doesn't stand up to 

protect the southern border.

  

There is another thing that they were quite exercised about last 

night, and it is the issue of election integrity. Indeed, I had a 

Tennessean call me at 6:45 this morning, and he said: Marsha, you have 

got to be kidding me. You mean they want to pass a bill that says 

anybody can go vote, that you can go vote the day of the election, that 

you don't have to show an ID to vote?

  He said: You know, I recently had to show not only a vaccine card but 

my ID to prove that was my vaccine card to go sit inside at the In-N-

Out Burger.

 

This is why people are so frustrated with Joe Biden. This is why they 

are so frustrated with the Democrats.

  

What are they looking for? They are looking for legislators to have 

some backbone, to stand up and stand for freedom, not to kowtow to a 

socialist agenda, because they know if the Democratic leadership and 

Joe Biden had their way with one vote, they would take one vote, and 

they would push to a socialist agenda.