Chances are that at one time or another, you have sat down at your kitchen table and planned out a budget or balanced your checkbook for your family. For most of us, budgeting means making some tough decisions and compromising to make ends meet. Unfortunately, setting a budget does not look the same for Washington Democrats.

Recently, House Democrats voted to pass their budget for the upcoming year. Not only did their plan open the door for massive spending, but it also paved the way to pass multiple spending bills without one Republican vote. This includes President Joe Biden’s latest $1.9 trillion COVID-19 spending bill – a bill that funds many unrelated items. If anything can be bipartisan in Washington, defeating the coronavirus should be at the top of the list. However through this budget resolution, Washington Democrats have signaled that talk of unity and bipartisanship were just that and they have no interest in working together to tackle the issues facing us.

President Biden’s partisan relief plan is incredibly expensive and comes while over $1 trillion in funds from previously-enacted COVID-19 legislation remains unspent. Let me say that again - $1 trillion that we have already approved is sitting there unspent. This includes $280 billion remaining for the Paycheck Protection Program, $239 billion unspent for health care measures, $172 billion unspent for unemployment insurance, and $59 billion unspent for schools. Now adding an additional $1.9 trillion on top of this unspent funding not only represents a massive undertaking six times larger than the 2009 Obama stimulus plan, but this is all borrowed money and we can’t afford to keep borrowing and spending blindly.

Instead, we should continue to identify and fund the real needs of workers, small businesses and health care professionals on the frontlines of battling coronavirus in our community. I stand ready to continue working with Democrats to combat coronavirus, speed up vaccine distribution, and find ways to increase jobs and opportunities for you and our neighbors. However, using COVID-19 relief as a Trojan Horse for massive spending and radical policies that threaten jobs is not what American workers and families need.

Unfortunately, this is par for the course with President Biden’s agenda so far. By signing more than 40 executive actions, including rejoining the Paris Climate Accords, canceling the Keystone XL Pipeline, and ending federal oil and gas leasing, he has jeopardized thousands of American jobs. I fear the President is more concerned with fulfilling a left-wing partisan climate agenda than creating jobs or being a “President
for all.”

Now, President Biden’s most recent executive actions have done more than kill jobs and put our economy in danger - they have put our national security at risk. Recently, President Biden reinstated catch and release and promised to dramatically rollback the immigration policies of the previous Administration to prioritize undocumented illegal aliens.

President Biden’s proposed Create a Pathway to Citizenship for Undocumented Aliens legislation prioritizes immigrants during a time when American citizens and businesses are hurting. The bill doubles-down on family-based immigration, clearing backlogs through amnesty, and increasing the number of visas we issue. The bill will also allow undocumented individuals to apply for temporary legal status, with the ability to apply for green cards after five years. And, President Biden’s decision to end construction of the border wall is a signal that he is not concerned about addressing border security.

These priorities of the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress continue to miss the mark. However, I won’t give up. I remain committed to working across the aisle for common sense solutions to the problems we face, including rebuilding our economy, passing targeted COVID-19 relief and reopening our schools. And like you and I have to do, I’ll continue to push our government to balance its checkbook along the way.