02.04.21

Graham Addresses Budget Resolution Ahead of Vote-A-Rama

WASHINGTON – Today, Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) discussed the Senate Budget Resolution ahead of a series of amendment votes.

  • GRAHAM: “Most small businesses in South Carolina and throughout the country have been struggling to stay open due to lack of travel, due to mandates at the state and local level reducing the ability to have 100 percent occupancy in restaurants. Tourism has really been hurt. The service sector has really been hurt. The food industry has really been hurt. Can you imagine the combined effect of having the government reduce your ability to earn money by restricting your business model and, at the same time, adding a mandate to your business of maybe increasing your wages by 50 percent, maybe 100 percent? So this one-two punch will take out what's left of small businesses and the tourism sector and in the restaurant business.”
  • GRAHAM: “To the American people who may be watching: what is this all about? This is an effort by my Democratic colleagues, supported by President Biden, to pass $1.9 trillion in COVID relief through a budget process that requires only 50 votes. It goes around the idea of bipartisanship.”
  • GRAHAM: “[COVID relief] is the one area that there was bipartisanship up until recently. This is the one area where the Congress has been able to work together across party lines, and that’s providing relief to the American people who have been long-suffering under the COVID pandemic. So I find it odd that if our goal is unity, we start with the issue that has been unified up until now.” 
  • GRAHAM: “It's not like the Republican Party can't work with the Democratic Party to help the American people when it comes to COVID relief. We had a Republican president, a Democratic controlled House, and a Republican Senate for the last year. We've almost, we've appropriated $4 trillion in COVID relief for the American people working together.” 
  • GRAHAM: “Now we find ourselves, early on in the Biden Administration, abandoning that model and going forward on a partisan effort to spend $1.9 trillion, with one party alone, without really input from the other party.” 
  • GRAHAM: “I can understand having a fight about health care, about taxes, but when it when it comes to COVID relief we've been able, in the last year, to find bipartisanship for $4 trillion, and now we're abandoning that quest, and we're going to try to create a process – my Democratic colleagues are – to deal us all out on our side and pass a $1.9 trillion COVID package that I think, in many ways, misses the mark. So to say that I'm disappointed is an understatement.” 

Click here to watch Graham’s full remarks

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