Written by Marsha Blackburn
U.S. Senator
Washington, D.C. – This past week, millions of Tennesseans will gather together to celebrate Thanksgiving with family, fellowship, and delicious food.
While this should be a joyous time, for too many families the holiday has become a financial strain after nearly four years of Bidenflation. Since October 2021, for example, the price of turkey has surged 26 percent, while the cost of Thanksgiving staples such as pumpkin pie, gravy, cranberry sauce, and biscuits have increased more than 20 percent.
For Tennesseans traveling to see their families, the cost of airline tickets has spiked 32 percent under the Biden-Harris administration, while gas prices have increased 36 percent. It should come as no surprise, then, that four-in-five Americans are having to alter holiday travel plans to deal with rising prices.
Thankfully, with this month’s election results, our country is turning the page from high prices, crippling inflation, and reckless spending. To restore fiscal responsibility and put our country back on track starting in the new year, Republicans will focus on reining in inflationary, out-of-control spending and cutting down the size of government.
To be sure, we won’t have a moment to waste. At $36 trillion, our ballooning national debt presents one of the biggest threats to our country’s stability, security, and survival. As our debt grows, for example, we are spending more and more money on interest, which has become a massive drain on taxpayer dollars. In just the first half of fiscal year 2024, our country spent $440 billion to service our debt—more than the total amount we spent on our military over the same time period.
Our nation should have never reached this point. But for four years, the Biden-Harris administration has run up unprecedented deficits to expand the size of government. Although the federal government collected $4.9 trillion in taxpayer dollars in fiscal year 2024, the administration managed to spend far more than that with $6.7 trillion in reckless spending. At the same time, as our economy continues to lose manufacturing jobs, we’ve seen a surge in hiring for the federal government, which now employs approximately 2.2 million bureaucrats.
When faced with this reality, Tennesseans and Americans will likely wonder how we can change course. Thankfully, there is so much Republicans can do with control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the White House starting in January.
In the executive branch, President-elect Donald Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency will look for ways to roll back costly regulations, shrink the size of government, and find savings for American taxpayers with the use of executive action. (To learn more about this issue, I encourage Tennesseans to listen to my latest “Unmuted with Marsha” episode with Vivek Ramaswamy, who will be leading the effort alongside Elon Musk.)
In the Senate, I have also introduced legislation that would slash federal discretionary spending by 1 percent, 2 percent, and 5 percent, excluding defense, homeland security, and veterans affairs. In addition, I am working on legislation that would freeze federal salaries and hiring, create a pilot program to make salaries for federal workers dependent on their job performance, and establish a commission to figure out ways to drain the swamp and move agencies out of Washington, D.C.
Perhaps just as importantly, Republicans will focus on making permanent the 2017 Trump tax cuts, which saw tax revenue rise as hardworking Americans took home bigger paychecks and our economy grew.
While there is much more we can do to cut spending and the size of government, all these efforts will be essential to restoring fiscal responsibility—and ensuring that we leave a better future for our children and grandchildren.
