Monday, President Biden released his budget for fiscal year 2023. It’s an ode to the bloated behemoth of Big Government. This headline says it all: “Biden Unveils $5.8 Trillion Budget Proposal With Tax Hikes, Spending Boosts.” More socialism!

With all that money, you’d think there might be something in there to deal with the crisis at our southern border. After all, Joe Biden recognized the crisis at the border when he was in Poland. He compared the crisis of Ukrainian war refugees to what’s happening in Texas and Arizona.

That’s an absurd comparison. Biden created the crisis on the southern border all by himself with open border policies and regular promises of amnesty. More than 150,000 illegal aliens are crossing our southern border every month, and this month it be more than 200,000!

Unbelievably, Biden’s budget spends more money to secure the borders of Ukraine than to secure our own borders.

He’s spending billions to provide illegal aliens with free legal representation. Think about that. While your tax dollars are paying for our Border Patrol and ICE agents to capture and deport illegal aliens, you’re also paying for left-wing legal groups to fight those deportations in court!

Here’s the bottom line: Biden’s budget seeks to fundamentally transform the border from a physical and legal barrier against illegal immigration to a massive “welcome center” where migrants merely “check in” to America on their way to free healthcare, jobs and education for their kids.

Meanwhile, polling shows that hard-working Americans of all races are struggling paycheck to paycheck to provide healthcare and a good education for their own children, let alone someone else’s healthcare and education.

Biden and liberal Democrats in Congress are not putting America first. They are putting America last.

Republicans should be leading the congressional elections by 20 points. Maybe if they spent more time talking about something other than Ukraine, they might have a bigger lead in the polls. (See below.)

Who’s In Charge?

After Biden introduced his budget, he took questions from reporters. The White House clearly knew the president was going to get tough questions about his comments calling for regime change in Russia, comments that were immediately repudiated by our NATO allies, France, Germany and Great Britain.

In fact, they even sent Biden into the press conference with prepared talking points that were captured by network cameras. Biden’s White House handlers were so worried about what he might say that they wrote the exact words for him to read to us on a card:

“Tough Putin Q&A Talking Points. I was expressing the moral outrage I felt toward the actions of this man. I was not articulating a change in policy.”

As usual, Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked the most challenging questions, specifically whether world leaders could believe that America is really “back” when so much of what Biden says has to be “walked back.”

Biden incredulously asked, “What’s getting walked back?”

So, Doocy then went through the litany of recent remarks from Biden — telling U.S. troops they were going to Ukraine, that we would use chemical weapons against Russia and that NATO was seeking regime change in Russia.

As I noted yesterday, multiple administration officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, have been desperately trying to clean up Biden’s mess and “walk back” his gaffes.

Well, Biden doubled down Monday, saying, “I’m not walking anything back.”

All of this leads me to wonder whether Biden understands what he said last week or even what he said yesterday! Is he even aware that his comments are being walked back by his own staff?

Does he know that NATO allies rejected his demand for regime change?

Who is running the White House?

White House officials said last week that Biden watched portions of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings. They even said he was “moved by her grace and dignity.” But when asked about the hearings Monday, Biden said, “I didn’t get a chance to see any of it, unfortunately.”

Well, which is it — did he watch the hearings or not? Who’s lying to us?

Is it Vice President Harris who is really running the White House? That’s doubtful. She can barely run her own office.

Is it Clinton crony Jake Sullivan? Is it Obama pal Susan Rice?

Or is Barack “pulling the strings” himself?

Any honest person is asking themselves some tough questions right now about Biden’s mental abilities, and the answers could well determine the fate of the Republic.

Is there one Democrat in Congress willing to publicly raise the question of whether this president is able to effectively do his job?

Put America First!

A recent Rasmussen poll asked a rather unusually worded question: Do you agree or disagree with the following statement — “The Biden administration is making a colossal mistake in thinking that it can protract the war in Ukraine, bleed Russia dry, topple Putin and signal to China to keep its hands off Taiwan.”

Half of voters agreed that Biden’s efforts to prolong the war in Ukraine and seek regime change in Russia are a colossal mistake, while 35% disagreed.

The only group that supported Biden was self-identified liberals, but even they split 45% to 43%. Republicans (57%), Hispanics and Asians (56% each) all felt a policy of war in Ukraine and pushing regime change in Russia was a colossal mistake.

Americans clearly support the Ukrainian people. And they have very negative feelings about Putin. But they don’t want to stumble into a major war that could turn nuclear.

As we have reported, the latest NBC News poll shows that Joe Biden is in big trouble. The latest Fox News poll shows that most people believe the country is on the wrong track. Yet, both polls also found that the battle for control of Congress is statistically tied.

If that’s accurate, the November election isn’t likely to be a blowout. Redistricting has not gone well for the GOP. Left-wing state courts have shot down several Republican congressional maps. The Senate, which is divided 50/50, has ten seats ranked as “toss-up races.”

I think Republicans need to spend more time talking about America and the issues impacting voters here. Issues like crime, inflation, illegal immigration, gas prices, indoctrination in the classroom, the left’s war on normalcy, etc., etc.

They need to announce what they will do to restrain Biden and how they will make the average American family’s life better.

A strong message that exposes the left’s extremism and defends conservative values can win. But polling clearly suggests that conservatives haven’t sealed the deal yet.

We cannot take victory for granted.