Good evening i'm senator tim scott from the great state of south carolinawe just heard president biden's first address to congress our president seems like a good man his speech was full of good words but president biden promised you a specific kind of leadership he promised united nation to lower the temperature to govern for all americans no matter how we voted this was the pitch you just heard it again but our nation is starving for more than empty platitudes we need policies and progress that brings us closer together but three months in the actions of the president and his party are pulling us further and further apart i won't waste your time with finger-pointing or partisan bickering you can get that on tv anytime you want i want to have an honest conversation about common sense and common ground about this feeling that our nation is sliding off its shared foundation and how we move forward together growing up i never dreamed i would be standing here tonight when i was a kid my parents divorced my mother my brother and i moved in with my grandparents three of us sharing one bedroom i was disillusioned and angry and i nearly failed out of school but i was blessed first with a praying mama and let me say this to the single mothers out there who are working their tails off working hard trying to make the ends meet wondering if it's worth it you can bet it is god bless your amazing effort on the part of your kids i was also blessed by a chick-fil-a operator john lennis and finally with a string of opportunities that are only possible here in America this past year i've watched covet attack every rung of the latter that helped me up so many families have lost parents and grandparents too early so many small businesses have gone under becoming a christian transformed my life but for months too many churches were shut down most of all i'm saddened that millions of kids have lost a year of learning when they could not afford to lose a single day locking vulnerable kids out of the classroom is locking adults out of their future our public schools should have reopened months ago other countries did private and religious schools did science has shown for months that schools are safe but too often powerful grown-ups set science aside and kids like me were left behind the clearest case i've seen for school choice in our lifetimes because we know that education is the closest thing to magic in america last year under republican leadership we passed five bipartisan coveted packages congress supported our schools our hospitals saved our economy and funded operation warp speed delivering vaccines in record time all five bills got 90 90 votes in the senate common sense found common ground in February republicans told president biden we wanted to keep working together to finish this fight but democrats wanted to go it alone they spent almost two trillion dollars on a partisan bill that the white house bride was the most liberal bill in american history only one percent went to vaccinations no requirement to reopen schools promptly covert brought congress together five times this administration pushed us apart another issue that should unite us is infrastructure republicans support everything you think of when you think of infrastructure roads bridges ports airports waterways high-speed broadband we're in for all of that but again democrats want a partisan wish list they won't even build bridges to build bridges less than six percent of the president's plan goes to roads and bridges it's a liberal wish list of big government waste plus the biggest job-killing tax hikes in a generation experts say when all is said and done it would lower wages of the average american worker and shrink our economy tonight we also heard about a so-called family plan even more taxing even more spending to put washington even more in the middle of your life from the cradle to college the beauty of the american dream is that families get to define it for themselves we should be expanding opportunities and options for all families not throwing money at certain issues because democrats think they know best infrastructure spending that shrinks our economy is not common sense weakening our southern borders and creating a crisis is not compassionate the president is also abandoning principles he's held for decades now he says your tax dollars should fund abortions he's laying groundwork to pack the supreme court this is not common ground nowhere do we need common ground more desperately than in our discussions of race i have experienced the pain of discrimination i know what it feels like to be pulled over for no reason to be followed around the store while i'm shopping i remember every morning at the kitchen table my grandfather would open the newspaper and read it i thought but later i realized he had never learned to read it he just wanted to set the right example i've also experienced a different kind of intolerance i get called uncle tom and the n-word by progressives by liberals just last week a national newspaper suggested my family's poverty was actually privileged because a relative owned land generations before my time believe me i know firsthand our healing is not finished in 2015 after the shooting of walter scott I wrote a bill to fund body cameras last year after the deaths of Brianna taylor and george Floyd i built an even bigger police reform proposal but my democratic colleagues blocked it i extended an olive branch i offered amendments but democrats used a filibuster to block the debate from even happening my friends across the aisle seemed to want the issue more than they wanted a solution but i'm still working i'm hopeful that this will be different when america comes together we've made tremendous progress but powerful forces want to pull us apart a hundred years ago kids in classrooms were taught the color of their skin was their most important characteristic and if they looked a certain way they were inferior today cues are being taught that the color of their skin defines them again and if they look a certain way they're an oppressor from colleges to corporations to our culture people are making money and gaining power by pretending we haven't made any progress at all by doubling down on the divisions we've worked so hard to heal you know this stuff is wrong hear me clearly America is not a racist country it's backwards to fight discrimination with different types of discrimination and it's wrong to try to use our painful past to dishonestly shut down debates in the present.