[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 158 (Thursday, September 29, 2022)]
[House]
[Pages H8308-H8312]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      USING THE POWER OF THE PURSE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2021, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Pennsylvania 
(Mr. Perry) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the good gentleman from Texas for 
being here and making this plain to all of us.
  We are going to talk about the CR some more. It continues the highly 
inflated funding levels.
  We just saw the Fed--I have issues with the Fed; that is a whole 
separate issue--raise interest rates to try to cool down, like pouring 
water on the fire, this economy because prices are out of control.
  People can't afford their daily lives. They can't afford their 
electricity, their food, their rent, or their mortgage. They can't 
afford to send their kids to school.
  So, the Fed does its part. What do we do over here? Well, the Fed is 
trying to pour water on the fire. They want to cool it off. Let's throw 
some gas on it. $1.5 trillion for this fiscal year continues to fund 
the things that we have been talking about, another $12.3 billion in 
Ukraine funding.
  We all want to help. What Russia did is bullying, right? A country 
can bully just like an individual can bully. They are bullying their 
neighbors. Nobody agrees with that. We all want to help. But this is 
American taxpayers' money.
  While Russia is invading the border of Ukraine, we have an invasion 
on our southern border. How much are we spending on that?
  Look, we are spending a pile of money. But do you know what we are 
not doing? We are not stopping the invasion. Here, let's spend a bunch 
of money down where Chip lives, and we put a welcome mat out.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, we spend approximately $58 billion--I don't 
have it right in front of me--a year for the Department of Homeland 
Security, $55 billion, $56 billion.
  We just approved earlier this year $58 billion for Ukraine, and now 
there is an additional $12 billion in the continuing resolution that 
passed out of the Senate today and is now sitting in the House. That 
puts it at almost $70 billion, which is well more than the entire 
annual budget of the Department of Homeland Security for the United 
States.
  Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for making the 
contrast.
  Here is what else it is more than: It is actually almost more than 
Russia's annual military spending. The United States alone, the United 
States taxpayer alone, is spending more in Ukraine to fight the 
Russians than Russia's total military budget--not just in Ukraine, 
their entire military budget.
  Yet, the budget that we are spending money on, on our border isn't 
meant to keep our country safe, our national security interest--it is 
not just national security. My good friend, the gentleman from Texas, 
lives right down there. He can tell you horror story after horror story 
about the unsafe conditions that his constituents, his bosses, have to 
live under every day because this little book, the Constitution of the 
United States, says that immigration and the border is the job of the 
Federal Government.
  But what do you do? What do you do when they don't do the job? What 
do

[[Page H8309]]

you do when 53 humans are cooked in a truck in your town? I will tell 
you. I had lunch at a little diner on my way to Washington, D.C., this 
week. Good people, hardworking people--you can see the same people 
probably every day in that diner. I sat down. They are talking about 
the world's problems, talking about their own problems. They looked at 
me, complaining, and said: What does it matter? We can't do anything 
about it.
  I said: What do you mean you can't do anything about it? What are you 
asking me for?
  They said: You are in Congress, and you can't do anything about it.
  We stand here in this body today knowing all of these problems exist, 
every single one of them. We can all outline the problems. We all know 
the challenges our country faces.
  Yet, in this body, and in the body across the other side of the 
building, we just want to keep the clocks wound. We just want the 
trains to run on time. We don't care about all of this other stuff that 
is happening out there, as long as everything works here in Washington, 
D.C.
  Some of the richest counties in the country are right here. 
Everything is fine in Washington, D.C., but go 100 miles or 3,000 miles 
away and see how it feels.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate what the gentleman just said.
  I would say, for our constituents back home, I feel them. I feel the 
frustration of being in a Chamber where I can offer no amendment, where 
I have no power to have any input on what bill we are going to be 
debating on the floor. Literally, for 6-and-a-half years, no amendment 
has been offered on the floor of this body in open debate, meaning it 
wasn't precooked up in the Committee on Rules.
  Think about that, in the people's House. That should infuriate both 
sides of the aisle. That is no way for the people's House to operate. 
It is being operated by dictate. That is a bipartisan statement, I want 
to say, over time.
  I think, for the American people, they want to see us do something. I 
think we can.
  To the fine folks in Pennsylvania that you ran into who said, ``What 
can we do? We can't do anything about it,'' do you know what? We can.
  One, we can freeze spending to stop the complete disregard for the 
economic well-being of this country and the driving up of inflation by 
spending money we don't have. We can do that.

                              {time}  1945

  We can agree as a body that we have to make tough decisions like 
families and businesses do. Freeze spending. Let's just stop the 
bleeding.
  We can take a second step, and we can actually demand that when we 
have debates about the spending of taxpayer money and the borrowing and 
printing of money that we actually deal with these crises in real 
terms.
  I am really talking to my colleagues on my side of the aisle on this 
one:
  We should demand that we get changes at the border.
  We should demand that we turn away or detain fully at the border.
  We should demand that we stop the forced jabs in people's arms in the 
military or they get fired.
  We should demand changes in our energy policy so that we can free up 
American energy to increase our power on the world stage, make our 
grids reliable, make us more dependent on reliable energy, instead of 
unreliable energy, while making the environment better, by the way.
  We should demand that we neutralize the power of the authoritarian 
state by pulling back on the reins of the FBI and the IRS.
  There are things we can do. It is right here. We have the power of 
the purse. We should use it. I tell you, I am speaking to my colleagues 
on both sides of the aisle. We have an obligation.
  Look, I have run into the buzz saw of challenging the administration 
when it was Republican because I believed so much in Article I primacy. 
I introduced the ARTICLE ONE Act with my friend, Mike Lee, to say we 
should take away emergency powers from the President.
  I did that when the President was using emergency powers to build a 
wall when there was an emergency and we needed to build it because my 
colleagues refused to. But I wanted there to be a limit into how much 
power the executive branch can use.
  I subpoenaed records about unaccompanied alien children because I 
knew that when my colleague on the other side of the aisle was wearing 
a white pantsuit, staring through a fence that it was all theater. 
There weren't kids in cages. Those were set up by the previous 
administration under Jeh Johnson and President Obama, and they know it. 
They know it.
  So you know what?
  I subpoenaed information from HHS under a Republican administration 
because I wanted to know the truth.
  We should care about Article I here. If we do, we can take power back 
and we can represent the people again.
  We can use the power of the purse to check the executive.
  We can stand up and defend the people of the United States.
  We can secure the border.
  We can rein in the tyranny of the IRS and the FBI.
  We can get American energy going again by opening it up, so our 
people don't have to have inflation and the inability to have a 
reliable grid.
  We can stop forcing our men and women in uniform to get fired if they 
refuse to take an experimental jab.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry).
  Mr. PERRY. The gentleman is absolutely right. I am looking at what 
else is in the CR: $3 billion for Operation Allies Welcome.
  You know what that is? That is Afghan settlement.
  For 20 years, for 20 years this country has bled its treasure of 
humanity, sending our best and brightest to the front, and, of course, 
your tax dollars.
  What did we do at the end?
  We just walked away and gave all that away. We dishonored those who 
lost their lives, those who came home irreparably damaged, and gave 
that country $85 billion of premier military hardware, we gave it to 
hardened terrorists and we gave them a country to operate out of.
  You know what you get for that? You know what thanks you get?
  Here is what you get: You get $3 billion for Operation Allies Welcome 
because we still have to bring people from Afghanistan because the 
people that we brought initially weren't vetted. We don't know who they 
were. They just got on the airplane, and now they are living in your 
community.
  We pray to God that you are going to be safe. We pray to God that not 
one of them is a terrorist.
  But we already know the answer to that, right?
  We are living on borrowed time. We already know because we have seen 
it.
  This is what my friend is talking about with Article I. The Founders 
gave us the power.
  You know what they didn't give us in the body?
  It comes from within. A little bit of courage. A little bit of 
courage.
  Right now, we all go out and say we should stop spending money on 
this and this and this: 87,000 IRS agents, a Department of Justice that 
is reigning tyranny over our citizens.
  You know what we did today?
  We just continued to fund them, hundreds of millions of dollars.
  To my good friend from Texas, and we are here joined by the gentleman 
from Louisiana (Mr. Higgins), another great friend, when I walk around 
my district, I see people that agree with me, that support me, and I 
see people that don't like me and would never support me. I have 
conversations with each one of them.
  You know what?
  Not one of them has said, I can't afford my groceries. My electric 
bill is sitting on the table because I don't have the money to pay for 
it yet this month.
  Here is what we need, here is how you fix that, Mr. Perry. Hire 
87,000 more IRS agents. Give $250 million to the Department of Justice. 
That is going to fix my problems. Not one of my constituents has said 
that to me.
  How about you, Mr. Roy?
  Mr. ROY. Not one. And I will tell you that across the board, 
regardless of ideology, the people that come to me and are talking to 
me are concerned about the border.

  They are concerned about fentanyl.
  They are concerned about energy prices and their inability to pay 
their bills.

[[Page H8310]]

  They are concerned about the extent to which they are in danger in 
their communities, the crime, and their relationship to the border.
  They are concerned about the things that are impacting their lives, 
their inability to pay for their kids' school, their inability to 
afford healthcare because we have regulated it to death, and we have 
funded it and subsidized it to death, so that we are in a position 
where they can't afford to live the American Dream for their kids and 
their grandkids.
  Our job in this body is to address that, not by spending more money 
and not by continuing to fund the very things that are undermining it.
  Mr. PERRY. That is exactly right.
  I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Higgins), my good 
friend.
  Mr. HIGGINS of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman and I 
thank my colleagues.
  I hope America is paying attention because we cannot continue to fund 
a government that appears to be determined to destroy our country from 
within.
  We have millions of illegal aliens crossing our southern border. We 
have lost all operational control, the sovereignty of our Nation at the 
southern border.
  They are asking for more money for COVID. Since March of 2020, we 
have spent $8 trillion just on COVID. That is $8,000 billion. You 
cannot convince me or any American across the country that our Nation 
has actually spent that money. We should have a full accounting of this 
money.
  They want more money for Ukraine. We have already sent them about $70 
billion.
  Do you know how much Russia spends, my colleagues, every year, on 
their military, their entire budget?
  I will answer the question. It is about $70 billion. We have given to 
Ukraine the entire budget for Russia for their military expenditures. 
We have no control over this money. We are not sending them any more 
money, not without a fight.
  They want a CR passed, a continuing resolution, a short-term budget 
to keep the Federal Government operating until December. That is after 
the elections have ejected our colleagues across the aisle but before 
Republicans will be sworn into the majority on January 3. That is wrong 
on every level.
  It is like identifying an arsonist, banishing them from your 
neighborhood, and giving them gasoline and matches on the way out. We 
cannot allow it. We stand strongly against it, but we don't have the 
votes.
  America, there is not enough Republicans in the House of 
Representatives to stop this CR in the formula that the Democrats 
intend. We need Americans to communicate and stand strong. Align 
yourselves with the conservatives in the House of Representatives, like 
my colleagues here tonight, and help us fight the good fight to 
preserve our Republic.
  I yield back to the gentleman.
  Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Louisiana.
  One of the other things that is in this continuing resolution: $1 
billion for increased home heating and cooling cost subsidies. Think 
about that, for subsidies.
  At the very same moment, the administration, through its policies, is 
driving your energy costs--electricity, gasoline, diesel--through the 
roof. They are making you pay more and then they are taking more of 
your tax dollars to give it out to people who can't afford to pay for 
it.
  And people in this body support this? Somehow with a straight face.
  You think that this is right?
  I will give you a statistic: The U.S. imports about 20\1/2\ million 
barrels a day. A tanker ship takes about 190,000 barrels. That is about 
50 ships a day. The trip from Saudi to New York is about 6,500 miles.
  Looking at the burn rate, we are burning about 1 million gallons one 
way--1 million gallons one way. And this administration would rather do 
that, tankers from Saudi Arabia, tankers from Venezuela, my goodness, 
probably tankers from Iran. But heaven forbid, heaven forbid we open 
the pipeline, any pipeline. They will close as many as they can because 
somehow they feel good about that.
  Mr. ROY. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. PERRY. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I will yield for the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Gohmert), but first I want to add to what the gentleman said because it 
is on point.
  We are funding $5 million for the Special Presidential Envoy for 
Climate John Kerry; we are funding $15 million for the U.N. 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and U.N. Framework 
Convention; $2 billion to the SEC, which they use to help advance the 
very ESG constraints on the flow of capital that is constraining our 
ability to produce energy; $3.2 billion to the Department of Energy's 
Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, which funnels 
taxpayer dollars to unreliable green energy; $825 million for DOE's 
Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, which gives credit 
handouts to massive oil companies; $450 million for DOE's ARPA; $29 
million to administer a DOE loan program responsible for the Solyndra 
debacle.
  I could go on and on. I have got a list here.
  All that money to go to the Department of Energy to keep spending 
taxpayer money to screw up American energy and drive up their energy 
bills.
  Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Roy is absolutely right. Before I turn it 
over to the gentleman from Texas, I want to prime the pump here a 
little bit.
  The Department of Energy was created for one sole purpose, one 
purpose and one purpose only: To make the United States energy 
independent.
  My good friend from the State of Texas just went through the list. We 
were energy independent about 1\3/4\ years ago. It took that long to 
not only make us energy dependent, but your bills are going through the 
roof.

  Look, I know that people will say, well, gas prices are actually 
coming down now.
  Ladies and gentlemen, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the President 
has been unloading that. It was created, set aside for natural 
disasters.
  What is happening right now today?
  What has been happening over the last 48 hours in our country with 
our friends from Florida, right?
  They might be able to use some of that, but, of course, it is at the 
lowest level it has been in the history of the Strategic Petroleum 
Reserve.
  It wasn't meant for political disasters. It was meant for national 
security and natural disasters. But yet, this is what is happening.
  If you don't like the look of your electricity bill now--now, when 
the weather is pretty temperate in the United States--just give it 
about 3 months and see how you are going to like it. You can blame it 
on one thing, one thing and one thing alone: The left, the Democratic 
left, the Democratic Party, and those in it that are forcing and 
imposing this on you.
  I yield to the good gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert), my other 
friend.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it is a bit of a segue here between things 
you were talking about earlier in the last half hour and all three of 
you have been mentioning, and that is when you talk about the $70 
billion that has been provided to Ukraine for the war with Russia, if 
you look at the amount of increase in fuel costs that this 
administration caused, it drove up the price of oil, the price of 
natural gas so much that Russia made, last I saw, over $60 billion more 
than they had before.
  This administration is really responsible for funding both sides of 
the war between Russia and Ukraine: The $60-plus billion that Russia 
got because Biden's actions increased the cost of fuel, and then the 
$70 billion that we appropriated to Ukraine. You go, this is nuts that 
they would be doing that.
  Then you look at who is getting hurt, and you mention the Strategic 
Petroleum Reserve. It is down to its lowest point in decades because 
this President was trying to cover for his disastrous energy policy. So 
the millions of barrels that the Trump administration put in there so 
we would have it for an emergency, like a hurricane and other things, 
that is all gone, trying to cover for Biden's own disastrous policies.
  The American public, they see the price of gasoline coming down some, 
but people need to understand what this is all about. It is what it has 
always been about, power in the hands of a small group of elitists and 
everybody else, like in the Middle Ages for many ages. The wealthy 
ride, the poor walk. That is what this energy policy of theirs is 
really all about.

[[Page H8311]]

  I saw a picture just before I came over, John Kerry on his private 
plane flying, using that energy, because he is important, because he is 
the elite. But everybody else is going to need to give up their cars.
  As our friend   Thomas Massie has pointed out, plugging in a car 
overnight is like plugging in 17 refrigerators.

                              {time}  2000

  And everybody won't be able to do it, but if everybody would go to an 
electric car, then people aren't going to have power. And then they 
will have to rely on their buddy, their Big Brother Government to say, 
Okay, some of you can plug in these times.
  What about when we were independent, and we didn't need the 
government to tell us when we could move about?
  This is where it is headed. The green is really a brown policy, and 
it is going to be really unpleasant.
  Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, we are talking about the drop-off of the 
Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
  If you can see this here on C-SPAN, this top level is 750 million 
barrels. And you can see up here in 2020, there is this sharp drop-off? 
That drops down to 350 million barrels. That is the defense being 
exercised by a President trying to save his party. That is not being 
used specifically for the national security interest of the United 
States.
  That is absolutely horrific. Dumping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, 
dumping it in order to drive gas prices down.
  You know what? Those chickens are going to come home to roost.
  Mr. PERRY. They absolutely are. And like I said, if you are worried 
about the climate, if you are worried about fossil fuel use, the most 
important thing to do, the most responsible thing to do is to do it 
efficiently.
  America does it more cleanly and more efficiently than everybody 
else. And we have pipelines, but we can't use them.
  Like I said: One trip. One way, from one tanker. Fifty a day come 
into the United States. One million gallons burned one way for each 
tanker. So that is 50 million a day.
  Everybody is worried about their cars. Nobody gives a hoot about 
this; and none of it is necessary. Absolutely zero of it is necessary.
  Mr. Speaker, in this CR, in this continuing resolution that we are 
going to vote on in this House tomorrow--I think--even though we say we 
want to save our country and our citizens, our bosses from this 
tyranny, people are going to vote for it anyhow: $2 billion for 
unaccompanied minors flooding the border while doing nothing to solve 
the border crisis.
  As the good gentleman from Texas said, how much did we spend from the 
Department of Homeland Security to secure our border annually?
  Mr. ROY. Close to $60 billion.
  Mr. PERRY. Close to 60; but yet we need another 2 for unaccompanied 
minors. We don't need the extra 2. You just stop the unaccompanied 
minors, and you don't need the extra 2.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Higgins).
  Mr. HIGGINS of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for 
yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, I would bring our focus on to our total national debt 
for a moment. As concerned American patriots, conservative 
constitutionalist men who love our country, we are discussing this 
continuing resolution, the temporary funding of the Federal Government 
that we stand against because of the process and the lack of 
appropriate regular order that reflects the failure of this body to 
perform regarding our budget responsibilities that were laid out 
clearly by our Founders.
  Let's talk about our $31 trillion in debt.
  It was 1980 in America before we had accumulated $1 trillion in debt. 
So in the first 200 years of our existence, America accumulated $1 
trillion in debt. In the following 40 years, we have accumulated $30 
trillion.
  We are up $31 trillion in debt. If this body were to balance the 
budget and run a $1 billion surplus, it would require 31,000 years to 
address a $31 trillion debt.
  Mr. Speaker, I say to my colleagues, 1 trillion is 1,000 billion.
  No one here, nor across the Nation that we love and serve, believes 
we have 31,000 years to fix this thing. We must restore fiscal sanity 
to this body.
  Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time I have 
remaining?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 4 minutes remaining.
  Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Roy).
  Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I mentioned this before, but I think it merits 
repeating, that we are at roughly $31 trillion in debt, as the 
gentleman said.
  If you set out to count to 31 trillion at one Mississippi, it will 
take you 1 million years to count to that.
  Just to put in perspective what that is, when I began running for 
office in December of 2017, our debt was $21 trillion; $10 trillion in 
5 years since I began running for office.
  Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, it is my understanding, I think that in the 
last year and three-quarters, the Biden administration has racked up 
more debt than the entire 8 years of the Obama administration.
  We found that unacceptable, but yet here we are. And yet, in this 
body, on this week, at this time, we are going to vote to just continue 
like nothing is happening, like that is not happening, like we don't 
care. We are going to go home and say, if you elect us, all this stuff 
is going to end. Yet, we have an opportunity in this body to stop it.
  All the things that the gentleman from Texas outlined, the things 
that I outlined:
  The Ukraine funding.
  The $3 billion for operation allies welcome.
  The COVID funding.
  Oh, by the way, the President of the United States said the pandemic 
is over, but we are going to add more COVID funding in here, right? 
Can't do without that crisis.
  Mr. Speaker, all that included, but hardly a whimper out of this 
town, because it is more important that this town keeps going than the 
American people get what they asked for, what they elected us for.

  Mr. Speaker, this is completely unacceptable. I would agree with my 
colleague from Texas, if Republicans aren't going to fight now--
understand, not one of us is a Democrat. We don't have any authority or 
majority in this House of Representatives; no majority by Republicans 
in the Senate. That is the complete legislature. There is no majority 
of Republicans in the executive branch. That is President Biden. Those 
are Democrats.
  How, for the love of the Lord, can Republicans be blamed for voting 
``no'' on this tyranny?
  If Democrats want to continue tyranny, God bless them. They can go 
explain that to their constituents, to their bosses. But why would 
Republicans help them? And more importantly, why would Republicans help 
them when reinforcements are coming right over the horizon. We have an 
election in 40 days.
  As Mr. Higgins said, to pass a continuing resolution, to pass a bill 
that continues this tyranny into December after there is no 
accountability, people have lost their elections. There is no 
accountability to offer them yet another opportunity to continue the 
tyranny.
  Mr. HIGGINS of Louisiana. It is dangerous.
  Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, how do you explain that to your constituents? 
How do you explain, Well, I voted for that because it is important that 
Washington, D.C., and all these programs needed your money, needed the 
money that you wake up every day and go to work for. They needed it, 
and you didn't.
  Mr. Roy, people in my district pack their lunch at night. They get up 
early while it is still dark. They kiss their little children that are 
in their beds asleep while it is still dark, and they leave for work.
  They count on us here to make sure that we are faithfully, 
adequately, appropriately, responsibly spending their hard-earned 
dollars.
  Mr. Higgins, you talked about this the other day in conference. Your 
paycheck. People work hard for it, and they depend on us. And what do 
we do with it?
  Mr. Roy, give us an example. You got like a thousand of them there. 
How do we blow it?
  Mr. ROY. Well, I think we have got about 20 seconds left.

[[Page H8312]]

  

  Mr. PERRY. Go ahead.
  Mr. ROY. All I would say is, if we want to do this, if we want an 
economy that is strong, stop spending money we don't have. Stop 
spending money to fund the bureaucracy that is going after the American 
people.
  If you want a Nation that is safe, stop talking down your cops. Stand 
with your cops.
  If you want a military that is strong, stop being woke. End the woke 
destruction of our military.
  If you want a border that is secure, secure it. Turn people away. 
Accept the people that need help but turn people away and actually 
detain them and stop the control of our borders by cartels that are 
endangering the American people.
  Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy), 
the other gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert), and my good friend, the 
gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Higgins).
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________