[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.
____________________