[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 159 (Friday, September 29, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H4907-H4908]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   DISGUSTED WITH GOVERNMENT SPENDING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 9, 2023, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. 
Burchett) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. BURCHETT. Mr. Speaker, I want you folks to know that I won't be 
as eloquent as my friend, and I won't be as long either. You all will 
be able to get out of here if you are waiting for a break. If you need 
to get up and go, you go, you are not hurting my feelings one bit.
  Mr. Speaker, I am absolutely disgusted with the way our government 
spends money and where it puts its priorities. We spent over $114 
billion on Ukraine. Don't get me wrong, Putin is a thug and I wish the 
Lord would take him out. Russia's GDP is somewhere between that of 
France and Canada.
  We have given Afghan refugees over $2,200 a month and we only sent 
the Maui residents one single $700 payment when they lost everything. 
Illegal aliens cost the Texas taxpayers somewhere around $850 million.
  Folks, we are over $33 trillion in debt. Fitch, which is a rating 
agency, recently downgraded the United States' credit rating because of 
the general government deficit, which it anticipates will be 6.3 
percent of gross domestic product in 2023, when it was only 3.7 percent 
in 2022. That is a huge jump for 1 year. Folks, that has almost 
doubled.
  Another reason they gave was leadership, and that has been over the 
last 20 years. That cuts both ways. That is both parties. The United 
States spends approximately $300 billion each month. That is nearly $7 
million each minute. It only takes our government 2 hours and 22 
minutes to spend a billion dollars if you can imagine that.
  We are all on the verge of a government shutdown, which none of my 
colleagues want--contrary to popular belief. Some of us conservative 
folks aren't sitting in a room hoping for this because we don't want 
our constituents to suffer undue pain because of our lack of work.
  However, this out-of-control spending needs to change. Many of my 
Republican colleagues and I, we are going to fight for that change to 
happen today--not in 30 days or 3 months or right before Christmas 
because that has pretty much been the plan.
  We pass a continuing resolution for 30 days, and then they say: We 
need another one for 30 days. Guess what? We are backed up to the 
Christmas holiday. Then they say: We need to pass an omnibus.
  Basically, an omnibus is just a large continuing resolution. In my 
opinion, it is chock full of goodies for powerful Members of this body. 
It is also chock full of goodies for lobbyists and their specialist 
interests that we continue to grease.
  Mr. Speaker, there are several solutions we can bring to the table. 
My colleague, Jodey Arrington from Texas, chairs the Budget Committee. 
I was on that committee and I asked to be taken off of it. If you know 
anything about our history in the last 30 years, we have not passed a 
dadgum budget, we haven't even attempted to because we don't want to.
  The people in power in both parties--if we pass a budget, there would 
be a lot more accountability and you all would know what was going into 
it. You would probably get disgusted and send a few of us home.
  My friend, Jodey Arrington, chairs that committee now, and he has a 
plan that would balance our budget in the next 10 years.
  Mr. Speaker, if we just went back to pre-COVID spending levels, we 
could balance this budget.
  Now, I dare say there is probably very few Americans that could tell 
me something that has been added to their plate since COVID from the 
Federal Government that they could not do without. Yet, we continue on 
this spending spree.
  As I have stated many times with these continuing resolutions, they 
tell us to pass a continuing resolution so we don't have to pass 
another continuing resolution. Well, that line of thinking is like 
telling a crackhead that I am going to give you more crack to get you 
off of crack. The truth is we are just addicted to money, and now we 
are addicted to our great grandchildren's money.
  We need to make some serious cuts to our bloated government in areas 
where we don't need it. We have way too many bureaucrats. Yesterday, I 
brought several amendments to the floor, literally, due to the Holman 
rule which allows us to line-out certain individual people's pay. They 
were caught doing something illegal in the past administration and they 
were fired, yet this administration seemed like they should bring them 
back. They brought the people back that helped them get back. That is 
your Federal Government.
  Mr. Speaker, my daddy fought in the Second World War in the Marine 
Corps

[[Page H4908]]

in the 1st Marine Division all the way across the Pacific. My mamma's 
brothers all went to the war. My dad's brother went to the war. My 
mamma actually flew an airplane during the war because her eldest 
brother, Roy, had gotten killed.
  I tell you all that to tell you this: our Pentagon is a bloated 
disaster. I prefer to call them the war pimps because that is exactly 
what they are. Every year we pass a bigger and more bloated budget for 
the Pentagon. This year, I believe it was $30 billion more than the 
year prior to the last budget--I believe that is correct--more than 
even President Joe Biden had asked us to put in.
  Yet, when folks like myself question it, people question our 
patriotism.
  Mr. Speaker, I am not offended by much up here, but that is the 
cherry on top. We should stop focusing so much on passing a bill that 
will be totally fine in the Senate. As we said during the debt ceiling 
debate, we should put our stake down. Now we don't want to put our 
stake down. We want to send a bill over there, at one time, that would 
just cut the rate of growth, which is Washington speak for not cutting 
anything.
  We are not Senate Democrats; we can't pass a budget that looks like 
theirs. The art of compromise should be in there.
  When I was in the State legislature in Tennessee, I was the House 
sponsor of a bill to raise the speed limit. I asked for 85, knowing 
that I would get 70. Oddly enough, my Senate colleague was   Steve 
Cohen, who is now my colleague here in the United States Congress. We 
compromised, but we knew what we needed.
  Mr. Speaker, truth be known, I brought Peyton Manning to the floor of 
the House the week before. I probably could have gotten 100 miles an 
hour and maybe even gotten Communism, I am not sure, or I might have 
been anointed as king at that point because Peyton was, and still is, 
that popular. That was a different time.

                              {time}  1530

  We have got to make some serious changes now or we are going to lose 
our dadgum country.
  I always remember my daddy, who was a World War II veteran. We were 
at our house in West Knoxville, 8220 Bennington Drive--I no longer live 
there. We were in the dining room, I remember, one of the few times it 
was cleaned out. We always cleaned it out for Thanksgiving and 
Christmas, but most of the time it was for storage.
  We were in there, and we had this little color TV that was over 
there. We were watching the election results that were coming in that 
night, and they were not going very well.
  I remember my daddy said the blessing. It was just me and him, and we 
had a Mr. Gatti's pizza, or, as I like to say, we were having a 
traditional Italian meal. Don't send me any letters, I realize that is 
not very traditional.
  Anyway, daddy said the prayer, he said the blessing. Really all he 
said was: Lord, please do not let us lose our country.
  I guess that is what drives me now because, dadgummit, I am afraid we 
are going to lose our country. Continuing down this road of reckless 
spending is going to be the quickest way to get us there. We need to 
stop spending the American people's hard-earned money like we are a kid 
in a candy store.
  One of the areas where we could be doing some cuts, in my opinion, I 
think we should close down our Department of Education. Now, I have a 
degree in education. My mama was a schoolteacher for her whole life. My 
sister has a degree in education. My daddy was a dean at the University 
of Tennessee.
  I didn't mean defund education, but if we would just send that money 
to the States and stop Washington, D.C., from taking its cut off the 
top, I think we could go a long ways.
  There is not one bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., in the Department of 
Education who ever taught a little kid how to read at Sarah Moore 
Greene Elementary School in Knoxville, Tennessee, and I daresay there 
never will be. However, they are going to be taking their cut off the 
top, just like the mob does, and that needs to stop.
  We need to allow the States the responsibility that they deserve, to 
be responsible stewards of our money, and send it to them and let them 
decide. What works in Washington, D.C., sure as heck doesn't work in 
Claiborne County in east Tennessee.
  We have got to stop spending the American people's hard-earned money 
like we are a kid in a candy store with a credit card with no limit 
because that limit is coming due.
  We do not need a continuing resolution. We don't need to play any 
more games. We just need clean bills with real cuts to get our country 
back on track.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank you for your time, and I appreciate the folks in 
the audience's indulgence. I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to refrain from 
referencing occupants in the gallery.

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