[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 196 (Wednesday, November 29, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Page S5653]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                 Budget

  Madam President, then, on another subject, Iowa is home to roughly 28 
different types of snakes. Some are venomous--copperheads and 
rattlesnakes. However, the one snake doing the most damage to Iowans is 
the snake that is not even in Iowa. So I would like to introduce you to 
the brown tree snake. The brown tree snake doesn't reside in Iowa, 
Washington, DC, or any other State represented within the Senate. That 
snake lives in Guam. That snake is not only damaging the native animals 
of Guam, it is wreaking havoc on the American taxpayers.
  So this gets to money. The Federal Government's goal, from what I 
have been told, is to eradicate the snakes, and that is where millions 
of dollars comes in. Now, our government has been trying to do this for 
the last 30 years.
  On June 7, 2023, I sent a letter to the Department of Defense, the 
Department of the Interior, and the Department of Agriculture. I asked 
those three Agencies how they have spent taxpayers' money to eradicate 
this snake from Guam. After waiting 5 months and an additional request 
on August 3, I received responses from these Agencies. Alarmingly, none 
of the three were able to tell me how many of the snakes are thought to 
be on the island or the estimated timeline for the eradication. It 
seems to me, our government ought to have better statistics that tell 
us what their planning is and how their goals are being met, but you 
can see soon that they don't have that information.
  So let me say, it is obvious, with all the taxpayers' money they are 
getting, they ought to at least have some sort of an estimate on this 
subject.
  So what did my oversight find? We will start with the Department of 
Agriculture. That Department, from fiscal year 2000 until right now, 
its budget expenditures were over $10 million. Now, that is a drop in 
the bucket compared to others.
  This is what I learned from the Department of the Interior. That 
Department told me that from fiscal year 1993 to now, they have funded 
over $90 million to support eradication, suppression, and interdiction 
of the brown tree snake.
  Now, another Department, the Department of Defense, gave me this 
figure for the same fiscal years. It spent more than $140 million.
  How many more decades and hundreds of millions of dollars do we have 
to spend on this snake, and what kind of projects have the taxpayers 
funded related to this snake? I have got some examples for you. Four 
projects in fiscal years 2009, 2010, 2014, and 2018 related to the 
application of Tylenol-treated baits, which are poisonous to the 
snakes, $2.9 million; $600,875 for multiple public awareness campaigns 
to educate the public in Guam on how the snake affects the ecosystem 
and human health and other factors; $376,659 for various research 
projects, including improved camera monitoring of the snake; caged bird 
colonies as superattractors with integrated snake trapping; and 
studying the efficacy of self-resetting kill traps; $122,462 for 
purifying and testing gecko skin compounds; $56 million in fiscal year 
2023 for the brown tree snake barrier south multispecies barrier.
  Now, that last one ought to really hit home for you. The Biden 
administration can't secure the southern border. Millions of immigrants 
are illegally crossing every year. According to reports in fiscal year 
2023, 172 people on the FBI's Terrorist Watchlist have been encountered 
at the border. How many on the Terrorist Watchlist who haven't been 
encountered that are ``got-aways''? I guess we don't have a figure on 
that one. So the 172 are the ones that we know of.
  Here, Congress and the Biden administration have no problem spending 
$56 million on a barrier to secure land against a snake. This is a 
clear example of spending that is out of control and why Congress must 
perform more exacting oversight.
  Sadly, this is not a new problem. On July 22, 2004, the late Senator 
from Arizona, John McCain, made the following remarks on this floor 
regarding earmarks identified in a defense appropriations bill for that 
year, 2004:

       $1 million for the Brown Tree Snakes. Once again, the brown 
     tree snake has slithered its way into our defense 
     appropriation bill. I'm sure the snakes are a serious 
     problem, but a defense appropriations act isn't the 
     appropriate vehicle to address this issue.

  So here I stand, 20 years later, identifying that this snake has 
continued to wreak havoc on both the island of Guam and, of course, on 
the American taxpayers.
  I recognize that the brown tree snake is a serious problem in Guam, 
but it has also become a serious problem robbing the American 
taxpayers, taking millions out of their billfolds without really any 
plan that I have been able to discover that the government knows how 
they are going to spend the taxpayers' money to eradicate this brown 
tree snake.
  Congressional appropriations of taxpayer money will be subject to 
waste, fraud, and abuse without congressional oversight. Accordingly, 
that is exactly what is needed here to better determine if taxpayer 
money has been used as it should have and whether these spending levels 
are needed entirely or at all.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.