[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 12018]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         SAVING TAXPAYER MONEY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I want to cover two or three 
things very briefly here this morning.
  First of all, The Washington Post reported on its front page 
yesterday that ``U.S. taxpayer money has been indirectly funneled to 
the Taliban under a $2.16 billion transportation contract.''
  This is crazy. It should not be part of the job of the U.S. military 
to promote Afghan businesses. The official report found ``documented, 
credible evidence of involvement in a criminal enterprise of support 
for the enemy.'' This is ridiculous. And it comes on the heels of a 
report last week that the Navy had spent at least $300 million on two 
ships that were never completed, never sent on a mission, and are now 
headed for a salvage yard in Brownsville, Texas.
  Are there no fiscal conservatives at the Pentagon? Sadly, most people 
in Congress today are afraid to cut the Defense Department for fear 
they will appear to be unpatriotic. Yet it seems to me, Mr. Speaker, 
that it's unpatriotic to continue with megabillions in wasteful 
spending or billions in spending that promotes businesses in other 
countries. No part of the Federal Government should be immune from 
having to save taxpayer money. The American people would be far better 
off today if every Department and agency had to take a fair, across-
the-board 10 percent cut.
  Let me mention a couple of other things. We're going to vote later 
today on the Keystone pipeline project. This is a project that will 
provide 20,000 jobs and also will lead to 500,000 gallons of oil coming 
into this country each day. This will help bring down the price of 
gasoline. And yet it is opposed by a very powerful group of wealthy 
environmental elitists. Most of these environmentalists today seem to 
come from very upper-income or very wealthy families and perhaps they 
don't realize how much they hurt the poor and the lower-income and the 
working people by destroying jobs and driving up prices. But that's 
what they're doing, and they're certainly doing that in blocking or 
delaying this Keystone pipeline project.
  We also need to make sure that more jobs are created in this country 
in every way possible. Just today in The Washington Post, there's a 
poll that says that 49 percent of the American people are finding it 
very difficult to find jobs and 33 percent say somewhat difficult. 
Eighty-two percent of the American people say that it's difficult to 
find jobs in this country today. Yet we continue to cave in to 
environmental radicals that destroy jobs and really do just nothing 
other than help foreign energy producers.

                              {time}  1030

  So I think it's time that we start siding with the American people 
and stop siding with foreign energy producers.
  Lastly, let me just say that the most false thing that has been said 
during this debate over the debt ceiling is that some people are trying 
to help billionaires or multimillionaires. No one is trying to help the 
billionaires. They can help themselves. What the debate is about is: Do 
you want the money spent by the Federal Government, and they will spend 
it without any question in the most wasteful, least effective, least 
efficient way possible; or do you want the money to be in the private 
sector, where it will do much more to create jobs and hold down prices?
  If that weren't true, the Soviet Union or Cuba would have been heaven 
on Earth because, in those countries, the government took almost all 
the money. So it's not about protecting billionaires, not in the least.

                          ____________________