[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 10322-10323]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1100
                     POWER OF THE PURSE ACT OF 2015

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Wisconsin (Mr. Ribble) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. RIBBLE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce the Power of the 
Purse Act of 2015. I wrote this bill to restore Congress' ability to 
set priorities within Federal spending and, quite frankly, to better 
control it. To do that, my bill simply removes the firewall that exists 
within sequestration between defense spending and nondiscretionary 
spending. It allows Congress to regain the power of the purse so that 
we can take discretionary spending and take defense spending, but right 
now, the firewall requires us to spend equally on both. The 
Constitution gives the power of the purse clearly to Congress, and, as 
elected Representatives, we have an obligation to make the hard choices 
about where your tax dollars are spent.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to take you back to 2011. The country was facing 
its third year in a row with trillion-dollar deficits. Republicans and 
Democrats alike here in the House, Republicans and Democrats in the 
Senate, and the President of the United States signed into law the 
Budget Control Act, the result of a failure of Congress to come to a 
better agreement.
  The intention of that act was to control spending, to put caps on 
spending. But to get Democrats to agree to it, we had to say we would 
only spend 50 percent of discretionary spending on defense spending; 
yet Republicans, we would only put 50 percent on nondefense spending. 
So we locked ourselves and tied our hands, but we couldn't actually 
prioritize.
  In 2011, you could make the argument, as some did--I was here at the 
time, but prior to that, I was not here--when they argued that we 
should spend more money here in the United States on domestic spending, 
and they passed an $800 billion stimulus bill. They had the ability to 
do that and adjust to the global financial crisis. In 2011, they 
responded to the terrorist attacks and decided to spend more money on 
defense.
  But today we don't get to respond. We have to say, 50 percent here, 
50 percent there, without regard to the circumstances that we face. 
This makes no sense at all.
  Today we are facing a new and an unprecedented number of threats. 
They are coming at us from all around the world. ISIS poses one of the 
greatest terrorist threats that we have seen since 9/11, while Iraq, 
Syria, and Yemen descend further into chaos. Iran remains committed to 
advancing its nuclear infrastructure while continuing to meddle and 
support instability in the region. And we have seen an alarming rise in 
cyber threats from both nonstate and state actors like Russia, Iran, 
and North Korea. China has started to build islands in the China Sea, 
raising tensions in Southeast Asia.
  By removing the arbitrary firewall that exists under sequestration, 
budget caps on defense and nondefense discretionary spending, we 
restore spending control back to the Congress, and we can appropriately 
respond to these international and global threats and require more 
focus on defense.
  Tomorrow could be just as well something else. It could be 
infrastructure right here at home or education. This is National 
Alzheimer's Month. Maybe it would be spending more there to cure that 
horrible disease. We need to have the ability here to respond to the 
climate and environment that we face today, not what it was 4 years 
ago. My bill simply allows us to do that. By taking the taxpayer 
dollars that are sent by hard-working taxpayers here, it allows this 
Congress to make the determination on what the priorities ought to be 
at the time that we face those priorities.
  Now, I know Democrats are concerned that we will just blow up and 
spend more money on defense, and Republicans are concerned that if 
Democrats control it they would spend more money on discretionary 
spending. My bill does not remove the caps, but it does make this 
Congress have to debate with each other and find a conclusion that 
makes the most sense for the American people, because times have 
changed right here in the Congress.
  Today there are many Republicans who are more libertarian-minded, and 
they would prefer not to spend money on defense. They would prefer to 
spend it domestically. Rather than building roads in Afghanistan, they 
would prefer to build roads here. I have got colleagues on the 
Democratic side of the aisle that feel we need to focus on national 
defense. They serve on the House Armed Services Committee or the 
Foreign Affairs Committee and are well aware of the national defense 
threats that we face. But we can't do anything because we reluctantly 
hold onto bad policy.
  My bill is designed to correct this once and for all. By removing the 
firewall, we get to have the control of the purse once again that the 
Constitution has given us.

[[Page 10323]]

  Benjamin Franklin said that a nation is best off when control of its 
money is handled by those who are the most ``immediate representatives 
of the people.'' This Chamber, Mr. Speaker, is called the people's 
House. Each of us represent well over 700,000 Americans, and our job is 
to represent them to the best of our ability. We should not and can not 
continue to tie our hands with some arbitrary decision that was made 
maybe out of necessity 4 years ago but doesn't recognize the threat 
today.
  I encourage my colleagues to be part of this process and to cosponsor 
the Power of the Purse Act of 2015.

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