[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 12657]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        FISCAL CLIFF IS LOOMING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
North Carolina (Mr. Jones) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, yesterday I heard Congressman Mo Brooks from 
Alabama give a very disturbing speech, but a speech that everyone 
should hear, and that is: America is headed toward Greece. Financially 
we are in a bad situation. We are $19.4 trillion in debt.
  In 2000 I was here when President Clinton was leaving office. We had 
a Republican House, a Republican Senate, and we were headed for a 
surplus. In fact, the debt in 2000 was $5.6 trillion. Today that debt 
is $19.4 trillion.
  The poster I have with me, Mr. Speaker, I used all during August. It 
is a great political cartoon. It is kind of sad in a way, I guess. The 
cartoon is this: It has got Uncle Sam in a wheelchair, and Uncle Sam is 
saying, ``I can see Greece from here,'' and the cliff has got written 
the words ``fiscal cliff.'' And then who is pushing Uncle Sam but Mr. 
Obama, and he is saying, ``Forward.'' And who is pushing Mr. Obama? The 
donkey, representing the Democrats? Who is pushing the donkey? The 
Republicans, the elephant. What it is saying is both parties are guilty 
of this debt that is going to strangle this country before very long.
  Last week there was an article in Reuters News. The headline was: 
``U.S. Army Fudged Its Accounts by Trillions of Dollars, Auditor 
Finds.'' The auditor said that, in the year 2015, he found that the 
Army had misappropriated over $6 trillion. I don't know where the 
outrage is anymore. I have no idea where it is. Six trillion dollars 
they cannot account for. And yet I hear very little about it from the 
Department of the Army and very little from leadership in the House of 
Representatives.
  In addition to that, I, for months, and maybe even years now, have 
been talking about the absolute waste, fraud, and abuse in Afghanistan. 
It is one of the worst failed policies America has ever had. We are not 
changing anything.
  You go back to Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great went to 
Afghanistan, or what was known as Afghanistan then. He was going to 
make it a different part of the world. It failed.
  Then you had the British. Winston Churchill was a young reporter and 
was in Afghanistan in 1920. He wrote and said: What is this country? 
What is this land? It is impossible.
  And then you had the Russians. The Russians went there, and they 
failed and they left. Now America is spending billions and billions of 
dollars, and it is failing.
  There was an article about 3 months ago, and the title of the article 
was: ``12 Ways Your Tax Dollars Were Squandered in Afghanistan.'' John 
Sopko is the inspector general for Afghan Reconstruction. What he said 
was:

       Billions have been squandered on projects that were either 
     useless or substandard, or lost to waste, corruption, and 
     systemic abuse, according to SIGAR's reports.

  That is John Sopko's group. They are known as SIGAR. Anyone can look 
it up on the Internet. They will just verify everything I am saying of 
just how much waste, fraud, and abuse, and how it is worse today than 
it was 15 years ago.
  I do not understand how we in Congress can be complicit.
  Well, what do you mean complicit?
  Well, when we pass the bill to fund the Department of Defense, if we 
know a percentage of that money, billions of dollars, is going to 
Afghanistan waste, fraud, and abuse, aren't we being complicit? I think 
so. I started voting against the bills because I don't want to be part 
of that, quite frankly.
  Mr. Speaker, in closing, I want to thank Congressman Brooks for 
coming on this floor yesterday, as I have done many times, to warn not 
only Congress but the American people that we are going to have a 
collapse sooner rather than later if we don't change the way that we 
are spending money here in Washington.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to thank our men and women in uniform, thank the 
families of our men and women in uniform, and thank the families who 
have given a child dying for freedom in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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