Floor Statements

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of my amendment to restore funding for the USDA Office of Chief Economist to fiscal year 2016 levels, which will save us more than $11 million in 2024.

Now, what is interesting, I have been listening to my colleagues across the aisle saying that it is going to 2001 levels. They don't want 2000 levels. This goes to 2016 levels, so I am hoping that they will support this because our annual discretionary spending has exploded over the course of the COVID-19 response.

No one thought our government was too small before COVID. We are currently spending $400 billion more in fiscal 2023 for the same government we had before, and deficits for this year are expected to exceed $2 trillion.

That is why we have a $33 trillion national debt, and that does not even include the $600-$700 billion in interest that we pay.

Revenue in fiscal year 2022 levels far exceeded our Federal spending in fiscal year 2016, meaning that if we were to shrink the Federal behemoth back to those pre-COVID levels, we might be able to avoid adding to our national debt for the next 12 months.

This is the first of many amendments that I will be offering to appropriations bills this week intended to reduce spending. My staff and I spent countless hours earlier this year reviewing the prior year's appropriations bills and making recommendations to the Committee on Appropriations. I even filed 521 separate bills to cut spending across the discretionary budget totaling $100 billion in spending reductions for fiscal year 2024.

I am not singling any one office or department out here. We need to tighten our belts across the Federal Government in order to get spending under control.

I will just ask you: How bad is the national debt crisis? The 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks that compose the largest central bank in the world have a monopoly on printing paper dollars. It is the world's reserve currency. Yet, its ability to print money and invest it in bonds, the Federal Reserve is now on pace to lose over $100 billion this year.

They lost $53 billion in the last two quarters. They are going to lose over $100 billion.

Why is that? Because Federal spending is out of control. If we are not going to fix it, who is going to fix it? Who is going to start fixing it? It is our job.

Mr. Chair, I urge the adoption of my amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Harris).

Mr. Chairman, for the last while I have heard my colleagues across the aisle, they were talking about costs, that Republicans want to cut costs, and that we always talk about costs.

Here is my question: What could they do? They are the ones who fostered this massive inflation on us that is imposing terrible, terrible costs on the American people.

The first thing they could do is they could unleash American energy. When you unleash American energy, you reduce the price of the fuels that are necessary for the farmers to produce our food. You reduce the cost of the transports to bring that food to market, and you make our cost structure go down.

That is not necessarily inflation, because the other thing you have to do to bring inflation under control is to bring Federal spending under control.

Mr. Chairman, I urge the adoption of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chair, I rise in support of my amendment, which restores funding for the National Agricultural Statistics Service to the fiscal year 2019 level. That would result in nearly $13 million to deficit reduction in fiscal year 2024.

Annual discretionary spending, I won't go through that again, what I said last time.

Revenue in fiscal year 2022 levels actually exceeded our Federal spending in fiscal year 2019, meaning that if we were to shrink the Federal behemoth back to those pre-COVID levels, we might be able to avoid adding to our national debt for the next 12 months.

Now, I want to continue on why this is so doggone important that we take care of this. The proposed funding level for the National Agricultural Statistics Service is a 7.6 percent increase over the fiscal year 2019 level. So we are actually bumping it slightly above the 2019 level, but we are getting right back to the pre-COVID levels.

Now, let's talk about this for a second. My colleagues across the aisle--I actually heard one of them say in talking about the underlying bill, the main bill, that the Federal Government needed to ``meet the needs of every American.'' I want you to think about what that says. The Federal Government meets the needs of every American.

Who determines what that need is and who pays for that need? Well, our grandchildren must be the ones that they think are going to pay for the current needs because we are borrowing $2 trillion this year; and it will be more than that next year. We are paying interest about $700 billion in 2023. It will be more than that next year.

Let's talk about the Fed again. I mention the Fed just so people can understand that the Fed has now put itself in a precarious position. We always used the Fed. We counted on it--those who wanted to grow government did. They believed in modern monetary theory, that the Fed could just keep printing money, no inflation would result, just money grows on trees, and that we could supply every American with every need that they might have.

So you use the central bank to keep interest rates really low. That made private borrowers really happy because they could service government debt inexpensively.

But what happened? COVID happened, right? And trillions of dollars flooded our economy, and when those trillions of dollars flooded our economy, it devalued our currency and caused inflation to go up because those were nonproductive dollars.

What did the Democrats do last year--because they didn't get their act together on budgeting--they passed a couple of CRs, which led ultimately to the omnibus bill, and that flooded money in there--after COVID was long gone. They added to the inflationary pressures.

I am going to continue this, but for now, Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, let's talk some more about the Fed and why we are in a world of hurt and why we have to start reducing spending and funding.

We can't fund every project, everything around the world and even in our own country. We send hundreds of billions of dollars out of this country.

Guess what, when the Fed bought $4.7 trillion in additional assets, $2.5 trillion of that was in mortgage-backed securities, and they invested in long-term loans. Then, as inflation pressures up, they kept increasing the prime rate. They are now expecting another increase in the interest rate within the next 2 months. We will have to pay that debt service. That will contribute to the inflationary pressure that we have.

When you screw up your energy policy and you screw up your Federal funding policy, the American people suffer, and they suffer through higher costs due to inflation. That is a hidden tax.

That is why I keep trying to find ways, line items where we can actually provide services but we can reduce the Federal spending to at least make some rational nod toward bringing us back to some sound funding policy, something we haven't seen here in ages.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chair, I rise in support of my amendment to restore funding to the National Institute of Food and Agriculture to fiscal year 2019 levels.

This amendment would direct $157 million to deficit reduction in fiscal year 2024.

Let's talk about this. I have been talking all night about the precarious position our economy is in. I am often baffled by this. I view it as an existential threat, and you know what, bipartisan we have seen national security leaders of this country say our biggest threat is our national debt.

Every year we have a structural deficit. This year we thought it was going to be about $1.7 trillion. CBO revised it to north of $2 trillion, and that is what it is going to be next year.

The National Institute of Food and Agriculture has made a habit of disseminating grant funding to organizations intent on perpetuating societal

division in the United States. These include things like a $350,000 funding grant to a Soros-funded nonprofit promoting ``equity'' in community food development projects, another $1.4 million in funds for organizations to advance ``food justice'' in California, and funding to colleges seeking to ``enhance diversity'' in food economics.

The proposed funding level that is made for the National Institute of Food and Agriculture is a 17 percent increase over the fiscal year 2019 level.

This reduction I propose in my amendment would ensure that taxpayer dollars are properly focused on activities related to food and crop development. That is what this agency is supposed to be doing, not wokeifying the money that we give to it.

Well, I want everyone to support this amendment, and I am going continue my talk about our precarious position, which is an existential crisis to the United States.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, over the course of this evening during the debate of the underlying bill it was referred to as being heartless and disrespectful. This amendment was referred to as being disrespectful, as a matter of fact.

This is what I would tell you: You know what is heartless? Heartless is putting our Nation and wrapping it up with flax and cords that we will not soon be able to get out of with constant perpetual debt.

You see inflation, inflation is going to keep going. Inflation is going to keep going because we don't have a great energy policy and we have a terrible Federal spending problem.

We heard on the underlying bill, hey, you know what, we should just raise more taxes. That is what we should be doing. But you know what, we had record revenue, record revenue, and guess what, we continued to increase our structural deficit, which leads to a greater national debt problem.

It isn't that Americans aren't paying enough in taxes. It is a fundamental spending problem. It gets back to what I have been talking about, this modern monetary theory. You heard it just a minute ago. We need to take care of the needs of everybody. Who pays for that? It is obviously not going to be the American people who are living right now. Maybe it is going to be some who are living right now.

We can't fundamentally afford the government my leftist colleagues across the aisle continue to promote. That is what they want. They want massive government. They want government that controls every aspect of everybody's life. Then, they say, that will meet the needs of everybody.

That is not enough. They have to open the southern border, as well. By the time the Biden administration leaves, you will have 10 million encounters at the border. That won't include the got-aways, both known and unknown, which already, under the Biden administration, exceed 2\1/ 2\ million people.

How are you going to pay for that? They never want to tell you how they are going to pay for it because they have no concept of what is facing this country.

Mr. Chair, I urge the adoption of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chair, I rise in support of my amendment to restore funding to the Farm Production Conservation Business Center to fiscal 2019 levels. That is right: Take it back to pre-COVID levels.

This amendment would direct nearly $15 million to deficit reduction in fiscal year 2024. My staff and I, earlier in the year, introduced many bills trying to take a line-item approach to the budget to try to reduce spending, to try to bring us back into some rationality, and this is one of the places we found.

The proposed funding level for the Farm Production Conservation Business Center is a nearly 7 percent increase over fiscal year 2019 levels.

The Farm Production Conservation Business Center is a fairly new office within the Department of Agriculture and is intended to support the agency's farmer-facing components. Under the Biden administration, the agency is pushing out taxpayer-funded climate alarmism and messaging to outline how USDA is advancing equity by providing increased financial assistance to historically underserved groups.

The spending reduction in this amendment would ensure that the business center is not abusing its farmer-facing role to promote divisive ideology, as the Biden regime is trying to do, but instead focuses its resources on serving agriculture producers.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I have to say, I am actually baffled a little bit because it is like we are on the other side of an ocean, an ocean separates us. I never hear my colleagues say that they want to reduce spending on any program. I never hear it. Instead, they

want to continually propose big spending programs that we simply don't have money for, and then they want to do something that is actually self-defeating by increasing taxes.

We have significant revenue. We just outspend the revenue. We outspend it every time.

What happened after COVID? Well, I am proposing we go back to pre- COVID levels. What happened during COVID is that the Federal Reserve had to auction so many treasuries it really had to begin offering higher rates. What did that do? That fueled higher rates.

Now, with rates so much higher, the bank is now forced to borrow against all its prior lending, all its prior investments, which they did at like 1 percent. Now, we are sitting at 5.3 percent.

When you are doing bonds, Mr. Chair, and you know this as well as anybody, your value of your asset has decreased. That is what has happened, and it puts us in massive economic jeopardy. We have to acknowledge that.

That is the reason that the Fed has incurred a net loss of $53.5 billion on interest expense, a trend that is going to continue in this quarter.

Mr. Chair, I include in the Record an article by Daniel Horowitz from September 26, 2023.

[From Blaze Media/Opinion & Analysis/Opinion, Sept. 26, 2023]

Horowitz: When Money Printers Can No Longer Print Money

(By Daniel Horowitz)

Just how bad is the national debt crisis? The 12 regional

Federal Reserve Banks that compose the largest central bank

in the world have a monopoly on printing paper dollars, the

world's reserve currency. Yet despite its ability to print

paper and then invest it in bonds, the Federal Reserve is now

on pace to lose money on its own scheme to the tune of over

$100 billion this year.

Thus, the great bailout institution of last resort has now

itself become a further drain on the federal treasury.

Until recently, the Federal Reserve was the ace in the hole

for the governing elites who wanted to grow weaponized

government on the cheap. The central bank was able to keep

interest rates extremely low, which made private borrowers

happy but also serviced government debt inexpensively. And by

using maturity transformation to borrow short and lend long,

the central bank could turn a profit by lending at higher

rates of interest than it borrowed. The net profit was always

deposited into the rapacious accounts of the Treasury

Department to offset a portion of its ballooning debt.

Then came COVID.

COVID ended the Ponzi scheme. In its attempt to permanently

control our lives, the Federal Reserve was forced to pay for

the lockdowns and ultimately lost control of the money

laundering operation. In order to service the debt, the Fed

in less than a year purchased $4.7 trillion in additional

assets, including $2.5 trillion in mortgage-backed

securities. Central bankers invested this money in the form

of long-term loans locked in at very low rates.

Then came the inevitable inflation driven by this very

COVID spending.

The Federal Reserve was forced to auction so many

Treasuries on the market that it had to begin offering higher

rates. Many would also argue that Federal Reserve Chairman

Jerome Powell raised the federal funds rate too quickly under

the false premise that it would stem the tide of the

inflation it created.

Well, now with interest rates so much higher, the bank is

forced to borrow high against all of its prior lending

(investments), which was at a much lower rate. We now have

the ultimate inversion, which is causing severe deficits. In

just the first two quarters of 2023, the Fed has incurred a

net loss of $53.5 billion on interest expense, a trend that

will only be exacerbated with higher rates, a slowing

economy, and a tightening credit market.

The $53 billion loss for the first half of 2023 is on top

of the $15.8 billion net loss in the final quarter of 2022.

This is a big deal. For the first time in its more than 100

years of existence, the money god itself can't print its way

out of insolvency.

To print even more money now will take an already tapped-

out consumer and small business and crush them further with

even higher inflation, tightening of credit, and crushing an

already insolvent housing market.

On top of the Fed's capital deficit is more than $1

trillion in unrealized losses on its $7.6 trillion balance

sheet of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities it

purchased in its System Open Market Account. All those assets

the bank purchased at 1 percent interest are now worth much

less if the bank were to sell them off at 5.3 percent.

Ironically, this is the same insolvency other banks that come

to the Fed for bailouts are facing today.

Yet the Fed simply writes off the loss as it unloads a

small portion of its balance sheet (about 9 percent from its

high in 2022) without using mark-to-market accounting, as

other banks are required to do under the Dodd-Frank law.

Mark-to-market uses the actual market price of the bonds, not

the irrelevant face value. The Fed ignores the market price

of bonds and assumes they are face value.

If the Fed is incurring this much of a deficit, which will

engender more bailouts from the Treasury--rather than the Fed

bailing out the debt-ridden Treasury--imagine how the economy

will look in the coming years. The majority of FOMC members

announced at a Wednesday meeting that they expect another

interest rate hike before the end of the year. Then they

envision the elevated rates to remain at least for a few

years. The capital deficit and unrealized losses on the

balance sheet are going to explode exponentially because of

the yield inversions, which will further exacerbate the debt

tsunami.

Also, even if the Fed itself doesn't raise the funds rate,

the yields on Treasuries must continue to climb just from the

sheer volume of issuance the Fed will offload on the market

to service biblical levels of interest on the debt, now

slated to top $1 trillion every year. There is already a

problem attracting enough buyers--with many foreign

countries, including China and Japan, dumping U.S.

Treasuries. Just wait until these other countries continue

with their plan to move away from the U.S. dollar as the

reserve currency. Yields will need to increase, further

perpetuating and exacerbating the cost of servicing the debt

and the Fed's own fiscal deficit in doing so.

Yields on the two-year Treasury are at the highest level

since 2006. However, 17 years ago, the gross debt was $8.5

trillion, not $33 trillion. Also, we were running $200-$400

billion annual deficits, not $2 trillion deficits. Not to

mention the fact that we didn't have nearly this much debt

and credit crush in the private sector and among households

that are straining banks and individuals to the point of

insolvency. Oh, and we are officially not in a recession and

have relatively low unemployment. Wait until the fun begins

in 2024 and the cost of social programs skyrockets. Even

without any new debt, $7.6 trillion of existing debt will

mature within the next year at much higher interest rates.

In other words, the Fed, which has been the government's

lifeguard for several generations, is now drowning in the

very pool it, along with corrupt politicians in Congress and

the Treasury Department, has created. Who will bail out the

money printer then?

Mr. Chair, let's talk some more about what should be done. We have a structural deficit of $2 trillion. We are spending $700 billion in interest. The Fed is losing money. Our economy is slowing down to boot.

The question is: What could we do? How about we rein in our Federal spending so that the value of our currency doesn't keep dropping like a stone? How about we unleash American energy so that we have pressure to reduce costs on the energy side and have traditional currency protection on the inflation side? That would do it. That would help, but we don't see anything from the Hill from which my colleagues across the way speak. We don't hear from the White House, either.

Mr. Chair, I am urging adoption of this amendment. It is a small measure to reduce a small program in a small way, but it moves us in that direction.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of my amendment to strike funding for the Food for Peace Title II grant program, which would direct $1.74 billion to deficit reduction.

I will repeat again what has been said so often here: Annual discretionary spending exploded over the course of the COVID-19 response. No one thought our government was too small before COVID, and we are currently spending $400 billion more in fiscal year 2023 for the same government we had before. Deficits exceed $2 trillion.

Let me just make this clear: In 2019, we spent about $4.9 trillion, $4.7- to $4.9 trillion, depends on who is telling you, and our revenue is going to be about $5.2 trillion. Wouldn't it be great to get back to those 2019 levels? Wouldn't it be great to get to the 2019 spending levels with our current revenue levels? Then you would not be increasing your deficit, your structural deficit.

The spending deficits that we have are out of control. They are leading to this massive national debt, which is fueling inflation and is going to be generational theft.

Let's talk about the Food for Peace Title II grant programs. Since the program was established in the 1950s, funding for the program has exploded. The Trump administration's fiscal year 2020 budget request recommended eliminating this program, which is duplicative of other foreign aid programs.

What is interesting, I say ``Trump,'' and you know that is going to set off, oh, no, the Trump derangement syndrome folks, the far left of this body are going to say: Oh, that is crazy.

However, Trump wasn't the first to do it. The Obama administration's 2014 budget request recommended shifting all Food for Peace Title II funds into accounts funded through the State and Foreign Operations appropriations bill. They cited potential improvements to flexibility, timeliness, and efficiency.

I am urging us to wipe out $1.74 billion in wasteful, duplicative spending and put it into deficit reduction.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, previously, some of my counterparts in debate have said we should supply every need, the Federal Government should supply every need to every American, and now they want to persist in trying to satisfy the needs and wants of people offshore, as well.

We can't afford to take care of every need of every American today. That is why we have a $2 trillion structural deficit. That does not include the $700 billion that we are spending in interest. We simply cannot afford to keep giving our future away, and that is what we are doing here.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I am encouraging everyone to support this important amendment. I think it is important, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of my amendment to strike funding for the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program.

I appreciate that the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Ogles) offered an amendment reducing it, and I appreciate that that is now going to be part of the underlying bill since it just passed on voice vote.

My amendment would direct the entire $240 million supporting that program would be used to reduce our deficit in 2024.

When you think about it, Mr. Ogles certainly made a strong case as to why that should be so, but I am going to add just a couple points to it. I am not going to belabor the fact that we continue to spend ourselves into oblivion at the Federal level. That is causing tremendous inflationary pressures, bringing stress to every American family.

What I am going to talk about instead is what happens in any Federal bureaucracy, what we see government do constantly. Mr. Ogles talked about the negative policy aspects of it, but I will just cover briefly what happens in the Federal bureaucracy on the spending side of it.

This particular program, the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program first received appropriations in fiscal year 2004, just 20 years ago, 20 short years ago. The bill set aside $50 million to carry out the program. That was the program, $50 million. Help around the world ostensibly, right?

However, what happens to Federal bureaucracies? They grow like Topsy. This one has grown to $240 million annually.

The Trump administration's 2018 budget, pre-COVID budget, request recommended that the program be eliminated as it ``lacks evidence that the program is being effectively implemented to reduce food insecurity.''

Additionally, the program primarily works by donating food produced in the United States to communities in need around the world, but we have already heard the seven nations identified. It is a great deal for U.S. agricultural producers whose surplus is purchased by the Federal Government for use in the program, but the provision of free food, as Mr. Ogles so eloquently pointed out, is required to be delivered, and that causes native, local production to decline in those States.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, why else might we want to eliminate this program? The provision of free food to these seven nations on this list, which is required to be delivered in a not-so-timely manner on U.S.-flagged ships, distorts food production markets in those nations receiving aid, and it actually increases the cost.

It is a classic ``give a man a fish, feed him for a day'' problem. The program isn't eliminating food insecurity. It is slow. It is costly. It is growing. It pushes out local production. Quite frankly, we simply can't afford it anymore.

At some point, we are going to have to say we are having trouble funding everything in our own country, and now we are going to send it abroad. That is something I don't think the American people stand for.

Mr. Chair, I urge the adoption of this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chair, I rise in support of my amendment to restore funding for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to fiscal year 2019 pre-COVID levels.

This amendment would direct $77 million to deficit reduction in fiscal year 2024. Annual discretionary spending exploded over the course of the COVID-19 response. No one thought our government was too small before COVID. We are currently spending hundreds of billions of dollars more in fiscal year 2023 for the same government functions that we had before.

Deficits are now projected to exceed $2 trillion for this fiscal year. Recently, the U.S. eclipsed $33 trillion in debt, accounting for nearly $100,000 per U.S. citizen.

Earlier in the debates today, we were told that if we go down this road, we are going to see a threatened credit rating reduction. We have already seen that. Fitch already did it. Moody's is threatening to do it again, and why are they doing it again? It is because, as they said the last time they downgraded us, we don't have an effective plan to handle and reduce our Federal deficit.

We just don't have a plan anymore. The plan is to actually increase our deficit, and my bill attempts to take one small bite at trying to shrink that deficit, that structural deficit, that leads to the gross national debt problem we have every year.

Revenue in fiscal year 2022 levels actually exceeded our Federal spending in fiscal year 2019. What that means is if we were to shrink the Federal spending behemoth back to those pre-COVID levels, we might just be able to avoid adding to our national debt for the next 12 months. That is all I am asking.

I am begging us, can we do it for a month, 2 months, 3 months? You will see that this country will not fall apart. Instead, it will prosper and grow, and we would be better off.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I appreciate my friend, the Agriculture Committee chairman, and his opposition, but I must respectfully disagree. The proposed funding level for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is a nearly 30 percent increase over the fiscal year 2019 levels.

The CFTC is following in the footsteps of the SEC under the Biden administration with efforts to mandate, without statutory authority, an onerous climate disclosure regime on the private sector.

Last year, the CFTC solicited comments on climate-related financial risk. Conservative attorneys general, led by West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, forcefully pushed back, stating that attempts to mandate disclosure through rulemaking or through another regulatory framework would clearly implicate the major questions doctrine, raised First Amendment concerns related to compelled speech, and stated that courts would find climate-related action to be arbitrary and capricious.

Other reporting suggests that the CFTC is aggressively pursuing enforcement action and hefty fines over minor technical reporting requirements. That is typical of the bureaucratic regime established under the Biden administration.

Adoption of my amendment would ensure that the CFTC is properly utilizing its resources to fulfill its mission of fostering open, competitive, and financially sound futures and option markets, not becoming the Biden administration's ESG enforcer.

Mr. Chair, I urge adoption of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, today, I recognize the legacy of service and leadership of Michael Pollack, a resident of Arizona's Fifth Congressional District. I join him in celebrating his 50th year as president and founder of Pollack Investments, which specializes in commercial restoration and renovation projects, specifically long-term investments in shopping centers and other multi-tenant locations.

In his industry, many developers will look at a property that has fallen into disrepair and see only a building ripe for destruction. In his own words, Michael sees ``each real estate project as an opportunity to enhance the fabric of Arizona's cities one development at a time.''

Whether refusing to take advantage of those affected by the housing crash or working with tenants to make it through the COVID era without closing their doors, Michael has always remained focused on protecting the overall economic and social health of our cities and their residents.

Michael's enduring legacy is one of inspiration, renewal, and compassion. He set new standards in his industry and community. He has made an immeasurable impact on the lives of countless Arizonans.

On behalf of Arizona's Fifth Congressional District, I thank Michael for inspiring others with his unwavering commitment to making our communities better than he found them, one development at a time. I pay homage to Michael Pollack and congratulate him.

Mr. Speaker, today I recognize the legacy of service and leadership of Michael Pollack, a resident of Arizona's 5th Congressional District, and I join him in celebrating his 50th year of business as the President and Founder of Pollack Investments.

Pollack Investments specializes in commercial restoration and renovation projects, specifically long-term investments in shopping centers and other multi-tenant locations. In his industry, many developers will look at a property that has fallen into disrepair and only see a building ripe for demolition. But, in his own words, Michael sees ``each real estate project as an opportunity to enhance the fabric of Arizona's cities, one development at a time.''

That's not just a catchy line. After renewing these properties to their full potential, Michael insists that they are held for many years--even multiple decades--to ensure the long-term success of their surrounding neighborhoods. Michael's foresight and unique understanding of market trends have allowed him to transform Pollack Investments into a major driver of economic development across the Phoenix metro area, and what began with Michael building a single home in 1973 has grown into a staggering portfolio, with commercial real estate assets totaling in the tens-of-millions of square feet.

Michael's expertise has allowed for success where others have fallen short, remaining profitable even in the most difficult of economic times. And it's in these times that Michael's character has shown through. Whether refusing to take advantage of those affected by the housing crash and economic downturn or working with tenants to make it through the uncertainty of the COVID era without closing their doors, Michael has always remained focused on protecting the overall economic and social health of our cities and their residents. In this mission, I'm certain of his continued success.

More importantly, however, Michael's legacy extends far past his business. His same passion for revitalization has allowed entire communities to start fresh by bringing in new development and jobs has also given hope to individuals and organizations through his philanthropy and deep community involvement. One

indicator of a man's heart and his generosity is consistency--and Michael is widely recognized as one of Arizona's most generous business leaders both in times of plenty and times of hardship. I thank Michael for his tremendous example.

Michael's enduring legacy is one of inspiration, renewal, and compassion. He has set new standards in his industry and his community, and he has made an immeasurable impact on the lives of countless Arizonans who work, shop, and live in the communities he has worked hard to reinvigorate. On behalf of Arizona's 5th Congressional District, I thank Michael for inspiring others by his unwavering commitment to making our communities better than he found them--one development at a time.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to speak in support of my amendment, which exempts defense-related activities from the Endangered Species Act.

This amendment would end the Endangered Species Act application in areas used for national defense-related operations and prohibits the Secretary of the Interior from designating areas necessary for military operations as crucial habitats.

I have been listening to my colleagues now for quite a while this afternoon and this evening on both sides. Where there was comity and concord, it was always arguing over how much we need to be ready and prepared. I will give you an example of what is happening here, the Yuma Proving Ground and the Barry M. Goldwater Range, where you can fire live fire missiles, are booked literally months, almost a year, in advance. Why? It is one of the most remote areas in the country that allows us to do it, but can we do it all the time? No. They are closed at least 12 percent of the time. That means contractors and the military can't complete their mission and prepare for their mission.

Why is that? Compliance with environmental laws has created restrictions on how DOD manages plants and conducts training exercises on its installations, not just at YPG or at Goldwater.

According to DOD, 85 percent of Army installations have threatened or endangered species present. Two million acres of Army training and testing lands have training restrictions in place related to ESA compliance requirements. These restrictions hinder our readiness and our mission.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, to oppose this amendment is an example of hate, bigotry, and ignorance. This is a longstanding issue, and you stand there and have the audacity to say there is zero evidence.

Explain then why officials have to report that on the Goldwater Range they had to cancel 8 percent of their F-16 training exercises. What is this for? It is for the Sonoran pronghorn, which doesn't inhabit that range? It inhabits the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge in the Cabeza Prieta Refuge.

However, anytime that pronghorn gets within 3 miles of this massive range that we have expended--by the way, you all just voted to give Mr. Grijalva from Arizona more money to expand and improve that. Guess what? It won't be able to be used a significant portion of the time.

If biologists determine that the Sonoran pronghorn is present within 3 miles of the training range, they shut it down.

We can't bomb in certain places. We can't test missiles in certain places. Why? For the acuna cactus.

I am telling you, when you say this isn't necessary, it is necessary. It is not extremist to say we need to help get our military ready in one of the most unique training ranges in the country, the Goldwater Range off Luke Air Force Base and the Yuma Proving Ground.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I think that it is interesting when we talk about protecting wildlife. How about protecting the homeland? How about protecting our military by allowing them to be ready and prepared? How about protecting the development of new military capabilities through the research and development that goes through both the Barry M. Goldwater Range, which, by the way, is impacted by the ESA, and also the Kofa range. That is why DOD responds.

Mr. Chairman, I urge the passage of this amendment. I think it is necessary if you want to keep advocating for preparation, which everybody has been talking about. That is the only thing everybody has been in harmony about until you get to this. Then we are told that if you want that, somehow you are a bigot, somehow you are ignorant.

That is audacious, offensive, and childish, and it doesn't warrant the worthiness of the debate that should be going on about a real issue.

If you want to talk about it, let's talk about it, but you don't need to throw out ad hominem attacks. That is really a shame.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I find it fascinating to listen to someone who lives in the Northeast, in a nice enclave protected from the border, stand up and say nothing about this is serious. Tell that to the victims of this border-crossing invasion. Tell that to them. They say: Oh, all the fentanyl is being stopped at the border.

It is just incredible.

What is going on between the ports of entry? Sure, we catch it at the ports of entry. Why? We have massive amounts of resources there. Between the ports of entry are wide open spaces.

The last time I was down there--when was the last time you were there? I go down often. I live in Arizona. I get down to the border.

The last time I was there, we were driving along and didn't see Border Patrol for miles. Do you know what we came upon? We came upon 21 individuals.

There is no town. There is no village. We asked them how they got here. The coyotes dropped us off and told us keep walking north. In that group were two babies under the age of 1 year.

I am telling you, this is a result of the dereliction of duty that has put this country in jeopardy. That is why this needs to go to the Committee on Homeland Security, so they can further investigate this. That is why it needs to be there.

Laugh if you will. That is the reality. You don't appreciate the seriousness of this, the gravity of it.

Laugh at it if you will, but you get to go to the angel families and explain to them why their kid or a member of their family was killed by an illegal alien who came into this country. You get to go to the parents.

You get to go to the parents of individuals who have lost their lives due to the fentanyl that you apparently claim is all being interdicted. It is dangerous. We have terrorists and criminal gang members coming in.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Colorado for holding this Special Order and talking about this very important subject.

The reality is, as we are on that tank from ``Indiana Jones'' that is going off the cliff, we are busy fighting on top of it, but the tank is still going over the edge.

One of the problem areas that we have is this payment of a half a trillion dollars a year--think about that--that we are giving to unauthorized programs. You can go to the Congressional Research Services and they will give you a full print out. You can get the full display of all of them and when those programs expired.

One of the oldest ones--and I will just pull it up here. I have to scroll through all of these programs, these hundreds and thousands of programs. This is one where the Judiciary Committee has jurisdiction, Mr. Buck, and I mention that because Representative Buck and I both sit on judiciary.

It is the payment to the Legal Services Corporation. You know what that is. That is the public defender's office. The expiration of their authorization was in 1980, 42 years ago.

What is the amount of money that they were last authorized to spend? Undefinite, an undefinite amount. There was no cap on it.

That is what we have. We have everything from EPA, State Department, ATF. These are agencies and departments that haven't been authorized. Then we have a whole list of additional programs that have not been authorized, but we continue to fund them. Our own rule proscribes that.

The remedy for us immediately is, when those come up, at least under previous terms of Congress, we have been able to actually raise a point of order and get that pulled out, if we can.

Representative Buck, that gives you kind of a background and an idea of what we are facing, which is part of our huge budgetary problem.

You would authorize a program--like the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act. That is an authorizing program. It authorizes us to spend money, and then we go ahead and appropriate to that authorization.

Yes. I am not sure that I knew that detail because I don't think I have seen that happen since I have been in Congress.

I am in my seventh year. That is the point. If you want to authorize something, like the Judiciary Committee, they should be holding these types of hearings because it is just what you say.

The year that I got elected from Arizona, a famous national journal did a study and estimated that the Department of Defense was wasting $125 billion annually. Well, that is one of those things where you probably would want to bring it in. Actually, in this instance, the NDAA, those hearings on authorization, you would be talking about if there is really that much waste there and what we do to recover that waste and prevent it.

We just don't do enough of that in Congress. We are just so busy, again, like I said, trimming around the edges. We are not getting at the core of the problem.

That is why I support what I call the Buck plan. The Buck plan calls upon Congress, the majority in this case, in every committee to have a subcommittee that is looking at the authorization jurisdiction of that committee and then makes the recommendations, has the hearings. Let's do this right.

Transparency is important, but beyond that, the process is broken. If we are going to try to get a handle on our out-of-control spending, you would think we would want to fix the process as much as anything.

I commend Representative Buck.

For those watching at home, both of you, Representative Buck has put together this plan, has been championing this plan, and I am behind that plan all the way. I think it is something we must do. It should be part of any appropriations process going forward.

We are too fearful because every program that gets created creates a constituency, and you have to look somebody in the eye and say that program is no longer necessary.

The ESA is a perfect example of that. It has basically run amuck. It is why California doesn't build storage facilities for water, which impacts the entire western half of the United States. It is why we had someone who wanted to stop any building in Arizona. They tried to get the Sonoran Desert tortoise to be declared an endangered species, but they had to stop counting when they got over 3 million of them. They said, well, that is not really an endangered species. That would have impacted the entire State because they are found everywhere in Arizona. It is an example of one of those eternal programs that you and President Reagan talked about.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

My amendment is needed to lower the economic threshold of the REINS Act to $50 million, requiring congressional approval to go into effect. That will lead to more votes in this body, and that is what we do.

We are Members of Congress. That is what we do as Representatives of Congress, and I would rather vote more often than have unelected, unaccountable, partisan agency heads writing rules that we treat as law.

The Biden administration has abused executive authority by growing the administrative state. These abuses add up, and estimates indicate that the Biden administration has proposed more than $1 trillion in rulemaking

proposals in 2022 alone. That is a trillion dollars without a single vote of anybody in this body. My amendment will fix that.

Actions this large, like student loan forgiveness, food stamp increases that nearly double in cost to Americans every 4 years--which even outpaces inflation--for every one of these overreaches, there are more smaller proposals that we never notice. I don't know if you realize that ketchup is regulated--breads, buns, cheese, Asiago cheese versus old Asiago cheese, that is what gets regulated by our government. There is virtually nothing that is untouched in regulation by this government.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.

Mr. Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time.

When we start looking at the regulatory environment and you start talking about a trillion dollars' worth of regulation being piled up by the Biden administration, a trillion dollars, you wonder why there is a persistence in inflation. That is one of the reasons.

I want to talk about something that my colleague said just a moment ago. He said: If you constrain the bureaucracy from making rules, somehow you are thwarting the purpose of government.

Mr. Chair, let me remind everyone what the purpose of government is. The purpose of government is to protect the rights and liberty of the American citizen. It is when you delegate from this body--who are elected by the people we represent--to executive agencies and you give them carte blanche, which is basically what we do, we rarely even do a CRA, you are undermining that liberty, that freedom. That is one of the most insidious problems of this runaway regulatory bureaucracy that we have today.

My amendment simply says: If you are going to impact the United States of America's economy by more than $50 million, we, the people's Representatives, should be okaying that regulation that ostensibly is going to be made and produced by people who are experts.

Well, let the people's Representatives adjudicate through a vote whether we agree with the so-called experts, and then we will be the ones who are held accountable, and we are the ones who should be held accountable.

Mr. Chair, I urge everyone to vote for my amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for allowing me to speak on this issue today. It is an important issue.

I remember my first townhall after I was elected to Congress. We had 1,000 people show up. Many of them were wearing resistance T-shirts. The radical left was busing people in actually from California to protest my townhall. That was fine. That is what it is about.

What wasn't fine was the ridiculous number of threats to me, my family, and my staff.

That is when I remembered from days in my legal practice my gratitude for the police who came and made sure that the crowd was protected and my staff was protected. They even placed two undercover police officers flanking my wife because she had been threatened, as well.

Thank you. Thank you to the men and women of law enforcement.

I thank the police chiefs and the rank and file in Apache Junction, in Mesa, in Chandler, in Gilbert, in Queen Creek, and in Maricopa County. The sheriff is a Democrat, but I think he does a pretty good job; not like some of the other folks that I will be talking about in just a minute.

I thank the sheriffs and their departments in local law enforcement in the border communities in Yuma County, Cochise County, and Pinal County who are having to take up the slack because of what is going on on the border. The Biden administration is allowing people to just run rampant across our border. It is unbelievable.

I thank them. They don't run away. They run toward, to save us. They run toward the people who would harm us, and they provide the rule of law.

Mr. Speaker, you can't have freedom if you don't have respect and rule of law.

Now let's talk about the Federal agencies for just a second. A story just came out last weekend about the bomber who put the bombs over at the NRCC and DCCC on January 6. Those were inert bombs. It turns out the FBI had surveillance and film of that person placing those inert bombs. They had video of them moving around on the Metro, moving on out to the suburban D.C. area getting into a car.

They have the license plate of the car, they have the tracking, and they have the credit card that paid for the Metro that that bomber used.

When they went to try to investigate, the leadership in the FBI halted that investigation. The Durham report has come out. I urge you to read it, Mr. Speaker.

I heard some of you talk about it. I am not sure you read it.

Any objective analysis of that report will tell you that the Department of Justice and the FBI were working with the Clinton campaign to create a false criminal allegation. We are still talking about the Russian hoax.

It is unbelievable. As some have said, the DOJ and the FBI abandoned their standards from the start. They had no predicate for that investigation. They knew it at the time. I think we should hold them accountable.

You want to keep funding them? Fine. You keep funding them, but you are going to have to reform them someway, somehow.

I, like my friend from Colorado, remember the time when it was the Democrats who often called for civil liberties and the protection of civil liberties from the Federal police apparatus. That is where I am. We have now come to a point where we have to protect our citizens from our own Federal police apparatus.

I will also get into this notion of federalizing the police. You can't simply always throw Federal grant money at local law enforcement.

At least in Arizona, when I talk to our friends in policing there, they will tell you: We take this money with trepidation because the Feds always want to take over.

They don't understand. I will just tell you, we don't understand Seattle. Why would you come to Congress and say you control policing in Seattle, you control it in Phoenix, or you control it in the town of Gilbert? Why would we turn that over to the Feds? That is too much.

Now, I want to share some comments that we have heard over the last couple of years from some of my colleagues across the aisle.

From the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler), with reducing the NYPD budget, stating: ``There should be substantial cuts to the police budget and a reallocation of those funds to where we need them.''

The minority leader, asked on CNN, expressed his openness to defunding the police when he said: ``You have to look at that on a case-by-case basis.''

Cori Bush was the vice chair of the Crime and Federal Government Surveillance Subcommittee. She said: ``It is not a slogan.'' ``Defunding the police'' is not a slogan. She said: ``It is not a slogan. It is a mandate for keeping our people alive. Defund the police.''

When she was challenged about that, she further said: `` `Defund the police' is not the problem.'' She continues to always double down on that.

The gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Ocasio-Cortez) also said: ``This is what happens when leaders sign blank check after blank check to militarize police, CBP, et cetera, while letting violence go unchecked. We need answers. And we need to defund.''

When New York decided to cut a billion dollars from their police force, Representative Ocasio-Cortez thought the cuts did not go far enough, stating: ``Defunding police means defunding police.''

Representative Jamaal Bowman said: ``We don't need police with lethal weapons carrying out routine traffic stops. Reallocate police funding to unarmed traffic forces to remove even the possibility of state- sanctioned manslaughter.''

Representative Jayapal said it is completely reasonable for us to ``shift significant sums of money from police'' and invest in people.

Representative Ilhan Omar said: ``We need to completely dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department because here is the thing. There is a cancer. . . . The Minneapolis Police Department is rotten to the root, and so when we dismantle, we get rid of that cancer.''

Representative Ayanna Pressley said: ``The defund movement isn't new. Folks are just finally listening.''

Representative Rashida Tlaib said: ``When we say #DefundPolice, what we mean is people are dying, and we need to invest in people's livelihoods instead.''

So don't tell me now that you can't vote for this resolution, which honors local police enforcement and condemns the defund police movement.

Don't tell me that is idle rhetoric. That is real. That is sincere, and that ought to be what the position of this body is.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his effort on this legislation. So many have worked hard on this.

I have been listening to my colleagues across the aisle and all the gaslighting. I am reminded of the secondary output produced by many of the dairy cows in rural Arizona.

While my colleagues across the aisle are ignoring this problem, right now, record numbers of people are coming across this border.

Do you know what? In Matamoros, right there at the Rio Grande, you have the immigration authorities of Mexico coordinating with CBP on controlled crossings of the river.

Why is that? Because title 42 has gone away today. It is going to go away tonight. The cartels control our border. We have had testimony. The Chief of CBP has said that.

When I heard some of the stuff I heard here, I said that I wonder if any of them even know where the border is. Come on down to the border. I will show you what it is like.

Do you know what CBP officials told local officials in Arizona about title 42? I am quoting here: ``You are screwed.''

You won't do anything to solve the border problem. This bill solves much of the border problem. I get a kick out of someone here who just made a reference to how bad things were and how we didn't do anything.

Yuma sector, 2020, apprehensions for the entire fiscal year were 8,800. Do you know what it is today, this fiscal year? Over 350,000. Do you know what it was last year? Over 300,000.

Why is that? Because what the CBP doesn't say, hey, let's do the Democrat plan. They say, can you at least let us enforce the law? This administration says no.

Thus, we have a crisis on the border. It is more than a crisis. It is cataclysmic.

In the Darien Gap in Panama, the numbers crossing, it is a 500 percent increase. The number is between 700,000 to a million people just waiting, coming on up, waiting for title 42 to go away.

Do you know what ``expedited removal'' means? It means expedited release into the country. It means community release.

Why is that? Because of the weak asylum enforcement laws that we have today. When you come up, if we are taking you back to the border, we are going to get you across the border, and you say, ``I want asylum.'' It doesn't matter what your history is or anything. We are going to get you out of here and release you, community release.

Community release means, right now, you are getting released. That is what is happening. Shame on you.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Carter) for yielding. I appreciate his leadership on this issue.

I was thinking as you were talking about the first job I ever had. I was making--this is really going to date me--I was making $2.50 an hour. I thought, holy mackerel, that is $100. I was working 40 hours and I was going to bring home $100. No, it was $75. That was a million years ago. I would bring home less today because everything else has gone up.

I will just tell you something about that. I have watched that same thing happen to each one of my children. We live in this world where the Federal Government kind of clamps down on you. I appreciate this so much.

The FairTax Act would repeal all Federal taxes, corporate taxes, individual income taxes, payroll taxes, self-employment taxes, capital gains taxes, death taxes, and gift taxes and replace them with a revenue neutral consumption tax.

Do you know what is so nice about a consumption tax?

You choose whether you are going to pay it. You choose whether you are going to pay it because it is how you consume. We pay too much already in Federal taxes, and under this administration we are paying silent taxes we never voted for.

Since this administration took over, Americans are paying nearly 15 percent more for goods and services due to the inflation tax.

I have introduced legislation, and I know others have as well, to repeal the 16th Amendment to permanently abolish the Federal income tax. This is a fantastic bill that Mr. Carter has.

I don't need to remind you that the Federal Government takes up to 37 percent away from families--away from your dinner tables, away from your gas tank, and pays for drag shows in Ecuador, and $85,000 Bob Dylan statues, for Pete's sake.

Americans know how to spend their own money better than politicians do. Under the FairTax Act everybody is going to take home 100 percent of their paycheck with no Federal taxes withheld.

Americans would decide how much they pay in taxes through the choices they make to purchase and consume goods and services. That means that Americans would keep their entire paycheck they worked for and have the freedom to decide how they spend their money.

Flat taxes are sometimes criticized as disproportionately affecting lower-income Americans negatively, but the FairTax Act accounts for that by preparing a prebate.

This prebate is an advance tax refund to every legal American family at the beginning of every month to purchase goods and services free up to the national poverty level. That has been compared, quite frankly, to the earned income tax credit, which is part of our Byzantine structure today.

When I was in my first year in law school--this was also 100 years ago--this is back before the internet and back when I worked for a tax firm, I was their librarian. Every week I went in and for hours I updated a room full of tax books--the regulations and the code itself being updated all the time as Congress would decide who gets a special break and who doesn't.

The FairTax Act, instead, encourages economic growth. It is more efficient and more productive than our current tax code. This means investment, wages, and consumption are higher than they are under the current income tax.

In light of the Democrat majority in Congress and the Biden administration, both of which have made clear their policies are to tax, spend, and control the American people, the FairTax Act provides the perfect alternative that gives Americans more freedom.

Without a national income tax there would be no need to file taxes or have an IRS, which this bill defunds. You had me at hello with that.

In addition to closing the many loopholes in the current tax code, the FairTax Act would reach a much larger group of taxpayers, which nine States have already seen the benefits of firsthand by eliminating their State income taxes.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Carter for letting me speak on behalf of his bill. I think it is a wonderful bill, and I support it. I encourage all of my colleagues to support this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me.

There is a great Chinese scholar, Professor Sheridan wrote a book called ``China in Disintegration,'' and he analyzed the fall of China's government in the early 1900s before you moved to kind of an anarchical situation where you saw the rise of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang versus, ultimately, post-World War II Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist long march as they marched around and eventually the U.S. wavered and China fell to communism under Chairman Mao.

What was the premise of ``China in Disintegration''? It was an analysis of why great powers, great nations, great empires fail. They fail because of a loss of geographical integrity. They fail for--that is the first thing.

The second thing is they fail because their currency loses value and trust. Once that goes, and the culture begins to change, they are either overextended, or they allow individuals with malevolent intentions to come into their country and influence the population.

So what do we have? We have a wide-open border, so we have lost our geographical integrity. We have $31.4 trillion in national debt and rising inflation.

We have nations like India contemplating moving to the Chinese yuan for their currency of exchange instead of the dollar. They have settled on the rupee.

We have lost economic integrity as well.

What has happened? Well, China views, as they always have, themselves as the center of the universe. They have viewed Westerners as barbarians. Mao and his ambitions were superseded ultimately by Deng Zhao Ping, who said we are going to put a unique spin and have a hybridized economy, and it is going to have some elements of capitalism, but it is going to be Communistic overall.

Now, why did he do that? Because they were failing as a Communist state.

We built the Chinese middle class. We built the Chinese deep water navy. We gave China superior telemetry.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have basically given China our technology. What we haven't given them, they have stolen.

Now you have reached a point where you have a CEO of a company like Nike, who says, we are not an American company anymore, we are a Chinese company.

How have they done that? There are literally tens of thousands of Chinese national students in our universities. When we talk about the billions of dollars that have come in in donations, a more insidious thing is the out-of-State tuition that funds these State universities who rely on out-of-State tuition, so they come in and they pay that tuition.

It is not a normalized situation. To come over here as a student, you have to be a member of the CCP.

There are 330 million people in the CCP, as many as we have living in the United States today.

They send their students over here and they exit. They leave and they go home with what? Our technology and experience that we have given them to defeat ourselves.

We can continue to put our head in the sand and hope that it isn't true. There are those who believe it is xenophobic to talk about this.

I appreciate the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bean) being here tonight and leading this Special Order because Americans need to know the peril that we are in because China doesn't view us as an economic opponent or competitor. They view us as an adversary, a geopolitical adversary.

For them, they want to be the world's dominant hegemon. That isn't me saying it. You can look at any modern writing within the top leadership of the CCP. It is pretty clear.

I would suggest that we need to take back our educational institutions. Couple that with the integration, we need to decouple our economic integration and dependence upon China. They know we are dependent. They know they can exploit that. We saw how they exploited it just recently in the COVID-19 epidemic.

Let's be wise. We are going to have to take action.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. Speaker, we are going to talk tonight about this debt ceiling, this mysterious debt ceiling that we hear so much about. I am joined by two of my colleagues who have strong ideas about this, as well.

I want to just relate something to America, so you can hear this.

We had a meeting several weeks back talking about the debt ceiling. I don't think anybody had ever asked this question, and I started asking it at every meeting. I said: How much does the Biden administration want to raise the debt?

We stand at $34.1 trillion now. We spend $6.1 trillion a year, but we raise $4.9 trillion. Every month, we fall short by about $100 billion.

I said: How much do they want?

Well, when I first started asking the question, everybody says: I don't know. We don't know.

Now, it is $4 trillion. That is what I am hearing, $4 trillion. Tonight, we heard $3.5 trillion. In any event, it is $3.5 trillion to $4 trillion.

I asked the next question. I said: Look, I really want to know what happens if we don't lift the debt ceiling. I don't know. These guys might have been there.

The fellow was nonplussed. This former deputy at the OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, an economist, stood there for probably 2 minutes. Nobody had ever asked him that question before. He says: Nothing. Nothing will happen.

I said: How can that be? I am hearing that it is collapse city. Tell me, how can that be?

He said: All the bills go to OMB. They get forwarded on to the Fed, and they all get paid as they come due. They just keep paying them.

I am here to tell you that the debt ceiling is mysterious. It is a black box. It is the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. And it is time for us to face the facts.

If they are going to try to leverage us, then we have to do something to make this more responsible, this spending more responsible, and get our budget back together.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Montana (Mr. Rosendale).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Montana. He mentioned unauthorized programs that we are continuing to fund. There are more than 1,200 Federal programs that are unauthorized right now. $500 billion. That is what we spend every year for those 1,200 unauthorized programs. Congress hasn't authorized them. They have expired. We haven't reauthorized, but we are still spending $500 billion a year. People wonder what is crazy about D.C. Well, let me give you one more datapoint.

That same meeting that we were talking about, the gentleman was getting ready to leave, this economist, and then we had a former head of OMB there with us. I asked them: Can you tell me how many agencies there are in the Federal Government?

The answer was ``no.''

I said: What?

He said: Nobody knows. That is hard to believe. I couldn't believe it. I did some more digging. Nobody can tell me. Nobody can tell me how many Federal agencies there are. We can tell you how much we are spending. We are spending over $100 billion every month more than we bring in.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Good).

I thank the gentleman for his remarks.

May I inquire of the Speaker how much time I have remaining?

Mr. Speaker, HFC put in a proposal just recently. I think this is really important. The idea is to shrink Washington and grow the country again. We proposed it in early March.

The first thing is we cancel the student loan forgiveness plan which totals $609 billion. We cut the wasteful, woke, weaponized spending programs and get the Nation back on track. We eliminate Green New Deal tax credits and subsidies.

I recently scored it at 350. I am told now it is $400 billion. Between those two items alone, Mr. Speaker, we are moving towards $1 trillion.

We cut the IRS expansion. We already passed that out of the House. That is $80 billion. We take into account the 500 targeted reductions that we have made. Maybe we don't do all of them. Maybe we just do half of them. Maybe we do 50, 70, $85 billion worth.

Then I will tell you something else, Mr. Speaker, that you have to do. You take back the COVID money that we sent out. There is about $80 billion of that that hasn't been spent. Bring that back.

All of that is in the first year, and I haven't even talked about reductions. That is the rescissions.

Then we start reducing, and we can make it targeted. We can do the discretionary.

Guess what?

We start getting to a place where we are not in the hole $100 billion per month.

How about doing that for a year?

How about doing that for a year?

I am told that a lot of these folks don't really want to do that, and I find that hard to believe.

So in fiscal year 2024 alone, if we add to what I just outlined, what we proposed, what we cosponsored, those 500 bills, we just want you to look at them for mercy's sake.

If we took all of them, then we would be a little over $100 billion in savings in fiscal year 2024 alone.

There are ways out of this, aren't there?

But it is going to take some courage and some discipline. Quite frankly, part of the reason that I wanted to do this tonight is I am hearing all the time that we don't know where you guys are.

I say: How can you not know where I am?

I have been so explicit, and I am transparent. Everybody knows where Biggs is because Biggs doesn't keep his mouth shut.

This is where we need to be. We need to be telling the truth. The American people need to understand clearly what is about to happen to them. What is about to happen to them is they are going to raise that debt ceiling. Somebody is going to raise the debt ceiling.

The idea that they are talking about now--just so people know--is anywhere from 1.5 to $4 trillion. That is what they are talking about.

They are going to trade it for 10 years with maybe $3.5 to $4 trillion in reductions in savings, net savings--not even net savings, I'm sorry to say that, gross savings.

So over here on that ledger, Mr. Speaker, you have to get $4 trillion over 10 years. But if you raise the debt ceiling by $1.5 to $4 trillion over that year, 18 to 24 months, now extend that out for the rest of that 10-year cycle.

We are not raising the national debt by $24 trillion. We are raising it by $19 trillion.

So we are still hitting 50-plus trillion dollars because we didn't have the courage to make the reductions and the hard choices this year.

My favorite thing to hear around here is that we are going to have a 10-year plan to balance the budget. Mr. Speaker, I could go back and show you from 15 years ago. They still relive that first year over and over again because it is like deja vu.

So this year they are telling everybody: We are going to do a 10-year plan. It is going to be great. We think we can get balanced in 10 years. We are going to have to make some tough decisions.

But next year they will come back and say: We have got a 10-year plan. You have to make some tough decisions.

Two years they will come back and say: We have a 10-year plan.

Do it now. Do it now.

People tell me: You are conflating the budget with the debt ceiling.

Do you know why, Mr. Speaker?

Because I can tell you that if we don't do it now in the debt ceiling, when that budget comes around, you are going to have an omnibus bill. You are going to have an omnibus bill. That is what is going to happen. That may not work, so you get a CR.

Part of the package that HFC put out is that if you end up with a mandatory CR, then you start reducing funding on that. So you never have a government shutdown, which is in some ways too bad, quite frankly.

Then we have also proposed adding the REINS Act. The REINS Act says that before a bureaucratic agency can impose rules on anything that will impact more than--it is $100 million--I think that is way too high. It should be like $10 million, but they are telling me it is $100 million--then we have to bring it back to Congress.

I think that is a great place to start.

Do you know why, Mr. Speaker?

We have delegated our authority to bureaucracy. So we have the bureaucracy out there, and they are making rules. That is the same thing as legislating. They are enforcing the rules. That is the executive branch power. They are adjudicating whether you have committed a violation of the rules and fining you.

In some cases most of the 40,000 crimes that are Federal in nature were created under the rulemaking process.

Mr. Speaker, I am just telling you: Our government is out of control, and our spending is out of control.

Guess what, Mr. Speaker?

If we went back to 2019 levels--which is what we have proposed--if you go back to 2019 levels which nobody would say: Oh, we had too little government in 2019. If you go back to those levels, Mr. Speaker, guess what?

You can pay it because we were spending about $5 trillion, and now we are bringing in about $5 trillion. So let's go back to the 2019 levels, for Pete's sake, and then let's do the rescissions to boot, and let's stop the seemingly endless cycle of a national debt increase.

If we do that, then we stop the imminent bankruptcy of this country, we stop the devaluation of our currency around the world, and we stop the inflationary pressures. Then once we do things like reduce some more taxes, reduce some more regulations, and get some better energy production, then we will, again, be the world's economic leader.

I am just here to tell you, Mr. Speaker, we have got a plan. We presented our plan. I don't think anybody should ever say that Mr. Good, Mr. Rosendale, Mr. Biggs, and the half dozen others or so, that they don't know where we are. I have never voted to raise the debt ceiling. I don't think that is what I was sent here to do, and I am finding it awfully hard to believe that there is any justification for raising it $2 to $4 trillion.

I encourage everyone to understand that we can put an end to this cycle of self-immolation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 9 o'clock and 48 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, April 18, 2023, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Gaetz) for sponsoring this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, there is no legal authority for the U.S. to be involved in the Syrian civil war. There is no authority.

Section 5(c) of the War Powers Act does not say, and I am quoting the chairman now, it does not say, ``without authorization.'' That is not the language. The language says, ``specific statutory authorization.'' You either declare war or you have specific statutory authority.

Do you know what that 2001 AUMF says? It says those who ``aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.'' It doesn't say ``ISIS.'' It doesn't say ``Syria.'' It is talking about the events of 2001, as the gentleman from Florida just referenced.

It is a quaint idea to say we are going to rely on that 2001 AUMF. I thought they were going to say they were relying on the 2002 AUMF. Either way, neither one works. You don't have authority, and you are going to be there and put U.S. soldiers in harm's way. This is a civil war.

One Syrian analyst said this recently: ``Until we see the externals confront each other directly rather than on the Syrian ground, I don't see an actual end to the Syrian conflict.''

Do you know who the externals are? The U.S., the Russians, and Iran. That is the externals, and we have no authority to be one of those externals. The analyst went on to say this is a proxy war. That is what is happening. It is another U.S.-Russia proxy war.

When the Syrian civil war began with protests during the Arab Spring of 2011, U.S. President Obama went to the regime in Syria and said: ``The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in the way. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.''

Is that our objective--regime change? Is that what it is? No. We don't know what the objective is. You can't even define what the exit ramp is.

Assad responded that time by fueling the civil war, the exacerbation of that problem, and it has just grown. Now, you have us with our allies the Turks and our allies the Kurds. They are fighting against each other. They don't want each other.

ISIS, in 2019, was declared to be defeated. Even the inspector general recently said they don't have an ability to cause damage and fear and harm in the homeland.

The result is, in the last 13 years, the U.S. has spent more than $15 billion on humanitarian aid, and we don't even know what we have spent in Department of Defense costs. Do you know why? Because they are grouping it with what is going on in Iraq. We tried to obtain information. How much have we spent? Nobody will tell us.

When General Milley says--by the way, he was the architect of that disastrous Afghanistan retreat, and he is a believer in a ``however long, no matter the cost'' approach in Ukraine. He insists we prolong our involvement in the civil war in Syria in order to help our allies.

General Milley, who are our allies? Is it the Kurds? Is it the Turks? Who is it? Is it the Assad regime?

He can't tell you. No one can tell you.

All of this is being done, though, without legal authority. It is time for us to stop fighting proxy wars. It is time for us not to say next time we will take care of these AUMFs. We have had time. This is the time to get rid of them. I urge us to vote for this.

Mr. Speaker, I have the privilege today of honoring Jack Holder, who passed away on February 24, 2023, at the age of 101.

Jack was a constituent and a U.S. Navy veteran of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Midway, Guadalcanal, and dozens upon dozens of missions in support of the Allied Forces during World War II.

Born Joseph Norman Holder on December 13, 1921, Jack was raised in a farming family in Gunter, Texas. Jack's father served in the trenches of World War I, and his uncle flew crop dusters over the family farm.

With that heritage, it was only natural that combat aviation was a fit for Jack when he joined the U.S. Navy on April 24, 1940, at 18 years old.

Jack attended boot camp and trained as an aviation machinist and mechanic in San Diego. He was then assigned to a flying boat squadron based on Ford Island in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Jack recalled how, soon after he lined up for roll call that fateful Sunday morning, the first bomb was dropped on Pearl Harbor only about 100 yards from him.

He wrote how he heard ``the screaming aircraft with the rising sun insignia and loud explosions,'' and how, ``as I looked up, I saw a plane circle and head straight for us, so we jumped in a nearby ditch.''

Jack never forgot that moment, seeing the face of the pilot, hearing the roar of the plane's engine, and the sight of his guns aimed right at him. Nor did he ever forget the prayer he offered: ``God, don't let me die in this ditch.''

Thankfully, Jack was spared, and that ditch would become a makeshift machine gun nest that he would man for the next 3 days.

After the attack at Pearl Harbor, Jack flew missions in support of Hawaii and Midway. At Midway, Jack's aircraft was the second to spot the Japanese fleet, but his was the first to transmit the fleet's position clearly to the USS Yorktown.

Jack's crew would later fly 48 missions in support of the Solomon Islands campaign, including at Guadalcanal. Jack then transitioned to a Navy variant of the B-24, performing in 56 anti-sub patrols in the English Channel and assisting in sinking a German submarine.

In total, Jack flew over 100 missions and was one of the select few who flew combat missions in both the European and Pacific theaters.

For his brave service, he was twice awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and received six Air Medals, a Presidential citation, and six commendation medals. Jack was honorably discharged in 1948 and would go on to become a pilot and an aviation engineer.

My office honored Jack several years ago at my Salute to Veterans event celebrating Veterans Day. I have heard over the years from constituents and veterans who attended the event that the retelling of Jack's courageous acts during and after the attack on Pearl Harbor formed a lasting impression that will remain in their hearts and minds forever.

Jack, you were more than a constituent. You were a hero, a patriot, and a good friend. You gave so much to preserve this Nation in the face of tyranny. Your love for these United States, our Constitution, and our freedom were an inspiration to so many, and I pray that future generations will appreciate and follow your example.

Fair winds and following seas, my friend. You will never be forgotten.