Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2020

Floor Speech

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Mr. BANKS. Madam Chair, my amendment is simple. It would reduce spending in this division by 14 percent, the amount that is needed to avoid busting the budget caps and preventing sequestration, which would compromise our national security.

This division would spend $1.3 billion more than the 2019 enacted level.

In their quest to spend every taxpayer dollar from this generation and our future generations, my friends on the other side of the aisle have proposed spending packages that in total will bust the budget caps by nearly $90 billion.

While my colleagues may be willing to put national security at risk to fulfill budget-busting policy promises, I will not.

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Mr. BANKS. Madam Chair, we have got to think about the audacity of these claims.

I am not talking in my amendment about cutting any specific program. I am proposing an amendment to cut 14 percent across the board to prevent the excessive spending that we are seeing being proposed from across the aisle that would spend substantially more than what the Federal Government spent in the year before.

Madam Chair, we simply cannot afford this reckless proposal from my friends on the other side of the aisle.

My amendment offers Members a clear choice. If a Member votes ``no,'' that Member supports busting the budget caps and putting our national security at risk due to entering into sequestration, which is inevitable if we pass the spending measures being proposed from across the aisle.

However, by supporting my amendment, Members can show that they support fiscal sanity by honoring the budget caps and protecting our national security.

Madam Chair, I will continue to come back to this microphone over and over and over again and propose this same amendment to each nondefense spending division, because I promised my constituents in northeast Indiana that that is exactly what I would do if they elected me to Congress, that I would fight to reduce spending to rebuild our military and to support fiscal sanity in our Nation, once again, by fighting for balanced budgets and fiscally conservative spending measures.

This amendment fulfills all those promises to my constituents and families in northeast Indiana, and I urge my colleagues to support it.

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

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Mr. BANKS. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

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