Providing for Consideration of H.R. Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, Agriculture, Rural Development, Energy and Water Development, Financial Services and General Government, Interior, Environment, Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Act, and for Other Purposes

Floor Speech

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Mr. SMITH of Missouri. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Oklahoma for yielding.

Madam Speaker, we are debating a spending bill under a budget that doesn't exist. Six months into Joe Biden's Presidency and a Democrat- controlled Congress, we have still not passed a budget for fiscal year 2022. In fact, Democrats have been in the majority for over 1,000 days and they have yet to put a real budget on the floor of the House of Representatives.

In this bill before us today, the Democrats want to give Washington bureaucrats an average increase of 21 percent. Their plan will fuel a massive growth in red tape that will harm small businesses. It will hurt working Americans and families, and it gives Washington more control over their lives and livelihoods.

But notice what they have left out.

What they have left out is, where is the money to protect our homeland?

Where is the money for our men and women in uniform?

Perhaps our colleagues have not brought these bills to the floor because they are ashamed to face the American people and explain why they want to flatline spending for our men and women in uniform.

Or how, during the largest and worst immigration crisis of the southern border in years, they refuse to put in one additional dollar to secure our border.

I suppose this shouldn't surprise us. Democrats have been very, very clear about their objectives. While we are debating a raise for bureaucrats, the Senate is figuring out how to abuse the budget process to spend at least $3.5 trillion more on their socialist agenda: amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants; subsidies for wealthy environmentalists; forcing States to expand Medicaid; and tax increases for working Americans while giving tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans.

This is the first year in the last decade without a spending cap agreement and look what is happening. Without missing a beat, the Democrats are opening the floodgates to reckless spending. While they argue over how many trillions to spend, we are just days away from reaching our debt limit. Democrats have ignored runaway government spending this year and look what is happening: Americans are paying more at the pump and in the checkout lines than they have in years.

The debate around our Nation's debt limit provides Congress with the opportunity to seriously address runaway government spending and rising inflation.

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Mr. SMITH of Missouri. But as we are here today, Democrats would rather bypass their budget process and talk about their liberal wish list.

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