Republican Study Committee's Blueprint to Save America

Floor Speech

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Ms. TENNEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Hern of Oklahoma and the Republican Study Committee's Budget Task Force for their diligent work in putting together this year's Republican Study Committee budget. Thank God we have a budget. This important document lays out a road map to restore fiscal sanity in America.

We are in a dire fiscal state. We here in Congress know it, and the American people, more importantly, know it as well. President Biden and Speaker Pelosi's reckless spending has led to 40-year high inflation, proving once again that we simply cannot spend our way to prosperity.

Our national debt has grown by $7 trillion since the COVID pandemic began. Today, it totals more than $30 trillion.

I have a wonderful constituent who puts the debt amount on his building every single day on a main thoroughfare, a guy named Frank Suits, who is a great American. He puts it out there just so the people know how much we are spending and how this isn't making us prosperous, especially in New York.

This is larger than our gross domestic product. In the face of this sobering reality, what does President Biden propose? Spending even more. His proposed budget increases spending by over 66 percent over 10 years and calls for $73 trillion--with a t--in new spending. Under President Biden's plan, the United States will reach the highest sustained spending limit in our Nation's history.

This is not how we jump-start an economy, control runaway inflation, and deliver for the American people. The budget proposed by the Republican Study Committee takes a different approach. It focuses on reining in wasteful spending, balancing our budget for once, and helping those in need while living within our means and focusing on balancing the budget within 7 years.

The Republican Study Committee budget also includes a bill I introduced, the Transparency and COVID-19 Expenditures Act. This important legislation would require a full audit of and report on Federal spending during the pandemic. With countless reports of fraud, waste, and abuse, Americans have a right to know how their tax dollars are being spent, how they were spent, and if they were spent the way they were intended.

Mr. Speaker, I am honored that this bill is included in the Republican Study Committee budget, further demonstrating the Republican Study Committee's commitment to transparency, accountability, fiscal responsibility, and just plain good governance.

Inflation in the United States continues to outpace much of the developed world. It is clear to me and to the American people that this isn't Putin's price hike. It is Biden's price hike.

Rather than doubling down on failed policies of the past and spending even more of your money, our money, it is time for Congress to turn around this ship, restore fiscal sanity to Washington, and put our Nation back on a path to economic prosperity.

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to Congressman Hern for his leadership and especially his leadership on energy. What a lot of people don't realize about New York State is we have among the richest shale reserves, the Marcellus and Utica Shale, that we can't touch because of New York's failed policies.

We could bring economic prosperity. We could bring national security, energy security, to our Nation just from New York State and really just bring our State around. That is something that we are fighting in New York.

We hope with your leadership out in Oklahoma and across this Nation, working with the Republican Study Committee members, which I am so proud to be part of this great group, that we finally have a budget. We are putting out a plan. We are telling the American people that we have a plan, and we have a plan to win. We will make sure that the American people come back and that America sees the greatness it once had.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Hern for doing these Special Orders, for highlighting this plan, for taking a leading role. We are grateful, and we certainly could use a dose of prosperity in upstate New York.

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