Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2023
Floor Speech
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Mr. WOMACK. Mr. Chair, I thank the ranking member for the time. I would have been here a little bit earlier, but previous commitments kept me from speaking during general debate.
I rise in opposition to this package of appropriations bills. I am the ranking member of the Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee, and I have a great deal of respect for my chairman, Mike Quigley. We work well together. I appreciate the hard work that Mike and his team put in in trying to get a bill that we can come to agreement on.
However, the bill we are debating is packed with unjustifiable spending that ignores the government's unsustainable fiscal trajectory and the historic level of inflation burdening all Americans, and we should be fixing that, not making it worse.
As the pandemic wanes and inflation soars, I was hoping that we could begin reducing spending. Instead, the Financial Services division of this bill increases discretionary spending by over 17 percent.
Many programs in the bill get double-digit percentage increases; some get triple-digit percentage increases. For example, the bill provides:
An increase of 433 percent for election grants;
A 20 percent for the White House;
A 30 percent for the Federal Trade Commission;
A $1 billion increase for the IRS; and
A $1.6 billion increase for GSA.
These increases are unconscionable when considering the U.S.' historically high debt, now in excess of $30 trillion, and inflation over 9 percent. The combination of debt and inflation places a heavy burden on future generations of Americans. We should be fixing that.
There are also several controversial policy changes included in the FSGG division, such as allowing D.C. tax dollars to fund abortions, and removing the prohibitions on Federal employee health benefits funding for abortions. These policy changes are no-goes. They make this bill and minibus, as a whole, dead in the water. They will have to be fixed if we are going to come to some agreement.
We need to continue the longstanding legacy riders and drop the poison pills. And we need a top-line spending agreement that reduces nondefense spending and funds national security at an appropriate level.
But maybe the larger question about this bill has more to do with how we came up with these top-line numbers. We allowed the four corners of leadership to dictate these top-line numbers. They didn't come out after a budget process. And we have a Budget Committee over here whose purpose is, in part, to do that very thing.
But that didn't happen. So we kick out numbers that we won't agree to, wasn't through a budget process where we can define our priorities, the emerging needs of our country, and come to some agreement through a legitimate budget process, but that is not what happened here.
So it is long since time that we stop this process of doing deeming resolutions or burying top-line numbers in rule bills and get back to the process that is laid out for us, and that is to do a budget resolution, House and Senate, to get to some kind of an agreement, and then establish an appropriate appropriation process where we can do these bills individually.
There are 12. We are going to do six today, and then we are going to do six later, but we ought to be doing them individually, and we ought to give the Members of Congress an opportunity--because it is our Article I responsibility. We need to be giving the Members of Congress the ability to have input on these bills and not just let the four corners of leadership decide what we are going to do or what we are not going to do.
So while I oppose this package in its current form, I do look forward to working with my friend Mike Quigley on a bipartisan compromise, at least on the FSGG side, and then perhaps we can do that for the 12 bills completely and then get about the business of funding the government, which is part of our fundamental responsibility.
Mr. Chair, I appreciate the Madam Ranking Member yielding time. Amendments En Bloc No. 1 Offered by Ms. DeLauro of Connecticut
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