Protecting Speech From Government Interference Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chair, I rise to offer Dr. Foxx' amendment to prohibit censorship while acting as an employee performing activities under taxpayer-funded time. We want to prohibit censorship while you are acting as an agent of the Federal Government using taxpayer dollars.

Public-sector unions already make liberal use of the so-called official time policy--in my opinion, to the detriment of the American people. That is not what this is about.

However, it is important to get a context here of how much time we are talking about. Take the Department of the Treasury, which houses the IRS. In fiscal year 2019--going back a few years--employees spent nearly 350,000 hours receiving taxpayer funds while doing and conducting union activities.

I know in our office, especially during the pandemic, we often had to intervene with the IRS on behalf of our constituents who couldn't get their refunds back and couldn't get answers. Yet, 350,000 hours were used by these same people.

Mr. Chair, that is the equivalent of 40 years of time in 1 year conducting union activities. Those are the 350,000 hours that the employees at the IRS are not answering taxpayer inquiries.

Let's look at the Department of Veterans Affairs. VA employees spent over 500,000 hours in 1 year wheeling and dealing for their own union interests while our Nation's veterans stood in line. We have heard about the waiting list and the backlog. I don't know, maybe we can do something with that 500,000 hours, which is 57 years accumulated in 1 year.

We are not here to talk about these excesses. We are here to talk about censorship being conducted while on official government time. That is it.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GOLDMAN of New York. Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment at the desk.

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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chair, just to comment before I yield some time, if the bill is redundant, if this isn't happening anyhow, then you shouldn't be opposed because it will affect no one.

Regarding the 87,000 IRS agents, we are not talking about hiring 87,000 process workers to go through claims. We are talking about 87,000 agents to come to your home to investigate you. That is what we oppose.

We want it to be done efficiently, and maybe if they weren't spending so much time on themselves, they could spend time on the American people.

Mr. Chair, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Comer).

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Mr. PERRY. May I inquire of the time remaining, Mr. Chairman?

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Mr. PERRY. What is awesome, Mr. Chairman, is that finally we can actually have amendments on the floor. We can have debate. Let's face it, as my good friend, my colleague from New York says, he is disappointed that his amendment or some amendment didn't make it through. But for the entire time of Speaker Pelosi's last reign of terror around here where we ran the place like an armed prison camp, there were no amendments on the floor--not one.

The gentleman might not agree with the amendment, he might not agree with the process, but at least the American people's voices are heard because amendments are on the floor now, and we are debating them right now.

This is a good amendment, it is required, and it should be required because we can't have government officials censoring their citizens while using taxpayer dollars to do it.

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

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