Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2024

Floor Speech

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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I rise to speak in support of my amendment that cuts $300 million in funding for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. I encourage all of my colleagues to support that.

The fiscal year 2024 Defense Appropriations bill authorizes a total $826.45 billion in new discretionary spending. This figure is $28.71 billion or 3.6 percent more than the fiscal year 2023 enacted level.

Currently, the United States has committed over $113 billion in military, economic, and humanitarian assistance to protect Ukraine's border, but we can't fund our own border to protect our citizens from the fentanyl pouring across our southern border that is killing over 290 Americans daily, and the trafficking that the Mexican cartels are engaging in.

Mr. Chair, I find myself asking this question: How is it that we are willing to send over $100 billion to Ukraine, and in this bill an additional $300 million, but we can't spend the money or find the ability and will to secure our own border?

With no end in sight, we cannot continue to blank-check fund a war when this administration said that we are going to stay there as long as it takes and spend as much as it takes. We don't really know why we are there, but we have morphed into a regime-change objective.

I would ask: What does that regime change look like? How are you going to get there? What is going to be the extent of our participation?

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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, it is interesting to hear that. I appreciate those comments. Explain to me, then, how this administration and our allies have lost contact and cannot provide a full accounting of all of the money we have sent and all the materiel we have sent.

Here is an example of that: When we talk about insufficient oversight of funding going towards Ukraine, the Pentagon has overestimated the value of the weapons it has sent to Ukraine by $6.2 billion over the past 2 years. They have overestimated it.

How have central African nations reported that U.S. materiel has been found in the hands of warlords in their areas, in their own countries, rebellious warlords fighting them with U.S. materiel?

How is it that we have gone from supplying surplus to supplying our own inventory, where our own stocks are going to take in some instances 7 to 10 years to rebuild, to put our own Nation in jeopardy?

The democratic peace theory was debunked 20 years ago, and that is the argument I heard today; basically, the democratic peace theory. That was utterly debunked.

This administration has also provided no explanation on what the objective is, what does it look like. The objective is to stay as long as it takes. What does that mean? Another 20-, 30-year war that we are participating in funding? Not only as long as it takes, but as much as it takes.

We are $33 trillion in debt. Our structural deficit this year is going to be more than $2 trillion. It will be that next year. Our interest cost is $700 billion. Everything we are sending to Ukraine, we are borrowing. It is our children and grandchildren who are effectively paying for this.

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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Crane), a great American.

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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, in closing, our national interests are best rooted in solving our national debt crisis, which has been determined by many national security leaders as being our number one security threat. I urge Congress to adopt this amendment.

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

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