Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act, 2024

Floor Speech

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

Mr. Chair, I rise to address the Biden administration's reckless decision to use taxpayer dollars to purchase weapons and ammunition for the IRS, which is a tax collection agency.

Last year, the American people were shocked to learn that the Biden administration was providing billions of dollars to the IRS to hire 80,000 new agents, whose job it will be to go after hardworking, middle-class Americans.

The IRS should be focused on assisting our constituents with tax compliance and ensuring Americans receive their entitled refund, not focusing on arming its agents with the aim of further extorting the American taxpayer.

The majority of Americans don't trust the government to be good stewards of their tax dollars. Arming the IRS certainly will not inspire new hope in our system.

Let me make one thing clear. Washington does not have a tax collection problem. It has a spending problem.

By disarming our tax collectors, this amendment offers us an opportunity to refocus the image of the IRS and restore faith in our government. After all, under President Biden, our agencies have been weaponized enough.

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Mrs. HARSHBARGER. Mr. Chairman, I understand why the IRS criminal investigation agents carry weapons. I am looking at a 2019 report where it was reported that by the end of 2017 the IRS already had 4,487 guns and over 5 million rounds of ammunition. I don't know what they need that for.

When we have more agents carrying weapons than we do marines carrying weapons, that is a problem.

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Mrs. HARSHBARGER. Mr. Chairman, the last thing I heard is that we have a couple people who haven't paid taxes. Hunter Biden is one, and more than likely so is President Biden. The IRS should not be the agency that goes after criminals. That is an agency called the FBI.

If they want to enforce the border with guns, then go after the 8 million plus illegals that are coming across the border and also the known terrorists that we have in this country.

Mr. Chairman, this is my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mrs. HARSHBARGER. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
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Mrs. HARSHBARGER. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to urge my colleagues to support my commonsense amendment which would defund and effectively eliminate the Biden administration's pro-abortion and pro-transgender policy council which is housed in the Executive Office of the President. The Biden administration has declared war on science, basic biology, and the concept of gender.

The American taxpayer should not be funding an office in the White House that is dedicated to spreading this administration's woke DEI agenda. Americans should know what DEI really stands for: division, exclusion, and indoctrination.

Through various directives such as the Department of Education, President Biden has made it abundantly clear that his priorities are not promoting the policies that benefit the majority of Americans but are promoting an extreme agenda.

They are forcing our daughters to compete against biological males in sports, forcing young women to share locker rooms and bathrooms with men, and launching pressure campaigns to encourage minors to take life altering hormones or undergo experimental surgeries.

One must ask: Why are we promoting these radical policies, and why is the taxpayer funding it?

The White House Gender Policy Council's executive director wants to lecture Americans, specifically our children, about her belief that racism and sexism are somehow built into our health system. The White House Gender Policy Council exists in a White House that is incapable of defining what a woman is.

This amendment is as much about curbing wasteful and unnecessary government spending and being good stewards of taxpayer money as it is about putting an end to the Biden administration's far left ideology being forced on Americans and their children.

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Mrs. HARSHBARGER. Mr. Chairman, I have a question as to why we even have a gender policy council when that authority should fall under the Department of Health and Human Services under Secretary Becerra. I think it is a redundancy that we do not need.

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Mrs. HARSHBARGER. Mr. Chair, nowhere in my remarks did I mention the Hyde amendment. I am talking about a gender policy council that should not exist.

For over 40 years we have had the Hyde amendment in place to where American taxpayer dollars didn't go to fund abortion.

Nowhere did I say that a woman shouldn't have a right to do what she wanted to do, but with the Roe v. Wade reversal, that decision went back to the States where it rightly belonged. In my opinion, over the last 40 to 50 years women have been indoctrinated to think it was a constitutional right to abortion, and it never was.

I am here to set the record straight. It went back to the States where it belongs. All I am trying to say is that we need to get rid of the Gender Policy Council. If they want to put that anywhere, HHS is the Department that it should fall under.

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

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