Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2025

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BRECHEEN. Mr. Chair, this amendment prohibits the IHS, Indian Health Services, from providing sex change surgeries at their hospitals, clinics, or reimbursing providers who perform those sex change surgeries.

IHS is receiving $5.2 billion in appropriations from the bill we are debating. We cannot allow that money to go toward mutilation of individuals, turning them forever into patients of the pharmaceutical industry. If you don't believe this is happening, look no further than the main website for IHS. It has a host of resources for individuals seeking surgery and guidance for so-called care providers.

Their website tells you how to acquire surgery, how to pay for it, and where to go on the day of surgery. The IHS has the gall to refer to this as ``gender-affirming care,'' which according to them, ``helps transgender and nonbinary people live as their true selves.''

Cutting off healthy body parts and furthering mental instability is not care.

In 2020, a Portland, Oregon, based affiliate of IHS developed a plan to provide sex change surgeries to its patients. It is publicly available online and you can read it. They stated unequivocally their right to provide sex change surgeries to Tribal citizens utilizing Indian Health Services.

As of fiscal year 2024, that group is on its second cohort of individuals being operated on. I am one of, I believe, two Republican Members that carry a CDIB card. I am a member of the Choctaw Nation. I find this practice abhorrent.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BRECHEEN. Mr. Chair, just in closing, this is not a historical practice as it relates to Tribal peoples.

This is a recent cultural fad that defies the face of hundreds of years of established norms. A dark cloud of confusion is gripping this country. It is over our Federal Government. It has led to IHS inflicting this harm on Tribal citizens.

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

Mr. BRECHEEN. Mr. Chair, this amendment reduces funding for the National Endowment for the Arts back to 2019 levels. It is a modest cut at $49 million, an overall cut of less than 0.13 percent of the entire bill.

This leaves $155 million for the program on which to operate. There is nothing inherently wrong with artistic programs, but there is something wrong about continuing to increase Washington's deficit spending on unnecessary programs when our national debt is at $35 trillion and climbing.

This commonsense amendment simply returns us back to pre-COVID spending levels. To help my colleagues understand how bad Washington's spending problem is, the CBO projects a deficit of $1.9 trillion for fiscal year 2025. That will grow to $2.9 trillion in another 10 years by 2034.

This excessive spending is going to drive our national debt to record levels. It is going to exacerbate the inflation crisis that all Americans are feeling. We all know the average family of four is struggling to afford the same goods and services as compared to January 2021, spending $1,300 per month more to afford those goods because of devaluation of their currency. That is $16,000 over the course of a year.

According to Zillow, Americans are also now having to earn $106,000 in order to comfortably afford a home. That is an 80 percent increase from the suggested income of $59,000 just in 2020.

How can we, in good conscience, continue to contribute to the economic crisis being felt around the country because of deficit spending and currency devaluation driving inflation? I ask my colleagues, can we not go back to 2019 spending levels? Was that not enough government?

If Republicans are truly going to be fiscally responsible, each one of us has to check our conscience on what we say and support commonsense amendments that are truly in line with fiscal sanity.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BRECHEEN. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BRECHEEN. Mr. Chair, this amendment reduces funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities back to 2019 levels. Just as with the previous amendment, this is a modest cut of $49 million that represents 0.13 percent of the entire bill, leaving $155 million for the program to operate.

Again, there is nothing inherently wrong with humanities programs, but Congress can't continue to steadily increase programs year after year as we watch our national debt continue to climb.

While this is a small cut, Congress must start cutting. If we are going to fight to make sure that the blessing of liberty is preserved for the next generation, we are going to have to get serious about the things that are absolutely necessary, compared to those things that we have a choice over. If we had taken the time to look at what is happening to us as a country, we have gone from a country that was ascribing to 18 enumerated powers when this grand experiment in self- governance was setup. Those 18 enumerated powers in Article I, Section 8 list out those things that Congress is supposed to be responsible for, and yet it leaves the States programs like this. So as much as I philosophically believe that we are in violation of the 10th Amendment that leaves all these authorities back to the States, I am not going that far.

My hope is to have a tug of war, to pull my colleagues along to my line of thinking to say, if we can't make a determination that our Founders ever intended for the Federal Government to be doing this type of operation, can we at least agree that we can go back to the government that we had in 2019 which since then we have increased total discretionary spending by 30 percent?

We increased discretionary spending by 30 percent during COVID. We increased it with the thought we needed to spend more as a Band-Aid to get through it, but we never returned back to normal. We have a $2 trillion deficit ahead of us.

I am asking, on programs that our Founders listed out and said these are the things you can do, 18 listed, everything else is left to the States--can we not go back to 2019 spending levels?

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

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BRECHEEN. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BRECHEEN. Mr. Chairman, this amendment defunds the self-reported nonpartisan Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. I purposely am using the air quotes for ``nonpartisan'' given what I am about to relay.

This think tank publishes articles and hosts events centered around foreign policy to advise policymakers on how to best tackle global issues. However, the Wilson Center is not nonpartisan. It is a far-left organization dedicated, much like President Wilson, to far-left values around the world.

What do I mean by that? In January 2019, the center hosted an event where they promoted ``safe abortion'' access around the world, claiming that denying abortion is violence.

In June 2021, at an event with White House Press Secretary Jean- Pierre, the center called for, again, ``those in power . . . to understand and advocate for the queer liberation necessary to achieve equity for all genders and sexual orientations.''

They publish articles like this from June 2024 that suggest Europe should accept unfettered mass immigration, claiming that blocking illegal immigration is ``far right.'' They say it is ``far right'' and ``perpetuating harmful stereotypes that are deeply ingrained in European consciousness, fostering fear and hostility.''

Apparently, the Wilson Center considers it to be, again, ``far right,'' their words, to believe in borders and not want your country filled with an infinite number of illegal aliens. The center advances radical ideas like its Maternal Health Initiative, which is dedicated to ensuring countries around the world have access to legal abortion.

This radical group receives $12 million in appropriations from the bill we are debating. Congress must not give to those who are using their nonpartisan purposes for very blatant partisan ends.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BRECHEEN. Mr. Chair, I will end by saying that this is a center that is utilizing taxpayer funds to push an agenda in a very partisan manner. It is very much in opposition to many of the things that many of us believe, and the power of the purse must speak.

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

Mr. BRECHEEN. Mr. Chair, diversity, equity, and inclusion is antimerit. It is designed to exclude people from opportunities they might otherwise receive through merit, but it is replaced by, through DEI, melanin percentage or sexual preference.

America promises equality of opportunity and fair treatment, but we have to ask ourselves: Are we betraying our values by encouraging discrimination against people who have a fairer complexion at the same time?

This amendment adds a commonsense DEI prohibition like others that we have seen in appropriation bills that we have advanced. Each of the departments and agencies we are funding, we see the DEI initiative and the involvement.

For instance, the Department of the Interior has a DEI office and DEI officers who train their staff on how to be racist toward White people. The National Endowment for the Arts has an equity officer, Nicole Phillips, whose job is dedicated to advancing racism. This shouldn't be.

Congress has the power of the purse under Article I, Section 9, Clause 7. We need to exercise it and stop blatant racism.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

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

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source