Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2026

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chair, ranking member, and my good friend, in some ways, this is a budgetary discipline amendment.

The fact of the matter is, we have been doing a project with the Joint Economic Committee for a couple of years now, where we have been going up and down budgets and finding resources, money that has been appropriated that has sat in accounts, sometimes for years and years. My argument is that many of these things I actually don't oppose. You belong appropriating it again. You belong engaging in the budgetary discipline.

If we are truly doing regular order, we should say that this was originally appropriated in 2015. It is clean coal, which is an actual one. The money is still sitting there, since 2015. Maybe we should reexamine it, reappropriate it, or pull it back.

Instead, Mr. Chair, we actually estimate there is over a trillion dollars sitting in accounts.

Mr. Chairman, much of it are things that I like. It is not about liking the appropriation. It is about budgetary discipline of going up and down and reviewing everything because maybe there is a newer, better, and faster way of doing these things. Yet, the fact of the matter is that we play this game where we leave this cash sitting in these accounts and then stack on it and stack on it.

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chair, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chairman, to my appropriator friend, this is the game that we play, and this is where we talk past each other. Can I give an actual example?

Clean coal technology, appropriated August 18, 2015; unobligated balance, $2 million.

In the scale we deal with, when we borrow approximately $6.5 billion every day, we are, right now, burning through about $71,000 to $72,000 a second. That is our borrow.

I actually think I voted for this in 2015, but it is still sitting in the account, unspent. Maybe, if we are doing our jobs, we should go back through and say: Do we still want this? Do we still want to do this?

This is our job. Instead, we are stacking.

Mr. Chairman, I will say it again: We are borrowing close to $72,000 every second. The Joint Economic Committee and our math is that we are going to borrow 7.3 percent of the entire economy this fiscal year, the fiscal year that we are in right now.

When you hear the economists both on the Democratic side and the Republican side running around saying: We should only be borrowing 3 percent, that would mean almost $1.8 trillion of cuts this fiscal year to get to a 3 percent borrow. Most of the borrow, or the vast majority, is interest and healthcare, but we are not allowed to tell the truth about those mechanics.

Is it appropriate to be engaged in stacking? This is something that was appropriated in 2015. It has sat in the account, static, but we are just going to stack on top of it. It is not about the belief that it is good for the country, good for the economy, and good for this. It is the budgetary discipline of: Are we going to tell the truth that we have something that we call ``forgotten funds,'' and it equals billions and billions of dollars sitting in accounts?

If we are going to be adults, be professionals, and do our jobs--I am sorry--every single one of these line items belongs in this budget, being modernized, reviewed, and determined whether it is still needed.

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

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

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