Reflecting on Impact of Illegal Action in Venezuela

Floor Speech

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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, this past weekend, I prayed, and thanks to God for saving the lives of every single one of our precious soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and intelligence officers who were deployed secretly to Venezuela by the President of the United States without consent of Congress.

Importantly, this operation was planned and executed in violation of the United States Constitution, Article I, Section 9, Clause 7: ``No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law.'' That clause also requires publication of all publicly expended money, funds.

None of that came to Congress, even in some of the most sequestered private meetings--nothing, no information, no support.

This military operation expended billions upon billions of U.S. taxpayer funds. The prior speaker, Congressman Schweikert, talked about the deficit going up. Well, where did the money that was not appropriated come from?

No one could be more grateful than I that our valiant combat teams all came home safely. Without question, because of funds that have been provided over the years, their readiness and performance resulted in their safe return. However, the commanding officials who are responsible for their deployment have not responded to requests by Congress to report from which accounts the money was withdrawn-- billions and billions of dollars, for almost 6 months--for the deployment and actions in the Gulf and Atlantic theater.

The Trump administration has failed to account for the funds that they have expended. Commanding officers and administration appointees have withdrawn billions and billions of dollars from the U.S. Treasury, from our taxpayers, without legal authority, as constitutionally required. For this, the executive branch and those who are in charge must be held accountable. That day will come.

The draw down of billions of Federal taxpayer dollars to conduct these military operations has been expended without a vote of Congress, nor even a notification. I can attest the administration has failed, despite two requests I have made in public and private meetings with the highest level of Department of Defense officials and this administration, to provide the Committee on Appropriations of both Chambers of Congress the details of which accounts were drawn down and how much will it be to carry out these costly continuing operations. Tonight, for a third time, I place on the public record asking the U.S. Department of Defense: What funds have been expended in years 2025 and are being expended currently, and from which specific accounts, and are projected to be expended from which accounts in this year of 2026 in the Venezuelan operations.

Billions and billions and billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent and are being spent in the Gulf and Atlantic theater for these operations since midyear last year. Secretary of State Rubio has claimed the Venezuelan invasion was not a military operation. Do you believe that? He calls it a law enforcement action. Really? Did these funds flow from the Department of Justice? Congress doesn't know. Thousands upon thousands of America's finest have been positioned and missed holidays and family days on dozens of battleships, some lifted in the air and then dispatched to ground action. This operation was much more than a law enforcement action. It was an action of war and regime change in another nation.

This country is powerful enough to do almost everything, but you can't violate the Constitution. That is different.

Can Secretaries Hegseth and Rubio give us examples of other so-called law enforcement actions that have cost U.S. taxpayers billions and billions of dollars? Moreover, this Presidential administration has not legally appropriated a single dollar. Rather, it appears billions and billions of dollars have been expended, some might say illegally transferred and some might say stolen, from other Department of Defense accounts or from executive accounts or from other Federal agencies to conduct these costly Venezuelan operations. From where? So now the simple question: How much did it cost to capture the dictator of Venezuela, Maduro, and his wife?

I ask, Mr. President, how much money and exactly from which accounts? Give me the specific numbers and accounting titles from which billions and billions of America's taxpayer funds were transferred. These shorted accounts are going to have to be refinanced. How and when?

Secretary Hegseth, Secretary Rubio and perhaps OMB Director Russell Vought, their chief budget manager, it is your sworn constitutional duty to provide the American people which Defense or other Federal department and agency accounts have been shorted because you transferred untold billions of dollars to depose Venezuela's dictator Maduro and his wife.

Do you know that our own citizens can't get through to the Social Security office because you have cut the staffing back so much? Do you have any idea what is actually happening at the local level in this country? No one in this Chamber is a fan of Maduro, and the people of Venezuela have a humongous, difficult task of building their country forward now, but why behave deceitfully when you swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States.

Now, based on President Trump's press conference this past weekend, it seems that this lengthy and costly deployment of U.S. military into the Gulf and the Atlantic aims to reclaim very dirty crude oil deposits with out-of-date refineries in Venezuela. How many refineries are there? One? Who formerly owned them? Is it only the former Chevron facility? What is the business plan going forward, starting with how are we going to reimburse the accounts that were raided here?

For the sake of the American people who are footing the big bill for all of this, here is an idea. What if Congress considers a taxpayer recovery fee on every Venezuelan or American energy company that will benefit from the heroism of America's military. How about putting some of that money into military housing, which is a disgrace.

Let's refund it back to our taxpayers in the form of an energy rebate to help them pay their rising utility bills. That is, Congress could mandate that any company that draws up Venezuelan dirty crude oil for their corporate coffers should instead be required to share in the cost of the operation and rebate any profit to the hardworking American taxpayers. The military operations amount to billions of dollars, so any energy company benefiting from the heroism of our military should pay an energy tax refund to U.S. taxpayers. Think about it.

U.S. energy prices are rising and even doubling across Ohio, our Buckeye State, and many other localities across our country due to the rise of data centers. Meanwhile, this administration is cutting off funds for modern energy systems. Wouldn't such a rebate not only be sensible but welcome and impactful for America's households that are seeing rising energy bills every month and rising water utility bills?

Historically, the human lust for crude oil--and Venezuela's crude is very dirty--is legendary. It is a subject about which the American people are going to become even more keenly aware. Why? Because the blood of war and the quest for dirty crude oil are tightly bound. Far too many members of our military have lost their lives to defend the interests of dirty crude. That isn't always in the headlines, but underneath, that is exactly what it is. The Saudi oil kingdom is but one example of the bondage of blood and oil to military dictatorships and war. To gain a sense of it, I recommend a book, ``Sleeping With the Devil'' by Robert Baer. You will learn a lot about blood and war and the sacrifice of the people in our military of this country over several generations.

Over the last three-quarters of a century in particular, the rush and fixation for crude has become a very costly cause of U.S. war deaths across our military forces. Thousands upon thousands of our war dead have been sacrificed in such conflicts for which I will now put figures on the Record.

Over the last century, time and again, in war after war, excepting for World War II, but for the China-Burma-India theater, our most precious U.S. military has rendered hundreds of thousands of selfless Americans, men and women, who have been ordered to battle and sacrificed their lives to gain access to the world's crude oil deposits.

The time for foreign oil conquests should be over. Frankly, America must not live in the past. We must keep inventing. We can't go back. We have got to go forward. Our energy future is right here at home. Over the last 50 years, new American energy sources have been invented. All exist in our homeland, with more to come. I am just so proud of the inventiveness of the American people. The discovery of natural gas in the Utica and Marcellus shale deposits at the border in Ohio and Pennsylvania is absolutely enormous, the largest on our entire continent. We are seeing whole communities changed and revitalized because of this. That was only made possible by the Department of Energy's invention of fracking technology since President Jimmy Carter first founded the Department when he was President of the United States in the 1970s. Ohio's nuclear industrialized north is being positioned to grow through fundamental modernization. That can't come soon enough for me. We have got to replace our 50-year-old nuclear power plants across this country.

Our objective must be to make America energy independent here at home in perpetuity. Our military has gone to war too many times in the last century to engage in wars in oil-rich places.

How President Trump is going to run Venezuela remains a mystery. My concern remains how much is this going to cost the taxpayers of our country. He has already expended billions, without the approval of Congress, to decapitate the corrupt leaders of Venezuela; but the White House can't even tell Congress how much has been expended, nor which accounts their budget director, Russell Vought, moved money out of to cover the billions and billions spent on this Venezuelan operation.

What this administration is carrying out is in clear violation of the appropriations authority of Congress. It is undermining our Constitution under Article I. That is the beginning of the Constitution. I recommend every American go back and look. It puts everyone in danger when you don't follow the law.

Operating dilapidated oil platforms in Venezuela is really not the President's job. That is what he says he is going to do. Now, the President does have responsibility for America's security, and so does Congress, to assure our energy independence, but he is shortchanging many programs across the Federal establishment that would make energy independence in perpetuity a reality.

Our energy portfolio domestically must be balanced and comprehensive, a truly all-of-the-above strategy in order that there be competition not reliance on dirty crude. That day should be over. That means continuing progress on renewable energy systems like modern nuclear, green hydrogen, fusion, biofuels, solar, hydroelectric, geothermal, and capturing thermal waste heat. Though the President does not like wind power, in some remote and coastal locations they do make sense.

The administration's Venezuela obsession is going to prove to be, I am sad to say, very expensive. Whatever happens will also take time. Forces of sabotage may lurk in an impoverished nation of over 30 million people, and its institutions are run down. Is the Trump administration assuming the task of nation building? That could add billions and even trillions to our debt.

When I asked Secretary Hegseth how many billions of dollars the Venezuelan operation had cost us in the United States to date, I asked where the unappropriated funds had come from. He rather dismissively blew me off and stated: From the general accounts. Mr. Speaker, there is no such thing. I asked that he identify the specific accounts at the Department of Defense from which he diverted funds to pay for this operation. He did not reply.

For example, I have been told military housing has been shorted to spend billions on military action. Secretary Hegseth then had a second thought. He said: Call my office. I asked him directly with whom in his office should I speak, and he replied: Anyone. Mr. Speaker, I am from the working class town of Toledo, Ohio. We understand a dodge when we hear one. I then reasked the question yesterday in a bipartisan convening here in the Congress: From which accounts, Mr. Secretary, were funds diverted to pay for the billions of dollars being expended in the Gulf and Atlantic theater. Again, he dodged and refused to answer.

The Secretary of State calls this Venezuelan deployment ``a law enforcement action.'' I have never seen--and please anyone listening to this, if you have seen a law enforcement action that has cost multiple billions of dollars, please let me know. Call my office.

The briefings we received before Christmas were hollow, and as we know now, totally misleading. The bipartisan briefing yesterday described the operation but not the costs.

Again I ask: Name the accounts exactly from which billions of dollars have been diverted to pay all the expenses of this major continuing military operation? Is the administration going to hire mercenaries in the next several months? If so, exactly from which accounts and which companies?

I would prefer any funds be rebated to our American people for the rapidly rising costs of energy because of the emergence of AI and data centers. The operation executed by our military that the administration has just perpetrated is not a law enforcement action by any stretch of reasonable consideration. It is an act of war and occupation.

Are funds being taken from our nuclear Navy shipbuilding program which is already 2 years behind schedule? Are funds being subtracted from cybersecurity accounts that are so essential to national security and our future? What about military housing, which I mentioned for servicemembers and their families all across this country and world, or how about the healthcare of those who have served in theater?

I can guarantee this: There aren't enough people at the Veterans Administration to answer the phones when our vets call in and ask for appointments because they are being shorted on doctors and nurses. The thousands of people they need to hire that Elon Musk erased from Federal employment, that is un-American.

The American people have an absolute right to know account by account how much this U.S.-Venezuela military oil operation has cost over the last several months. Rebuilding Venezuela is not the top priority for the people of the district I represent in northwestern Ohio.

While we observe billions being spent in Latin America for oil, the Trump administration has just canceled millions of dollars to Ohio manufacturers who were hoping to make their operations more energy efficient to compete with China and other countries around the world who compete so unfairly.

Those projects to manufacturing companies in Ohio have been halted by the administration over the course of the last year and then just again before the holidays. The U.S. Department of Commerce, for example, canceled all Federal assistance for manufacturing extension long relied upon in Ohio and across our country, especially in manufacturing areas that were depleted after the passage of NAFTA to help spur business extensions for small- and medium-sized manufacturers.

When we get the tax refunds from oil that is going to be spent in Venezuela, let's help some of these companies that need to build the future for our communities.

The question must be asked: Why does the administration expend billions for capturing dirty, defunct crude refineries in a foreign country, rather than investing in the future of American companies right here at home?

The American people deserve an answer. This is not a small amount of money. They deserve transparency by the Trump administration.

I lived through the first Arab oil embargo of this country as our people endured the great harm it caused. Our Nation should not be funding recovery of defunct, dirty crude oil companies in foreign nations, rather, investment is needed here not just in our northwestern Ohio district but nationwide to modernize and advance modern energy systems.

Our grid needs modernization across our Nation. Why? The poor condition of the existing grid and the recent doubling of electric bills across our region due to a surge of data centers consumes massive amounts of power. Our grid is old. All over the country we must focus on building new energy systems at the cutting edge of American technology. Dirty Venezuelan crude is not the answer. We can't live in the past.

America needs investment in new, diversified energy platforms, in green hydrogen, in modern nuclear. I know our young people will do this. I just know they are going to grow into this, in natural gas applications and advanced biofuels, more powerful thin film energy arrays, including solar, thermal heat recovery, fusion, advanced batteries. Our region has oil refineries whose platforms have been made cleaner. They need help in dealing with RINs inside our own Nation. Why not help them?

Nuclear power plants in our region of Ohio are over a half century old. We don't need old nuclear, we need modern, safer nuclear. We need the President's help to modernize Ohio's Nuclear North with a new grid. Our industrial corridor produces heavy truck and car platforms, steel, strategic metals, cryogenic hydrogen, biofuels, renewable fuels, natural gas, advanced solar, and nuclear power. I would like the President to take as much money as he just spent in the Gulf on this Venezuelan operation and modernize the electric grid across the Great Lakes region that I represent. There is enough money in that to cover other areas of the country.

America should be excelling in new grid replacement and creating jobs, but guess what, Mr. Speaker, we are very, very far behind.

The people of my region work in manufacturing. They work in steel. They work in strategic materials. We prefer not to import steel here. We make it. We build cars. We prefer not to import. We build tanks. We can't import our defense industry base. We must build it. That is what we do. Our region operates among the top 10 finest National Guard F-16 Fighter Wings in this whole Nation. Mr. Speaker, 20 years ago our, pilots flew the first biofueled F-16 aircraft out of a major base in our country.

We grow crops for biofuels right where we live, and those fuels went into those planes. We don't import it.

Our military is looking for more renewable fuels. The American people and our military need domestic energy investment in our country, not Venezuela. We need jobs here, not in penny-wage havens.

It is clear that the President deployed the U.S. Navy to the Gulf and the Atlantic to take over Venezuela's oil industry. Both China and Vladimir Putin's close relations with Venezuela have been a regional concern, but we don't need to take over old, broken-down former platforms for oil to block Putin. We just place further financial sanctions on Russia, which could happen in this House Chamber with two more Members signing discharge petition No. 8 at the Clerk's desk in this Chamber. We need only two more signatures to get it across the finish line to put more sanctions on Russia. That would make a big difference.

President John F. Kennedy, a Navy man and the only President ever awarded the Purple Heart, understood exactly what to do when faced with the Cuban Missile Crisis perpetrated by Communist Russia one-half century ago. He blockaded the region.

This country has the strongest defense ever known to humankind. We can protect ourselves if we are smart enough to do it, but we can't do it without investments in this country to make our companies stronger.

The President of the United States should not seek to run foreign countries' oil companies.

What is morally troubling is that the President sought $1 billion in campaign donations from major oil and gas interests. He should reflect on our Nation learning a hard, painful lesson from our decades-long presence in long conflicts that dragged on. Tutoring other governments to make them work is a deep, dangerous, and expensive hole that is being dug by this administration. The American people don't want to go down this path anymore.

Our primary job must be to defend our country against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That means being strong inside our own borders. It means abiding by the rule of law and our Constitution. We had best focus on the future right here in the USA, abide by our country and the rule of law, and strengthen our ties with other proven democracies of the world. That alliance is our insurance in war. America must not be sucked down into unstable situations.

The lingering challenge of our own future energy security here at home is real. The solution demands the brilliance of invention inside our own borders, and we must never tie our future to imports or foreign crude.

The good news is that our citizens and inventors have been busy inventing our new energy future inside our borders right here at home.

Mr. President, if your staff allows you to watch this speech, I personally invite you to join me with members of our American energy team. We will show you the new energy future that is developing right here inside our own Nation. They have you captured down there in Mar-a- Lago. There is a lot bigger country to see.

Our nuclear Navy is the best in the world. Their work matters. They are behind. We need your help. We are on the horizon of advanced nuclear. We need your help.

Our farmers, too, have figured out how to grow a range of biofuels. One-half of their crop now goes into fuel. Come. Meet them. Your tariffs limit their global reach, even as their role in new energy fuels is huge.

Our water and wastewater utilities are beginning to capture vast amounts of geo-power in a way prior generations have never even imagined possible. Building materials inventors are creating more energy-efficient windows, better siding and materials for construction, better roofing, and better batteries. So many power options like green hydrogen await on the horizon.

Why would any wise leader handcuff their nation to imported and dirty foreign crude dependency?

I have devoted a major share of my career to helping America regain its energy independence in perpetuity across all sectors of energy. That keeps it competitive.

Our domestic deposits of oil and natural gas must be used judiciously. We are now the largest exporter of oil in the world. We will not be the last generation, however, to populate this country, and we cannot live in the past. We must live in the future.

In the last century, and even this one, America often headed to war for oil interests. Our soldiers fought unending battles in godforsaken places anchored to dirty crude. We even had to pass legislation here in Congress that began in my district to create the toxic exposure fund, the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act, to allow treatment for the toxins our vets who fought in the Middle East and Vietnam endured as their health failed. No member of our military should ever die for dirty crude.

Folks, what a pity it would be if the Trump Presidency went down in history as taking American progress backward on energy independence. That hangs in the balance.

Just in my lifetime, here is a summary of U.S. military personnel who died in foreign conflicts where crude oil interests underpinned the surface warfare. I say no more.

World War II, in the 1940s, during World War II, our Uncle Tony was deployed by the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, to the China- Burma-India theater. He served as an Army parachutist and truck driver--he was so brave--under command of General Vinegar Joe Stilwell. Fighting off Japanese regulars in bitter combat, our uncle was part of an elite unit building the Burma Road. His dangerous mission helped stop the flow of oil to Japan from the surrounding oil-rich East Asian deep-sea crude oil deposits. Again, control of oil was central to warfare. Today, the former Burma Road that he helped build is a major corridor for China's Belt and Road Initiative. Pay attention, folks, to oil.

In the Korean war, 1950 to 1953, we lost 36,000 U.S. troops, 36,000 U.S. war dead. It was the second most deadly war of the Cold War, which was undeclared by a gutless Congress involved in the North Korean People's Army that invaded South Korea in an attack along the 38th parallel, the dividing line between Communist North Korea and the Democratic Republic of South Korea. Again, the war occurred along the Korean Peninsula, which still remains divided but which accesses oil from multiple fields along the eastern rims of both nations. Today, South Korea does not produce oil, but it has the fifth largest refining capacity in the world after the U.S., China, Russia, and India.

In Vietnam, over 58,280 conscripted U.S. troops died near the Chinese border in an undeclared war by another gutless Congress. More than 60,000 more Vietnam veterans died when they returned home by their own hand.

Mr. Speaker, they were and are America's patriots, drafted and sent to that horrible war by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson from the oil rich State of Texas. Thousands of conscripted U.S. soldiers were unloaded off ships to fight in that undeclared conflict. Many deboarded vessels, as they viewed and reported huge oil derricks operating in the South China Sea ringing the coasts of Vietnam, and adjacent countries. Many came home from that confusing deployment wondering what they had fought for and against. Records indicate oil drilling in the South China waters continues until today. Oil and gas companies in Vietnam made huge profits in 2025.

Kuwait Gulf War--1991--147 U.S. War Dead:

About a decade later came the Gulf War. U.S. troops were deployed to save the Royal Kingdom's dirty crude oil for the monarchy of Kuwait. Republican President George Herbert Walker Bush of Texas was buddies with the Saudi Family and its lobbyists and the Kuwaiti and Saudi royalty. Together they mobilized the U.S. military and other nations to push neighboring Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein back into Kuwait's border. Hussein's objective was to steal from Kuwait's crude oil fields which extended across the adjoining borders of Kuwait and Iraq. The Coalition of the Willing Forces rolled back Saddam's forces inside his own borders. When I landed in Kuwait during the Iraq War that came two decades later, I entered the headquarters complex of the U.S. military command. It was huge. It looked like a massive Mission Control for a U.S. space launch. Video screens, hundreds of employees, and a full color, smiling portrait of former President and oil man George Bush Senior--probably 5 feet by 6 feet plastered on the wall of the secure entryway. So, another U.S. President also from Texas supported another crude, dirty oil kingdom war in the complex Middle East political array of undemocratic states.

2001--Iraq War--U.S. War dead--3,481:

Saudi religious dissidents snuck into the U.S. under the tutelage of Saudi religious zealot Osama bin Laden--they highjacked four airplanes and flew those planes into New York City's tallest buildings--the World Trade Towers--the first foreign attack on U.S. soil in American history. Another plane hit the Pentagon and a fourth headed for Washington, DC crashed near Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

In New York City, the demise of the World Trade Center occurred with the first plane crashing into its North tower above the 80th floor. That impact brought down the Cantor Fitzgerald trading company whose President is Howard Lutnick (who today serves as the U.S. Secretary of Commerce). That firm handled Wall Street's major oil trader called e- bond's from the Middle East through its New York World Trade Center offices by denominating them in dollars. It also ran a London Office. Had the London office not existed on 9-11, it is likely the U.S. financial bond markets would have collapsed that day. Chaos would have reigned across our entire financial markets.

By way of history, Ronald Reagan who had served as President from 1981 through 1989--importantly with oil man George Bush Senior of Texas as his Vice President--had negotiated an agreement during his Presidency with the Saudis to dollar denominate all its oil revenue trades, bringing enormous financial benefit to the U.S. financial markets. Moreover, it is important to follow the footsteps of Richard ``Dick'' Cheney, then Secretary of Defense, and late Vice President during the George Bush II Presidency from 2001 to 2009. When he left his position as U.S. Secretary of Defense for George Bush I, he worked for Haliburton company whose purpose is earning money off drilling, and refining dirty crude oil from everywhere in the world. Oil is not liberty. But its presence has impacted liberty throughout modern history. Osama bin Laden was intelligent. He understood the finances of Middle East oil interests. I believe he knew exactly how Cantor Fitzgerald and U.S. bond markets were directly tied to the Middle East kingdoms' stability, and U.S. markets.

History demonstrates our nation has rewarded tens of thousands of American lives for dirty crude oil interests. We should not be sending our sons and daughters to die in Venezuelan jungles so oil companies can squeeze wealth out of that sovereign nation to pad their profit margins, and fill the pockets and bank accounts of the influential president's billionaire buddies, or presidents and financial interests whose top priority is not the American people, nor liberty.

To remain strong and energy independent in perpetuity, the United States of America must continue its steady progress in building competitive modern energy systems forward here in our homeland. May God bless America.

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