Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Chairman, ever since 1835, the rules of the House have forbidden spending money except for purposes authorized by law. Yet last year, the eleven appropriations bills reported out of the House Appropriations Committee contained over $350 billion in spending on unauthorized programs. The rule against unauthorized spending cannot be enforced because it is always waived by the resolutions that bring these appropriations to the floor.

The bill before us today contains $24 billion in such unauthorized spending for programs that have not been reviewed by the authorizing committees since as far back as 1980. That was Jimmy Carter's last year in office.

Now, I am sure that some of these programs are valuable and worthy of taxpayer dollars, but surely, others are not. The fact that they have not been authorized in as much as 35 years ought to warn us to be at least a little more careful about continuing to fund them.

Rather than reviewing our spending decisions and making tough choices about spending priorities, Congress simply rubberstamps these programs out of habit. It is no wonder we are so deeply in debt with so little to show for it. My amendment does not defund these unauthorized programs, as the House rules would require. It simply freezes spending on them at last year's levels.

The cuts contained in this amendment total just $121 million, which is about 0.036 percent of the total spending in this bill.

If year after year, the authorizing committees haven't found these programs worth the time to reauthorize, then maybe that is just nature's way of telling us they aren't worth the money we are shoveling at them either.

It is the proper role of the House of Representatives to control the purse strings of our government. But we do a disservice to our constituents when we allow this kind of spending growth to occur on autopilot, absent any oversight or congressional authorization.

I look forward to the day when Congress will again assert its constitutional prerogative to control Federal spending and enforce its own rules to prohibit spending blindly on unauthorized programs.

However, in the meantime, adopting this amendment will merely freeze the spending in these unauthorized programs, shaving just 0.036 percent of this appropriation. By freezing that spending on unauthorized programs, I hope that will be a small symbolic step toward reclaiming the House's responsibility to act as a watchdog over the Treasury.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Chairman, I can forgive my colleague from Ohio for misstating California's history as she did earlier today, but I cannot excuse her for misstating the recent history that we were all quite familiar with.

I would remind the gentlewoman that this House passed three appropriations bills over to the Senate funding the entire government last year, including a lot of things that we would like to reform, but we agreed to fund all of those spending with one exception.

We asked for a 1-year delay in the train wreck that has become ObamaCare. I think the American people can see that that was a realistic request. Unfortunately, the Senate chose not to act. That is what caused the government to seize up and to shut down.

Now, I also want to correct the gentlelady in her suggestion that, somehow, this is motivated because I don't like energy. I love energy, and I want to see it efficiently researched, and that is best done by the private sector using its own money, rather than politicians using other people's money to reward politically well-connected companies.

I would simply ask the gentlewoman this: If these programs were all so worthwhile, why is it that the authorizing committees have not bothered to reauthorize them in a span of up to 35 years?

I suggest that fact speaks for itself. Until these programs are properly reviewed and reauthorized, all I am asking is we don't keep increasing their budgets; we freeze them until the authorizing committees review them and reauthorize them.

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

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