Smith Floor Remarks on Reckless Spending in Democrat FY22 Minibus

As Prepared for Delivery

Madam Speaker,

We are debating a spending bill under a budget that does not exist. Six months into Joe Biden’s presidency and Congress still has not passed a budget for fiscal year 22.

In fact, Democrats have been in the majority for nearly 1,000 days, and they have failed to pass anything close to a real budget.

In the bill before us today, Democrats want to give Washington bureaucrats an average raise of 21 percent. Their plan will fuel a massive growth in red tape that will harm businesses, raise the cost of living on workers and families, and give Washington more control over our lives.

But notice what they’ve left out.

Where’s money to protect our homeland? Where’s funding for our men and women in uniform?

Perhaps our colleagues have not brought those bills to the floor because they are ashamed to face the American people and explain why they want to flatline our defense budget. Or how, during the worst immigration crisis in 20 years, they don’t want to find an additional dollar for border security.

I suppose this shouldn’t surprise us. Democrats have been very clear about their objectives.

While we’re debating a raise for bureaucrats, the Senate is figuring out how to abuse the budget process to spend at least $3.5 trillion on a socialist agenda – amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants, subsidies for wealthy environmentalists, forcing states to expand Medicaid, and tax increases for working Americans while giving tax breaks for the wealthy.

This is the first year in the last decade without a spending cap agreement and look what’s happening. Without missing a beat, Democrats are opening the flood gates to reckless new spending.

And while they argue over how many trillions to spend, we are just days away from reaching our debt limit.

Democrats have ignored runaway government spending this year and look what is happening – Americans are paying more at the pump and in the checkout line than they have in years.

The debate around our nation’s debt limit provides Congress with the opportunity to seriously address runaway government spending and rising inflation.

But as we see here today, Democrats would rather bypass the budget process and talk about their liberal wish list than the inflation their out-of-control spending has caused.

Watch House Budget Committee Republican Leader Smith’s full remarks here.