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Floor Speech

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Mr. LEE. Mr. President, yesterday at about this same time, I came to the floor, and I made three predictions. Even though not a single Member of this body had seen the full text of the thousand-page spending bill that we received just after 2:30 a.m. this morning, I predicted three things about that bill. I predicted that it would, No. 1, be full of corrupting earmarks--well, the bill has nearly 1,400 earmarks, and 138 pages of the more than thousand pages in this bill are dedicated to earmarks alone; two, that it wouldn't force Biden to secure the border--well, it doesn't; and three, that it would perpetuate massive deficits--it does. I really hate to say, ``I told you so.''

It is now Thursday, a little less than 48 hours before the funding deadline, and we received the 1,012-page bill at 2:30 in the morning. We are told that the only way we can avoid a shutdown is to vote for a thousand-page bill negotiated in secret and put forward at the last minute by the law firm of Schumer, McConnell, Johnson, and Jeffries.

With a little less than 48 hours on the clock, we can be sure that there will be no time to read the text, to vet it with our staffs and our constituents, to debate the bill and offer amendments to improve the bill. Regardless of what State we come from or what party we are a part of, this is not what our constituents, our voters, sent us to Washington to do.

These bills--massive legislative undertakings that bundle most of the Federal Government's funding into a single package--have become synonymous with legislative manipulation because that is precisely what they are.

The firm's modus operandi involves crafting these omnibus bills behind closed doors, with only a select group of appropriators contributing to their formulation.

Now, by design, the bills are unveiled to the public and to most of Congress with barely any time to spare before a potential government shutdown. This strategic timing, arranged by the firm and often arranged right before a long-scheduled recess or holiday, ensures the bill passes with minimal scrutiny and little or no meaningful opportunity for amendment or debate. It is a charade, occasionally softened by allowing a few votes here and there on a few token amendments. But make no mistake, the firm wields its enormous influence to ensure that no substantial changes are made that would threaten, as they perceive it, the sanctity of their original drafts.

Members are cornered into a false dichotomy, arranged and contrived entirely by the firm: Pass the bill--unread, undebated, unamended--or face the chaos and public ire of a government shutdown. Thus, the individual voices of the people's elected lawmakers in Washington and, by extension, the will of the American people--those who elected us to come here--are diluted in a process dominated by the few at the expense of the many.

This is exactly the type of dichotomy we tried to avoid when we passed a CR in November of last year. We extended the deadline into the new year. We established two separate funding deadlines into January and February specifically to avoid the dreaded Christmas omnibus, when the firm historically drops a bill just as we are planning to all leave and spend the holidays with our families.

By avoiding the Christmas crunch for the first time in a very long time, that CR was intended to give us the time to properly debate, amend, and ensure that all of the people's elected lawmakers in Washington engaged in a fair and transparent process. But now, we are in the very scenario we tried so hard to avoid, with a massive bill just before a recess, just before the Easter holiday. So what happened? What happened? How are we in the exact same spot we found ourselves in just a few months ago that we worked so hard to avoid and we promised we would avoid?

Today, with just over 48 hours before the government runs out of funding, this body once again throws American taxpayers and our voters under the bus, forsaking fiscal sanity. In so doing, they oppose measures that the vast majority of Americans support--measures that Republicans fought to include in this legislation, which were overwhelmingly rejected by just a handful of Members, so overwhelmingly supported by voters and overwhelmingly rejected by a narrow sliver of Members of this and the other body.

Those measures would have, among other things, banned the use of funds to implement Green New Deal-related policies that have been overfunded over the last few years; blocked funds for racist DEI programs across the Department of Defense and the intelligence community Agencies; prohibited the use of funds for bureaucrats to label free speech that they happen to disagree with as ``misinformation''; measures to ensure that only the American flag may be flown at all government buildings.

It contains no new funding for a border wall or any of the other core border security elements in H.R. 2, which are so badly needed at this time. Our country is under invasion with the acquiescence of the President of the United States. It contains nothing to stop Biden's invited invasion from happening right now at our southern border.

Instead of securing our border, we are spending millions of taxpayer dollars on radical pet projects that exist to weaken and divide our country culturally and economically--pet projects like $1.8 million for a hospital in Rhode Island that performs abortions, including late-term abortions; $475,000 for an activist organization that has designed curriculum and materials for children ages 2 through 5 to ``introduce the kids in our classroom to a wide variety of gender expressions''; $400,000 for the largest LGBTQ advocacy organization in New Jersey-- their efforts include focusing on what they call transgender student rights, which include letting boys use girls locker rooms and play in girls athletics in high school; $676,000 for an organization that has been actively supportive of Black Lives Matter and painted a BLM mural in front of Cincinnati's city hall in 2020; $2.8 million for an institution that released what they call an ``Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility'' charter in 2020, which stated that ``diversity, inclusion, equity, and accessibility are critical components within the fabric of the institute to excel in basic and applied research, solve complex environmental issues, and advance DRI's mission''; $500,000 for a radical activist organization that hosts training workshops on implicit bias, social inclusion and equity, decolonization, and land acknowledgement; $450,000 for a childcare initiative that is being established to provide childcare for immigrant families.

So instead of securing our border, it appears we are using taxpayer money to create welfare programs for illegal immigrants who have invaded our country. That is because this whole system of government funding is designed to not benefit the vast majority of Americans. It benefits the very architects of these bills--the appropriators, the earmarks, the lobbyists, and the special interests. These entities thrive in the shadows in this process, influencing legislation in ways that serve the architects themselves, often--indeed, always--at the expense of the general public.

Americans are bearing the cost of decisions made without their knowledge or their consent, manifesting in skyrocketing costs of living and a staggering national debt now exceeding $34 trillion. Not only do they not have a say in this process, those they elected to have a say in this very same process are excluded, and that is wrong.

We must dismantle this corrupt process and restore once again transparency and accountability to the way we fund our government. The process behind what we expect from this insulting spending bill is a disgrace, and let history show that a few of us stood up and said no.

This is not the way. What we need is a short-term CR--a continuing resolution--through April 12 to give lawmakers time to review, debate, and amend the bill. Even if by some twist of fate, even if by some gift by God, you are able to discern every single word in this bill and you digested it over the last few hours and you still love the bill, you should acknowledge that most Members--I would say all--lack that capacity and therefore deserve the opportunity, whether you love the bill or hate the bill at the end of the day, to fully review it, vet it with constituents, debate it, and, yes, offer amendments at a meaningful window of opportunity.

Voting for this bill is voting in favor of massive, bloated deficits that are crippling America and making life unaffordable, corrupting earmarks, and funding Biden's border invasion. So I invite my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join in fighting for fiscal responsibility and the best interests of the American families we are supposed to represent in Washington--after all, they elected us--because we are certainly not doing that now.

To that end, I offered up a solution. Again, whether you love this bill or hate it after reviewing it, which will take some time, you should still want it to be adequately vetted first.

235, H.R. 4364; I further ask that the Lee amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to, the bill as amended be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

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Mr. LEE. I will sit down in a moment to let my friend and colleague Joe Manchin speak.

I want to point out for a moment a couple of things. My friend and colleague from the State of Washington is objecting to this measure that would allow all Members adequate time to review the bill and to vet it with constituents and debate it and discuss it and amend it on the floor. She said that we have to get a move on; the government has been on autopilot, meaning under a continuing resolution for too long. True. Absolutely true.

But I find it stunning the suggestion that she is saying now that time is of the essence. Now, we didn't have the bill yesterday or the day before or the day before or the day before that when we were promised the bill. We didn't have it. We have it now.

She identified the precise moment in history--the precise moment in 2024--when we can no longer move forward for another day. We have to get a move on right, right now. They are the only ones who know this.

She also says it is bipartisan, bicameral; that it is a carefully negotiated agreement. That is great. That small handful of people who actually saw this bill and were involved in its final formulation, I am sure, will find that very comforting. For the rest of us who didn't see it until 2:30 a.m. this morning and the 330 million Americans out there who will have to pay for this stuff, that is not adequate notice. That is not a carefully negotiated agreement. That is collusion among the few affecting the many adversely.

I find this very, very disturbing that we couldn't get the American people and their elected representatives a few more days so that they can understand what is in there. It begs the question, What are they hiding?

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