Fiscal Cliff is Looming

Floor Speech

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Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, yesterday I heard Congressman Mo Brooks from Alabama give a very disturbing speech, but a speech that everyone should hear, and that is: America is headed toward Greece. Financially we are in a bad situation. We are $19.4 trillion in debt.

In 2000 I was here when President Clinton was leaving office. We had a Republican House, a Republican Senate, and we were headed for a surplus. In fact, the debt in 2000 was $5.6 trillion. Today that debt is $19.4 trillion.

The poster I have with me, Mr. Speaker, I used all during August. It is a great political cartoon. It is kind of sad in a way, I guess. The cartoon is this: It has got Uncle Sam in a wheelchair, and Uncle Sam is saying, ``I can see Greece from here,'' and the cliff has got written the words ``fiscal cliff.'' And then who is pushing Uncle Sam but Mr. Obama, and he is saying, ``Forward.'' And who is pushing Mr. Obama? The donkey, representing the Democrats? Who is pushing the donkey? The Republicans, the elephant. What it is saying is both parties are guilty of this debt that is going to strangle this country before very long.

Last week there was an article in Reuters News. The headline was: ``U.S. Army Fudged Its Accounts by Trillions of Dollars, Auditor Finds.'' The auditor said that, in the year 2015, he found that the Army had misappropriated over $6 trillion. I don't know where the outrage is anymore. I have no idea where it is. Six trillion dollars they cannot account for. And yet I hear very little about it from the Department of the Army and very little from leadership in the House of Representatives.

In addition to that, I, for months, and maybe even years now, have been talking about the absolute waste, fraud, and abuse in Afghanistan. It is one of the worst failed policies America has ever had. We are not changing anything.

You go back to Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great went to Afghanistan, or what was known as Afghanistan then. He was going to make it a different part of the world. It failed.

Then you had the British. Winston Churchill was a young reporter and was in Afghanistan in 1920. He wrote and said: What is this country? What is this land? It is impossible.

And then you had the Russians. The Russians went there, and they failed and they left. Now America is spending billions and billions of dollars, and it is failing.

There was an article about 3 months ago, and the title of the article was: ``12 Ways Your Tax Dollars Were Squandered in Afghanistan.'' John Sopko is the inspector general for Afghan Reconstruction. What he said was:

Billions have been squandered on projects that were either useless or substandard, or lost to waste, corruption, and systemic abuse, according to SIGAR's reports.

That is John Sopko's group. They are known as SIGAR. Anyone can look it up on the Internet. They will just verify everything I am saying of just how much waste, fraud, and abuse, and how it is worse today than it was 15 years ago.

I do not understand how we in Congress can be complicit.

Well, what do you mean complicit?

Well, when we pass the bill to fund the Department of Defense, if we know a percentage of that money, billions of dollars, is going to Afghanistan waste, fraud, and abuse, aren't we being complicit? I think so. I started voting against the bills because I don't want to be part of that, quite frankly.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I want to thank Congressman Brooks for coming on this floor yesterday, as I have done many times, to warn not only Congress but the American people that we are going to have a collapse sooner rather than later if we don't change the way that we are spending money here in Washington.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank our men and women in uniform, thank the families of our men and women in uniform, and thank the families who have given a child dying for freedom in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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