Republican Study Committee's Blueprint to Save America
Floor Speech
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Mr. HERN. Mr. Speaker, America is in crisis. Inflation is at its highest in four decades. Drugs, weapons, and all other manner of contraband, along with hundreds of thousands of unvetted migrants, are pouring over our southern border with almost no resistance. Our national debt is over $30 trillion, a sum of money that most people cannot even begin to comprehend.
Suffice to say, the past 18 months of Democratic rule have been a disaster. The American people are sick and tired of their government recklessly spending their tax dollars while families struggle to put food on the table and fill up their gas tanks.
Can you blame them? Families across the country are sitting at home trying to make ends meet while the Federal Government runs around and spends their money like it is going out of style.
President Biden often likes to tout his understanding of kitchen- table economics. However, the so-called budget that the President produced a few months ago never balances and adds trillions of dollars to our national debt over the next 10 years. There isn't a single kitchen table in the country where you can spend more than you make year after year and survive financially.
One of Speaker Pelosi's most famous phrases is: Show me your budget, and I will show you your values. It is plain to see that Democrats care little for financial responsibility and a strong American economy. They won't even draft a budget.
I have been in Congress 4 years, and under Speaker Pelosi's leadership, the Democrats have not created a single budget in the House Budget Committee. If Congress continues down this path, we will add $15.1 trillion to the debt this decade, $24.2 trillion in the 2030s, and $41.8 trillion in the 2040s. These are incomprehensible numbers.
It is long past time to return to a state of fiscal stability. That is where the Republican Study Committee's budget comes in. Our Blueprint to Save America isn't just hyperbole. It is a no-nonsense plan that slashes spending, reduces deficits, and bolsters our economy, all things that the President's budget fails to do.
It is the most pro-life budget that the RSC has ever produced. It ensures the protection of Americans' constitutional rights. It solidifies our national security and secures our southern border. It saves Medicare and Social Security from insolvency.
While the President's budget increases spending to $73 trillion and taxes to $58 trillion, our budget decreases spending by $6.7 trillion, all while balancing in just 7 years. This is exactly what our country needs right now.
Tonight, we are going to hear from the hardworking men and women who helped create this budget and who are committed to putting these policies into action next year.
I thank all the members of the Budget and Spending Task Force for all of their extremely hard work over the past months, as well as Chairman Jim Banks for trusting me with chairing this task force for a second year.
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Mr. HERN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his hard work over the last 6 months to arrive at this budget. It is not a conservative budget; it is an all-of-America budget. It is what all Americans have to do, create a budget.
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Mr. HERN. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Wisconsin for his words.
What you just heard is what most of America experiences in our individual families, our businesses, our cities, and our States. They have to balance their budget. It is hard work. It doesn't know any partisanship. It is constitutional and has to be done.
One of the first, primary things we should be doing as Members of Congress is being good stewards of American taxpayer dollars. But what I fear is that after people have been here for a period of time we lose sight of that. It is not our money; it is the American people's money.
We need to be accountable to that. We need to not be running up $30 trillion debts and another $15 trillion on the horizon with the President's budget, the only Democrat budget that has been put out, that increases the debt to $45 trillion in the next 10 years, assuming he can get $7 trillion in additional taxes out of small businesses and individuals in America by allowing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act's tax cuts to expire.
The American people deserve better. We in Congress need to work hard together.
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Mr. HERN. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend and colleague from Pennsylvania for his words.
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Mr. HERN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arkansas for his words and for his personal knowledge of how the budget is so important to all the American people.
You have heard a lot from my colleagues about pieces of legislation to be included in this budget. Some 203 pieces of legislation by some 82 Members of the Republican Party have been included in this budget to design and develop and produce a balanced budget for all Americans. All Americans sitting at their table, they don't look and see first if they are Democrat or Republican. They don't care about politics when it comes to spending.
Members of Congress talk about how they care about the least of us in our economy across America. If we cared, we would sit down and work together to produce a balanced budget, one like we haven't seen in over 20 years.
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Mr. HERN. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague.
Mr. Speaker, as we look at inflation, and we heard one of my colleagues talk about it earlier, it says it is 8.6 percent inflation caused by excessive spending. We have heard this from many of the past treasurers under the Obama administration. We have heard the current Secretary of the Treasury admit that she got it wrong last year, that excessive spending drove the inflation that we are seeing today.
The problem is that most Americans don't believe the 8.6 percent. I mean when you look at gas prices up over 100 percent since Biden took office. If you look at hot dogs--something as simple as an all-American hot dog--up 64 percent; milk up 32 percent. And the numbers go on and on and on.
The American people are struggling. We can do better. We must do better. We must produce a balanced budget, get it on the floor to have it voted on.
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Mr. HERN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his very poignant words on where America is right now and our ability to, once again, return to energy dominance if we just get out of the way.
We were there some 16 months ago, 18 months ago, and we saw energy prices at the pump at $2.39. All of America needs to hear that: $2.39 until policies of the Biden administration came on the scene. Now, we are over $5 across America, with $6 on the near horizon.
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Mr. HERN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from New York. It is refreshing for all of America to hear that New York cares about America. We hear so many times that nobody cares. It is so refreshing to hear your conservative values about something as simple as a balanced budget.
He is from another State where we always assume that nobody cares about fiscal responsibility in America.
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Mr. HERN. Mr. Speaker, it is 45 percent of the economy in Oklahoma. The Biden administration and the Democrats have made--it is very well- known. The President has said time and time again, and he said it just in the last week, that the high gas prices in America, and that Americans are suffering, are part of the grand transition plan off of fossil fuels to electric vehicles and others.
Yet, in polling, when you ask the young Americans today where they think electricity comes from, the response is the wall, not knowing how electricity is actually generated in our generation plants around the country. The fact that our grid can't even supply what they are proposing to quickly convert our country to, and would destroy economies throughout our Nation, it is really a tragedy to see what has happened.
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Mr. HERN. Mr. Speaker, I had the very great fortune of being introduced to politics by the late Senator Tom Coburn.
When he was running for Senate in 2004, he quickly gained the title of ``Doctor No'' because he was always pushing for responsible spending. He wasn't against spending; he said we just should pay for it. He wasn't against helping people; he said we should just pay for it like you do at home, like you do in your business, like you do in your cities or your States.
He was ridiculed by many Members over his time in the Senate because he always pushed for fiscal conservatism, fiscal responsibility for American taxpayer dollars.
In 2004, when he ran for Senate, and he spoke about this on the campaign trail, the national debt was $7.3 trillion. Here we are, 18 years later, and we are approaching $31 trillion. I would say he understood a little bit about being responsible with taxpayer dollars.
As you just alluded to, there should be no pride in either one of the parties taking this acknowledgment of having a balanced budget. It should be just what we do as Congress.
This should be a nonconversation. We should produce a balanced budget, as we did under Newt Gingrich's leadership. As he just acknowledged this week, it is time for us to return to the era of the 4 years where we had balanced budgets and a divided government, where the House and the Senate were Republicans and the White House was the Democrat.
President Clinton knew it was the right thing to do. He knew that we had to be more responsible for taxpayer dollars and joined up and created a bipartisan budget that lasted until the attack on us in 2001. We have to get back to that.
Our Nation is under attack by the debt load that we are having. The interest on our debt, much of which we will pay to China because that is who we are getting our money from, is overtaking us. In the next 4 years, the spending on our mandatory interest on our debt will surpass what we spend on protecting this great Nation and the support of our men and women in uniform.
As we look at this, I just want to thank my colleagues from California, New York, and across this great Nation who have worked on this issue, not just on this budget and spending task force, but on this issue. The very core of who they are and why they came to Congress was to be responsible to the American taxpayers, not just to the ones who elected them but to all Americans, Democrat, Republican, to be fiscally responsible for their money, their hard-earned money that they make back home. They go to work every day and send tax dollars up to Congress. We have to do better.
The American taxpayers are much more responsible with their dollars in their pockets than we are here in Washington, D.C. We need to return the American taxpayers' dollars back to them. We need to be less on the spending side and more on acknowledging that American taxpayers are smart. They will spend their money in their communities better than we will. That is why we need to rebalance our government.
So as I hear from constituents back home, they are worried that no one in Washington cares about our spending anymore. They are worried that there is no one left--even Republicans--who care about balancing the budget.
Mr. Speaker, I can tell you I do. You heard the Members tonight. You heard my friend from California talk about how he cares. He has cared since he got here, and all the members on the Republican Study Committee care.
Balancing the budget isn't a conservative idea. This isn't a budget just for one party. This budget is our blueprint to save all Americans--all Americans--not just Republicans. We are not excluding Democrats. This is all Americans.
When Congress spends less, the American people have more. That is at the center of what we do, what we are doing, and what we are here to talk about.
I thank everybody, again, for coming and speaking tonight.
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