Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024

Floor Speech

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Mr. ARRINGTON. Mr. Chair, I am grateful to my appropriator colleagues for rightsizing the bureaucracy and reining in the wasteful and unnecessary spending after this government grew 40 percent during COVID. The taxpayers deserve fiduciaries who spend their money like it was our money. That is really the prevailing philosophy we should all embrace. I, again, commend the appropriators for the painstaking efforts to rein this in.

I support the bill, but I highlight in an amendment one of the most egregious and largest wasteful spending categories, and that is improper payments. The Federal Government wastefully and fraudulently spends taxpayer money at an alarming rate. In 2021, it was almost $300 billion. Last year, it was $245 billion.

Mr. Chairman, that is money you could spend on a soldier or a sailor or on a safety net or infrastructure. It is going nowhere. It is larger than the Departments of Energy, Commerce, and Justice. It is a third of our defense spending.

The VA is not the only problem. It is pervasive. At the VA, there is a long-term care category that has an improper payment rate of 47 percent. Think about that. Almost 50 cents on every dollar is wasted in this program. It is unconscionable, Mr. Chairman.

If you look across the board, the earned income tax credit, 30 cents on every dollar wasted, $18 billion. The Medicaid program wasted $80 billion last year. The child tax credit wasted $5 billion. The list goes on. If we are going to rein in spending, if we are going to save the country from a debt crisis, we have got to get our fiscal house in order and focus on improper payments. It is not right.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Lois Frankel), a fierce advocate for our communities' veterans and a member of the Appropriations Committee.

Ms. LOIS FRANKEL of Florida. Mr. Chair, well, my, my, my, here we go again. The Republican attacks on access to legal abortion never end. Today, the target is women veterans, women who left their loved ones, trained hard, sometimes risked their lives to stand up for our freedom, and now it is time to stand up for theirs.

All women should have the freedom to make their own personal decision about when or whether to start or grow a family. This bill would undermine the current Biden policy that allows VA medical centers to provide an abortion when the life or the health of the pregnant veteran is in danger.

Republicans are willing to force women to wait until they are on death's door to receive the healthcare that they need. Really? This is how we thank veterans for their service?

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this bill.

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