Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act, 2024

Floor Speech

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Mr. HILL. Mr. Chair, I rise today to offer an amendment that I hope will garner bipartisan support. I do this with my colleagues on the House Financial Services Committee. Chairman Blaine Luetkemeyer of Missouri is here with me today.

In 2021, Mr. Chair, the Treasury Department approved $650 billion in an allocation of Special Drawing Rights at the International Monetary Fund. That is a bunch of technical words, but in plain English, this means that they were lavishing $650 billion on all the countries of the world with no strings attached.

The Biden administration claims that this allocation is necessary to have the global adequacy of funding in reserves in each of the sovereign countries of the world. In other words, these reserves from the IMF went to healthy countries, countries that don't need the money, like countries in Europe or the United States. Many countries ended up using this IMF money just to pay short-term bills.

Worst of all, this Special Drawing Rights allocation provided billions of dollars of unconditional liquidity to some of the worst regimes in the world: $40 billion went to China; $17 billion went to the Putin regime in Moscow; and Iran, the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, the funder of Hamas, the killer of Israelis on October 7, received $5 billion to boost its reserves.

That is completely at odds with American policy, completely at odds with our sanctions policy against some of the worst regimes in the world.

The amendment we propose today would prohibit the Treasury Department from allocating any more Special Drawing Rights from the IMF to the ayatollahs in Tehran.

Following the October 7 attack by Hamas against our friends in Israel, it would be unacceptable for the IMF to, once again, bolster the reserves of Iran. Money is fungible, and that money goes to Hezbollah and Hamas.

Some of our colleagues might counter that prohibiting more SDRs for Iran means prohibiting them for everybody. That is simply not true.

Mr. Chairman, the IMF has the authority to do special allocations and allocate these Special Drawing Rights reserves to countries of a particular need or concern. We don't have to give this kind of largesse to wealthy countries like the Netherlands or the United States or to rogues like China and Iran.

Some may argue that excluding this is too dramatic and that Treasury itself can designate the whole country as a jurisdiction of primary money laundering concern, and therefore, Iran can't get it.

This administration has already freed up money for Iran in their recent hostage deal. If Treasury really wants to argue that Iran, the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism, should receive more no- strings-attached money, then come to Congress to make the case, but this is significant and should be decided by the elected officials in this body, not agency officials at the Treasury.

Last month's assault on Israel was a clarifying moment for so many people around the world. This amendment sends a unified message: No more money for bad regimes around the world.

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Mr. HILL. Mr. Chair, I don't consider that a very convincing argument on this amendment. This amendment is a good idea to counter a bad policy.

Blanket money for rogue regimes through the IMF, approved by our Treasury Department and encouraged by the Biden administration, is bad.

Voting for this amendment is good. It sends a message to rogue regimes: You don't get a free lunch from the United States of America.

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Mr. HILL. Mr. Chair, may I inquire as to the time remaining.

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Mr. HILL. Mr. Chair, let me say, in conclusion, that this is the Treasury bill. This is the bill that appropriates money for the Treasury.

The Rules Committee made this amendment in order because it concerns spending money at the Treasury for bad ideas. Those on this side of the aisle want to counter terrorism, counter bad ideas, counter profligate spending by the IMF to back up rogue regimes.

Mr. Chair, I encourage all Members who want to counter terrorism, counter rogue regimes, speak up for freedom in Israel, speak up for freedom in Ukraine, speak up for freedom on the island of Taiwan to support this amendment.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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