Interview With Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN)

Interview

No, ma 'am. I have not voted for a C.R. I didn't -- continuing resolution. I didn't vote for one under President Trump, and I haven't voted for any in the past.

I think it's just completely throwing away our duties. We have a duty to pass a budget. We have got a Budget Committee. And, for the last, I think, 30 years, though, we haven't even passed a budget. Could you imagine at your church or your synagogue or your temple or your charitable organization or your business or even our states -- all 50 states pass a budget.

Daggone, we can't seem to -- we just don't do it. And part of the reason is, it's easy. And part of the reason is, it hides a lot of things from the public.

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Well, Garret, he's close to the speaker, and I get that. He's a buddy of mine.

But, ma'am, we take in $5 trillion a year, and folks like Garret want to continue spending over $7 trillion a year. I don't know where that ever works anywhere, only in Washington, D.C. And the status quo from East Tennessee -- I know you're a Jersey girl -- hardworking people, ma'am, and they have budgets.

And we ought to get a budget and stick to it.

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But this dysfunctional Washington -- go ahead. I'm sorry, ma'am.

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No, I was just going to say that this dysfunctional Washington cannot continue.

The American public knows what we're up to, and they're sick and tired of it. That's why folks like me, I'm -- we're sticking to our guns. And, all of a sudden, we're the bad guys because we want to balance our budget. I mean, imagine that we have come to Washington, we represent our constituents, we say what we're going to do.

And then we come to Washington and do it. Now, you have folks that come to Washington and say, oh, I'm going to be a fiscal conservative, I'm going to be tough on this, and then they're not.

You close those doors, ma'am, the only color they see is green. They look -- that's why they love an omnibus package, because it's like Speaker Pelosi said, we got to pass it to know what's in it; 2,000 pages, they read down until they find their district, and they see the funding for all their special pet projects, and then they stop.

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They don't read the other 1,995 other pages.

Go ahead. Yes, ma'am.

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Well, because those were attainable goals in the growth of the government, ma'am.

And I dare say that any of my colleagues would say that, since the COVID -- if we could just go back to pre-COVID spending levels, for goodness' sakes, that we would balance the budget.

Now, can you name me anything that's been added to our budget since COVID that you could not live without? And it's just reasonable. There's 15 or 16 of us. Look, they wouldn't even get in the room with us and talk to us about it until -- until this all broke.

We were -- we had the whole month of August to deal with this, yet they sent us home. And I get it. I work harder in -- back in East Tennessee here than I did in Washington, D.C., any day. But the reality is, we had the whole month. September 30 came upon us. And it happens about this time every year, ma'am.

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And yet we had our head in the sands, and we didn't do anything about it. And now we're up on that.

And now the folks that want to keep their word to their constituents, we're the bad guys. And all we want to do is have responsible government, ma'am. You cannot keep spending. You can't keep spending $7 trillion when you're only taking in $5 trillion. That just doesn't work. And it's completely dysfunctional.

And we have got to -- we can't continue this path.

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Well, I submit to them that we're just -- we're going to get the blame because we're trying to do our job, is what the rest of them were supposed to be doing.

And now they're going to take the easy route out by buying -- by borrowing more money from China. Ma'am, that just doesn't work, any stretch of the imagination. And...

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Mayor Pete -- OK.

Every year, we do this, the temporary. We say, let's -- and the latest strategy is to say, let's not call it a continuing resolution. The American public won't know it. That's ridiculous. Or they say, let's pass the C.R., continuing resolution, so that we can pass -- so that we can stop passing C.R.s. That's like telling a crack addict, we're going to give you more crack

to keep you off a crack. It doesn't work, ma'am. It's the continued -- here's what will happen. We will pass a 30-day C.R., continuing resolution. Then we will pass another continuing resolution. And then that will back us up to the Christmas break.

And then guess what? We will pass an omnibus again, and we will not do our duty. If they want to do their duty -- they're all struck on doing their duty. Tell them to pass a budget. Jodey Arrington out of Texas, God bless him, chairman of the -- of -- he's gone ahead with it.

They gave him 10 minutes in conference to talk about a budget. Nobody paid any attention. But that's what we're supposed to do.

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It's a 10-year plan to get us back on our feet. And that's reasonable.

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That would be something I would look strongly at, ma'am, if we do away with our duty that we said we're going to do.

They're all talking about this promise that he made with Biden a year ago -- I mean, with Biden a year ago. What about the promise we made to the American public that we were going to be responsible Americans? Ma'am, we are going to be -- we are going to be governing over a pile of rubble if we're not careful.

Our financial ship is sinking. And the American public needs to realize, all these fancy titles, C.R.s and omnibus, to confuse the American public is not working. The curtain's off. We need to do our duty. We should be back in Washington right now and dealing with it.

But what are we doing? Well, they sent us home."

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