Representative Kevin Hern (OK-01) spoke on the House floor yesterday in support of his amendments to HR 4502. Six amendments from Rep. Hern were ruled in order for the mini-bus. The amendments were presented en bloc, each one cutting 20% from different divisions of the appropriations package.

You can watch the video here.

Remarks as prepared:

Last year, we lost Senator Tom Coburn, a dear friend of mine, and a legend in both this chamber and across the Capitol for his consistency and dedication to fiscal responsibility.  Tom taught me so much about the way our government works, about our broken budget process, and the importance of spending American tax dollars wisely.

It’s pretty clear that a lot of my colleagues have forgotten one monumentally important fact: the federal government has no money of our own. Every dollar comes from the American people.  When we’re in this chamber debating spending another billion here, and a trillion there, it doesn’t come from some bottomless bank account. It comes from the hard-working American people; we can never take that for granted.

I have with me today Senator Coburn’s last Black Book, an outline of his deficit reduction plan in 2011 to get the United States on track to eliminate our debt and balance the budget.

My colleague from Oklahoma, Senator Lankford, has taken on Tom’s mantle as the fiscal hawk of the Senate and now produces a similar report, detailing the many, many line items of waste and abuse in the federal government.

In [Tom’s] memory, I helmed the Republican Study Committee’s Budget and Spending Task Force this Congress, and we produced what is still the only budget introduced to the House. My budget is not only a clear path back to black, as my friend Tom would say, it balances in just five years.

Our interest costs on the debt alone are expected to nearly triple in the next ten years, making interest costs the third-largest federal expense behind Social Security and Medicare. As our spending continues to rise, so too do the concerns of our constituents.

It’s alarming to me that the Speaker abandoned her responsibilities outlined in the Congressional Budget Act for the third year in a row. This majority and their leadership do not care about American taxpayers, and they don’t care about the fiscal health of this country.

When I came to Congress at the end of 2018, our national debt was $19 trillion. In just 2 and a half years, we are quickly approaching $30 trillion. Our debt has grown by 58%... meanwhile our economic growth is a mere 2%.

In the past 12 months our country has been devastated by Covid-19 both physically and financially. With millions of Americans losing their jobs, businesses, or both, they turned to the federal government for help. Since last year, Congress has spent $13.3 trillion of the American people’s money on government COVID relief programs. To date, only $8.7 trillion of those funds have been spent, leaving us with $4.6 trillion of the American people’s money in government hands.

Pelosi and Biden are spending money as fast as they can without any oversight into the effectiveness of what’s already been appropriated. From Day 1 of the Biden Administration, President Biden and Vice President Harris have shown nothing but contempt for the American taxpayer, choosing to increase spending, increase taxes, and destroy jobs across the country. All they have to show for it is rampant inflation and continued unemployment.

What we’re looking at today is a drastic expansion of federal spending across the board. My colleagues across the aisle are throwing money at every federal department and agency – except for the defense of our people, of course.

Flagrant overspending is on the menu today. The Department of Energy will be increased by 7.6%. The Department of Interior’s budget is being expanded by 19%. Department of Labor by 17.6%, with $4.2 billion to bolster Biden’s unemployment programs preventing people from returning to work. HHS gets a 23% expansion, including $110 million to research the health impacts of climate change and $400 million in title 10 funding, which Planned Parenthood is now eligible for since Democrats are eliminating the Hyde Amendment. The Department of Education will receive a staggering 40% increase in funding, and it just gets worse from there.

Every penny they spend comes at the cost of American taxpayers.

When Oklahomans lose their jobs, Democrats will be to blame. When American job creation and wage growth halts, Democrats will be to blame.

That is why today I am offering amendments to each division of this package to do one simple thing: cut spending by 20%.  Speaker Pelosi doesn’t want fiscal accountability, which is why she piled all of my amendments into an en bloc to ensure none of them pass.

Congress has spent recklessly in the last year, and the American people are sick of it.

I want to thank my colleagues who have supported these amendments and have spoken in favor of them tonight. I urge adoption of the en bloc to rein in the Democrats’ reckless spending and ensure a fiscally secure future for Americans for generations to come.

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