The Swamp-Omnibus

Last week, I voted against the massive “minibus” spending bill, which may be one of the worst entrenchments of the Washington Swamp I have ever seen during my time in Congress. There are too many problems with the bill to count, but it spends $1.2 trillion, combines spending programs into a bloated bill rather than dealing with single subjects, and broke almost every process rule in the books – rushing the bill to the floor before members, let alone voters, even had time to read it.

If we were truly given time to learn what is in this bill (and what isn’t), the vast majority of taxpayers would rightly be furious. These are just a few examples:

IN: Funding of Marxist initiatives through increased funding for DEI and CRT
OUT: Funding the border wall and full staff levels for ICE and CBP
IN: Government-sponsored censorship under the guise of addressing “misinformation”
OUT: My bill to help law enforcement address the invasion at our southern border
IN: Green New Deal initiatives that hamstring US-produced energy and bolster China
OUT: Defunding anti-American UN agencies like WHO and the Population Fund
IN: A new headquarters for the FBI and more resources for the anti-gun ATF
OUT: Protecting unborn babies from being murdered with taxpayer dollars

Congress spends all this money on a woke and weaponized bureaucracy, yet doesn’t do a single thing to actually fix the main problem we should be solving in the border crisis. This is a complete miscarriage of the spending process. This is not what you sent me here to do.

Even as we were reviewing the bill the night before the vote, the New York Post released a terrifying video of the Texas National Guard being overrun by migrants tearing down a razor wire fence and rushing across the border. Time and again, I hear members of Congress talk about how bad the border crisis is and how it needs to be solved, and then they vote for terrible bills like these. This bill gives the Biden Administration hundreds of billions more dollars to continue shamelessly breaking the law.

The US Dollar, The World, & You

On Thursday, I pressed Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on the Biden Administration’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget request during a House Appropriations Committee hearing. The budget request includes egregious federal workforce practices and an economic agenda designed to cripple the United States’ economic influence around the world.

Every day, the people of Texas’s 27th District have to show up for work, yet the Biden Administration has been disturbingly slow in returning the federal government to in-person work — some agencies are barely requiring workers to show up even half the time. This can cause tremendous delays for critical casework like passport renewals, tax refunds, social security benefits, veterans’ benefits, and other problems. Taxpayers should not be forced to fund a government that does not work for them.

I’ve also been deeply concerned about the ongoing weakening of the dollar and potential scaling back of the United States’ economic influence on the global stage, all in pursuit of Joe Biden’s vision for a ‘multipolar world’ — a world in which the United States is not the global leader. I pressed the Treasury Secretary on that vision, and her role in maintaining the strength of the US Dollar here at home and on the world stage.

You can watch my questioning of Secretary Yellen HERE.

March 26, 2024: Weekly Newsletter