National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to the Senate Amendment to H.R. 6833, a short-term continuing resolution extending government funding through December 16th.

I oppose this CR for several reasons.

First, we should be here addressing the border crisis, the energy crisis, and the inflation crisis. This bill does nothing to fix any of these issues.

In fact, this bill actually bails out the Biden Administration for their failures and provides additional appropriations to put a band-aid on some of these problems for a few more months.

Madam Chair, thank you for yielding.

The revised allocations presented today do not change the spending levels that were adopted on a party-line vote last week. Because there are no substantive changes, I must once again oppose them.

It is unacceptable to Members on my side of the aisle to underfund our national defense while giving significant increases to the same social programs that received trillions of dollars over the last year. I hope we can find common ground as these bills move to the floor.

We will need to restore important language from prior bills, agree to remove controversial policy riders, and set responsible funding levels so that bills can get to the president's desk and be signed into law. I urge a no vote and yield back my time.

Madam Chair, thank you for yielding.

First, I want to thank Chairwoman Lee and Ranking Member Rogers for their work on the fiscal year 2023 State-Foreign Operations Appropriations bill.

I also want to thank the committee staff. All of them understand the importance of these issues for our country and the entire world.

I previously served as chair of this subcommittee and know this bill funds many programs that have bipartisan support – the most important being the funding for Israel. I am pleased to see that Chairwoman Lee has included 3.3 billion dollars for Israel's security.

Thank you, Madam Chair for the time.

The chairman's mark before us provides $64.58 billion for the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs, that is a 15 percent increase over the fiscal year 2022. I have serious concerns about this funding level and how the resources were allocated in the bill.

As I told the administration witnesses that came before this subcommittee seeking billions more in spending this year, increases of this magnitude are not realistic and create expectations that cannot be met.