Steve Womack

I am concerned that this Committee ought to be focused on a large and growing crisis that threatens income security programs for all Americans.

It is imperative that policymakers establish and enforce policies guiding fiscal responsibility as subsequent COVID-19 relief bills are considered.

We cannot keep getting away from doing our job, especially when we are in normal times.

How do we make sure that the policies we enact are doing everything possible to defeat the virus, to boost the economy, and to get Americans back to work?

Obviously, these are unprecedented times in our nation, as evidenced by the fact that we are conducting this hearing from various parts of our country.

Everyone here agrees that when a crisis occurs the federal government has to act.

Thank you for driving down and at least warming a chair there in the Budget hearing room.

As I was saying, it is appropriate that we are having this conversation, in many respects, behind a mask, because there is nobody on this floor today who can argue with a straight face that many of the provisions in this bill that we are…

We must ensure our efforts are targeted to help the needy, not prop up the opportunistic.

Our response, just as this situation, has been unprecedented.

One of the most significant responsibilities afforded to Congress is the power of the purse, clearly stated in our Constitution.

This is, in my serious opinion, one of the most pressing issues facing the Congress of the United States. And that is to get back to some regular order on budgets and appropriations.

Our nation's founding document makes clear that budgeting is not a secondary part of governance, but fundamental to it.

Providing for the common defense is, in my judgment, our highest constitutional duty.

I support building that wall.

Today we examine the President's budget request for the Department of Health and Human Services for Fiscal Year 2021.

Mandatory spending accounts for 70 percent of the federal budget.

The deficit will be over $1 trillion--that is with a T.

I have to question the point of the exercise today.

Our fiscal trajectory, it is not sustainable.

It is time to make tough choices, that even programs that have been around a long time, it is time to figure out, in an era of $23 trillion national debt where do we make tradeoffs?

But I just want to be clear that this Committee did produce a budget in that year.

When you show us your budget, you show us your values.

All of that money that goes into net interest on the debt... serves to crowd out other funding that might otherwise be available.

So we are just paying the interest on the debt. All the while, the debt continues to go higher and higher.