On the recordNovember 14, 2023
I appreciate the gentlewoman actually stepping up. She asked two key questions that I really liked. First off, what would it eliminate was one of the questions. Well, what it would eliminate is the wasteful and fraudulent spending that has gone to the NIH, as well as to those who have actually continued to pursue things like gain of function under Fauci, and we saw how that worked out. The other thing she also questioned, what should we have learned. Well, what we have learned is that we are actually spinning ourselves into an economic abyss; the fact that we are actually leading the Nation when it comes to continually frivolous spending. I love how only in Washington can we call something emergency spending levels but then maintain it throughout the period in which we are going to move forward. We have to acknowledge the fact that in 2019, pre-COVID spending levels, if you did a 3\1/2\ percent adjusted rate, that would get us to an actual spending cap of $1.477 trillion today, not the $1.586 trillion, not the $1.786 trillion, and certainly not the $2 trillion that the Democrats want to continue to spend. The bottom line, Mr. Chair, is this: We are not saying that we will not have the necessary spending for our public health sectors and others to continue to do their job. What we are saying is that we should return our spending levels to pre-COVID, pre-emergency levels that would be in sync with what we have always done, at a 3\1/2\ percent adjusted rate. Mr.…





