On the recordJanuary 24, 2011
Mr. Speaker, as we meet this afternoon, there are 15 million Americans without a job. And this debate represents yet another wasted opportunity for us to come together and address the real number one issue of the country, which is putting people back to work. The debate also represents a curious lack of clarity as to what exactly the majority is proposing. And there are words in this resolution, but there aren't numbers. So I did some research of my own about numbers. Let's take FBI agents, for example. Now, the resolution says that security spending is exempted, but it doesn't define security spending. When we passed the budget for FBI agents here, that budget is under the Commerce, Justice, Science budget, so I don't know whether this is within security spending or not. But here is what I do know. In the present fiscal year, if we maintain the budget that we've been living under since October 1, we are on track to spend $7.6 billion on FBI agents. If we do what the resolution says, which is to go back to what was spent in 2008, we would spend 22 percent less than that, or $6.5 billion. If you look at the average salary of an FBI agent, that would mean we would have to make do with 1,720 fewer FBI agents than we do today.
