Mike Cloud

We have more illegal entries. We have terrorists coming across our border. And the fentanyl coming across our border has increased.

But your job should be to be moving us in the proper direction.

You find these loopholes, and you are missing the objective, the overall objective of securing the border by finding these little legal loopholes to get out of things.

You are taking what we have already authorized, what we have already appropriated for border wall construction, and you are wanting to rescind that and use it for other purposes. Isn't that correct?

You stopped Texas from buying border wall?

Right now we are paying for border wall to be stored instead of built.

As the Article I branch, our job is to make the law. Your job is to execute the law.

Biden issued an executive order directing all Federal agencies to develop a voter registration and voter education plan, to be submitted to the White House.

We have to secure our border first.

We have got to see action and we have got to see those trends reversed.

We write the check to secure the border and the Biden administration gets it and they say: Yay, more money for human trafficking operations.

Biden's border budget request takes the money that we have already allocated and moves it to other directions.

There has been a lot of non-transparency in delivering on those plans when it comes to FOIA requests.

I have been here in D.C. long enough to know some of that is a little self-dealing that is going on politically.

Just because we raise the budget doesn't make immediately there to be more firefighters.

If I could get a breakdown of that, that would be very helpful

I am coming to this conversation, this is my first hearing, and so I am coming with no assumptions.

I am trying to figure out how much of this is overhead

I would urge you to be very careful. A lot of States also regulate this on their own...

But isn't that a solution of the marketplace to--you know, if a business is having a problem finding workers, then it is behooves them to adjust their practices and how they address their own noncompetes.

Would you work with me and maybe even perhaps support legislation like the DIVEST Act?

Are you familiar with The Wall Street Journal report that came out in--I think it was August of last year?

It is zero. It is zero.

It is certainly a concern that is worth looking into.

Have you considered that a number of businesses actually like regulation because it creates an uncompetitive environment?