Unanimous Consent Request--S. Res. 88
Floor Speech
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Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, Senator Scott, Senator Ernst, and I are not trying to ask for something that the American people aren't already asking for as well and, quite frankly, the Senate and this White House haven't already said that they wanted to be able to do: basic transparency, efficient spending.
It is Wednesday afternoon right now. We are about to take up a bill for, we think, $1.9 trillion. And I say ``we think'' because none of us has seen the text of this bill yet, not one of us on either side of the aisle. And the debate was supposed to begin on it today, but none of us has seen the text for this.
Supposedly, we are supposed to start voting on it tomorrow night, though no one has seen the text of the bill yet. In addition to that, last year, this Congress, on a bipartisan basis, passed five COVID relief bills totaling over $4 trillion. Every dollar of that $4 trillion was borrowed, every dollar. None of that was budgeted. But there was bipartisan agreement as we walked through the process to determine that this is an emergency; this is a global pandemic. To help stabilize our economy from going into free fall, we have to do some very difficult things. But in the middle of all of that, we also said we don't need to borrow a dollar more than what we need to borrow. Let's borrow what we need to but not more than we need to.
Interestingly enough, of the five bills and $4 trillion that was allocated for COVID last year, only $3 trillion of that $4 trillion has actually been spent yet. We still have over $1 trillion unspent of the money from last year.
But before that last trillion dollars, which imagine just how big that really is--to give you an example, every single Agency in the Federal Government, the total budget for a year, is $1 trillion. So this ``little $1 trillion'' that is left would cover the total budget for every Agency in the Federal Government for all of next year.
With this $1 trillion that is still unspent, the Biden administration and my Democratic colleagues are saying: We want an additional $2 trillion. Basically, near the end of the pandemic, they want a bill as large as what we had the very first month of the pandemic a year ago, when we knew we were in economic free fall.
All we are asking are a couple of things: One is, hey, can we read the bill? No. 2, can we get real numbers of what is unspent and anything that is unspent that we can reallocate for something in the future? Let me give you an example. The best I can tell, we have about $6 billion still left in the vaccine line item left over from last year--$6 billion just for vaccine, and that is vaccine purchases. There is another $17 billion left over just for all the distribution process for vaccines. That is a lot of money.
Just yesterday, President Biden announced we will have all the vaccines available for every adult in America by the end of May. It is paid for, set aside, ready to go. Yet this bill that I understand is coming tomorrow--maybe later today--has tens of billions of dollars more in vaccine money. Why are there tens of billions of dollars more in vaccine money, when just yesterday the President announced we have all the purchases done all the way through toward the end of May to vaccinate every adult in America? And there are billions of dollars still left over in the two vaccine accounts even after that. Why are we asking for tens of billions of dollars more? Where is that money going? That shouldn't be an unreasonable question. That should be a question everybody should ask. Why are we asking for tens of billions of dollars more in vaccine money when we have already purchased everything related to vaccines? Is this foreign aid vaccines? We don't know.
There is $170 billion being requested for education expenses. All of us want to take care of education, but $170 billion is twice as much as what the American people spend on education in a year. The total education budget is $67 billion for the entire year for all of the Federal education budget--$67 billion. This is now very close to three times what the annual budget is for all of spending just for COVID. And, by the way, still unspent in the education amount from last year's budget, we understand, is about $68 billion. So there is still $68 billion unallocated in education entities that hasn't even been touched yet.
Hey, listen, before everybody jumps up and says, you Republicans are just being a blockade, can we just ask a question? How much money is unspent, and what is the money going toward that we are asking for? That shouldn't be an unreasonable question. That should be a reasonable question. We are not trying to be obstructionists; we are just trying to get information.
And, quite frankly, when our team calls over to the White House and says: Can you give us the details of what is unspent in this amount--I know it is early in their Presidency, and they are still getting organized, but most of the time their answer is: We will get back to you, and they never do.
We need to know what is still left over of this $1 trillion that has already been allocated before we allocate another $2 trillion, knowing every single dollar of that is borrowed from China or somewhere else.
This is a real issue. We should resolve this before we move to spending another $2 trillion. And I thank very much Senator Scott for his leadership in this area and asking some very basic questions.
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