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BLOATEDBUS SPENDING BILL
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Cline) for 5 minutes.
Mr. CLINE. Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition today to the bloatedbus spending bill that is being jammed through the House this week by the majority.
Instead of working to craft bipartisan legislation, Democrats have put forward appropriations bills that are based on unrealistic and irresponsible spending levels and include partisan policy provisions that will only delay its final passage.
Further, rather than holding a vote on each individual appropriations bill, the Speaker has lumped together seven separate spending bills that include nearly $600 billion in discretionary spending, a 21 percent increase over just last year.
Twenty-one percent. That is almost as high as some of the price increases families in my district are seeing in their daily lives, thanks to the flood of deficit spending President Biden and Speaker Pelosi have forced through this Congress already.
This is not how the legislative process should work. And with inflation rates at a 13-year high, Madam Speaker, we simply cannot afford it.
And while this bill provides unprecedented increases for Democrats' domestic spending priorities, the left has decided to underfund two appropriations bills that are required by the Constitution: Homeland Security and National Defense. Worse yet, it reverses decades of historically bipartisan pro-life policies like the Hyde and Weldon amendments which have been bipartisan since 1976.
Further, it increases our dependence on China. It fails to keep us safe by hindering the work of Customs and Border Protection, and it abandons an all-of-the-above energy strategy. This is truly unacceptable.
Madam Speaker, this minibus needs to be sent back to the scrap yard, and if not, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''
Honoring Chief Joe Simmons
Mr. CLINE. Madam Speaker, I rise today in recognition of the 30-year career of one of Virginia's finest, Bridgewater Police Chief Joe Simmons.
Interestingly, this law enforcement veteran originally had aspirations of being a firefighter, but after being a dispatcher, jailer, and then a road deputy in the Rockingham County Sheriff's office, the SWAT team recruited him in 1996. By 1997, he joined the elite RUSH Drug Task Force, a mix of local and State officers, who I was proud to work with as an assistant Commonwealth's attorney, as well as Federal drug agents.
Simmons brought all this experience to the town of Bridgewater in the late 1990s, eventually rising to chief in 2011. Mayor Ted Flory said of Simmons: ``He's done an amazing job. . . . The model of community policing . . . serves the citizens very well.''
Chief Simmons says most police officers are good people who care about the citizens in their community. ``You have to have empathy. It's not us against them,'' Simmons said, ``You have to police with an open mind. It's customer service.''
In the end, while Simmons never became the firefighter he once wanted to be, he had a successful career in public service, risking his life to protect and serve his fellow citizens.
I thank Chief Simmons for his service.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 133
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