WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Congresswoman Harriet Hageman voted against H. Res. 1061, Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024. The vote funds six of the twelve FY2024 spending bills.
Rep. Hageman stated, “Washington’s addiction to spending must be stopped. With a national debt of over $34 trillion – a debt that is growing by $1 trillion every 100 days, we must be bold in our efforts to fix this very real problem. Some issues are too important not to fight for, and our obscene national debt is one of those issues. This minibus provides over $60 billion more in discretionary spending than the same six appropriations bills drafted by House Republicans earlier this year.
“This bloated legislation is full of spending gimmicks used to circumvent the already absurdly high spending caps touted within the minibus. By converting regular, government as usual operations into hundreds of millions in ‘emergency spending’ the true amounts of spending are not included in the top line numbers of this appropriations package and it deceptively circumvents spending limits put in place, which are already too high.
“In addition to this overspending, many of the issues that are of importance to Wyoming and that were included in earlier bills passed by the House of Representatives have been left out of this minibus. Delisting the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem Grizzly and stopping the implementation of the Rock Springs Resource Management Plan were stripped from the final spending package, and money to implement a program that isn’t even law - EID Ear Tags for cattle and bison, was increased - making our fight against mandatory EID even more difficult.
“This package of spending bills is not the change we need to restore fiscal responsibility in our federal government, and trying to sell it to the American people as such is dishonest.”
Other significant concerns with H. Res. 1061:
Claims to cut the EPA by 10% or $977 million.
Reality this cut is largely backfilled by superfund taxes. Democrats claim that EPA is only reduced by three percent from last year’s levels.
Claims to cut the FBI budget by $654 million.
Reality: $621.9 million is achieved by defunding the FBI’s new Headquarters. The FBI sees a real cut of just $32 million for salaries and personnel.
(Note: all the following items were included as Republican priorities in earlier appropriations bills)
Does not defund Critical Race Theory agenda across federal agencies.
Does not prohibit the VA from violating federal law to offer abortions.
Does not prohibit funding for DOJ censoring lawful speech as misinformation.
Does not prohibit funding for ATF pistol brace rule.
Does not prohibit governmentwide COVID-19 mask and vaccine mandates.
Does not prohibit illegal aliens from being counted in the Census.
Does not prohibit funds from being used for gender transition services.
