Wittman asks Pelosi to cancel August break so Congree can work on appropriations

On June 9th, 2021, I wrote to Speaker Pelosi urging her to cancel August recess and require Members of Congress to remain in Washington until they complete the job they were elected to do. Unfortunately, my calls were ignored by the Speaker.

Now, we are less than two weeks from our taxpayer funded recess, and the full House has still yet to even complete one of the 12 fiscal year 2022 appropriations bills that fund the government. Congress has not done its job, and our constituents expect us to stay and complete the work of the American people.

It is imperative that we get our nation’s fiscal house in order and work to address our nation’s debt and deficit. High levels of debt translate to much lower levels of economic growth and those same high levels of debt mean that too many of our taxpayer dollars are wasted on paying high interest and unnecessary overages.

While we can certainly start with eliminating duplicative programs, wasteful spending, and fraud, if we don’t address the broken budget and appropriations system producing these spending deals, we won’t ever solve this problem.

We need to know where our money is going and work through our funding packages in a responsible, thoughtful, deliberate way through regular order – not rushed through at the last minute. Returning to regular order — moving spending bills through the committee process and the floor where we read, debate, and vote on them — will go a long way towards bringing transparency back to the budget and appropriations process.

This requires holding Members of Congress accountable, something I have been working on throughout my time in Congress.