Each month I want to provide you with regular updates about what’s going on in our nation’s capital and throughout the 4th District of Kansas. Here’s what happened in September.
Government Spending There was a lot of speculation at the end of September about a government shutdown and a lot of talk about how much the federal government spends – something I’ve been concerned with even before I came to Congress just over six years ago.
For historical context, the last time Congress passed all appropriations bills on time was 1996. For more than two decades, Congress has failed to go through “regular order,” meaning pass a budget and then pass individual appropriations bills that fund various government agencies. Republicans in the House have been working to restore regular order and rein in reckless spending, but it’s a challenge to fix a system that has been broken for more than two decades and that has already accumulated more than $33,000,000,000,000 in debt. It’s worth noting that discretionary spending in appropriations bills – the spending that is not mandatory or automatic – is only about 30% of total federal spending. That means the spending bills we’re debating are only a tiny fraction of what Washington spends each year. So even though no one wanted a government shutdown, it’s absurd to think that we should continue borrowing 20% of what we spend without making any changes – even incremental – to address spending in Washington.
In the final week before appropriations lapsed, the House managed to pass three more appropriations bills. I would have liked to have passed all 12 individual appropriations bills on time, but passing four (we passed one earlier this year) is a step in the right direction. The Republican majority allowed for members to offer amendments and have real debate, something else that has been lacking in previous years.
The four bills we passed reduce wasteful Washington spending – a priority of mine and a priority for many Kansans. We also had the opportunity to remove a massive amount of spending for Ukraine. While I think most Americans believe Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is unjust, the United States has already approved more than $100 billion in support and aid for Ukraine. I voted to remove $300 million in additional Ukraine aid that would have been in one of the appropriations bills we passed.
Since the House hadn’t passed all of the appropriations bills – and the Democrat- led Senate hadn’t passed any – we still needed to fund the government before the fiscal year ended on Sept. 30. So when legislation came to the floor that gave Republicans an opportunity to fully fund the government for a short period of time while also reducing spending and advancing strong border security laws, I was pleased to vote for it. It was not a continuing resolution that just kept the government running at previous spending levels, but it started to turn back Washington’s out-of-control spending. This was a good, conservative bill that could have made a positive impact on our budget and at the border. Unfortunately, every Democrat and some Republicans voted against the measure, and it failed.
With a government shutdown looming, another proposal came to the House floor on Sept. 30 – a “clean” continuing resolution that continues the Biden-Pelosi spending of the last Congress for another 45 days. While I didn’t want a government shutdown, I couldn’t vote to continue borrowing tens of billions of dollars each week to continue our massive wasteful spending. I voted against the 45-day CR, which ultimately passed. Now, the House has to tackle the remaining appropriations bills in the next month and a half. And I hope the Senate will take this seriously and start taking up the bills we’ve already passed so we don’t end up here again in the middle of November.
Republicans are committed to being good stewards of taxpayer dollars, and debating and passing individual bills is a far better way to manage our dollars than cramming in a lot of spending in a must-pass bill before a deadline. My colleagues and I are continuing to work to reduce federal spending. No family or small business in America could borrow 20% to cover their expenses and just keep doing it year after year, and neither should the federal government. Border Update
Kansans regularly share with me that one of the issues of greatest concern is immigration and our southern border.
This is no surprise. President Biden’s open border policies have created the worst border crisis on record. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data, there were 232,972 illegal immigrant encounters at our southern border in August, a 14% increase from last August. And we know that it’s not just immigrants crossing the border – the porous southern border allows drug cartels to bring unprecedented amounts of the deadly drug fentanyl into our country. In fiscal year 2023 alone, CBP has seized 25,901 pounds of fentanyl coming across the southwest border – enough to kill nearly six billion people.
Although some asylum seekers have legitimate claims, unfortunately, they are not the only ones coming over the border. Since October of last year, 151 individuals whose names appear on the terrorist watchlist were stopped trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border between ports of entry. And thus far in this fiscal year, CBP has arrested 32,097 aliens with criminal convictions or outstanding warrants nationwide, including 564 known gang members.
Border towns are overcapacity, so every community in America has become a border community, forced to pay the high price of Biden’s open border policies.
Not only is the border crisis a national security and humanitarian crisis, but increasingly it’s fueling our spending and debt crisis. Medicaid spending on “emergency services for undocumented aliens” exceeded $7 billion in the last year alone. Washington, D.C., is expected to spend $52 million by October to house, feed and support illegal aliens. Even the small town of Sanford, Maine, more than 2,000 miles from the Southwest border, has said it allocated $155,000 this fiscal year to house and care for illegal aliens, but has now spent more than $483,000.
All of this means that finite tax revenues – from hardworking Kansans like you – are being used to support not only Americans, but also people who have broken our laws and are not paying into the system.
Since President Biden won’t address the crisis he created, my colleagues and I in the House took action and passed the Secure the Border Act of 2023, the strongest border security bill in history. I’m looking forward to my colleagues in the Senate picking up this bill and taking action on this critical issue of national security.
Impeachment Inquiry
In September, Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, expanding the tools available to the House to pursue our investigative work and ensure justice, fairness and transparency for the American people.
Kansans deserve to know the truth about President Biden’s participation in his family’s business dealings with foreign entities, and an impeachment inquiry is the logical next step that will allow us to uncover the facts and determine if Joe Biden has engaged in impeachable activity.
Speaker McCarthy has directed three committees to conduct this investigation – Oversight, Judiciary and Ways and Means, on which I serve. At the end of September, Ways and Means voted to release hundreds of pages of additional information from IRS whistleblowers connecting Joe Biden to his son Hunter’s business transactions and exposing an unequal application of the law. Releasing this information provides greater transparency to the American people and will help the impeachment inquiry process.
Even though investigations into Joe Biden, the Biden family and their associates have been ongoing, the official impeachment inquiry moves the focus of the investigation to ask if an official – in this case, Joe Biden – has engaged in impeachable conduct. The status of impeachment inquiry will also give more weight to requests from the House, which should yield greater cooperation with the courts and the Executive branch than we’ve had thus far.
While this inquiry is a grave and serious matter, it is just one part of my job in the House of Representatives. As the inquiry unfolds, I will continue to advance our legislative priorities and advocate for policies that benefit Kansans in the 4th District.
Biden’s Lesser Prairie- Chicken Veto
Once again, the D.C. swamp is meddling in local, Kansas affairs. Evidence shows that the Lesser Prairie- Chicken population is stable, and in both the House and the Senate there was enough bipartisan support to pass a Congressional Review Act delisting the LPC as endangered. And yet, President Joe Biden vetoed the will of the people in another display of gross federal government overreach. I’ll keep working to ensure Kansas ranchers, farmers and energy producers are able to do their jobs while continuing local conservation efforts.
Connect with Me
Interested in receiving regular updates about what’s going on in Congress? Sign up for our weekly e-newsletter at estes.house. gov and please don’t hesitate to reach out to my District Office in Wichita at 316-2628992 if you have questions, concerns or need help with a federal agency.
Ron Estes, one of only a handful of engineers in Congress, worked in the aerospace, energy and manufacturing sectors before representing Kansas’ 4th Congressional District since 2017. He is a fifth-generation Kansan, former state treasurer, and serves on the House Committee on Ways and Means, Budget Committee, and Education and the Workforce Committee.
