Afghans Getting Rich Off U.S. Taxpayers

Hello, I am coming to you once again from my office in the Rayburn House Office Building across the street from the capitol.

Almost every day and certainly at least once or twice a week, I read or hear about some ridiculous expenditure or excessive appropriation that the federal government has made or is making, and I become very upset or concerned or disappointed that we are doing such ridiculous things at the federal level.

The only real way to stop those types of wasteful expenditures is to defund those departments or those agencies and cut their spending.

Certainly I've had one of the most fiscally conservative voting records of almost anybody in Congress in the time that I've been here.

Anyone who has followed my record knows that I have consistently followed the Tennessee-first, America-first agenda, and I believe that the first obligation of the United States Congress is to the American People and not to the people around the rest of the world.

I agreed with Admiral Mike Mullen who said repeated in speeches and testimony a couple of years ago-he was our highest ranking military man at that time, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff-and he said that the greatest threat to our national security is our national debt.

It is now $17.6 trillion and headed very quickly, according to the Congressional Budget Office, to $25 or $26 trillion in the next eight or nine years.

In fact, in a speech on the floor a few days ago, I said the only reason that more people aren't upset about that is that nobody can humanly comprehend a trillion dollars much less comprehend a figure like $17.6 trillion.

It affects directly and indirectly everything that we do both in the government and in our overall economy.

My number-one concern has been the fiscal condition of the federal government, but along with that is the fact that we have sent millions of good jobs to other countries over the last forty or fifty years, so that now we have ended up with the best-educated waiters and waitresses in the world.

Many college graduates are having to work at jobs far below their education levels and many non-college graduates having to work at levels far below their intelligence and their skills and talents. 

That's the main reason why I've always opposed expanding immigration into this country, even high level or so-called high-skilled immigration, because we need to put our own people first and make sure we have good jobs for all Americans.

But also, even though I don't have anything against anybody in any other country, I think it's ridiculous that we continue to spend mega billions in other countries.

We turned the Department of Defense into the Department of Foreign Aid, and while I want to have a strong military, I don't believe the Department of Defense should be the Department of Foreign Aid.

And just yesterday, a front page story in the Washington Post told the story of a man named Zabi Tamanna.

He was an Afghan photographer making almost no money, and then the U.S. turned him into a wealthy construction executive, doing all kinds of things for his family and making him, as I said, a very wealthy man.

And we have done that with many thousands of people in Afghanistan.

In fact, the Washington Post story said that we have been providing over three-fourths of the Afghanistan GDP, gross domestic product.

And I think it is totally ridiculous that we have poured so many mega billions, hundreds of billions, into Afghanistan in recent years, primarily through the Defense Department, but we've also sent in $103 billion just to rebuild the country in non-military ways.

So, these are the types of things that greatly concern me, and that I don't think the federal government should be doing unless and until we start having our budgets balanced and have surplus cash, and we are a long ways from that now.

I plan to continue speaking out against wasteful spending and ridiculous spending at the federal level in every way possible. Thank you.