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Front view of the Capitol

Oversight and Accountability

I was elected to office because the American people are tired of the D.C. way. I brought my work boots because I am here to drain the swamp.

I am leading the charge to ban corrupt practices like earmarks that waste taxpayer dollars. It is wrong for career politicians to enrich themselves while bankrupting Americans by using taxpayer dollars to reward campaign donors and lobbyists with special favors. In March of 2022, Pelosi passed a $1.5 trillion, 2,741-page, drunken-sailor, monstrosity of a spending bill in less than 22 hours that included 2,727 earmarks totaling $4.2 billion. No one even had time to read the bill. I voted no.

When corrupt, unelected bureaucrats in the Biden regime’s Department of Homeland Security created the Disinformation Governance Board—aka the “Ministry of Truth”—I led the charge in opposition and introduced a bill to forever ban and defund corrupt government agencies trampling on our First Amendment rights. I convinced House leadership to join me in opposition and we were able to pressure the Truth Czar Nina Jankowicz to resign and the Biden regime to cancel this unconstitutional program.

When Biden’s Department of Justice’s National Security Division targeted parents speaking out at school board meetings, I stood up for their rights.

When the IRS proposed monitoring all financial transactions above $600, I cosponsored legislation to protect financial privacy.

Additionally, when the Biden bureaucracy tried to move the Bureau of Land Management headquarters in Grand Junction back to the swamp, I the successful bipartisan effort to keep the western headquarters in Grand Junction and give rural Coloradans a voice in land-use decisions and save taxpayers millions of dollars. The Western Headquarters’ 56 jobs and 70 other good-paying Bureau of Land Management jobs that we were able to keep in Grand Junction is a major victory for the Third District.

Many federal agencies should be reined in and significantly reduced. I cosponsored the House Finding Federal Savings Committee to create a temporary committee in the House charged with studying federal programs and determining which ones are underperforming or nonessential and then develop recommendations on whether they should be modified or eliminated.

I cosponsored the Eliminate Agency Excess Space Act to authorize empty federal office buildings to be put up for sale. I cosponsored multiple amendments that would eliminate wasteful federal spending on the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

At a time when our debt is over $33 trillion, we need to cut unauthorized and wasteful spending wherever we can and restore fiscal responsibility. We need a targeted, well-constructed budget aimed at specific issues while incentivizing business and individual investments. The government’s fiscal irresponsibility threatens our economic and national security.

I use the entire legislative process to cut federal spending wherever I can, and I led Congress in the number of amendments filed to eliminate wasteful provisions in massive spending bills, including cutting funding for critical race theory, taxpayer-funded abortions, the Green Climate Fund, and gain-of-function research in China.

As a member of the Budget Committee, I exercise oversight over the budget process. Too many programs get tax dollars by going around the law and not going through the established appropriations’ authorization process. The status quo needs to change, and Congress needs to get back to regular order.  Under regular order, Congress passes a budget resolution that caps spending levels and then reviews each federal program’s effectiveness annually through 12 different appropriations bills that are passed through both Houses. Instead of following this prudent fiscal process and allowing amendments, Congress has passed massive end-of-year omnibuses that are 2,700 pages and that no one reads. Shockingly, regular order has not been followed since 1994. I took action to put America back on track by introducing a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution.

Additionally, as the communications chair of the House Freedom Caucus, I will not back down to the bureaucracy, and I will continue fighting for the freedoms and best interests of all Coloradans and Americans.