Comer Opens Hearing on Biden-Harris Administration’s Legacy of Incompetence
WASHINGTON—House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) today delivered opening remarks at a hearing titled “A Legacy of Incompetence: Consequences of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Policy Failures” by demonstrating how the American people are worse off after almost four year of the Biden-Harris Administration’s mismanagement that has raised prices, eroded border security, and emboldened our foreign adversaries.
Below are Chairman Comer’s remarks as prepared for delivery.
Three and a half years ago, when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took office, they promised to “Build Back Better.” The fawning media told us that “the adults are back in the room.”
But three and a half years later, the economy is suffering, the border is broken, and crises continue to erupt worldwide.
Everything Joe Biden and Kamala Harris has touched has failed.
Americans are asking themselves, “what is better?”
The evidence of President Biden and Vice President Harris’s incompetent and weak leadership is seen and felt by Americans across our nation.
Let’s look at the economy.
Vice President Harris has claimed repeatedly that “Bidenomics is working” and is “a term we are very proud of.”
Yet Americans have faced 20 percent average inflation since Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took office.
The price of everything has gone up. More Americans are now having to choose whether to pay their energy bill, pay rent, or buy food.
How is this record something to be proud of?
These price increases aren’t “transitory” at all, as one Biden-Harris Administration official claimed.
American households now must spend over $11,000 more each year to maintain their same quality of life.
Let’s turn to our broken border.
On their first day in office, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris immediately enacted policies that eroded border security, overwhelmed law enforcement, and left us vulnerable to terrorist infiltration.
They ended the Remain in Mexico Program, stopped construction of the border barrier system, and gutted interior enforcement against illegal aliens.
They signaled to the world our border was open.
Finally realizing it was turning into an inconvenient problem, President Biden tapped Vice President Harris to examine the root causes of the border crisis that happened on their watch.
Did she bother to examine her own Administration’s policies fueling the crisis?
Since Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took office, over seven million illegal aliens were either released into the country or evaded apprehension entirely to make it here.
And instead of being given swift due process and deportations, the Biden-Harris Administration flew them all over the country, paying hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to nongovernment organizations and to provide food, shelter, and other services for these illegal aliens.
Communities across our country are suffering from the Biden-Harris open border.
Meanwhile, the Biden-Harris Administration grossly mismanages the very government programs they champion.
Congressional Democrats committed five billion dollars in 2021 to build electric vehicle charging stations. Know how many the Biden-Harris Administration built?
Eight. Not eight thousand, or eight hundred. Eight.
That’s $625 million a charging station.
$42 billion has been spent on their Broadband Equity Access and Deployment program to connect Americans to high-speed internet.
Over 1,000 days later, this program has not connected a single American to internet. Not one.
Meanwhile, American taxpayers—who are already struggling with sky-high inflation—are on the hook to pay for the Biden-Harris Administration’s boondoggles.
The Biden-Harris Administration’s incompetence has extended to the world stage, contributing to chaos erupting across the planet.
Instead of the “adults in the room,” the American people continue to bear the consequences of weak and ineffective leadership on the global stage.
The disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, where a failure to plan created the conditions ripe for a terrorist attack that killed 13 servicemembers and scores of Afghan civilians.
The invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
The emboldening of Iran and its proxies.
Growing political warfare by the Chinese Communist Party.
These are just a few examples of the Biden-Harris Administration’s failed policies.
Americans cannot afford more of them.
The Oversight Committee has been vigilant this Congress to uncover what works, what doesn’t, and how to move forward as this Administration has drifted from crisis to crisis.
We know that border walls work, because we heard it firsthand from expert Border Patrol agents.
We know the solution to inflation is to get spending under control and to roll back overreaching and costly regulations that will only be passed on to consumers.
We know that strong leadership on the world stage is necessary to confront aggression by foreign powers aligned with evil terrorists.
The Oversight Committee looks forward to hearing from the witnesses today on more solutions to the problems our country now faces because of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s ineffective, incompetent, and weak leadership.
Thank you to the witnesses appearing here today. I now yield to the Ranking Member for his opening remarks.