Reinforcing Education Accountability in Development Act

Floor Speech

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Madam President, in Washington, we have a disease--or a syndrome rather. I call it the dinosaur syndrome: big hearts, small brains. Unfortunately, it is a recurring problem year after year, bill after bill, day after day.

In Washington, it is argued that you are more compassionate if you give away more of someone else's money. I would argue that true compassion is in giving your own money away. I would argue that truly rational policy is giving away money that you have. It is one thing to give away other people's money. It is another thing to give away money you do not even possess. As a country, we have a $20 trillion debt. We borrow $1 million every minute. Yet we are putting forward a bill to allocate $15 billion to those who are suffering from Harvey without paying for it and without finding the money from anywhere. We are simply adding it to our tab--adding it to our $20 trillion bill.

How did we get to $20 trillion in debt? Big hearts, small brains. Nobody has the courage to ask: Why don't we pay for it? Why don't we be legislators and stand up like men and women and say: Let's set priorities.

If it is a priority to help those in Texas--and I have great sympathy for those in Texas. My family is there. I have family members with 2 feet of water in their house so I have great sympathy for those who are in need, but there is no reason to be foolish. We shouldn't just borrow the money. Why don't we take the money from something less important?

My amendment, the America first amendment, would take the money from money we are going to send to foreign countries. We send billions and billions of dollars to countries that hate us. We send billions and billions of dollars to countries that burn our flag. I think it is a very simple choice, when we are looking at helping those in need in our country, that we quit sending money to other countries.

What my amendment would do would be to pay for the $15 billion in aid by taking it out of the foreign aid account. Who gets the money in the foreign aid account? What is it spent on? I will give you a couple of examples of what we spend our foreign aid on.

We spent billions of dollars--I think it is over $100 billion--on building roads in Afghanistan, blowing up roads in Afghanistan, building schools, blowing up schools, and then rebuilding all of them. Sometimes we blow them up, and sometimes someone else blows them up, but then we always go back and rebuild them. What about rebuilding our country? Why don't we look at our country and rebuild our infrastructure and rebuild our roads? For those who are flooded in Texas, let's help them, but let's help them by not sending the money to Pakistan and to other countries that do not even like us.

In the foreign aid account, we spent $273 million last year teaching people how to apply for more of our money. So it is not bad enough that they take your money and send it to foreign countries that do not even like us, but we teach these people how to apply for more of our money.

We had a televised cricket league that we spent $1 million on in Afghanistan--a televised cricket league. The only problem is, they don't really have any televisions. Why it is our obligation? Why is the U.S. taxpayer asked to pay for a cricket league in Afghanistan?

We spent $45 million on a natural gas, gas station in Afghanistan-- $45 million. It was estimated to cost a half a million dollars--86 times cost overruns. What does it serve up? Gasoline. Natural gas. Who has a car that runs on natural gas in Afghanistan? Nobody. So we bought them cars. We bought them cars that run on natural gas. Then they had no money with which to buy the natural gas so we gave them credit cards to buy the natural gas. That is where your money is going. If you want to help the people in Texas or those people who may be hurt in Florida, why don't we quit sending the money overseas? These are the people who chant ``Death to America,'' and we send more money to them.

We spent money on home mortgages in Nigeria. We are spending money on home mortgages in Nigeria? We spent money on tourism in Albania. This is one of my favorites: We spent money teaching people in Kenya how to use Facebook.

All I am asking is, Why don't we stand up like men and women, like real legislators? If we are going to have compassion for those in Texas, why don't we have the good wisdom not to just simply add it to our debt? In hysteria--everyone is hysterical--we must give, give, give someone else's money but not only that. We must give, give, give money we do not have. We are going to destroy our country. There have been people who have argued that our $20 trillion debt is the No. 1 threat to our national security.

So what I am asking is, Why don't we pay for this? Why don't we simply take some money that we were going to spend somewhere else, for something not as valuable in another country, and spend it here? You realize what is going to happen. I will proffer this amendment, and in all likelihood, the swamp--the establishment--will vote this down because they never want to cut a dime of spending. They are always compassionate. They have big hearts. They are willing to give away everybody else's money, but they are never ever willing to pay for it. This is both parties--both the Republican Party and the Democrat Party. Watch the vote and see who is a conservative and who says we should pay for the aid for Harvey and who says, oh, no, that we should add it to the tab.

Where is the $15 billion going to come from? This year, we are going to run a $500 billion debt. There is no money. They are giving away your grandchildren's money to help people. People will say that is compassion, that we are going to help people now. Yet we are stealing it from our kids' futures, and we are stealing it from the future and the soundness of our country, and we are threatening the very security of our country with this enormous and elaborate debt.

Simply pay for it. Simply say: Do you know what? This year, we cannot be so compassionate to people who are wanting to get healthcare in Cambodia. We have USAID money going to Cambodia to help them get cost- effective or lower cost insurance. We could not even do anything with the healthcare in our country. We failed to act on it, but we are sending money to Cambodia to help them with their healthcare. Why don't we act here at home? Why don't we take care of our own problems before we think we can take care of everybody else's problems everywhere around the world?

So we will get a chance to vote today. My amendment will come up shortly, and it will simply say, yes, we are a big, rich country. We can help those in Texas, but we will pay for it by taking the money away from somewhere else in the budget that is less of a priority. We give hundreds of millions--really billions--of dollars to Pakistan. How much do they like us? Sometimes they help us, but sometimes they harbor the enemy. Sometimes they harbor whole networks of people who are plotting to kill us.

What do they think of Christianity in Pakistan? Asia Bibi is a Christian. She has been in jail for 5 years--on death row--for being a Christian. What do they think of helping us with bin Laden? They did not raise a finger to help us with bin Laden. Bin Laden lived among them for years and years and years, and when we finally got bin Laden, we got bin Laden with information from a doctor named Shakil Afridi. What did Pakistan do to reward the doctor who helped us get bin Laden? Pakistan has him locked up for life in prison.

Really, we need to requestion whether this aid works at all to foreign countries, whether it is counterproductive, and whether we have it in the first place, but we should also ask an important question: Maybe that aid ought to be better spent at home. Maybe we ought to start rebuilding our country instead of always thinking we have to rebuild everybody else's country.

I think this amendment is so easy to decide, and I think the American people are behind me on this amendment. If we were to take this to a huge vote of the entire American public, I think 75 to 80 percent of the American public would say: Do you know what? Let's take care of our problems at home; let's don't send our money abroad. And I think we would win this battle.

Watch this vote because in Washington you will see the opposite. You will see three-fourths of this body or more say: Oh, no, we are not going to cut any spending to anyone. We could never cut foreign aid or welfare for foreign countries. We are just going to add it on to the tab. I, for one, want to be a loud voice to say that it is risking our country's future. It is risking the security of the United States to keep adding to a $20 trillion debt, no matter how good the cause is.

Remember, the next time a politician tells you that they are so compassionate because they want to give away more of someone else's money, ask them how much they gave of their own money if you want to judge their true compassion.

Thank you.

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