Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2018

Floor Speech

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Mr. Chairman, first I want to thank the gentleman from Colorado for the amendment and the committee for the opportunity. The U.S. Institute of Peace is intended to be a nonpartisan independent national institute funded by Congress, and I question both the nonpartisan nature of the Institute and the need, quite honestly, for the Federal Government to fund it now, at least $1 billion over these many years at $35 million a year, and, as the gentleman from Colorado said, in a duplicative effort.

Nobody is against peace and nobody is against love. The question is: Do we need a State Department doing it at the cost of billions of dollars and then this other organization doing the exact same work at a cost of another $35 million annually when we are $20 trillion in debt and more, maybe up to $200 trillion in unfunded liabilities? And then to add insult to injury, regarding the nonpartisan independent nature that the taxpayers are forced to fund, on January 5th of 2016, on an episode of C-SPAN, Manal Omar, the acting vice president for the Middle East and Africa Center conducted a highly divisive, partisan attack on then-leading Republican primary candidate Donald Trump and the Republican party as a whole.

Some of her more egregious statements include: ``What Trump is doing is inciting violence, make no mistake about it. He has blood on his hands.'' And ``Trump and other Republican rhetoric have validated that type of violence against Muslims. It has given them an excuse to actually turn the negative rhetoric into violence.''

Her comments followed the violent attacks in San Bernardino and Paris.

To my knowledge, no punitive action was taken against Ms. Omar, and she continues to serve as the associate vice president for the Middle East and Africa Center at USIP.

I wrote the Institute a letter in that regard inquiring as to her status, whether there would be punitive measures taken for this obvious partisan and vicious attack on the Republican Party and the candidate that was then leading, and, of course, I didn't hear back until, oh, I don't know, 2 days ago, when we saw that there was an amendment to defund the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Again, Mr. Chairman, to add insult to injury, this place spends $35 million, including telling the American people what they should think about their politicians. That is not their mission, that is not what we are paying for, and that is why we should stop paying for it.

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