Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2020

Floor Speech

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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the chair of the committee for her leadership throughout our appropriations process. We now have a funding bill on the floor this week that makes critical investments and advances American values.

I want to touch on the part of the State and Foreign Operations bill that deals with support for the Venezuelan people. I am thrilled with the support in the bill for Venezuela, for her people, because the Venezuelan people are enduring an unimaginable onslaught of hunger, danger, and escalating economic pain, and America cannot stand idly by.

As a member of the Appropriations Committee and the Representative with the largest Venezuelan population in the United States, I am thrilled that the bill has language that allocates aid to Colombia to assist communities that are impacted by refugee and migrant populations fleeing the despotic Maduro regime.

Congresswoman Shalala and I visited Colombia and met with starving and impoverished Venezuelans and saw, firsthand, the need for this funding. We saw the blocked bridges and met with Venezuelans shot by their own military to prevent them from delivering humanitarian aid to their own people.

The bill also includes funding for democracy promotion, human rights, and civil society programs in Venezuela, and I was proud to work with the chairwoman to include this vital funding.

Perhaps most important is what this bill does not do, what it does not contain, which is the traditional prohibition on funds being provided to the central Government of Venezuela, with the clear hope that we might have a cooperating regime to work with in the near future.

The U.S. rightfully recognizes Juan Guaido as the legitimate interim President of Venezuela.

Viva Venezuela. We must continue to work to make sure that she can transition to a democracy and the vibrant nation that she once was.

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