Keeping Girls in School Act
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. McCAUL. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of the Keeping Girls in School Act.
I want to thank Representative Frankel and Representative Brooks for their leadership on this legislation.
The United States has been a global leader in funding programs to support women and girls from around the world. We recognize the importance of empowering women to succeed, and that starts with receiving an education.
This legislation codifies the existing U.S. strategy to empower adolescent girls, which coordinates efforts between the Department of State, USAID, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the Peace Corps, and PEPFAR to ensure that our development assistance programs are addressing barriers to girls' attendance in schools. It also supports efforts to ensure girls receive a quality secondary education and have the support necessary to stay in school.
We know that when women and girls are educated and supported, they are more likely to invest in their families and in their communities.
Last year, I was honored to travel to Cote d'Ivoire to launch the Women's Global Development and Prosperity Initiative alongside Ivanka Trump and a Senate delegation. W-GDP seeks to reach 50 million women in the developing world by 2025 through efforts to empower and enable women to be entrepreneurs and productive members of the workforce.
I was also proud to be a cosponsor of the Women's Entrepreneurship and Economic Empowerment Act which was signed into law last year. We must continue our bipartisan efforts to ensure United States' support for women and girls around the world is strong.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. McCAUL. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Indiana (Mrs. Brooks), who is the lead Republican cosponsor of this bill.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. McCAUL. Madam Speaker, yesterday in this Chamber we honored the life of a dear friend of mine, a colleague I came into the Congress with in 2005, Michael Fitzpatrick, and it was quite an honor to know him and to call him my friend. With that, I want to yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fitzpatrick), his brother and a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. McCAUL. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Waltz), a distinguished member of the United States military who served our country so well overseas in some very dangerous places.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. McCAUL. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
We have heard some really powerful testimony about the rights and the role of women throughout the world, and I think back to my own time as a counterterrorism Federal prosecutor, to chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, and now my role on the Foreign Affairs Committee. Where women are oppressed, democracy and freedom is oppressed. Where extremism exists, the rights of women are denied.
I also want to thank you, Madam Speaker, Ms. Frankel, for your leadership in bringing this bill to the floor.
It is a national security issue. I really view it that way because, where women are empowered, we don't have extremism.
Chairman Engel and I will be at the Canadian Embassy this night talking about the Global Fragility Act and the ONE Campaign and Bono's efforts to stabilize the world, stabilize this whole region from extremism. What we found, whether it was Boko Haram taking 270 Catholic grade school girls hostage, to the Taliban raining down on educated women or women trying to get an education, to the story of Ms. Yousafzai, to killing women in the streets, it is absolutely unacceptable.
I am proud today that we stand as Americans and not as partisans standing for the rights of young women. I have four daughters myself, and they live in freedom, and they know education is important. But women around the world deserve this right. Regardless of where you are born, women and girls around the world deserve this right.
We have seen it from Afghanistan, to the Sahel, to Pakistan and, really, all over the world. I think the number, 130 million. I love the quote that the biggest threat to extremism is a girl with a book. That is what we are going to change.
Madam Speaker, thank you for your boldness and your courage and leadership in bringing this to the floor, and I yield back the balance of my time.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source