Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2025

Floor Speech

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Ms. STANSBURY. Mr. Chair, I thank Ranking Member Lee for her exceptional years of leadership on international affairs. She is a beacon of hope for our country and to so many around the world.

Mr. Chair, I rise today to oppose H.R. 8771, which is the GOP's State-Foreign Operations bill that is supposed to fund our international programs but, in this case, is defunding critical programs across the U.S. Government.

This bill will not only make the United States less safe, it will make the world less safe. It defunds critical programs for international security and stability and includes poison pills that would undermine American leadership on climate action.

It guts climate programs, undermines international commitments to our climate accords, and seeks to undermine U.S. leadership in tackling the climate crisis abroad and right here at home.

We have to ask ourselves why is the GOP proposing to do this? For years donors have funded candidates and organizations that have propagated lies about the climate and climate denialism. They have propped up international oil and gas companies and their profits while the American people have paid for it at the pump and with billions of dollars in damages caused by extreme weather and climate inaction.

Make no mistake: Climate change is real. It is here and we are seeing its impacts everywhere, every day across the country and across the planet with extreme heat waves here on the East Coast and across the Midwest, flooding and tornadoes, catastrophic fires, including two fires in New Mexico that burned through 25,000 acres just this last week, displacing nearly 9,000 residents of my district, burning hundreds of homes, and claiming the lives of two people.

This is the cost of inaction. These are the costs that we have been fighting to address through climate action. That is why I introduced amendments to this bill to restore climate programs that the GOP is proposing to cut, to tackle climate change at home and abroad, to rebuild and enhance international climate programs, to catalyze clean energy and sustainability, to revitalize climate and environmental justice programs, to protect our public health, and to support implementation of the most consequential climate bill ever passed in American history in the Inflation Reduction Act, which we passed on this floor just 2 years ago under the leadership of Joe Biden and Democrats because we must take climate action now.

We cannot wait, but unfortunately, none of the amendments that I offered to this bill were found in order by the GOP because not only do they seek to gut the fundamental international programs that underpin U.S. leadership on so many issues, they continue to do the bidding of their corporate donors here on the House floor.

That is why, Mr. Chair, I have to vote ``no'' on this bill, and that is why we must restore our international commitments to climate action and justice and American leadership on this issue and stop every effort to undermine them because, indeed, the future of our country and our planet depend on it.

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