Providing for Consideration of H.R. Rescissions Act of 2025

Floor Speech

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Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 499 and ask for its immediate consideration.

The Clerk read the resolution, as follows: H. Res. 499

Resolved, That upon adoption of this resolution it shall be in order to consider in the House the bill (H.R. 4) to rescind certain budget authority proposed to be rescinded in special messages transmitted to the Congress by the President on June 3, 2025, in accordance with section 1012(a) of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. The bill shall be considered as read. All points of order against provisions in the bill are waived. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill and on any amendment thereto to final passage without intervening motion except: (1) one hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the Majority Leader and the Minority Leader or their respective designees; and (2) one motion to recommit.

Sec. 2. The provisions of section 1017 of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 shall not apply to a bill or joint resolution introduced with respect to the special message transmitted under section 1012 of that Act on June 3, 2025.

Sec. 3. House Resolution 492 is hereby adopted.

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Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume.

During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the rule and of the underlying legislation. Yesterday, the Rules Committee met and produced a rule, House Resolution 499, providing for the House's consideration of H.R. 4, the Rescissions Act of 2025.

This rule provides for consideration of H.R. 4 under a closed rule.

The rule provides 1 hour of debate, equally divided and controlled by the majority leader and minority leader or their respective designees, and provides for one motion to recommit

Additionally, the rule provides that House Resolution 492 is hereby adopted.

Mr. Speaker, before we get into the substance of the bill today, I would like to clear up any confusion about any remarks I made in the Rules Committee last night.

Let me be crystal clear. I encourage all Members to support the rule before us today. My comments last night were lacking in context. Democrats made the argument throughout the hearing that this process is somehow another vote on H.R. 1. That is false.

The resolution today makes purely technical changes to protect the privilege of the reconciliation bill as it heads to the Senate.

It is not a redo or relitigation of any underlying policy issues in the bill.

Let me repeat: There are no policy decisions included in this engrossment correction.

That is what the Senate is working through, and I look forward to considering H.R. 1 when the bill returns from the other Chamber.

Mr. Speaker, House Republicans remain on a positive, forward moving trajectory in delivering upon the American people's mandate from November. Just a few short weeks ago, we passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

This week, we are taking up a nearly $10-billion rescissions package, and soon we will be moving into the appropriations process.

Discretionary waste is about to be put through the congressional shredder.

Mr. Speaker, the American people demand that this happens. Now our colleagues across the aisle will leap to their feet and scream bloody murder about how the waste we are targeting simply doesn't exist and how we are laying siege to everything under the Sun.

Au contraire. We have the receipts to back everything up.

Here is just a small sampling of the mind-boggling discretionary waste that we will be slashing in foreign funding:

$158 million from the Lebanon peacekeeping mission which has been fraught with waste and abuse as evidenced by its abject failure to contain Hezbollah;

$3 million for an Iraqi Sesame Street;

$833,000 for services for transgender people, sex workers, and their clients and social networkers in Nepal; and

$500,000 for electric buses in Rwanda.

These examples barely skim the surface, Mr. Speaker, and it is really no wonder why Americans are outraged that their tax dollars are being squandered.

It is the American people's money. A single dollar of taxpayer money wasted is $1 too many in our view.

Then there is NPR. I honestly don't even know where to begin on that one. Even if someone were to accept the premise that we need to finance a public radio outlet, then certainly we can all agree that it simply cannot be NPR any longer. NPR's own CEO testified before Congress that she has never seen any political bias at NPR. I don't know what reality she is living in, but it clearly isn't this one.

Here is the kicker: NPR does harbor political bias. It took a $1.9 million grant to improve objectivity and diverse viewpoints.

There is the proof, and it is a concrete example that NPR's CEO was giving false testimony to Congress.

Mr. Speaker, you either understand that you are biased and need help, apparently in the form of taxpayer grants, or you haven't witnessed any bias. You can't have it both ways.

Then there is PBS. Again, I honestly don't know where to begin. On top of the concrete, statistically proven bias against conservatives, Republicans, and the Trump administration, this is the 21st century. We have Sesame Street now streaming on private services so the taxpayers are now subsidizing for-profit companies. We have seen private celebrities like Ms. Rachel who are engaging in crossover with Sesame Street which, again, leveraged taxpayer dollars to concentrate wealth to private individuals.

It is clear that we must slash this tranche of wasteful spending and continue down a path to fully restore fiscal sanity in our Nation.

Once again, I need to set the facts straight. Our colleagues keep flip-flopping on their characterization of cuts to wasteful spending and our campaign to get our fiscal house in order.

At one moment our spending cuts are so monumental and draconian that the Earth is going to stand still and people are going to die, as they told us in the Rules Committee. Literally seconds after they said that yesterday, not even minutes later, they tell us that the spending cut is inconsequential, that it is a rounding error, and that it is a drop in the bucket.

Mr. Speaker, which is it?

It has to be one or the other.

The fact that our colleagues keep twisting themselves in knots is simply evidence that they are doing everything in their power to hide the facts about this vote.

At one minute, this $10 billion return on taxpayer dollars is not worth Congress' time. At another minute, they will tell us that these are draconian cuts that they will oppose with every ounce of strength in their bodies.

Give me a break.

Republicans are finally offering taxpayers relief from years of profligate spending from Democrats. Again, they expanded the Federal Government with an unprecedented $11 trillion in spending, $6 trillion of which has been added to the national debt. It is time to end that spending.

We are ending it in H.R. 1. We are ending it in this package here today, and we won't stop fighting for taxpayers. We can cut spending in little chunks and in big chunks.

In response to Mr. McGovern's obvious assertions, Members always have a choice to vote up or down on legislation, be it a rule, authorization, or appropriation.

The plain text of the rule provides for consideration of this rescissions package and advances H.R. 1 by adopting the engrossment resolution.

Since Democrats seem to have selective memory, let me remind them, and Americans, that during the 117th Congress, very recently, House Democrats deemed 29 items total. Also included in that number is the engrossment correction resolution they deemed in a rule for the American Rescue Plan Act, which included section and paragraph strikes.

In contrast, Republicans in the 118th Congress deemed only two measures. We understand that this is a tool of the majority that should be used only when necessary.

We all know the Democrats opposed H.R. 1. They opposed it weeks ago, and they opposed the engrossment resolution last night on the basis that it advances H.R. 1.

Mr. McGovern is tying himself in knots here. In a ``Dear Colleague'' he circulated, he characterized this rule as repassing H.R. 1, just before he went on to complain that H.R. 1's engrossment is not getting its own vote.

Nothing was added to H.R. 1. Let me repeat, nothing was added to H.R. 1. Every change was technical or simply removed provisions to make sure this big, beautiful bill has its day in the Senate.

Let's remind the American people what the Democrats voted against in H.R. 1. Democrats went on record against tax cuts for families, against tax relief for tips, against tax relief for senior citizens. They went on record against protecting Medicaid by advocating for the enrollment of 1.4 million illegal aliens. They went on record against increasing the quality of life funds for our Nation's military families.

We have a rule before us to protect H.R. 1's process in the Senate and restore fiscal sanity to our Nation, and the American people need and want us to deliver.

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Ms. FOXX. This rescissions package does reduce certain global health accounts by hundreds of millions. Keep in mind that $10 billion has been appropriated for this work in these accounts, making this rescission exact and very targeted.

The Trump administration has communicated it will not reduce funds for treatment in PEPFAR, rather it eliminates programs antithetical to American interests and ones that worsen the lives of women and children. Enacting this rescission will get this funding stream back to its core mission by refocusing it on protecting health and supporting life-sustaining treatment.

What we don't need is the wasteful spending priorities of President Biden now exposed by the Trump administration: $500,000 for a Lesbian Justice Foundation in Canada; $9.3 million to the John Snow Research and Training Institute to advise Russian doctors on how to perform abortions and gender analysis; $800,000 for transgender people, sex workers and their clients and sexual networks in Nepal; $7.4 million for a One Health Workforce project whose curriculum includes teaching practitioners about environmental racism and the importance of DEI.

This spending, guised under the terms ``equity, reproductive health, and family planning,'' stray far from the mission of sustaining life and serve no benefit to the populations they are intended to help.

These are wasteful programs financed by the American taxpayer, funded by deficit spending; but no longer. This money is better off returned to the Treasury, and PEPFAR's integrity is now being restored.

Mr. Speaker, the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 mandates that all public broadcasting programs must demonstrate strict adherence to objectivity and balance in all programs. There is a myriad of statistical studies that prove they are not.

NPR banned coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop story, claiming it was a mere diversion. PBS made 162 references to ``far right'' versus only 6 references to ``far left.'' Perhaps most damning for NPR is the fact that it had to utilize a $1.9 million Federal grant to improve objectivity and diverse viewpoints last year.

The problem with the Public Broadcasting Act is that it lacks an enforcement mechanism, so we will go with our constitutional prerogatives here to enforce the law. That starts with this rescission of funding.

PBS and NPR will continue to pivot their response to this cut back and forth, as they have for some time. They tell us that their taxpayer-funded gift is just a drop in the bucket, not worth our attention. Nothing to see here. Yet, when we want to hold them accountable, it is the end of the world.

They will weaponize their content against congressional Republicans. They will hire lobbyists. They will buy ads. In fact, they have. They can continue to do that, but thankfully, it won't be subsidized by the taxpayer any longer.
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Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I think my colleague from Texas (Mr. Roy) explained very well why we are not voting to increase the deficit by $3 trillion. We all know that that is coming from the fact that we are extending tax cuts that were passed in 2017.

By the way, if we go back and look at the Record at all the scare tactics and all the Armageddon comments that were made when we passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017, we heard the same things. None of those things happened. In fact, we had a booming economy. I don't think the same scare tactics are going to work again.

Mr. Speaker, Americans are the most generous and caring people in the world. We have set up lots of programs to save the lives of people across this country and across the world, and we will continue to do that, Mr. Speaker. What we are doing here is not going to cause people to be dying if the money is spent the way Congress intends for it to be spent.

Now, as my Democrat colleagues are well aware, reconciliation bills are different from other types of legislation and are prohibited from including provisions deemed as extraneous in the Senate.

What we are doing here in terms of the engrossment resolution for H.R. 1 is we are striking a few provisions in the bill that Senate Parliamentarians concluded would jeopardize the privileged status of the bill in the Senate.

The House is taking all necessary steps to enable the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to be considered expeditiously in the Senate and sent to President Trump's desk under the reconciliation process, which is what this engrossment resolution does.

Mr. Speaker, I will also remind the ranking member and my Democrat colleagues that when they were last in the majority, they also utilized an engrossment resolution to strike extraneous provisions from their American Rescue Plan in 2021.

Furthermore, Mr. Speaker, what we are doing with the reconciliation bill and with the rescission bill is, we are doing everything we can to get our country back in fiscal shape. That is more important to the people in this world than any individual program is. It is important that the United States remain the greatest country in the world and that we reduce our debt and deficit. That is the focus of Republicans.

Mr. Speaker, the answer is clear: The American people gave Republicans a mandate to restore fiscal sanity. This rescissions package is part of achieving that end.

Republicans are cleaning up the ruin that the Biden-Harris administration left this country in. We are taking a fiscal scalpel to waste, fraud, and abuse within the Federal Government. It is the right thing to do.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the previous question and ``yes'' on the rule.

The material previously referred to by Mr. McGovern is as follows:

An Amendment To H. Res. 499 Offered By Mr. McGovern of Massachusetts

Strike everything following the resolved clause and insert the following:

That upon adoption of this resolution, it shall be in order to consider in the House the bill (H.R. 4) to rescind certain budget authority proposed to be rescinded in special messages transmitted to the Congress by the President on June 3, 2025, in accordance with section 1012(a) of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. The bill shall be considered as read. All points of order against provisions in the bill are waived. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill and on any amendment thereto, to final passage without intervening motion except: (1) one hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Appropriations or their respective designees; (2) the amendment specified in section 2 of this resolution, if offered by Representative Goldman of New York or a designee, which shall be in order without intervention of any point of order, shall be considered as read, shall be separately debatable for 10 minutes equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent, and shall not be subject to a demand for division of the question; and (3) one motion to recommit.

Sec. 2. The amendment referred to in section 1 is as follows:

Page 7, line 17, strike paragraph (21).
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