Rescissions Act of 2025

Floor Speech

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Mr. PETERS. Mr. President, today, we are debating President Trump's disastrous proposal to cut more than $9 billion in funding that Congress has already approved for local public broadcasting and foreign assistance.

Not only is this bill harmful to communities in Michigan, as well as all across the country, but it also risks undermining a key part of our democratic process.

President Trump and his crony--Budget Director Russ Vought--are trying to undercut the voice of everyday Americans in our government through this process.

Americans sent us here to represent them and to act in their best interest. That is why our Constitution gives Congress--not the President--the sole power to make laws, including the power of the purse. And that is why lawmakers routinely come together to decide, on a bipartisan basis, how to allocate Federal funding in a way that best serves the people who live in our States.

I am proud to take part in that important process as a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. And I am proud that my Democratic and Republican colleagues in the committee are working hard to advance commonsense, bipartisan funding bills that will meet the needs of all of our communities.

But Donald Trump wants to throw these bills out the window so he can pick which communities win and which communities lose when it comes to Federal resources.

Funding laws are still laws, and Congress passed these laws with bipartisan support to direct resources to these programs. No President gets unilateral say on how any law is implemented, and no President gets to overrule Congress's bipartisan laws.

But the legislation pending before the Senate today would open up a slippery slope that would undercut Congress's authority, rob our communities of important resources, and ultimately erode the voice of the American people who elect their Members of Congress to make these decisions in their best interests.

We have to put our foot down because we know it will not stop here. Today it is funding for local public media, but tomorrow it could be funding for infectious disease research, public education, or weather forecasting--all on the chopping block.

They have made it pretty clear that folks just want to cut rather than leading our government in a way that makes our constituents' lives better.

We saw it at the beginning of this year, when the administration froze funds that Congress passed into law to support local infrastructure upgrades, cancer research, childcare programs, opioid addiction centers, and so many more.

Just a few weeks ago, the administration froze a ton of funding that Congress passed for summer school and afterschool programs. And again with the ``Big Bad Bill'' that our Republican colleagues just passed, President Trump signed into law a bill that gutted funding for critical resources like Medicaid and SNAP, ripping healthcare and food assistance from millions of Americans, all to cover the cost for their massive tax cut for billionaires.

And, now today, Republicans are trying to bypass once again bipartisan laws--laws that many of them voted for themselves--so they can rubberstamp another round of President Trump's harmful cuts.

Let's take a look at the harm that these cuts will do. Take the proposed elimination of funding for public broadcasting. This would eliminate the single most important source of funding for local radio and TV stations that focus on providing high-quality, community- centered content.

When local public media stations from Grand Rapids to Marquette see a huge chunk of their budget eliminated by this bill, they will, at a minimum, be forced to let people go. These are Michiganders who are just trying to keep their friends and neighbors informed on what is happening in their local communities. Families will no longer have 24/7 access to Michigan's Learning Channel, which provides educational math and literacy content for children all across my State.

But the biggest harm that these funding cuts will have on our communities is the impact to emergency response and public safety.

Many of Michigan's public TV and radio stations are responsible for broadcasting emergency alerts during national disasters like tornadoes, wildfires, or severe flooding. When catastrophic ice storms swept through northern Michigan earlier this year, it was local radio stations that literally saved lives by broadcasting emergency warnings to folks after commercial towers went down.

These alerts are critical, particularly in rural communities where these local public stations are often the only ones available to reach people during an emergency.

WNMU out of Marquette is the only source of emergency alert services for over 250,000 residents in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. This singular station covers an area larger than Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Delaware combined. If Republicans pass this disastrous bill, those communities will be left in the dark when the next emergency strikes.

Local public media also plays an important role in supporting national security and law enforcement efforts. In the Thumb region, Delta College Public Media hosts transmitters for the FBI and the Coast Guard to ensure that they can effectively communicate during emergency situations. Eliminating funding for that partnership, as this bill would do, is quite literally putting American lives and the homeland at risk.

And don't get me wrong. I am all for reducing waste and making sure that we are spending taxpayer dollars efficiently, but gutting funding for local stations that communities rely on to keep their families safe is to cut corners that is absolutely detrimental to public safety.

So when President Trump--and his cronies like Russ Vought--say that this bill targets government fraud, waste, and abuse--something that I have spent my entire life fighting against--we know that it is just not true.

Don't forget, they just passed a bill that is going to add $3 trillion to the deficit. They don't care about balancing the budget or limiting waste. They want to cut services that American families depend on so they can afford a bigger tax cut for the wealthiest Americans.

In addition to local broadcasting, this bill also will upend bipartisan investments in foreign assistance that Congress made earlier this year to maintain our global leadership and protect U.S. national security interests.

While foreign assistance represents less than 1 percent of the Federal Government, it provides critical benefits to our Nation. These strategic investments help save American lives, reinforce our global leadership, and support economic growth here in our country. Foreign assistance helps protect global stability and prevent conflict that is more costly for us in the long run. But this bill undermines those strategic goals by compromising programs that have long received bipartisan support.

Funding for programs like Feed the Future and efforts to counter Russian and Chinese influence have been cut in this bill. These programs just don't support communities abroad, they actually stimulate local businesses and economies right here at home. Feed the Future, which is a part of the U.S. Agency for International Development, supports local farmers by purchasing their products and distributing them to people in need around the globe. If Republicans pass this bill, those farmers will lose.

Feed the Future also partners with universities and colleges across the United States to operate innovation labs that draw on their expertise to tackle the world's biggest challenges to food security.

Institutions like Michigan State University conduct cutting-edge agricultural research to help farmers grow better products that support Americans. These partnerships also provide training opportunities for the next generation of researchers to help maintain America's competitiveness. If this bill passes, MSU will lose.

But Michigan State University is not alone. Institutions across the country in States like Kansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, North Carolina, and many more will also have their vital research projects canceled.

Foreign assistance is designed to prevent the need for more costly interventions down the line. This bill will undo the success of past generations of Americans and damage our geopolitical standing, all to save just a fraction of our Nation's annual budget while doing serious damage to American leadership across the globe.

But the bigger picture here is that Republicans are allowing Donald Trump to bypass Congress and the bipartisan laws that we pass right here.

Every year Congress tirelessly negotiates bipartisan funding bills, and each side makes compromises. But if one party can simply rip up those bipartisan funding agreements by enacting one-sided decisions like what my Republican colleagues are going to be doing here, the appropriations process will simply break down.

How can we be assured that these bipartisan agreements are being made in good faith if Republicans are just going to turn their backs on them just a few months later? How can we be sure that the funding laws we pass will help all of our communities succeed if our Republican colleagues will simply let President Trump pick who wins and who loses when it comes to Federal support?

President Trump's Budget Director Russ Vought has already made it clear that he won't stop with this rescission effort. He just opened the door to undercutting the bipartisan funding laws that Congress passed, and there is no telling where he and President Trump will stop if they succeed here.

Congress is meant to be an independent branch of the government from the Presidency, with our own unique powers. Making decisions about how the Federal Government should allocate its resources is one of those powers that belongs solely to Congress under the U.S. Constitution.

What we do today will either reaffirm that Congress makes the laws, or it will show how quickly our Republican colleagues will roll over and rubberstamp whatever Donald Trump wants, no matter--no matter--what harm it will do to the people that they represent.

I urge my colleagues to oppose this harmful bill.

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