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Floor Speech

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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, I am so pleased that we are going to move forward today on the rescission package that has come over to us from the House.

As I talk to Tennesseeans, one of the No. 1 things they talk about is the debt; what are we doing to stop the out-of-control spending and to get this national debt under control.

After you look at what happened with COVID and with the Joe Biden years, we are sitting at $37 trillion in debt. So last November, the American people voted to make a change on how this country is running. One of the things they wanted to see changed was out-of-control, reckless spending.

Now, if you look at this debt and where it stands right now and you say: How much am I, as an American citizen, responsible for, each and every citizen in this country would be holding $108,000 in debt. Think about that. All of our citizens, each and every one of us--whether you are the dad, the mom, the children--each and every citizen bears the burden of $108,000 in our Nation's debt.

One of the things that came up this weekend when I was at home and somebody was asking about the rescission package and when we were going to get this done and start making some of the cuts, start making the DOGE cuts--this was a veteran, and they pointed out that they were aware that we are spending more money to pay the interest on our debt than we are spending to fund the U.S. military.

Think about that. Think about what that message is that goes to other countries as they are looking at what we are spending on national defense compared to what we are spending on our debt.

What does that say about the priorities that we have as a nation?

So Tennesseeans know that the path we are on with this spending is not sustainable. We can't continue this.

When you look at where we were with our debt when George Bush was President and we were at about $10.5 trillion when he left the Oval Office and Barack Obama and Joe Biden come in, and they doubled that number; you had President Trump's first term and COVID hit; and then the out-of-control spending by the Biden White House, that is how you end up at $37 trillion, and it should concern everyone.

I guess we are learning the autopen was signing a lot of those sales receipts over at the White House. The point is, we have this debt.

Now, the good thing is, that when the American people voted to get this spending under control last November, they sent President Donald Trump back to the White House, back to the Oval Office. And, yes, indeed, he has gotten busy looking at how we spend the taxpayers' money.

He has spent time looking at the resources that we have and how we utilize those resources. And indeed, they have targeted $190 billion in this year's budget documents for waste, fraud, and abuse and for removing those programs to yield that savings to the American people.

And I think the American people see this as a victory for them and for their pocketbook. Hard-working taxpayers want to keep more of their money. They don't want to be sending it to DC for programs that outlived their usefulness, programs they have never heard of, programs that they don't want.

So we have the opportunity now to go in and claw back some of that money, draw a red line right through the middle of those programs in that budget document and make these savings permanent.

Should we do that? Absolutely. We should be doing that.

That is why you are seeing Republicans here in the Senate choose to move forward on the rescission package that will save $9 billion out of this year's budget. And you know, as you think about it, budgets are 10-year windows so you are not going to see those items next year or the next or the next. So you are going to compound those savings.

Nine billion dollars each year in that 10-year budget--those savings mount up, and it is what the American people are wanting to see us do, to get rid of some of this reckless spending.

Now there are some good examples of programs that we are going to draw that red line through those programs and eliminate them from this budget document. There is $1.1 billion for the Corporation of Public Broadcasting.

Now, this is an organization that funds NPR and PBS. And what we know--think about NPR. They have been pushing a leftwing ideology using the taxpayers' money for years. And my colleague from Louisiana Senator Kennedy talks some about Katherine Maher, who is NPR's CEO, and the things that she has had to say about President Trump.

She has called him all sorts of names. Now, she is not somebody that is neutral, and she is not somebody that wants to give you a point and a counterpoint. She has an opinion, and she is using your tax dollars to spread her opinion far and wide.

One of the things that they did ahead of the 2020 election, NPR refused to cover the revelations about Hunter Biden's laptop and his overseas business deals. And at that time, NPR's leadership had this to say:

We don't want to waste the listeners' and readers' time on stories that are just pure distractions.

Now, that was their opinion. They are entitled to that opinion, but they are not entitled to take the taxpayers hard-earned money and spend it to push their opinion.

As we now know, they were wrong--they were wrong.

Now, the rescissions package that is coming before us also cuts billions of dollars in foreign aid spending that really does nothing to promote American values and interests around the globe. Here are a few of these things.

There is a $4 million item for ``sedentary migrants'' in Colombia. That is their term. That is the line item--$4 million for ``sedentary migrants'' in Colombia.

There is $3 million for an Iraqi version of ``Sesame Street.''

There is $1 million for voter ID efforts in Haiti; $500,000 for electric buses in Rwanda; $6 million for ``Net Zero Cities''--that means no carbon emissions--``Net Zero Cities'' in Mexico; and $2.1 million for ``climate resilience'' in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

I could stand here for hours and go through some of the ridiculous, absurd items that are listed and the amounts of your money that you have earned and you have sent to Washington, DC, to be spent on God knows what.

So it is important that we look at this, and, yes, we are going to make reductions in spending in the appropriations process, but do you know what? Doing these cuts helps to push this forward.

You know, there is also some money in this rescission package that is going to be removed from some of these international organizations that work against our interests.

Now, all during COVID, we heard about the World Health Organization and how the World Health Organization was covering up for China, and they were going to be certain that they covered for China, and we would not know the truth about what happened with COVID.

So in this document, we are going to remove $135 million from the World Health Organization, and from the U.N. Human Rights Council, $8 million. The reason to do this? They support dictators, they support repressive regimes, and they are demonizing our ally Israel.

These are wise decisions to be made about how we spend their money. And do you know what? It is common sense. As I have had Tennesseans say to me, it is about time that we start to make these reductions. We know that Tennesseans support these cuts. The American people support these cuts.

This is about fiscal responsibility. It is about thinking about our kids and our grandkids and what kind of country they are going to inherit. What are we going to leave for them?

You know, running up this kind of debt--I think it is so important to remember what Admiral Mullen, who was then Chief of Staff over at the Pentagon, said in July of 2010.

He was asked: What keeps you up at night? What do you think is the biggest threat?

His reply to that reporter--significant--he said: The greatest threat to our freedom is our Nation's debt.

It is time for us to stop the out-of-control spending. It is time for us to begin to turn this around and reduce what the Federal Government spends.

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