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Floor Speech

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Ms. ERNST. Mr. President, all Americans can take great pride in our Nation's generosity that has saved millions of people around the world from starvation and disease, and our government Agencies coordinating aid efforts should be eager to share details about how their use of taxpayer money makes the world a better place. Yet, over the past decade, USAID repeatedly rebuffed my request for information, using intimidation and shell games to hide where money is going, how it is being spent, and why.

As a result of my oversight, I learned that the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, is a rogue bureaucracy operating with little accountability and even sometimes at odds with our Nation's best interests.

What warranted such secrecy and stonewalling? Here is just some of USAID's questionable spending that I uncovered: Money intended to alleviate economic distress in war-torn Ukraine was spent sending models and designers on junkets to New York City and fashion weeks in Paris and London at a cost of more than $203,000, $148,000 went to a pickle maker, a dog collar manufacturer fetched $300,000, and a custom carpet manufacturer collected $2 million.

Elsewhere, $20 million was awarded to Sesame Workshop, which produces ``Sesame Street,'' to create content for Iraq. Two million dollars went toward promoting--get this, folks--promoting tourism to Lebanon--a nation that our very own State Department warns against traveling to due to the risks of terrorism and kidnapping.

Yes, folks, 2 million bucks for tourism to Lebanon when we are saying: Don't travel there.

Also, $67,000 was spent to feed edible insects to children in Madagascar, and over $800,000 was sent to China's notorious Wuhan Institute of Virology to collect coronaviruses.

What exactly was our International Development Agency developing at China's Wuhan Institute of Virology? Well, if the CIA, the FBI, and other experts are correct that the COVID virus likely originated from a lab leak, USAID may have had a hand in a once-in-a-century pandemic that claimed the lives of millions.

There is no shortage of other questionable USAID projects, but President Trump is putting an end to this deep state operation.

The foreign assistance programs that do advance American interests are now being administered under the watchful eye of Secretary Marco Rubio. This includes projects previously supported by USAID that were caring for orphans and people living with HIV.

Imagine how much more good work like this could be done with the dollars that instead financed fashion shows, supported ``Sesame Street'' programs in Iraq, or ended up at China's Wuhan Institute.

Overseas projects without merit are being ended, and the tax dollars that were paying for them will be refunded if the Senate passes the rescissions bill.

It also cancels taxpayers' subsidies to public broadcasting. Too often, these programs are partisan propaganda. And you don't have to take my word for it. A National Public Radio senior editor recently confessed, and I will quote this editor's words, not mine:

It's true NPR has always had a liberal bent.

He admits the organization has zero--zero--Republicans in editorial positions. Come on, folks, even CNN has Scott Jennings to roast the loony liberal lunatics on that failing network.

NPR has the right to say whatever the heck they want, but they don't have a right to force hard-working Americans to pay for their political propaganda being masked as a public service.

Defunding this nonsense is causing a lot of squealing from the big spenders around here. Washington insiders are more upset at this effort to stop wasteful spending than at the misuse of taxpayer dollars. In fact, saving tax money is such a crazy concept in Washington that Democrats are threatening to shut down the entire government if this bill passes. It says a lot about the other side's priorities when they are willing to take hostage funding for veterans and senior citizens to prevent $9 billion in unnecessary waste, fraud, and abuse from being trimmed from our $7 trillion annual budget. The interest that we are paying on our debt alone is costing nearly $3 billion every single day--every day.

If we are ever going to get serious about our debt crisis, Congress needs to pass a rescissions bill like this every single week--every week.

Folks, the simple truth is, if you can't find waste in Washington, it is because you simply are not looking. With our national debt now exceeding $37 trillion, the real question we should be asking isn't why is government spending now being scrutinized, but, rather, why did it take so long?

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