Relating to Consideration of the Senate Amendment to H.R. Rescissions Act of 2025

Floor Speech

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Mr. MEEKS. Mr. Speaker, this rescissions package is disastrous. It cuts $8 billion in lifesaving and critical U.S. foreign assistance, including food assistance, access to clean water, and lifesaving medicine.

Let's stop pretending that this is about fiscal responsibility. This package is not about saving money. It is about selling a con yet again to the American people.

The President claimed the United States was wastefully sending condoms to Gaza. The fact is that they were sending them to Mozambique to stop the spread of HIV and AIDS.

The President claimed that there was a wasteful $21 million grant to India. The fact is the grant never existed.

It goes on from there.

The President claimed that there was a national emergency in Brazil to justify slapping a 50 percent tariff on a country where the U.S. has run a trade surplus for over a decade. There is no emergency.

He shouted about the Epstein files, and now his administration is saying there are no such files.

This all, once again, is to serve as a con to the American people.

Let's be clear about what the Republicans are voting to defund today: programs that help educate women and girls, programs that fight deadly diseases.

Food, clean water, humanitarian relief for the world's most vulnerable--are we really going to take these things away from the most vulnerable with it? America's credibility and global leadership must not yield to this con.

Let's get to the real waste. The real waste is incinerating 500 metric tons of expired aid sitting in warehouses meant to feed suffering children in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The real fraud is telling the American people that these cuts will help them, and they won't.

The real fraud is letting Elon Musk and his DOGE minions wreak havoc at State and USAID after the President fired the independent watchdogs at those agencies.

This is not how you run and lead a country. This is how you run a scam on the American people. Let's call this for what it is. It is a con.

Republicans claim that they are doing this to save taxpayer money, but as Mr. McGovern says continually, you cut $8 billion in Foreign Service and then you add over $3 trillion or $4 trillion to the American debt. It is a con.

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