Relating to Consideration of the Senate Amendment to H.R. Rescissions Act of 2025
Floor Speech
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Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his leadership. We are so proud of him.
Now, tonight is a dangerous night for our country. I am not even talking about the defense bill and whether we agree or disagree on that. I am talking about what is happening in this Rescissions Act.
Don't take it from me. Just take it from Navy Admiral William McRaven, who was a Navy SEAL and a 4-star admiral. He warned that cutting State Department USAID will put every American at risk.
This is the quote: ``This is no time to weaken any element of America's power. The dismissal of highly trained diplomats at the State Department and the dismantling of USAID will jeopardize national security and make the military's job much more difficult. Our national security has never depended on military strength alone; rather, it relies on collaboration with a strong Foreign Service and diplomatic corps,'' and I am adding with our USAID.
In this bill, over $8 billion is taken away from what we do to alleviate poverty in the world, to lessen things like HIV and AIDS and other diseases, which have an impact on global health, by stopping the funding for the World Health Organization.
I gave praise to President Bush when he put forth PEPFAR. We worked closely with him to fund it as appropriators. There were 25 million people's lives saved, but we are saying the alleviation of poverty and the eradication of disease is no longer the point. They did this in the 1990s, too, when they took control of the House. Do you know what they did? They opened the door for China and Russia to go into these countries, have geopolitical victories funded by our money that they made in trade against us, speaking of China, and then, and then us walking out the door. This is absolutely a shame, an absolute shame.
Mr. Speaker, I urge everyone to vote ``no'' on this and understand what this is.
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