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

Floor Speech

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Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, I remain strongly opposed to this rescissions bill, which is a rubberstamp on stealing from the American people.

Since taking office, the Trump administration has stolen funds appropriated by the Congress, passed by Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate, and signed into law by the President of the United States, upending the separation of powers and our constitutional order.

This rescissions bill is another effort to subvert the Congress' power of the purse. That is precisely what they are trying to do. For what ends? To hand billionaires and the biggest corporations that already pay little or no taxes a massive tax break and, ultimately, to embrace privatization; to give the biggest companies unchecked power to rig the economy against the middle class, the working class, and vulnerable people; and to ensure the American people have no faith in their government.

This bill will shut down rural television and radio stations, cutting off coverage of local news, eliminating emergency information like severe weather alerts, jeopardizing access to PBS KIDS, children's programs like Sesame Street--yes, Sesame Street.

This bill rips lifesaving support away from hungry, displaced, and sick people in developing countries and conflict zones and will end programs that prevent conflict and pandemics.

This bill abandons the people of Ukraine while they resist Putin's tyranny.

This bill puts America last.

When we retreat from the world diplomatically and through our assistance to vulnerable people, America will be alone without allies in a less stable world without the support of the international community.

Do you know who will come out ahead? China, Russia, Iran.

All of this is being done in the name of combating waste. I will tell you what waste is: 500 tons of food grown by American farmers destroyed at a cost of $130,000 to American taxpayers because of the chaos caused by dismantling USAID. It was left there to expire.

This is the bill to help Republicans claim that they are practicing fiscal responsibility while concealing that what they are doing is ripping health insurance away from at least 17 million Americans in order to make billionaires even more rich, and they increase the debt by $4 trillion.

How dare they talk about the deficit when they have just increased it? They are not addressing the cost of living in this country, the single biggest issue. They are making it worse.

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Ms. DeLAURO. This bill codifies the right of the Trump administration to steal from vulnerable American communities, children, and the global poor for the sake of handing even more money to billionaires.

Congress needs to reassert its role. Fight for the middle class, the working class, the vulnerable, not to protect the interests of billionaires and big corporations.

I strongly oppose this bill. It forfeits our global leadership, undermines our national security, and steals from the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

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