Eric Schmitt Touts Rescissions, Highlights 'Ridiculousness' Of Taxpayer-Funded Foreign Aid Programs

Forbes Breaking News

During remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) spoke about the rescissions package that the Senate will vote on.

Transcript

00:01Senator from Missouri.

00:02Are we in a quorum call, Mr. President?

00:03Yes, we are.

00:04I would ask for unanimous consent to suspend the quorum call.

00:06Without objection.

00:07Thank you, Mr. President.

00:09We are here today, and we're about to begin Voterama.

00:12Voterama.

00:13We seem to do this quite a bit these days.

00:15But we're here today to do it on a very, very important bill,

00:19the rescissions package from President Trump.

00:21I spoke yesterday, and I won't go on for as long as I did yesterday,

00:24about what this is all about.

00:26What this bill is about is to test the will of this chamber

00:31if we can actually move forward on what the American people sent us here to do,

00:39which is to find waste, to find fraud, and find abuse,

00:44and also to realign the taxpayer dollars that go out the door

00:49with actual American interests.

00:51So we're going to have a lot of conversations about the foreign aid spending.

00:55And it's been certainly highlighted, as it should be,

00:59some of the ridiculousness and craziness.

01:02And my friend from Hawaii has talked about,

01:03well, that's not going to happen anymore.

01:04Well, good, we don't need the money for it.

01:06But let's make sure it never happens again by sending a message

01:09that this chamber can actually see what happened and course correct.

01:14$18 million to gender diversity in the Mexican street lighting industry.

01:21$2.4 million to make international disaster aid more considerate of sexual orientation

01:26and gender identity.

01:27$2.2 million to reduce xenophobia towards Venezuelan migrants.

01:33$3 million for Iraqi Sesame Street and $33 million for UN programs like funding for transgender tampons in Bangladesh,

01:42LGBTQ campaigns in Rio, and third gender community centers in Southeast Asia.

01:47If you're listening to this, if you're watching this, that is offensive.

01:51And that's just a short laundry list of the ways in which these bureaucrats have betrayed the trust of the American people.

01:58So what is today about?

02:00It is our effort to try to restore not only just some fiscal sanity to this place,

02:06that everybody has talked about, even across the aisle.

02:09Hopefully, maybe, I don't know.

02:11But not just that, but the political will to take that vote to go do it.

02:16Many, many legislators in many, many senates over the generations have talked about doing this.

02:22In fact, President Ronald Reagan talked about getting rid of federal money

02:27for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the early 1980s.

02:31It didn't happen.

02:32But guess what?

02:34Today, we can actually go do that.

02:37We don't have to sit by anymore and continue to send the hard-earned tax dollars that are sent here

02:43by the guys that swing the hammer and the gals who drive the trucks back in Missouri

02:47who should be mortified that they're spending money for the head of NPR

02:53to call the President a bigot, a racist, to look over the vast continent of our country

03:00and where I come from, flyover country, and look down on them

03:03and actually use our money for programming to tell them that every single hour of every single day.

03:09Enough is enough.

03:10So that's the charge here today, Mr. President.

03:13Let the Votorama begin.

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