    [Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 31 (Friday, February 14, 2025)]
    [Extensions of Remarks]
    [Page E129]
    From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

           UNITED STATES AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (USAID)

                                     ______

                              HON. JOHN GARAMENDI

                                 of california

                        in the house of representatives

                           Friday, February 14, 2025

      Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, we now know what a $280 million
    investment in the presidential campaign will give you--the opportunity
    to totally destroy one of America's most important soft power
    institutions, that is the United States Agency for International
    Development.
      What has happened over the last 17 days is an extraordinary display
    of contempt for the American government. If you think about this in
    totality, right off the start, all federal funding stopped. What does
    that mean to the programs that Americans depend upon? Programs that
    gave people access to health care, education, programs that funded
    valuable medical research and infrastructure programs. For what purpose
    was that done? Perhaps to set up the next step, which is the
    dismantling of extraordinarily important programs.
      For me and for my wife, more than almost 58 years ago, we
    participated in a USAID program which at that time was just four years
    old. Set up by then-President Kennedy. We volunteered for a vaccination
    program. An effort created by the United Nations funded by the American
    government, through USAID, to eradicate smallpox. We spent a month in
    rural Ethiopia doing vaccinations. Then as our life moved on, we
    continued working to provide the necessary services so that people
    could survive.
      The Food for Peace program, my wife Patti actually ran that when she
    was at USDA as an assistant administrator. The famine camps, we were
    there. We saw the children that were dying of starvation, and we saw
    when the American grain finally arrived. I remember clearly one evening
    at the famine camp in Ethiopia in the mid 1980's, a woman literally in
    rags picking up individual grains of wheat that had spilled from the
    bags. She was trying to fill a cup so that there would be enough food
    that she could take back to her children. They died that night of
    starvation.
      The richest man in the world invested over $250 million in a
    presidential campaign, and he was given the keys to the American
    government and the opportunity to destroy things that he didn't like.
    USAID is not only providing the necessary food to allow people to
    continue to live, but also to thrive. Programs, agricultural programs,
    economic development programs around the world. People that didn't have
    the opportunity were given it and they were given this opportunity by
    the generosity of the American people.
      So, Mr. Speaker, what we have is here is a billionaire Elon Musk, who
    has the greatest wealth of any individual in the world, who seems to
    think he has the right to destroy people's lives. Before Musk does
    this, Mr. Speaker, before our president gives him the power to do that,
    I would ask Musk and President Trump to get on their private jets or
    get on Air Force One. I urge them to go to one of the famine camps in
    southern Sudan and hold a starving child in their arms. I urge Musk and
    Trump to look at the extended belly, the vacant stare, look at this
    child who cannot even to hold up their own head up and know that the
    American people have developed an emergency supplemental food program
    that can revive that child. And then and only then can they both come
    back and decide whether to put USAID into the wood chopper.
      If Musk or President Trump have just a modicum of humanity or any
    sense of compassion, they would never ever have taken USAID and
    destroyed it. Mr. Speaker if President Trump and Musk had any sense
    that both of their actions are doing to the thousands, indeed, millions
    of people around the world they both would decide to reverse what they
    are both are doing to USAID.
      There are other programs that are out there, and we will be talking
    about those programs. The Department of Education, labor department,
    giving the richest man in the world the keys to the U.S. Treasury? What
    is going on here? What information has been gathered? Where did that
    information go? What will it be used for? Who owns that information
    now, the U.S. Government or Elon Musk? These are serious questions that
    my colleagues and I will continue to raise.

                              ____________________