[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.

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