    [Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 39 (Thursday, February 27, 2025)]
    [House]
    [Pages H909-H911]
    From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                          PROBLEMS CAUSED BY DOGE CUTS

      The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
    January 3, 2025, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from California
    (Mr. Sherman) for 30 minutes.
      (Mr. SHERMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
    remarks.)
      Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, he got his start on a TV show called, ``The
    Apprentice.'' We saw how entertaining it can be to fire people, but
    that is entertainment. That is not how you run an organization.
      We have seen a performative effort to try to convince us that they
    are saving money. They are doing this in order to justify their plan
    for a $3.5 trillion tax cut for hedge fund managers, multinational
    corporations and billionaires, but they are really not saving anything.
      Then, yesterday, we passed a budget resolution, and all my Republican
    colleagues are on Twitter, X, whatever they want to call it, saying
    that that resolution contains statutory language to say no tax on tips,
    no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security.
      Well, what did Elon Musk have to say about that or what did his
    organization have to say?
      They organized the readers content comments to correct falsehoods
    that people put in their tweets, and every single time a Republican
    went up and said that that resolution had eliminated taxes on tips,
    overtime, and Social Security, the Musk organization said: Readers
    added context. None of the policies mentioned in this post were
    included in the House budget resolution. It does nothing to exempt
    tips, Social Security, or overtime. We know they are not ultimately
    going to do that because they need the $4.5 trillion to provide tax
    breaks for hedge fund managers, multinational corporations, and
    billionaires.
      Now, government is frustrating. It frustrates me often. It needs to
    be improved. You know what is also frustrating sometimes? My computer
    is on the blink a little bit, and I just want to take a hammer and hit
    it up the side. That makes me feel good, but it doesn't actually make
    the device work any better.
      There are several techniques being used by the Federal Government
    that may make us feel good but don't make it work any better. You see,
    you can fire people--and they are firing just about everybody in the
    government with less than 2 years of government service, the
    probationary employees. That destroys our future. The people hired in
    2024 are those that we are going to need in 2034.
      The Dodgers are a pretty well-run organization. I think better run
    than government. Imagine if the Dodgers were going to fire all the
    players who had joined in the last 2 years, just eliminate everybody in
    single A and double A ball, I would say they would be worse than the
    White Sox. You can fire people.
      You can also do the buyouts. They offered everybody in government a
    buyout. Who took the buyout? The people who could easily get another
    job elsewhere because they have very high capacity and the people who
    are going to retire in the next year or two anyway, so why not get 8
    months free vacation.
      Then they have the hiring freeze. Imagine if the Dodgers stopped
    signing new talent, where would they be in the 2030s?
      You can also stop all research, and I will get to an example of that,
    and then you argue, well, hey--in 2026, they can say: Hey, we saved all
    this money, and the research wouldn't have benefited you by 2026.
    However, who is going to be dying from cancer and other diseases in the
    2030s because of the research they are stopping now?
      Then they can do an oopsy-daisy and say: Oh, we stopped the research,
    and we started it again. No, no, no, no, you stopped the research. All
    those little white rats are dead. You can't start again. You have to
    start the research over.
      You can stop maintenance, and I will get to an example of that. It
    saves you money unless you actually want things to work well.
      Again and again, we are told that there is just a government
    mulligan, let's just do it over.
      Oopsy-daisy is not the way to run a multitrillion-dollar
    organization.
      We are told that there is $50 million for condoms and $100 million
    for condoms in Gaza, and then they said, never mind, we got it wrong.
    We made a mistake. Oopsy-daisy.
      They decided to offer all of the air traffic controllers 8 months
    free pay for quitting, and then they say, oopsy-daisy. Then today Elon
    Musk tweets: There is a shortage of top-notch air traffic controllers.
    If you have retired but are open to returning to work, please consider
    doing so. He just gave them 8 months' pay to stay home. Now he hopes
    they are going to come back. No, the fishing is good, the 8 months' pay
    is guaranteed.
      However, it is even worse. You see, not only did they give buyouts to
    the air traffic controllers, but they have fired the navigational aid
    maintenance personnel. Those air traffic controllers are going to be
    looking at empty screens, and those folks remain fired. What could go
    wrong?

                                  {time}  1345

      They also stopped our efforts against Ebola. Some of the charities
    were barely getting by. They have gone bankrupt. They pulled their
    people out of Africa. Then he says: Oopsy-daisy, we are going to start
    that again.
      What a way to run a government. There are people who are going to get
    Ebola as a result of this oopsy-daisy mistake, and that is another
    opportunity for Ebola inside a human being to mutate a little bit and
    then be a more pathogenic Ebola when it comes here.
      Finally, they fired 300 people who were in charge of security of our
    nuclear weapons. Oopsy-daisy, what could have gone wrong? Keep in mind,
    if somebody is fired and then hired back or told they are going to be
    fired but then not fired--if you say, oh, no harm, no foul, oopsy-
    daisy--once that happens to a person, their resume is on LinkedIn. They
    are looking for a new job.
      Nobody wants to stay with an employer, if they have other
    opportunities, if that employer is teasing them about firing them or,
    worse yet, actually fired them and got them back. Some of our best
    people will be leaving in the weeks to come, even if they hire them
    back.
      There is real waste, fraud, and abuse in government. This is an
    example. Mr. Speaker, $200 million of our taxpayer money is being spent
    on advertisements praising Donald Trump. How do they justify this? They
    aim these at their own base, to tell their own base: Hey, Donald Trump
    is great. Here is a commercial to tell us that.
      They claim that these ads are aimed at undocumented immigrants and
    that somehow, by watching a 30-second ad, the immigrants are going to
    say: Oopsy-daisy, I made a mistake. Venezuela really is better than
    California.
      I don't think so. There is nothing that can be put in a 30-second ad
    that is going to cause somebody who is here to decide they want to be
    back there. These are people who walked here from Venezuela. They went
    through the Darien Gap. They dealt with the forest. They dealt with the
    snakes. They dealt with the predators. They dealt with the drug
    dealers.

    [[Page H910]]

      They came into our country at great personal risk. They are going to
    see a 30-second ad praising Donald Trump and decide to walk back or
    even fly back? What a stupid excuse that is for the obvious election
    interference of spending $200 million of taxpayer money on ads praising
    Donald Trump.
      Let's look at what is happening at the VA. They fired 2,000 people
    there. They are still hiring, but they have fired 2,000 people there.
    They have a nursing shortage in this country. The nurses they have
    fired are going to find jobs elsewhere very quickly, and they are not
    going to get them back.
      The VA has stopped its clinical trials on cancer. Even people who are
    not veterans may be dying next decade because of the research that is
    not being done this decade. They are canceling operations. They are
    increasing the wait times at the VA. They have fired the suicide crisis
    line counselors.
      There is veterans' blood on the hands of a man who never served his
    country. That is right. Elon Musk never served in the South African
    Army.
      My district includes the Pacific Palisades. I thank so many of my
    colleagues for their expressions of sympathy. I have had a chance to
    work, as I always do, with my constituents dealing with government. It
    is sometimes frustrating. There are short deadlines imposed on people
    who have fled their homes and form letters that are confusing as hell
    and make people think they are not eligible.
      How do we make it all worse? Fly to my district, as the President
    did, and announce the elimination of FEMA entirely, while I have FEMA
    workers working 12 hours a day with my constituents, trying to solve
    problems. Offer the FEMA workers, including the temporary workers, a
    buyout. In any disaster we go in, we have to hire temporary workers.
    They may only have a 3-month or 4-month job, but they are offered 8
    months of pay to stay home. What a way to deal with a disaster.
      Then the President says he wants to impose conditions on the aid.
    They want to abolish the California Coastal Commission which takes
    steps to prevent billionaires with beachfront property to not wall off
    the beach and prevent anybody else from getting in the sand. I can see
    why Donald Trump would identify with those billionaires. That is the
    condition he wants to impose?
      I voted for aid for hurricane victims in Louisiana, and it never
    occurred to me to turn to a victim after a hurricane in Louisiana and
    tell them to stay on their cousin's couch and no Federal aid until
    their State changes its abortion laws.
      Now is not the time to take hostage fire victims or hurricane victims
    in an effort to try to force a State government to take an action that
    this or that Member of Congress or this or that President wants them to
    take.
      I want to assure the country we are going to build back better. We
    are going to make sure that the Palisades does not burn again. We have
    a very strict fire building code that is applicable to all new
    construction in the Palisades and other fire-prone areas.
      Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.
      The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from California has 17 minutes
    remaining.
      Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, my party has put confidence in me and made
    me the chief Democrat dealing with the Subcommittee on Capital Markets.
    Our SEC oversees our capital markets which are the nerve center of
    global capitalism. Virtually all the most powerful companies in America
    and really the world focus on one goal, and that is to increase the
    value of their companies' stock on our capital markets.
      Our capital markets are the envy of the world. The securities traded
    there are worth over $100 trillion. It is fragile. It is delicate. It
    is the nerve center of global capitalism. Why don't we just let big
    balls take a whack at it? What could go wrong?
      Whether it is crime in the streets or crime in the suites, we should
    not defund the police. We don't defund the men and women in blue, and
    we don't defund the Securities and Exchange Commission that oversees
    the stock and bond markets.

      The SEC has a budget of $2 billion. It secured over $3.2 billion in
    fines, in effect, to those on Wall Street that did the wrong thing. It
    more than paid for itself and--no, that was $3.2 billion that went back
    to investors, $8.2 billion in fines. The Federal Government made four
    times its money on the SEC.
      There are those at DOGE that want to, in effect, abolish the SEC and
    get the same kind of securities regulation on Wall Street that they
    have in Botswana or Kazakhstan--that is to say, no regulations at all--
    and see what happens.
      Two years from now we will have to see. Did the SEC under the Trump
    administration secure $8.2 billion paid to the Federal Government or
    $3.2 billion returned to investors? If not, it will not be because
    there is no crime in the suites, that there is no crooks on Wall
    Street. It will not be because the wolves of Wall Street have become
    lambs. It will be because they defunded the police of Wall Street.

                          Our Relationship with China

      Mr. Speaker, a lot of attention is being spent here in Congress on
    China. With 28 years of experience on the Foreign Affairs Committee, I
    would like to address that issue. The big part of the problem started
    when this Congress voted to give most favored nation status to China.
    That was at the beginning of this century. We were told it would only
    increase our trade deficit by a billion dollars a year. That prediction
    was off by 4,000 percent.
      The vast majority of Democrats voted ``no'' on that bill, which was
    the action which made China a worldwide economic superpower. It got
    China into the international trading organizations and opened up access
    to our markets. We voted ``no'' when a Democratic President was
    twisting our arms to vote ``yes.'' It was our proudest moment. I hope
    my Republican colleagues will have a proud moment when they stand up to
    a President of their own party.
      Unfortunately, Republican votes and a few Democratic votes passed
    that. We now have our markets wide open to China. Their markets aren't
    particularly open to us, and we have huge trade deficits. Those trade
    deficits with China were $150 billion higher under the Trump
    administration than they were under the Biden administration. They were
    particularly high in the partial Trump administration before COVID. It
    wasn't a COVID thing. Trump's policy is to yell loudly and accomplish
    nothing when it comes to dealing with our trade deficits with China.
      Trump talks about other countries eating our lunch. Under his first
    administration, China ate our lunch, our dinner, our dessert, and our
    snacks. Americans are investing in Chinese stocks, and the question I
    would ask at hearing after hearing is: Can anybody give me a reason why
    we should use our tax system and lose our tax dollars to incentivize
    Americans buying Chinese stocks? And not a single member can give a
    reason. Not a single witness can give a reason why we should do that.
      We forgo hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in taxes on the
    gains people earn on investing in Chinese stocks. We encourage them to
    invest in the Chinese economy with our tax dollars. Only one Republican
    has stepped forward and cosponsored my legislation to eliminate the
    capital gains allowance, the tax incentive for investing in Chinese
    stocks.
      Why is that? The billionaire class wants subsidies for every
    investment they make, even when they are building the Chinese economy
    or the Russian economy or the Iranian economy. It is time to stand up
    to the billionaire class. China cannot be confronted if people are not
    willing to do so.
      We also need to take steps so that Chinese stocks are not included in
    index funds and so that every company that reports to the SEC informs
    its shareholders of what risk they have due to their dependence on
    China and what they are doing about it so that every private company is
    derisking from China and doing everything they can. Then, God forbid,
    if China wants to end the trade relationship or, God forbid, China
    invades Taiwan, these companies have minimized the risk that our
    economy faces.
      One area where we need to be particularly strong is in those islands
    in the Pacific between the United States and China. My father fought in
    the Pacific. He landed the boats on island shores. We need to maintain
    our influence in places like the Solomon Islands

    [[Page H911]]

    and the Cook Islands. Solomon Islands are a place where thousands and
    thousands of American Marines died and many in the Navy, as well.
      What have we done? We have eliminated our aid program. These
    countries are very small. These islands are small. The aid programs are
    small. Yet, they have a tremendous impact on influence in these
    strategic islands. We eliminated $21 million for the Solomon Islands.
    We eliminated $95,000 for the Cook Islands.

                                  {time}  1400

      Is this how we confront China, or is this how we have performative
    savings?
      Now, we need to confront China. One way we also need to confront
    China is in international lending and the credit rating agencies, the
    bond rating agencies that rate the creditworthiness of countries. We
    need to tell those who rate the other countries' creditworthiness that
    if they don't repay a phony debt to China, a debt trap debt to China,
    that should not be counted against them.
      What do I mean? When China makes a loan to Sri Lanka, that they know
    Sri Lanka is not going to be able to pay for that project. They put in
    there: Oh, if you don't pay, we get to control your port. Sri Lanka
    should be encouraged: Don't give your port to China. Give your middle
    finger to China, and you will able to borrow from American banks and
    European banks and international lending associations.
      We should never allow a credit rating agency under our control to
    ding a country that is subject to this kind of blackmail from China.

                          Foreign Aid is a Good Thing

      Mr. Speaker. This brings up the issue of foreign aid in general.
      If you poll Americans, they will say we are spending too much on
    foreign aid. Then you ask them how much of our budget is going to
    foreign aid. They say 25 percent of our American budget is going to
    foreign aid, and it ought to be less. Then you ask them what percentage
    should we be spending on foreign aid, and they say 10 percent.
      Well, guess what. We are spending way less than 1 percent of our
    budget on foreign aid. We are spending way less than the American
    people think we are spending. We are spending less than they want to
    spend, but they want it cut because they think it is over 30 times what
    it actually is. That is why Ronald Reagan recognized the importance of
    our foreign aid program.
      Now, I have been in Congress for a long time, and I remember when
    Congress confronted the executive branch. It wasn't just Democrats
    against Republicans. It was all of us against the executive branch.
    There are times when both sides of the aisle are going to need to do
    that.
      There are some criticisms that are valid against our foreign aid and
    State Department budget. The State Department is doing something that
    is too woke for me but is supported by Elon Musk. That is when they
    have in their budget spending $400 million to replace the perfectly
    good armored cars that the State Department has now, armored vehicles
    designed to make sure that our diplomats are safe in dangerous places.
    We have perfectly good armored cars, but there is a proposal that the
    State Department spend $400 million on new zero-greenhouse-gas-emitting
    armored cars. That is pretty damn woke. You would expect DOGE to have
    crossed that out, but they won't because the explicit statement is that
    this is $400 million for Tesla Cybertruck armored cars. You know Elon
    ain't cutting that.
      You know what they did to fool us because they think we are stupid?
    They changed the document a little bit. They took out the word
    ``Tesla.'' Now, the State Department is going to spend $400 million on
    armored, U.S.-made Cybertrucks. Do they really think those aren't going
    to be Tesla? Is there somebody else who makes armored Cybertrucks in
    the United States? That money is going to reduce the greenhouse gases
    of our armored vehicles, and it is going to Elon Musk.
      There are a lot of things that are said about our foreign aid budget
    that are completely false. Elon Musk already has admitted that his
    statement that $50 million was going to condoms for Gaza was just a
    total mistake. Oopsy-daisy. He apologized. It is okay, he thinks, for
    DOGE to make a mistake, but if he can find even a single dollar of
    misspent money in any other agency, he says that is a reason to abolish
    the whole agency and fire all the employees.
      Well, that $50 million was going for anti-AIDS programs in Africa,
    and some of it was going for condoms. That is one of the ways you try
    to prevent the transmission of AIDS.
      Now, why are these foreign aid programs in the interest of America?
    First, you might think that we have a moral responsibility as the
    richest country in the world to do something for the poorest countries,
    but let's put that aside. If we don't provide foreign aid, China steps
    in, our influence is declined, and China's influence increases.
      If we don't provide aid to the very poorest people there, that gives
    them a strong incentive to try to come here. You can try to stop them
    with a wall, but he had 4 years to build a wall and didn't build a
    wall.
      The best way to reduce irregular migration to America is to eliminate
    the reason that people are so desperate to come here.
      Finally, and most importantly, our aid deals with diseases. Musk
    already said oopsy-daisy, he didn't mean to cut the program to fight
    Ebola in Africa. He tries to restore it. Of course, he has already done
    so much damage to it, wasted so much money, who knows what. That is
    more people getting Ebola in Africa, more chances for the disease to
    mutate and then come here.
      He is fine with cutting our actions against HIV/AIDS. Same issue.
    That disease mutates in every human it infects. One out of a thousand,
    one out of a million of those mutations make the disease more capable
    of surviving the drugs that we have, make it more communicable, and
    make it more powerful when it comes back here. A lot of Americans will
    be dying of AIDS next decade because of what we are not doing in Africa
    this decade.
      Then they try to point to some other programs that are wasting money,
    like $6 million to help Egypt encourage tourism. I have Republican
    colleagues who think that USAID is aid that must be food for people who
    are hungry right now and about to die of starvation. They don't know
    that USAID stands for U.S. Agency for International Development. The
    goal is not just to feed people who are hungry now, not just give a man
    a fish, not just give a woman a fish, but to teach them how to fish.
      That is why an Agency for International Development would help Egypt
    develop its economy. You know what Egypt has? They have got a lot of
    sand. That doesn't help them too much. They have got pyramids. If they
    can develop their tourist industry, which is a big chunk of their
    economy, they won't need our food aid because they will have money of
    their own. It is a good program, $6 million to help them get more
    tourists.
      You know who started that program? Donald Trump in his first term.
    Yes, they made a big deal of cutting a wasteful program that Donald
    Trump started.
      Then we are told that there is a circumcision program. There is a
    circumcision program, voluntary, providing this very inexpensive
    operation. Why? Because you reduce by 60 percent of risk of female-to-
    male transmission of AIDS. It is the single cheapest thing you can do
    to reduce AIDS. Then you make a joke out of it. Yes, you can make a
    joke, but it is not a joke when more people die of AIDS in Africa and
    more AIDS mutates in Africa because you had a funny joke.
      The Ebola cut was a mistake. Musk admits it. Oopsy-daisy. The cutting
    efforts to deal with HIV/AIDS in Africa, also a mistake.
      The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.

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