[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 121 (Tuesday, July 15, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4374-S4379]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
RESCISSIONS ACT OF 2025
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
H.R. 4
Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. President, the rescissions package before us reduces
access to educational programming for children and locally produced
public radio and television programming. It diminishes America's global
leadership while eliminating lifesaving aid from the world's most
vulnerable populations.
I want to spend a minute on the impact that this will have on public
radio and television, including the disproportionate impact it will
have on rural communities.
One in four Wisconsinites lives in a rural community, and many rely
on public broadcasting for local news, emergency alerts, and free
educational programming, especially for children. Wisconsin Public
Radio is the primary broadcast relay for Wisconsin's Emergency Alert
System, including AMBER Alerts and lifesaving weather alerts like
tornado and flash flood warnings. Look no further than the absolutely
devastating news out of Texas. Access to high-quality information can
truly be the difference between life and death. Access to local news
from reporters and sources that community members trust is more
important than ever.
Stripping away this funding would also endanger local news that is
already disappearing in so many Wisconsin communities. In 2024--just
last year--almost 20 percent of our local newspapers shut down in
Wisconsin, according to a study by Northwestern University. That same
study found that Wisconsin's northernmost county, Bayfield, had no
local news sources at all while 22 counties across Wisconsin had just 1
local news source.
That is where public radio plays a critical role in keeping
Wisconsinites connected with their communities. Stations like WXPR in
Rhinelander, WI, would be under threat if this package advances--one of
the few news sources producing local reporting in Wisconsin's
Northwoods and Michigan's Upper Peninsula--or Radio Milwaukee, which,
because of public funding, can broadcast local school board meetings
for parents and families to stay in touch with what is happening in
their communities.
Without Federal support for public media, this critical information
could disappear for Wisconsin families. This is what public
broadcasting means for Wisconsinites, but it applies to all the States
that we represent. That should be reason enough to oppose this bill on
the substance of it.
But the other reason is the extraordinary process that is being used
to make this change and the impact it would have on the ability of this
body to perform its most basic functions. If passed, this bill would
represent the first time this rescissions process would be used to pass
completely partisan rescissions, and in doing so, we would undo
bipartisan agreements.
That is why I oppose this bill, and I hope enough of my colleagues on
the other side of the aisle will choose to do so as well.
The Senate passes bipartisan appropriations bills every year. They
are hard, and they take months to negotiate, and it doesn't always work
as well as it should. Senators on both sides of the aisle often discuss
wanting to return to something we call regular order. We decry full-
year continuing resolutions, or CRs, and government shutdowns. We say
we want to bring appropriations bills to the floor. This isn't a
pipedream, and I reject the idea that the appropriations process can't
work anymore. More often than not, we pass appropriations bills within
the first few months of the new fiscal year--not ideal but workable. We
certainly need to work to make it better, and the full-year continuing
resolution we find ourselves in right now is a prime example of its
failing, but throwing in the towel, as this bill does, would make it so
much worse.
I want to highlight one example of when the appropriations process
worked how it should that is particularly relevant in this exact
moment.
It was just a few years ago, in fiscal year 2019, that the Labor-
Health and Human Services bill--not the easiest bill--passed the Senate
and was signed into law prior to the start of the next fiscal year. At
that time, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator
Shelby, along with other Republicans and in working with Democrats,
vowed to return to regular order and committed to it.
In May of 2018, President Trump submitted a rescissions package just
like the one we are contending with today. Enough Republicans joined
all of the Democrats in opposing it. It failed, and that was the end of
it.
Then, 3 months later, a combined Defense and Labor-Health and Human
Services bill passed. It passed the Senate; it passed the House; and it
was signed into law by President Trump on September 28--just days short
of the expiration of fiscal year 2018. It wasn't the only pair of
bills. Several other appropriations bills were enacted prior to October
1 also.
My Republican colleagues knew then that passing partisan rescissions
packages would make passing bipartisan appropriations bills that much
harder, if it would be possible at all. That is what we are debating
today. The issue here is really simple: How can any minority party,
Democrat or Republican, make concessions as part of these bipartisan
appropriations negotiations if the majority just walks back those deals
a few months later?
The answer is, it can't, and that is why we have never passed
partisan rescissions packages like this before.
Passing this rescissions package will also, very likely, mean that
there will be more to come. In fact, OMB Director Russ Vought has said
as much. Right now, the Department of Education is withholding $7
billion in funding that normally goes out at this time of year to the
States for the upcoming school year to support afterschool programs,
STEM education, school counselors, and smaller class sizes, among many
other things.
Will the administration put that funding in the next rescissions
package?
So, if we pass this bill, we would find ourselves right back here in
a couple of months--with the President exerting his influence to pass
another partisan rescissions package--or we can end this here, like we
did in 2018, and deal with these issues where they should be dealt with
and where they frequently are dealt with as part of the appropriations
process. We can and should debate the issues raised in this rescissions
package as part of the annual appropriations process. We should mark up
bills
[[Page S4375]]
in committee and bring them to the floor.
But you cannot vote for this rescissions package and then argue for
regular order or decry brinksmanship over government funding and
government shutdowns or full-year continuing resolutions because
walking back on bipartisan agreements like this rescissions package
does will make future bipartisan agreements that much harder, if not
impossible.
As the ranking member on the Labor, Health and Human Services
Subcommittee, I commit to working with my Republican colleagues on
their specific concerns with funding for the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting, but the concerns I have heard raised as part of the
debate on this package actually weren't even raised as part of the
appropriations process in the last 2 years as I chaired this
subcommittee. My colleagues are saying that this is such a grave
problem that we have to take the extraordinary step of rescinding
funding when these issues weren't even raised when we passed the
appropriations bills with this funding in it originally. That is not
how this process should work.
To my colleagues, if you are for regular order, if you want this body
to work better and want more bipartisanship and less partisanship, I
sincerely ask you to deeply reflect on what this vote means for that
goal that a majority of our constituents want from us. I urge my
colleagues to vote no.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
Mr. PETERS. Mr. President, today, we are debating President Trump's
disastrous proposal to cut more than $9 billion in funding that
Congress has already approved for local public broadcasting and foreign
assistance.
Not only is this bill harmful to communities in Michigan, as well as
all across the country, but it also risks undermining a key part of our
democratic process.
President Trump and his crony--Budget Director Russ Vought--are
trying to undercut the voice of everyday Americans in our government
through this process.
Americans sent us here to represent them and to act in their best
interest. That is why our Constitution gives Congress--not the
President--the sole power to make laws, including the power of the
purse. And that is why lawmakers routinely come together to decide, on
a bipartisan basis, how to allocate Federal funding in a way that best
serves the people who live in our States.
I am proud to take part in that important process as a member of the
Senate Appropriations Committee. And I am proud that my Democratic and
Republican colleagues in the committee are working hard to advance
commonsense, bipartisan funding bills that will meet the needs of all
of our communities.
But Donald Trump wants to throw these bills out the window so he can
pick which communities win and which communities lose when it comes to
Federal resources.
Funding laws are still laws, and Congress passed these laws with
bipartisan support to direct resources to these programs. No President
gets unilateral say on how any law is implemented, and no President
gets to overrule Congress's bipartisan laws.
But the legislation pending before the Senate today would open up a
slippery slope that would undercut Congress's authority, rob our
communities of important resources, and ultimately erode the voice of
the American people who elect their Members of Congress to make these
decisions in their best interests.
We have to put our foot down because we know it will not stop here.
Today it is funding for local public media, but tomorrow it could be
funding for infectious disease research, public education, or weather
forecasting--all on the chopping block.
They have made it pretty clear that folks just want to cut rather
than leading our government in a way that makes our constituents' lives
better.
We saw it at the beginning of this year, when the administration
froze funds that Congress passed into law to support local
infrastructure upgrades, cancer research, childcare programs, opioid
addiction centers, and so many more.
Just a few weeks ago, the administration froze a ton of funding that
Congress passed for summer school and afterschool programs. And again
with the ``Big Bad Bill'' that our Republican colleagues just passed,
President Trump signed into law a bill that gutted funding for critical
resources like Medicaid and SNAP, ripping healthcare and food
assistance from millions of Americans, all to cover the cost for their
massive tax cut for billionaires.
And, now today, Republicans are trying to bypass once again
bipartisan laws--laws that many of them voted for themselves--so they
can rubberstamp another round of President Trump's harmful cuts.
Let's take a look at the harm that these cuts will do. Take the
proposed elimination of funding for public broadcasting. This would
eliminate the single most important source of funding for local radio
and TV stations that focus on providing high-quality, community-
centered content.
When local public media stations from Grand Rapids to Marquette see a
huge chunk of their budget eliminated by this bill, they will, at a
minimum, be forced to let people go. These are Michiganders who are
just trying to keep their friends and neighbors informed on what is
happening in their local communities. Families will no longer have 24/7
access to Michigan's Learning Channel, which provides educational math
and literacy content for children all across my State.
But the biggest harm that these funding cuts will have on our
communities is the impact to emergency response and public safety.
Many of Michigan's public TV and radio stations are responsible for
broadcasting emergency alerts during national disasters like tornadoes,
wildfires, or severe flooding. When catastrophic ice storms swept
through northern Michigan earlier this year, it was local radio
stations that literally saved lives by broadcasting emergency warnings
to folks after commercial towers went down.
These alerts are critical, particularly in rural communities where
these local public stations are often the only ones available to reach
people during an emergency.
WNMU out of Marquette is the only source of emergency alert services
for over 250,000 residents in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. This singular
station covers an area larger than Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode
Island, and Delaware combined. If Republicans pass this disastrous
bill, those communities will be left in the dark when the next
emergency strikes.
Local public media also plays an important role in supporting
national security and law enforcement efforts. In the Thumb region,
Delta College Public Media hosts transmitters for the FBI and the Coast
Guard to ensure that they can effectively communicate during emergency
situations. Eliminating funding for that partnership, as this bill
would do, is quite literally putting American lives and the homeland at
risk.
And don't get me wrong. I am all for reducing waste and making sure
that we are spending taxpayer dollars efficiently, but gutting funding
for local stations that communities rely on to keep their families safe
is to cut corners that is absolutely detrimental to public safety.
So when President Trump--and his cronies like Russ Vought--say that
this bill targets government fraud, waste, and abuse--something that I
have spent my entire life fighting against--we know that it is just not
true.
Don't forget, they just passed a bill that is going to add $3
trillion to the deficit. They don't care about balancing the budget or
limiting waste. They want to cut services that American families depend
on so they can afford a bigger tax cut for the wealthiest Americans.
In addition to local broadcasting, this bill also will upend
bipartisan investments in foreign assistance that Congress made earlier
this year to maintain our global leadership and protect U.S. national
security interests.
While foreign assistance represents less than 1 percent of the
Federal Government, it provides critical benefits to our Nation. These
strategic investments help save American lives, reinforce our global
leadership, and support economic growth here in our country. Foreign
assistance helps protect global stability and prevent conflict that is
[[Page S4376]]
more costly for us in the long run. But this bill undermines those
strategic goals by compromising programs that have long received
bipartisan support.
Funding for programs like Feed the Future and efforts to counter
Russian and Chinese influence have been cut in this bill. These
programs just don't support communities abroad, they actually stimulate
local businesses and economies right here at home. Feed the Future,
which is a part of the U.S. Agency for International Development,
supports local farmers by purchasing their products and distributing
them to people in need around the globe. If Republicans pass this bill,
those farmers will lose.
Feed the Future also partners with universities and colleges across
the United States to operate innovation labs that draw on their
expertise to tackle the world's biggest challenges to food security.
Institutions like Michigan State University conduct cutting-edge
agricultural research to help farmers grow better products that support
Americans. These partnerships also provide training opportunities for
the next generation of researchers to help maintain America's
competitiveness. If this bill passes, MSU will lose.
But Michigan State University is not alone. Institutions across the
country in States like Kansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana,
Oklahoma, North Carolina, and many more will also have their vital
research projects canceled.
Foreign assistance is designed to prevent the need for more costly
interventions down the line. This bill will undo the success of past
generations of Americans and damage our geopolitical standing, all to
save just a fraction of our Nation's annual budget while doing serious
damage to American leadership across the globe.
But the bigger picture here is that Republicans are allowing Donald
Trump to bypass Congress and the bipartisan laws that we pass right
here.
Every year Congress tirelessly negotiates bipartisan funding bills,
and each side makes compromises. But if one party can simply rip up
those bipartisan funding agreements by enacting one-sided decisions
like what my Republican colleagues are going to be doing here, the
appropriations process will simply break down.
How can we be assured that these bipartisan agreements are being made
in good faith if Republicans are just going to turn their backs on them
just a few months later? How can we be sure that the funding laws we
pass will help all of our communities succeed if our Republican
colleagues will simply let President Trump pick who wins and who loses
when it comes to Federal support?
President Trump's Budget Director Russ Vought has already made it
clear that he won't stop with this rescission effort. He just opened
the door to undercutting the bipartisan funding laws that Congress
passed, and there is no telling where he and President Trump will stop
if they succeed here.
Congress is meant to be an independent branch of the government from
the Presidency, with our own unique powers. Making decisions about how
the Federal Government should allocate its resources is one of those
powers that belongs solely to Congress under the U.S. Constitution.
What we do today will either reaffirm that Congress makes the laws,
or it will show how quickly our Republican colleagues will roll over
and rubberstamp whatever Donald Trump wants, no matter--no matter--what
harm it will do to the people that they represent.
I urge my colleagues to oppose this harmful bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. MERKLEY. My colleagues from Wisconsin and Michigan have spoken to
the destructive nature of this rescission because of the programs that
will be canceled midstream.
I have seen, so often, the power of our international aid programs in
assisting in nutrition and fighting tuberculosis and malaria and AIDS
across the world. But what many may not understand is that the small
fraction--less than one-third of 1 percent--that we spend on those
programs has an incredible yield not just in doing good works around
the world, but have been doing good for America because of
relationships that are forged through those programs. The respect that
is forged through those programs comes back to benefit us in all kinds
of cooperation on a huge range of diplomatic goals--be they economic;
be they trade; be they issues of national security.
That is, in fact, what is referred to as ``soft power,'' and soft
power is at risk with this strategy of canceling these programs.
I think about rural Oregon, where so often the warnings on floods or
fires is broadcast over the public radio system, and all kinds of
different channels have different programs that people become quite
attached to. So there are simply good humor programs that are fun to
listen to, and others are good music programs. But a lot of it is good
news programs--things deeply appreciated throughout the State but often
harder to access in rural Oregon. So I am concerned about this
concerted attack on rural America.
First, my colleagues across the aisle say: We are going to make it
very, very hard for people in rural America to get healthcare if they
are on Medicaid. And then, without Medicaid financing and paying for
services, you lose an entire hospital or you lose an entire clinic. The
whole rural community is profoundly damaged because everyone's
healthcare is affected. An attack on rural America continues through
this bill.
But what I really want to talk about now is to give a sense of how
this bill is an attack on the separations of power that we all here in
the Senate have taken a constitutional oath to defend.
When I first came to Congress as an intern for Senator Hatfield, we
were celebrating our 200th anniversary. That is so long ago, 49 years
ago. And Senator Hatfield had a saying about appropriators, and that
was that appropriators--that is, those Members of the Senate who served
on the spending committee--they were first appropriators, and then they
were Republicans or Democrats. That is how strongly they felt about
their shared responsibility to manage the power of the purse.
The power of the purse--article I, section 9, of the Constitution
says:
No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury but in
Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.
And here is the thing. The Congress is vested with that power, but
when you decide how to spend money, you are really talking about your
values. So those who serve on the Appropriations Committee were doing
their best to enact the values of our country, be they investment in
healthcare, in housing, in education; investments that created good-
paying jobs, investments that helped small communities thrive,
investments that helped build infrastructure across the country. That
was the responsibility that was so cherished.
And there was a term for those who chaired the 12 subcommittees on
Appropriations, and that term--the colloquial term--was that they were
the Senate's ``cardinals.'' It was taken from the Catholic Church,
where cardinals helped steer the church on the right path. And the
cardinals of the Senate had the responsibility of steering our Nation,
through our spending decisions, on the right path for the people of
America.
This is, in fact, a key part of government by and for the people:
that shared responsibility to spend that money wisely. But even in the
early years that I was here in the Senate, we were starting to see
signs of the breakdown of that relationship.
In the last conversation I had with Senator Hatfield before he passed
away, he said: What happened to the Appropriations Committee?
Now, Senator Hatfield was a Republican, and he had been chair of the
Appropriations Committee. And he said: I worked so closely with Dan
Inouye of Hawaii, and I worked so closely with Patty Murray of
Washington. What has happened to that collaboration?
That was several years ago. But as we have watched, over time, some
significant things are happening that we should understand as Senators.
In the not so distant past, you have tried to have a fair allocation of
revenue laws that raised money, and then, as you filled the Treasury,
the question became: How shall we spend it?
[[Page S4377]]
So the responsibility shifted from the Finance Committee to the
Appropriations Committee. But, over time, it has become more and more
popular to spend money for programs through tax credits and deductions.
So much of the spending that was in the Appropriations Committee has
shifted to the Finance Committee. And then it became more and more
popular to shift discretionary spending, over which the Appropriations
Committee has control, into mandatory spending. If it is mandatory, it
is not a decision decided by the appropriators.
And then, on top of all that, we started to build up more and more
national debt, and so all the money that went to interest on that debt
is money unavailable to be spent on basic programs of healthcare,
housing, education, investments that create good-paying jobs across
America, infrastructure, security. That money isn't so available
because it is tied up paying for interest.
So these trends are changing the role of those Senate cardinals--the
chairs and the ranking members of the subcommittees who help guide us
in the 12 different sections of spending. And, I will say, that problem
of the debt growing, that is very significant.
Back in 1974, Democrats and Republicans came together and said: Let's
have an architecture to ensure that we are very responsible and don't
run up massive debt. We will have a filibuster-free pathway for one
purpose, and that is to reduce deficits--only to reduce deficits.
And then my colleagues, 22 years later, across the aisle--my
Republican colleagues--said: Well, you know, we want a filibuster-free
pathway to do tax cuts which will increase the deficit. And they
brought in a new Parliamentarian in order to get a ruling that they
could do the exact opposite of what 100 Senators had agreed to. So more
and more payments diverted into interest.
We had that Big Beautiful Bill, as Trump calls it--or as many of us
call it, the ``Big Ugly Betrayal Bill.'' You know the one I am talking
about, the one where families lose and billionaires win that was passed
2 weeks ago. Well, this rescission bill is a continuation of that
vision of families lose--particularly rural families, particularly all
Americans, who lose out on the advantages of soft power that we
exercise around the world--and billionaires win. But it is a direct
attack, as well, on the immediate process of Democrats and Republicans
working together on the Appropriations Committee in this really sacred
responsibility of exercising the power of the purse.
Let's examine that word ``rescission.'' It is a fancy term. What does
it really mean? A rescission is a repeal of a previous spending law.
A law was passed. It spent a certain amount of money on a certain
program or on a certain Agency. And a repeal of it--that is all that
fancy term means.
And so the spending process is one where those members of the
spending committee come together--Democrats and Republicans together--
and they work out a bipartisan bill. And in that bill, last year, for
fiscal year 2025, 11 out of 12 bills that came out of the spending
committee, out of the Appropriations Committee, were unanimous or
nearly unanimous. Where do you look for that type of bipartisan
cooperation in Congress anymore? Well, last year, in the Appropriations
Committee, 11 out of 12 bills passing unanimously or nearly unanimously
out of committee. But what is happening right now is consideration of
undoing that bipartisan work with a partisan repeal.
Now, just kind of stick with me here about a normal deal. You make an
agreement with a friend: I will do this if you do that.
Well, everyone kind of understands that is a partnership. You have an
agreement. But what if one person bails on that agreement later? It is
a betrayal. But bailing on the agreement is exactly what this bill is.
Democrats and Republicans together made those spending decisions, and
now they are being undone in a purely partisan fashion. They are
breaking the deal. They are going back on the agreement. They are
breaking their word. That is pretty shameful, and it is why my
colleagues have been saying: Don't do it--because it is wrong, and it
has a huge impact going forward. Once somebody you have made an
agreement with breaks their end of the bargain, are you going to make a
second bargain with that same individual, knowing that they bailed on
the first deal? The answer is probably not.
So how will we come together and continue what we did a year ago--11
out of 12 bills passing out of the Senate committee in a hugely
bipartisan fashion--if one side comes back and breaks the deal? I would
invite my Republican colleagues: Come to the floor and explain to me
how breaking the deal that you were participating in a year ago is an
honorable thing to do, and explain to me how we are going to do future
deals if you are breaking the existing deal.
Now, never in the history of the Senate has there been a partisan
repeal--never. This is the first time. Why? Because we understood
together that a deal is a deal.
That doesn't mean the President doesn't have influence. Hey, that was
just about last year's bill. The President lays out a budget for the
next year and has a huge influence. The President can veto the next set
of spending bills or any one of them.
But once it is locked into law--passed by the House, passed by the
Senate, signed by a President--to come back and undo that in this
partisan fashion, you are breaking the honor code that has made
bipartisan collaboration so successful. That is why you shouldn't do
it. That is why you should vote no.
Now, this question of how this affects our Constitution is
significant because, as I cited, the Constitution assigns the
responsibility of the power of the purse to Congress in article I,
section 9. But there have been occasions before when Presidents said:
We would like to actually have that power of the purse. And the
President who really pursued that aggressively was President Nixon, in
the 1970s. President Nixon signed a law about how money would be spent
but then decided not to spend it and withheld the money from being
spent on housing, on education, on highways, on agriculture, and on
pollution prevention programs.
Well, of course, this was appealed on a constitutional basis because
the Constitution doesn't give the President the power to impound funds.
Congress, by law--and by law signed by a President--had said: Here is
what must be spent on these programs. And the President came along, and
President Nixon said: I don't want to do it. I am not going to do it.
Take me to court.
So they went to court. And it didn't actually make it to the Supreme
Court until after President Nixon was out of office, after having
resigned because of the Watergate scandal. But, in a way, this was
really almost a bigger scandal. This was an attack on the Constitution.
So what did the Court say in Train v. New York? And the piece of
spending that made it to the Supreme Court was related to spending on
water treatment systems, of all things. And the Court said: You cannot
do this. You cannot impound funds. It is unconstitutional because the
Constitution assigns that responsibility to Congress.
Now, if the law had been written by Congress to say the President has
flexibility between here and here, maybe a modest amount of flexibility
may have survived the constitutional test. But the idea that the
President could just simply ignore the law? No. The Court said no.
Then there was a second test. The second test had to do, in 1996,
with Congress, where Republicans controlled the House and they
controlled the Senate. They decided: You know how we will tackle the
deficit now--now that we have destroyed the 1974 law that said the fast
track can only be used for reducing the deficit and how we switched
that and said it could be used for increasing the deficit--now we have
destroyed that, and we have a new plan, and we will just simply say to
the President: You can line-item veto.
Again, the court weighed in, and the court said: Hell no, no you
can't, because the Constitution does not say you can delegate to the
President powers the Constitution assigns to you.
It assigns it to us. That is our responsibility.
So, again, the core concept here is that bipartisan work in forging a
spending bill should not be done by one partner bailing on the deal
that was agreed to the previous year.
Now, there is a formal way to go about doing this in a bipartisan
fashion, and that is, each spending bill, in
[[Page S4378]]
addition to saying what we will spend next year, can contain agreements
on undoing the spending from the previous year because it is the same
set of people saying: We assigned funds last year, but now we see they
are not needed.
Maybe the President pointed out that they are not needed.
We will undo it, but we will undo it in a bipartisan fashion in the
Appropriations Committee in that same sense of a partnership working
together.
So rescissions, yes. We do them all the time. But they are done on a
bipartisan basis in the spending committee, not in a partisan special
bill, one-sided, basically bailing on the deal struck last year--
because this strategy is a recipe for disaster, destroying the bond of
trust on a deal made with each side having its priorities in a bill and
then one side bailing on it--because of that, it has never happened
before, and it should never happen now.
Mr. President, let's step back from the immediate loyalty test the
President of the United States has put forward. The President said: It
is a loyalty test. I want you to do this because I want you to bend the
knee to me.
That is not the responsibility of a Senator of the United States of
America, to bend the knee to the executive branch. The Constitution
gives us the responsibility to design how the executive branch
functions. It gives us, the Senate, the responsibility to fund the
programs and the services.
The way you lose government of, by, and for the people is to have an
acquiescent legislature that stops doing its job and just says ``We
will respond; we will just do what the President asks'' and a
deferential court. Right now, we have both.
But we took an oath to the Constitution, each one of us, to honor
that oath. Do not engage for the first time ever in creating this
recipe for disaster of our bipartisan responsibilities.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, the good news is that I am the last speaker
of the day. I wish I could tell you my speech will be short. I don't
think it will be long, but I will try to make it interesting.
I want to tell you a story. It is not a story about anything that has
happened in this building. It is a story about a very humble Catholic
parish in Northside Richmond, VA, called St. Elizabeth of Hungary. It
is a humble parish. It is a small parish. It is slightly over 100 years
old. It is the church where my wife and I were married more than 40
years ago, where all three of our children were baptized, where we
attended Mass just this last Sunday to hear the Gospel reading of the
story of the Good Samaritan.
The church was founded more than 100 years ago in an unusual way.
There were Italian and German immigrants in Richmond who felt looked
down upon because of where they had come from and because of the
accents that they spoke with and that their English wasn't so good.
In the aftermath of World War I, people looked at German-Americans
and Italian-Americans with some suspicion. German language was being
criminalized in some of our States in the aftermath.
These immigrant refugee Catholics decided that they wanted a place
where they could feel welcomed, loved, and safe as they worshipped in
accord with the American value of freedom of worship. So they set up
this little parish in the Highland Park neighborhood of Northside
Richmond, VA, where they could go and be together and feel safe. They
chose an interesting name, St. Elizabeth of Hungary.
St. Elizabeth of Hungary lived 1,000 years ago. She was a teenager,
and she was a queen in a time of great poverty. Against the wishes of
her husband and other officials, she would take bread and put the bread
inside of her garments and go out and distribute it to the poor.
Once, she was caught, and she was made to open her garment, and when
she did open her garment, the bread had turned into roses. That is the
miracle that was attributed to her. She lived only a short time and
died, but she was made a saint by the Catholic Church.
These immigrants who started my parish chose that name because they
felt like that was what was needed in the world--people who would try
to serve others in need.
One hundred years later--we celebrated the centennial of my church a
couple of years ago, and I was sitting there--I have now been a member
of the parish for 40 years--and I was looking around, and I realized
that times change and they don't.
Catholic Relief Services, which is one of the largest agencies in the
United States that help settle refugees, who are legal immigrants--
refugees are legal immigrants--about 15 years ago settled a Congolese
family into my church who had been in a refugee camp after fleeing
violence in the Congo. Catholic, French, and Swahili speaking, one
Congolese family came to my church. Then, over time, Catholic Relief
Services decided ``Well this family likes St. Elizabeth, and they feel
welcomed here,'' and other families started to come to my church.
So by now, as we were celebrating our centennial and I was looking
around the parish where I go--this small, very humble parish--it is a
sizably Congolese refugee population, legal immigrants to the United
States who have been settled through the Catholic Relief Services, and
they have come to a place where they feel loved and cared for and safe
and welcomed. The color of their skin, the accent they use, and the
fact that they are unfamiliar with American culture might make them
feel not so welcomed in other venues, but in my church, they feel
welcomed.
It made me realize as we celebrated that centennial that my church
looks really different in some ways than when it was founded 100 years
ago, but in other ways, it is exactly the same. It is a haven for
people who are legal immigrants to the United States but need a place
where they can gather with others and feel welcomed.
Why do I tell that story? How is it connected to the rescission bill
that we are going to be voting on tomorrow?
President Trump has sent a bill to Congress, and one of the pillars
of that bill is to rescind the funding for refugee resettlement
programs in the United States run by churches. Seven of the ten
organizations that resettle refugees in the United States are faith-
based organizations. The largest two are the U.S. Conference of
Catholic Bishops, operating through the Catholic Relief Services, and
the evangelical organization World Vision.
But it is not just them. There is Church World Service, Lutheran
Social Services, the Episcopal Church of the United States, and World
Relief. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society was founded more than 100
years ago to try to bring Jews at that point from Europe to the United
States and make sure that, as legal immigrants--yes, they would be
allowed to be here legally, but they needed someone to teach them about
American culture and integrating into American life.
The practice of American religious organizations assisting in legal
immigration goes back more than a century, and President Trump's
rescission package that is before us wipes out funding to a dramatic
degree for virtually all of them.
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society has had to lay off hundreds of staff.
World Relief said this:
President Trump [has] said he will defend persecuted
Christians. [But] the U.S. refugee resettlement program is
one of the primary ways that the U.S. government protects
Christians and others fleeing persecution.
The Episcopal Church of the United States has had to end its
longstanding refugee resettlement program because of President Trump's
budget cuts.
Lutheran Social Services has had to--they have struggled to make
payroll. They have had to lay off so many people. They reduced the
services they are able to provide, especially to Afghan allies who are
in the United States because they worked with the U.S. military in
Afghanistan to protect our troops.
Catholic Charities has laid off all kinds of staff.
The families at my church come up to me after mass on Sunday, and
they are so frightened about what might happen because many of them
have family still in refugee camps who might want to come here as legal
refugees, as legal immigrants.
I don't know of a President who has attacked religious
organizations--Catholic, evangelical, Jewish--that have been doing this
work in many instances for more than a century, in
[[Page S4379]]
such an orchestrated, intentional, and calculated way as President
Trump.
Matthew: ``I was a stranger and you welcomed me in. I was sick and
you cared for me. I was hungry and you fed me.'' This is a bedrock
belief of our Nation's religious organizations: that they will follow
the law--legal refugee program--but they will help the person who is
accessing legal refugee programs to be able to integrate into a society
so they can live with some sense of dignity and have some chance of
success.
Why cut these programs? Why look in the face of these religious
organizations that, out of a motivation of conscience, for decades,
even a century, have decided that they will try to smooth that path to
integrate people into American life who are here lawfully? Why cut
their funding? Why force them to be laid off? Why debilitate their
ability to provide services? It is an attack on the religious
organizations so that they cannot do the work that their faith and
their Creator compels them to do.
I am not surprised that President Trump would propose this. The
language and the rhetoric and the behavior that he has exhibited toward
even legal refugees, legal immigrants to this country lead me to not be
surprised that this important funding is on the chopping block in the
bill that he has sent to the Senate. But I have to admit that I am
surprised that it seems to be just moving on a path to being accepted.
It was accepted in the House without much drama, including by a whole
lot of people who go to churches, just like me, and hear sermons
preached about the Good Samaritan, just like I do every Sunday.
We will have an opportunity tomorrow to grapple with it here. I
intend to at least offer an amendment to try to strip this piece of the
bill out so that the bill will not be an attack on religious
organizations doing what they feel compelled by their faith to do.
It is my prayer that the entire rescission bill fail for the reasons
my colleagues have said--a deal is a deal, and we shouldn't backtrack
on it. But if we can't defeat the entire rescission bill, it is my hope
that we will allow organizations like Catholic Relief Services and the
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and the Episcopal Church and World Vision
and World Relief and Lutheran Social Services--it is my hope that we
will at least allow them to practice the faith they sincerely believe
and do it in a way consistent with what their practices have been for
decades and in some cases more than a century.
And so that is what I am going to be praying for tonight, that there
is a bit of an epiphany in this body, and we realize that the work that
these church-based organizations are doing isn't bad. This work isn't
something that should be slashed and cut with these valuable faith
workers laid off.
My hope is that the Senate will realize this is good work that is
really at the core of who we are as Americans--so tiny little parishes
like St. Elizabeth of Hungary or synagogues or other churches all over
this country who pride themselves on offering a welcoming environment
for people who are here lawfully and want to make their way in America
will be able to continue to do just that.
I yield the floor.
____________________