[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 123 (Thursday, July 17, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4445-S4446]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Rescissions

  Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, in the past month, my great folks in 
Oklahoma have started learning a new term around here that is an old 
term, actually, but it is a term we use all the time, ``vote-arama.''
  I have to tell you, it makes me sleepy just to say the word because 
vote-arama is a part of the 1974 Budget Act that allows for unlimited 
debate on an issue of certain types of budget process, rescissions, 
that we did yesterday, and then trying to be able to go back even 
farther to be able to deal with a reconciliation.
  I want to spend just a couple of minutes talking about it because so 
many folks that I talk to have no perspective on this. It is good to be 
able to get some context.
  The 1974 Budget Act set out 12 different appropriations bills that 
are done. That is how our budget is actually done. That is how we 
actually spend. When the House and the Senate and the President sign 
that, those 12 bills are now law so they have to be done; that has to 
be spent. But if the President were to say: I don't want to spend this 
amount; I don't think that it is necessary, it is the law so it has to 
be done. But the President can actually send back over to Congress a 
rescissions and say: I would like permission to turn this part off, 
and, literally, make a new law to be able to say we are not going to 
spend this.
  That is what has happened here in the last 24 hours. The President 
sent over, about 40 days ago, a rescissions for $9 billion and said: I 
don't think this needs to be spent.
  I will talk a little bit about the context of that in a moment, but 
it was on foreign aid, and it was on National Public Radio and PBS. It 
was $1 billion for PBS and National Public Radio, and it was $8 billion 
for foreign aid. He sent it over and said: I don't think this needs to 
be spent.

  What has been interesting is to be able to see the national 
conversation on this on social media as if this cuts off all foreign 
aid everywhere. I have to tell you, I have some of my good friends at 
home who would be fine with all foreign aid being cut off, but that is 
not what happened. What happened was actually going through and 
examining what foreign aid do we want to keep and what foreign aid do 
we think is wasteful, that we shouldn't keep in it.
  So what actually happened? Let me set some context on this first.
  There are things like PEPFAR, which I have been very supportive of. 
For the last couple of decades, the United States has made one of the 
biggest impacts in the world on slowing down the spread of AIDS 
worldwide. The work that has been done in Africa, through PEPFAR, on 
AIDS, on tuberculosis, and on malaria has literally saved millions of 
lives and has dramatically slowed down that virus movement. The 
innovation that not only affects Americans who suffer with those but 
also affects the entire world and the movement of that disease has led 
us to actually engage in areas like Ebola and other areas to be able to 
go and fight them and make sure that diseases that are happening there 
that are highly communicable don't spread to us or to other parts of 
the world. All of us who have experienced COVID know full well that it 
is better to be able to attack it early than it is to be able to fight 
it later. PEPFAR has been that entity that has done that. This bill 
that we just walked through in the rescission didn't affect that aid at 
all. We said: No. We are going to continue to be able to do that.
  Programs like Food for Peace and the McGovern-Dole Program that 
actually feed the hungry around the world--some of my farmers and 
ranchers in Oklahoma even and some of the mills that are there actually 
take some of the food that is grown there--it is literally packaged in 
the Midwest, and it is shipped all over the world to feed hungry 
folks--that is still in place. That has not changed.
  I know a lot of folks on social media say: Oh, my gosh. This is 
cutting off all food aid everywhere else.
  No, that is actually not what happened. We have worked through our 
foreign aid programs to counter the Chinese Communist Party's influence 
around the world, but that wouldn't affect it. In fact, that was 
specifically isolated out to say: No, we are going to continue to do 
that because we have got to push back against the communism that has 
spread across the world.
  What about combating anti-Semitism, human trafficking, and religious 
persecution? No, no. We protected all

[[Page S4446]]

of those and made sure those were not affected.
  Polio eradication efforts around the world, especially for children, 
is protected. We didn't make any change to that. All of that foreign 
aid is still going out.
  Again, I have folks at home who say that is somebody else's problem, 
but the vast majority of Americans and Oklahomans say: Hey, we need to 
make sure that we are engaging in humanitarian needs in the places 
where we can as we are also fighting our debt and deficit.
  But what are some of the areas we actually did cut? Because we 
actually did eliminate $8 billion. Let me give you a couple of examples 
of that.
  We actually did a 25-percent reduction in the resettlement fund that 
is run through the State Department. Now, why would we cut 25 percent 
of the resettlement fund? Well, 18 months ago, the United States was 
facing 2.5 million people a year illegally crossing our border, and 
there was work across all of government that the Biden administration 
was doing to try to manage these people in very mass numbers. Well, 
guess what. We have fewer than 200 now a day even attempting to cross 
our southern border. So there is not a need for this massive 
resettlement fund anymore because the borders are under control, so 
this fund was cut 25 percent.

  Now, we are still involved in some resettlement efforts in other 
places for refugees around the world, and we are still involved in 
disaster aid, but we don't need near as large a fund for this because 
there is not near the problem that there used to be because our border 
is more secure.
  The Office of Management and Budget literally went through the State 
Department, line by line, and identified all of these different line 
items and said: What did we spend our money on in this account last 
year? This went to humanitarian aid.
  But then they also identified different areas that the State 
Department took for some of these funds and said they spent it on these 
areas. For instance, the State Department spent $2.5 million to teach 
children how to make environmentally friendly reproductive health 
decisions. Well, we cut that, and I think most Americans would say: 
What in the world are we doing with that?
  They spent $3 million creating an Iraqi version of ``Sesame Street'' 
to be able to use in Iraq.
  They spent $4.5 million on the Melanesian Youth Climate Corps.
  They spent a ton of money on a pride parade, with the U.S. taxpayer 
sponsoring a pride parade in Southern Africa.
  There was money that was spent to promote vegan food in Zambia.
  There was money spent for social media mentorships in Serbia and 
Belarus.
  There was $18 million spent to improve gender diversity in the 
Mexican street lighting industry. Do you know what? We cut that. What 
we saved was aid for polio, for AIDS, for food. What we cut was money 
for gender diversity improvements for the Mexican street lighting 
industry.
  So, yes, we did cut some funds back, but it was very intentional to 
go back and identify the areas that most folks at home would scratch 
their heads and say: Tell me again why we spent our tax dollars on 
that. Tell me again why I worked overtime to pay for my family to be 
able to make more money and pay more taxes so that my money would go to 
be able to teach children how to make environmentally friendly 
reproductive health decisions overseas.
  That is what we went after, and I am grateful that we actually didn't 
just talk about doing something; we did it.
  Not only did we do that on the State Department's side, but we 
engaged in something that a lot of people have talked about for a long 
time: NPR and PBS. Now, I have got nothing against ``Sesame Street.'' I 
have got nothing against the ``Antiques Roadshow.'' I have got nothing 
against NPR programs. If people want to be able to listen to that, 
well, that is fine. They are in America, and they can have the 
opportunity to be able to listen to it. This has been interesting just 
to be able to hear their conversation about it because the conversation 
has been that we shut the whole program down, that NPR is closing down 
tomorrow. Well, that is just not true. Let me tell you what we actually 
did with this rescission.
  We gave about a year and a half of time to NPR and to PBS to find 
some additional funding because, with NPR, 90 percent of their funding 
right now--90 percent of their funding--comes from private sources. The 
Federal taxpayer just pays 10 percent of it. That 10 percent for PBS 
and for NPR equals $1 billion. It is a big number, but it is just 10 
percent of the funding. They provide sponsorships.
  I asked the question: How does every other television station and 
every other radio station seem to operate and find enough sponsors to 
be able to cover them but that somehow, magically, NPR will not be able 
to cover the last 10 percent of their costs? That is absurd. Of course, 
they will be able to do that.
  I have smiled and jokingly said to folks: If MSNBC can find enough 
sponsors to cover it, NPR can as well.
  Listen, they will be able to find enough sponsors, and they have got 
time to be able to actually do that. We didn't cut them off tomorrow. 
We gave them about 18 months of time and said: You need to start 
finding some other sponsorships to be able to get ready for that 
because some people really like PBS. That is great. They will still be 
out there.
  I grew up in a time period like some folks in this room grew up in. I 
was the remote control when I was growing up, OK? We would sit on the 
couch, and Mom would say to me: Go up to the TV and turn the dial, 
because I was the remote control in our family because we had four 
stations. We had ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS. Those are the four stations 
that we had. We established that as a nation we need to be able to get 
emergency information out because that was the best way to communicate 
because we had four stations in America. That was it.
  Well, that is not true anymore. There are thousands of stations that 
are available over the air for free, and there are streaming platforms 
galore if you want to be able to spend a hundred bucks a month for each 
of them. We have got lots of things on our cell phones and have access 
to it. There are lots of different options now that are very different. 
I think some people don't realize that, in 1983, Ronald Reagan proposed 
taking the funds away from PBS and from NPR, saying it was not needed--
in 1983--because we had enough options, much less now, when thinking 
about all of the options we have.
  It has been fascinating for people to be able to say: If we don't 
have PBS, people will not know how to respond in an emergency. They 
desperately need that for an emergency.
  I have to tell you, I live in a rural State, the great State of 
Oklahoma. We have, occasionally, a few storms that roll through 
Oklahoma. I actually don't know a person who says: Oh, my gosh. It 
looks stormy. I think I will turn on NPR.
  I actually don't know that person. They pull out their cell phones, 
and they look and see what is going on, on the radar or they track 
through unlimited numbers of great options for meteorologists in our 
State, and that is true all over the country.
  Again, I don't belittle what they are doing--people can choose to be 
able to listen--but to say the only way a television station or a radio 
station is going to function in America is if taxpayers pay for it 
means you ignore the thousands of other options that are out there.

  So, no, we are not cutting them off except for the funding and 
saying: Hey, decades ago, this might have been an appropriate use of 
funds, but when we have $2 trillion in overspending, maybe we should 
start looking for billions of dollars to be able to reduce our 
spending. We are not just talking about it; we actually did it and 
said: OK. Let's start finding strategic ways to be able to do this. So, 
in the last 24 hours, the House and the Senate agreed, and we are 
reducing our total spending by $9 billion in very strategic ways. Now, 
that is the rescission package. That is one vote-arama for our long 
night last night.