[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 126 (Wednesday, July 23, 2025)]
[House]
[Page H3564]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         PLUMPY'NUT SAVES LIVES

  (Mr. Magaziner of Rhode Island was recognized to address the House 
for 5 minutes.)
  Mr. MAGAZINER. Mr. Speaker, I rise for the 34th time to call on the 
Trump administration to restore food aid for children around the world 
suffering from malnutrition. We have been doing this for months.
  We have been doing this for months because after decades of United 
States leadership in providing aid to children around the world 
suffering from malnutrition, the Trump administration has stopped 
funding this lifesaving program.
  In my district in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, there is a warehouse 
with 90,000 boxes of Plumpy'Nut, lifesaving food aid that is designed 
to save the lives of starving children whose organs are shutting down 
and can no longer process conventional food.
  This food aid has already been manufactured and has already been paid 
for but is sitting in a warehouse in Rhode Island because some 
bureaucrat in the Trump administration refuses to sign the piece of 
paper to restart the shipments.
  Why? What possible good can come from allowing children to starve 
needlessly around the world while American factories and American 
farmers do not get paid?
  The crazy thing is that for months the administration has been 
insisting that they are going to restart this program. Secretary Rubio, 
under oath in the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that this 
program was going to be restarted.
  Elon Musk, when he was still in the administration before he had his 
big break up with Donald Trump, even tweeted the name of the factory in 
my district and said that they were going to get their funding.
  Time and time again when we have inquired with the administration, 
they say: Yes, any day now we are going to restart it. It has been 6 
months. Every day that they delay is another day that children 
unnecessarily starve to death.
  We need the administration to honor its word. We are not asking them 
to change their policy. We are asking them to execute on their stated 
policy.
  I will continue to speak out on this floor every day until they honor 
their commitment to restart funding for emergency food aid around the 
world.

                              {time}  1110


              Helping Small Businesses Thrive and Survive

  Mr. MAGAZINER. Mr. Speaker, when I was back in my district in Rhode 
Island, I took the opportunity to catch up with a number of leaders in 
the restaurant and hospitality industry around my State, and they told 
me to a person that business is down this summer compared to last 
summer.
  Why? Well, there are a few reasons.
  Number one, the tariffs that Donald Trump has put in place are a tax 
on small businesses and on the middle class. Why are we putting a 10, 
15, or 20 percent tariff on food that we can't even grow in the United 
States?
  Mr. Speaker, 99 percent of the coffee that we drink comes from other 
countries because we can't grow it here. We are taxing ourselves 10, 
15, or 20 percent to import pineapples, bananas, and foods that we do 
not make or grow in the United States. That hurts restaurants and other 
small businesses in my district and the entire country. It hurts 
consumers as well.
  On top of that, this is summer tourism season in Rhode Island, and we 
typically get a lot of tourists from Canada and Europe who come to 
Rhode Island for our beaches, our food, and our hospitality. Wouldn't 
you know it, international travel into Rhode Island and the entire 
Northeast is down because, it turns out, when you threaten to invade 
other countries, when you enact tariffs on other countries with no 
clear strategy, and when you bad-mouth our allies, they don't want to 
come visit here anymore.
  We have a hospitality industry in Rhode Island--hotels, restaurants, 
and other small businesses--that is facing crushing costs from tariffs 
and less business from international travel. In addition, by the way, 
their domestic customers, American customers, also have less 
discretionary income because of the increased cost of food. Besides 
that, for some reason, we are also taxing imports of energy from 
Canada, so people's electric and heating bills were higher this year.
  Supporting small business used to be a bipartisan cause in 
Washington, D.C., one of the few things that both parties could join 
together and come together on, but for some reason, over the last 6 
months, it seems that Washington, D.C., is intent on doing everything 
that it can to make it harder for small businesses in this country to 
operate.
  Let's reset. Let's prioritize tax relief for small businesses and the 
middle class instead of the rich. Let's eliminate these tariffs on 
products that we don't even produce in the United States because we 
don't have the climate for it. Let's help small businesses thrive and 
survive this summer.

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