Delivering for Delawareans

Floor Speech

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Ms. McBRIDE. Madam Speaker, when I was elected, I promised to work with anyone who would help deliver for Delawareans and to stand up to anyone who seeks to harm my State.

Instead of seeking common ground, the Trump administration from day one has waged an unrelenting attack on working people in Delaware and across the country, seeking to freeze funding for first responders, domestic violence shelters, schools, and healthcare facilities that my constituents rely on.

Last week, as I traveled up and down our State meeting with seniors, military families, students, mayors, doctors and nurses, the fear and outrage was palpable. People were terrified by the administration's funding freeze.

A senior center in the heart of my State was worried that they wouldn't be able to provide meals to the Delawareans they serve. Critical services like opioid prevention programs could grind to a halt.

Research programs fostering innovation in Delaware already received stop work orders, putting Delaware jobs at risk. Mayors were fearful they wouldn't be able to pay first responders or continue pivotal water and transportation infrastructure projects.

Perhaps most disturbing, some of our hospitals, community healthcare centers, and clinics that serve rural and urban communities facing desperate health deserts, don't know if they will be able to continue serving some of our State's most vulnerable.

In all of these instances, the Federal funds my State relies on were appropriated by Congress and signed into law by the executive, but the current administration is threatening to illegally freeze funding for these lifesaving services and to gut the Federal workforce tasked with helping my neighbors. It has thrown communities across Delaware and around the country into chaos, and that is their goal.

The attacks we have seen in recent days on public servants and lifesaving programs administered by USAID don't just put our security and health globally at risk, they lay the foundation here at home to gut Federal support for education, for healthcare, for housing, for childcare, and for workers. If they can do what they are doing at USAID, then they can do it anywhere in the Federal Government. That means no place and no program is safe from unilateral evisceration.

This week it is USAID. Tomorrow it may be the Departments of Education and Labor. We shouldn't pretend that this path doesn't ultimately lead to Social Security and Medicare.

Piece by piece, department by department, the Trump administration is defunding critical Federal services, purging employees, consolidating power, and cutting and gutting programs that Delawareans rely on. They are trying to decimate the Federal Government and sell it for parts to line the pockets of donors at the expense of working people.

It is clear. They do not want to solve the problems facing American people. They do not want to make government more efficient. They want to prove that government can't work by making it not work.

In 1941, Franklin Roosevelt was in this very Chamber and declared that necessitous men are not free men and that democracies can't survive if people are hungry or out of a job. They want Americans hungry. They want Americans scared for their future. They want Americans to stay angry because that is the fuel of Trumpism. That is how Donald Trump keeps his power.

My constituents reject this administration's cycle of chaos, corruption, and cynicism. Delawareans sent me here to make government work better for people, not to make it worse. Delawareans want a government that respects everyone by delivering for them. By helping them learn, live, and thrive.

That is what I am here to do.

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