Big, Backstabbing Bill

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. IVEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, it is an honor to be here on behalf of the Congressional Black Caucus to address and speak to these issues because they are so timely.

There are new developments that come every day that keep us guessing as to what the Trump administration is going to do from one moment to the next. I am going to talk about this plane from Qatar toward the end.

Mr. Speaker, I want to speak today about my deep concern about the appropriations and budget processes as established by the Constitution because they are broken. I rise out of deep concern for our institution, our responsibilities, and for the American people who elected us to make decisions.

The continuing resolutions that we have been passing are temporary stopgaps, but they have become the norm. It is not just a failure of a process. It is a failure of President Trump's leadership and House Republican leadership.

Trump's economic failures include trying to make his tax cuts permanent, the DOGE cuts, and the irresponsibility of the tariff packages. Thank goodness, I think he backed away a few days ago with respect to cutting a deal with China, but that is only for 90 days.

The challenge of the erratic and illegal behavior he has been exhibiting is that it really puts companies in a very difficult spot. Companies have to make decisions not just moment to moment, as apparently President Trump does, but over months and sometimes years, especially if they are going to make major decisions about something like investing to build a new plant. That can cost millions or even billions of dollars.

When he does things like puts up 130-something percent in tariffs against one of the main trading partners of the United States, like China, it creates a major problem for companies that trade with China and that get their materials or send their finished products to China.

Many of them are small American businesses. We have seen and heard from many of those over the past couple of days. I have been listening to some who are toy manufacturers. They talk about what has happened to their companies on the radio. They are concerned about what might happen for them during the Christmas holidays, a key time of year for their businesses.

The Trump administration didn't pay any attention to that. In fact, he just moved forward with the tariffs that he put in place. He did so not just against China, not just against our adversaries, but against allies like Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, and other countries. It has been devastating to the American economy and businesses across the country.

He ran for election telling the American people that he was going to make their economic lives better and that he was going to help them financially be better off than they were under the Biden administration. However, it is clear in the first 6 months that what he has been doing is he is not putting money in their pockets, he is taking it out.

I think it is critical for us to make sure we understand fully what is going on here with respect to the packages that they are trying to move. He is trying to do this mainly through executive order. He has been unable to move major pieces of legislation through the House, and House leadership hasn't pressed him to do it, even though we are supposed to be doing these things through the appropriations process.

As a matter of fact, the Constitution gave us the obligation to move these bills through the appropriations process, but the Republican leadership in the House has failed to do that.

The failure to pass these appropriations bills has led to things like Federal workers are being forced out of their positions. Some of them are concerned about whether their paychecks are going to come. Small businesses, we just mentioned a moment ago, especially those who are relying on government contracts, are having trouble making payroll. In some of those instances, they have already done the work that they are supposed to get paid for.

However, the Trump administration has done two things. One is it has withdrawn contracts, but it has also, even though they performed the work, refused to make the payments and forced some of these companies to shut down and fire some of their employees even though they already did the work.

We are also going to have challenges I think, too, with respect to communities who have been hit by major disasters. Unfortunately, I just saw while we were waiting to start this process a few minutes ago, we had three major natural disasters today across the country, but FEMA is under attack, and the funding is being cut.

With respect to reconciliation, as we just talked about a moment ago, the $881 billion in cuts to Medicaid are a shocking development. We know what that could mean for communities across the country is that hospitals have to shut down, medical treatment facilities might have to be closed, and people who perform medical services like doctors and nurses might not be available.

Certainly, in urban areas and suburban areas like mine, there is going to be a major impact from that, and in red States and rural districts as well.

I just heard a report on the radio last week. It was talking about a district in a rural area where I think they said that 70 percent of their funding comes through Medicaid in one way or another. If these cuts are made then that hospital is going to have to close and if that hospital closes then it creates, essentially, a medical desert going 200 miles each way. So the next time you have a serious car accident in that area, Mr. Speaker, they are going to have a tough time getting people the care that they need for any kind of medical emergency, say perhaps from a complication in a birth scenario or basic day-to-day medical services, they are going to have to drive hundreds of miles, in some instances, just to go see a doctor.

With respect to the impoundment issue, I want to raise that too because the Trump administration has started making the argument that even though money has been appropriated, they don't have to spend it. The reason they are trying to do that is because they want to take control away from Congress. They want to take control of the power of the purse that was given to Congress through the Constitution. They want to do that so they can marginalize Congress and make the spending decisions that they want to make.

We saw that with the $1.6 trillion, the Trump administration decided how to spend that because we didn't pass a regular appropriations set of bills. We had to do it through the continuing resolution. It left them discretion that I don't think they should have. I have to say I am concerned about the way he has used that discretion in some of these processes.

They have made budget cuts, for example, to VOCA. That stands for the Victims of Crime Act. They are cutting grants to help people who are victims of crime.

Why would he take a step like that?

The Violence Against Women Act, VAWA, is to help women who are surviving sexual assault and domestic violence.

Why would he cut a program like that?

They cut USAID programs. One of our colleagues referenced earlier about how that has had a positive impact on the starvation issues, the USAID efforts. However, they are cutting programs that will to lead to, I saw one estimate, 1.6 million people who will die over the next year based on these cuts that he is making right now to foreign aid.

We stopped funding AmeriCorps, which means less teachers in areas that are in desperate need of teaching assistants. We have a lot of schools out there who are short on full-time teachers. They are certainly short on full-time certified teachers. Cuts to AmeriCorps just exacerbate the problem.

Cutting rental subsidies means that low-income families will have trouble keeping a roof over their heads. The Trump administration is going to make it even harder for them to do that.

Why would we take that step?

How is that consistent with the promise he made to help American people who needed help the most?

He is making cuts to mental health services. We have got kids who are struggling in school. They are bullied sometimes. We have some scenarios where we have serious violent attacks in the schools. It might be a mass shooting from a gun situation. It might be something less serious than that. We have got kids who need assistance with their mental health challenges across the country, and making cuts to those sorts of programs only makes it harder for these kids to survive and get through the school process.

There are cuts to NIH. Now, I know he had, frankly, a vendetta, essentially, against Dr. Fauci, and he is taking that out on many of the health institutions, like the NIH. However, at the end of the day, it is clear that the NIH has been and continues to be, hopefully, at least if it can survive these cuts, one of the premier institutions that do medical research that makes a difference here in the United States and around the world.

He is cutting medical research on cancer. I am a cancer survivor. It is important to folks like me, and there are a lot of folks who are cancer survivors. The only reason we are still here is because of the medical advances that were made at places like NIH based on research that was done using government funding. That is how these things happen.

Alzheimer's is another one. My father died from Alzheimer's. It is one of the most horrific diseases you can possibly imagine. Mr. Speaker, you would never even wish it on your worst enemy. It is hard to even explain how tragic it is to watch a human being slide from being the full person that they were into something ravaged by Alzheimer's. They cut funding for clinical trials for Alzheimer's at NIH. The thing about clinical trials that you need to remember, Mr. Speaker, it is not like an off switch. You don't just flick it on and off and it comes right back. If you shut down a clinical trial, Mr. Speaker, you might have to start that all the way from scratch. In some instances, the research and the projects that have been going forward under that have taken years. So he is setting that back years and months.

Why? Why would he do that?

He is making cuts to grants to help people who want to go into the science fields. The United States, certainly in the last 50 years and the postwar era, has been the premier nation with respect to science and technology and innovation.

That is how we got Apple, that is how we got Microsoft, and that is why we have quantum computing. All of these fantastic innovations and giant steps forward came from the United States, in part because of the research that was funded in part by the Federal Government. The people who developed many of those advances got their training and got their college and Ph.D.s paid for using funding that helped them get through school. They wouldn't have been able to pay for it otherwise. Yet the Trump administration is making cuts not just to those programs but also to the grants and funding that help those people get through.

To add insult to injury, he makes personal attacks on research institutions like Harvard, which has been the source of some of the best, the brightest, and most talented who have taken leadership in these fields. He is making threats to undermine those institutions and those universities just out of personal venom.

It makes absolutely no sense. It is damaging to the United States, and it undermines our leadership in science and technology in the world. He says it is America first, but sometimes it feels like China first. Sometimes it feels as if he is actually trying to help the Communist Chinese Party leadership surge ahead of the United States in its leadership role in science and technology.

Then there are $40 million in cuts for election security. I know he still says that he won the 2020 election. Okay, fine. However, one of the things we can all agree on for sure is that we know the Russians and the Chinese and, in some instances, Iran and terrorist organizations around the world are making efforts to influence our elections with misinformation, disinformation, and the like.

Why would we ever make our elections more vulnerable to those kinds of attacks by cutting the funding that helps defend against it?

I will stop with this regarding the plane. When I first saw that on the news, I thought it was a joke. I thought it was a clip from Saturday Night Live or something. I never imagined that the Trump administration or the Trump family would even consider taking a $400- million plane from a country like Qatar, which is not exactly an adversary country but certainly it is not an ally country. It is a foreign country. The reason the Emoluments Clause was put in place in the Constitution was to make sure that Presidents of the United States of America, whether it is number one or number 47, are not tempted or tested with these kinds of, essentially, bribes to try and get them to lean and issue support for their countries in making decisions. We want to make sure we have people like the President of the United States not tested by the money and not tempted by the money but always making the decisions for the best possible reasons and the best interests of the United States.

However, here we have a $400-million plane, and apparently, he will eventually own it personally.

Now, Mr. Speaker, tell me why that is beneficial for the country. It creates conflicts of interest and then some, because we have all of these issues with Qatar, including the negotiations with the Gaza conflict.

How is this going to be beneficial to the United States to create these levels of conflict?

Even if he can rise above them, the appearance of the conflicts is ridiculous, it is astonishing, and it is unacceptable. The National Review, not exactly a liberal rag and not exactly a liberal bastion, has said that the swamp is under new ownership.

So much for the commitments that he made to the American people when he first ran and when he ran again to so-called clean up the swamp.

Here we are. It violates the Constitution. I think on its face he should know better, and I am sure that everybody in the Congress knows that sometimes he needs guardrails. He always needs guardrails. This is the moment we have to make sure we stand up and put the guardrails in place.

To my colleagues here in Congress: Let's get back to work. Let's stand up and address this issue. As far as the conflicts of interest with the plane, let's make it clear that we unanimously oppose him taking the plane, certainly on behalf of the United States, and certainly in his personal capacity.

We unanimously want to move forward with a budget that is fair and reasonable and helps the American people, not one that takes $881 billion out of their pockets, out of the pockets of kids, out of the pockets of seniors, out of the pockets of the disabled, and the people who need it the most.

We have to make sure that when the budget process is done, we are protecting the people who need it the most. Right now it looks like we are taking from the most vulnerable to give to the most wealthy, like Elon Musk and his allies. We have got to reverse that process.

I want to commend the gentlewoman for pulling this together, my colleagues with the Congressional Black Caucus, my colleagues in the Democratic Caucus, and, hopefully, my colleagues in the Republican caucus who will stand up and say: We can't do this. We cannot cross these lines. The plane is over the line. The $881 billion in cuts to Medicaid is over the line. The no more appropriations bills, that is over the line. Let's get back to work. Let's engage in clear and proper oversight, and let's address these problems and do the work that helps the American people.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source