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Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, since day one, the Trump administration has been focused on identifying waste, fraud, and abuse in the Federal Government--something on which, I believe, the American people agree with him on. And last month, the administration submitted a rescissions package to Congress that would cut somewhere around $9 billion in wasteful spending, with a focus on woke and wasteful foreign aid dollars.

We are going to consider that commonsense legislation this week. I would love to report that I expect strong support from Senators from both parties, but, incredibly, Democrats are melting down at the prospect of even the most minor cuts to Federal spending. You would think we were proposing to defund the entire government, from the way they are talking, instead of proposing cuts amounting to approximately one-tenth of 1 percent of the Federal budget. That is right--one-tenth of 1 percent of the Federal budget.

This bill that is inspiring such hysteria in Democrats would cut just one-tenth of 1 percent, or one one-thousandth of the Federal budget.

Now, back in the day, Democrat President Bill Clinton signed into law a rescissions package that was 10 times larger as a percentage of total government spending. Yet today's Democrats can't bring themselves to even contemplate cutting just one one-thousandth of the Federal budget.

And let's remember what kind of cuts that we are talking about here. We are not talking about making difficult decisions about essential Federal programs or gutting foreign aid. We are talking about modest cuts to funding that has been used for things like promoting vegan food in Zambia, funding a pride parade in Lesotho, teaching children how to make environmentally friendly ``reproductive health'' decisions, making aid more considerate of ``sexual orientation and gender identity,'' and funding a ``One Health Workforce,'' curriculum, which includes material on ``environmental racism'' and the importance of DEI. The list goes on and on.

Thankfully, the Trump administration has stopped these ridiculous wastes of taxpayer money. Now, it is time for those of us in Congress to do our part and make sure that the budget reflects these commonsense moves, something that every Member of this body should be able to agree on.

The United States is facing serious budget issues. We saw an incredible growth in spending under the Biden administration, which took what should have been a temporary elevation in spending under COVID and essentially made that the government's new baseline-- permanent spending.

In 2024, Federal spending was a staggering 54 percent higher than 2019. My Democratic colleagues may not want to acknowledge it, but we have a serious spending problem in this country. And the very least we can do, in response, is to target some of the egregious misuses of taxpayer dollars that we are addressing today in this bill.

In his recent ``Dear Colleague'' letter, the Democrat leader claimed--in defiance of abundant evidence to the contrary--that Democrats ``support ridding our federal [government] of waste, fraud, and abuse.''

Well, here is a chance for the Democrat leader and his caucus to put their money where their mouth is. If they really support eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse, they can join Republicans and pass this legislation.

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