Rescissions

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, last week, both the House and the Senate voted to pass what is known as a rescissions bill. That is a term which a lot of people aren't familiar with. What it basically means is that Congress appropriates money, the President signs that appropriations request into law, and it is the policy which is supposed to guide, under the Constitution, the President of the United States and the activity of the executive branch. This is the ordinary course of events.

However, there may come a time when a President decides that we don't need this expenditure, even though it has been approved and it is the law. He then goes through the rescinding of his decision to spend the money. It is called a rescissions bill. In this case, the Trump administration came to Congress and said: The $9 billion that you appropriated and directed me to spend, I don't want to spend. I want your permission not to spend it--$9 billion.

That is what we voted on and the House voted on last week. What was in this bill were primarily two major elements. One element was foreign aid, humanitarian assistance around the world paid for by the United States. The other element was public broadcasting--National Public Radio, for example. So $8 billion was taken out of foreign aid, and $1 billion was taken away from public broadcasting.

It was a close vote in the Senate. Two Republicans joined the Democrats in opposing it, but there were enough Republicans to support it. It barely passed the Senate and was sent back to the House. After some turmoil in the House, the decision was made also to pass the rescissions bill.

I thought this was a particularly important bill. As a Member of the Senate--I am honored to represent the State of Illinois--I have cast over 9,000 votes. The Presiding Officer from Utah is new to the Senate. It will take him a few years to catch me, and I am sure he will. But of the 9,000 votes in that period of time, how many do you actually remember? A handful. This vote last week was one of those votes.

Why will I remember this? Because nongovernmental organizations, charities, and humanitarian aid groups around the world have told us that taking $8 billion out of foreign aid and humanitarian assistance is going to cost us in terms of lives. It will deny people food, clean water to drink, medicine, and the basics of life. In the poorest places on Earth, it will cost us lives.

The original bill eliminated a program called PEPFAR. PEPFAR was created by Republican President George W. Bush. He rallied our government--Democrats and Republicans--to lead a national and international effort to stop HIV/AIDS. For example, if a mother is pregnant again and had HIV, the transmission of that disease to the baby was, unfortunately, very common. We started finding ways to stop it from happening. It has been many years since George W. Bush was President, but we estimate that we have saved 25 million lives with this PEPFAR Program. I am a loyal Democrat and proud of it but was happy to vote with the Republicans and George W. Bush on that program. That program was going to be eliminated by this bill that was considered. It was taken out at the last minute. That is the type of thing that was at stake in that vote.

That decision by the Senate and the House, signed by President Trump over the weekend, is going to cost human lives in the poorest places on Earth. I think that is a tragedy. I have been to some of those places. I have made a point of going to see it and to see our programs.

I remember a dusty village in India where the children were gathered around for what they called lunch. American kids would not have touched what they were being given to eat. They were basically dough bowls. They were grains from the United States that were blended together. They ate these dough bowls gleefully, happily, anxiously. But before they took the first bite, they stopped and said a prayer, and I asked the local people who were leading this effort: What did they say in prayer? They said that they said thank to you the United States of America for the food that they were going to eat that day. They knew that was the case because it was printed on the bags as a gift to their people from America. Those programs are going to be eliminated now because of the vote last week.

But there was another part of it, too, that struck me as really painful. That was the decision to eliminate the Federal support for public broadcasting--National Public Radio and public television. I am a fan. I have been a fan for a long time so I will confess my prejudice.

But I am also from Downstate Illinois. That is the part of the State outside Chicago where the small towns and the rural areas are located. I know what public broadcasting means to those areas. I heard firsthand an example of what it means.

A lady named Heather Norman, who is with the public broadcasting coalition in Illinois, joined me at a press conference, on Friday, in front of the public radio station in the city of Chicago. I asked her to tell me and the press who had gathered an example of why public radio was different than the other radio stations and why it was important. She gave me a very classic example.

She works at the public radio station in Macomb, IL. Macomb is a Downstate community on the western side of our State--a more sparsely populated area than people visualize when they say Chicago, IL. Western Macomb, IL, has Western Illinois University. Thousands of students from all around the State and the area attend college there. A year ago, there was an active shooter in the community. They learned about it through the police notifying the radio station, and they started broadcasting to the people of Macomb to stay in their homes, to shelter in place. Don't go outside until we control the situation. Wait for the police's signal.

Well, there was a lot at stake. We have seen on a lot of our campuses and universities where deranged people take a gun and kill innocent students right and left, and we didn't want that to happen again. So the public broadcasting station, the NPR station, kept the broadcast going all day long to notify the people of Macomb and the McDonough County area of the danger, and they warned them to stay home.

You say: I will bet the other radio station did too. They didn't. Why didn't they do it? Because the four other radio stations are recordings. There is no live person at those radio stations--just equipment. So they are playing their music and whatever programs they wish, but they couldn't send out local news because there was no one there to send it. It was the public broadcasting station--the public radio station--that kept the people of Macomb and McDonough County safe. So, to say that you can eliminate that station, and it won't make any difference whether the warning is about an active shooter or about a tornado or a flood or a flash fire, public broadcasting is there on the scene, doing their job, day in and day out.

Now, what is going to happen with this decision by the Trump administration to eliminate Federal support for these stations? I don't know. I asked Heather. She said there are probably two stations in our State--at least two--that will go out of business. They depend so much on the help from Washington. That is a loss.

Whether you are conservative or liberal, MAGA or progressive-- whatever you want to call yourself--how could you want an America with less information and with fewer choices as the sources of that information?

The strength of our democracy is the fact that the American people have access to good, credible information and can make up their own minds. They don't want to be told. They make up their own minds. That is the key to the core of democracy, and we attacked it last week when we eliminated support for public broadcasting.

I don't know what is going to happen next. A lot of people have to think about this. I said to the people who govern public broadcasting and public television and public radio: You will have to think of a plan B because this President wants to put you out of business. You can't do what some law firms have done that he got mad at. He got mad at the law firms and threatened to cut off their Federal business. What did they do? They sued for peace immediately. They said: What can we do? Can we give you thousands and, maybe, hundreds of thousands of free legal services?

When that intimidation is in place, some of them turn to that as an alternative, but a public broadcasting station cannot do that and maintain its credibility. It can't go hat in hand and bent knee to this administration or to any administration and maintain its credibility when it comes to news.

So they have a terrible challenge that they face. I want to help them find a solution. I think America would be poorer and less free, and there would be less information available to people in our country if we allowed this to go forward.

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