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Floor Speech

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Mr. SHEEHY. I want to thank Senator Risch for helping to lead this legislation in the Senate.

Most Americans probably find it somewhat surprising, as they struggle with affordability, as they are struggling to fill their gas tank or pay their rent or afford their mortgage, that many of their tax dollars--in fact, upward of $10 billion of their tax dollars--are sent directly into the pockets of foreign terrorist organizations--terrorist organizations that we spent thousands of lives and decades fighting, to protect our shores, to include the lives of some of my friends.

I spent years of my life, as did my wife spend years of her life, fighting these terrorist organizations, trying to keep this country safe, and now we are told that our tax dollars have an obligation to go into the pocket of those organizations to buy bullets, to build bombs, to coordinate attacks that don't just kill Americans. They kill those who share our values worldwide.

It is not just westerners and Americans who are killed by this. The Taliban systemically hunts down those in Afghanistan with whom they disagree, those who want to be free, those women and girls who saw a brief period of freedom under our occupation there, and now they are once again placed in the yolk of terrible sexism, of not even fascism but outright terror.

It isn't just Afghanistan. This extends across the globe. This terrorist financing network is not just guys in mountain caves collecting dollar bills. This is a sophisticated global finance network that spans the entire world.

The Iranian regime, although not directly connected in many ways to this, is absolutely directly connected to the international flow of terrorist funds through sophisticated real estate transactions, cryptocurrency, oil smuggling, piracy, kidnapping, and terrorism.

It is unthinkable that we would intentionally and knowingly hand our taxpayer dollars to organizations that actively kill Americans and attempt to destroy our values every single day.

I think it should be a bipartisan American issue for us to finally put an end to this ridiculous practice that is actively costing us lives and precious freedom capital around the world.

I hope we pass this act. I urge a ``yes'' vote, and I urge it quickly.

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