No Funds for Repeat Child Care Violations Act of 2026

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mrs. McBATH. Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member of the Education and Workforce Committee for yielding.

Stealing from those who need it most is especially egregious, and I can agree with my colleagues on that. But I can't agree with allowing them to punish those that have been defrauded for a second time because that is what this bill really does. It has the same impact on people as fraud.

At the end of the day, the families who these dollars are really meant for, they are not going to get them. They are not going to get the dollars that they need. Instead, the money will have gone to thieves or to nobody at all.

The outcome is just the same. The people who have the least are always the ones who pay the price. In Psalms, since so many profess to be Christians here, the Lord says that because the poor are plundered, that because the greedy groan, He will rise. But God cannot take action on his own. He has given us free will. It is through our hands that his vision for a just world becomes truth. Instead of rising to help the plundered, to help the poor, this only plunders them for a second time.

This is clearly more about giving the Trump administration more power to punish their political enemies than it is about preventing fraud. Instead of following the law, allowing the process to play out, this bill gives the Secretary personal discretion to investigate and punish fraud.

This President and his allies stop at nothing to punish people who disagree with them. This administration has not hesitated to not only kill people for speaking out and protesting against the government but to slander their memory after they are gone.

They will tell lies about you and your family to the entire country to justify the unjustifiable, just like they did about Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

When my son Jordan was killed in a shooting, the same man who pulled the trigger tried to justify it by lying about who my son really was. He said that there was a gun in the car when there wasn't; that Jordan was a thug, and he wasn't; that my son and his friends were doing things that they really weren't doing.

I thank God every single day that those lies never caught on, but I remember how insulting that was. I remember thinking: You took my child from me, and now you are going to lie about who he really was just to try to get away with it?

The Trump administration has proven that they cannot be trusted to do the right thing on their own--

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mrs. McBATH.--or even do something as basic as telling the truth.

This bill makes it easier for this administration to make unilateral decisions at a time when Americans want accountability. I encourage my colleagues to oppose this bill.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source