Foreign Aid Package Puts America Last The House stayed in session two days longer than scheduled this week – not to strengthen America or secure our borders – but to borrow nearly $100 billion to send overseas to defend and secure OTHER countries. We voted this week on a 4-bill supplemental foreign aid package that borrows $95 billion to give to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. While Speaker Johnson had promised for months that we would not consider more aid for Ukraine without first forcing the Senate and the White House to join us in securing our borders, he reversed course this week.
My House Freedom Caucus colleagues and I worked hard to try to persuade the Speaker to break the supplemental spending package into individual standalone bills. We urged him to pass a paid-for Israel bill first, and pressure the Senate to take it up in response to last weekend's attack by Iran. We also pressed him to keep his commitment to require the Senate and the White House to agree to true border security measures in order to consider any additional aid for Ukraine, and to require it to also be paid for with offsetting spending reductions.
Unfortunately, the Speaker ignored our requests and moved forward with the combined 4-bill spending package that was not paid for, borrows $95 billion from our kids and grandkids, does nothing to address the border invasion, and was passed primarily with Democrat votes. One of the bills in the package provides support for Israel, but it isn't paid for, and $9 billion was added for Gaza (Hamas) aid in order to buy Democrat votes!
To add insult to injury, the Speaker added a separate weakened border bill that will not be taken up by the Senate, because it is not attached to the Ukraine funding bill, and so there is no leverage to force them to act. It will simply give political cover for those who voted separately to fund Ukraine.
I offered an amendment to the $60 billion Ukraine portion of the 4-bill foreign aid package that would prohibit funds from going to Ukraine until illegal border crossings are reduced to less than 1,000 per day (versus the approximately 10,000 flowing through now). Unfortunately, this amendment was not made in order, and did not receive a vote.
One positive sign this week was the willingness of a record 55 Republicans to vote on Friday to oppose the rule, in a last-ditch attempt to block the advancement of the legislation to the House Floor. While this was an unprecedented number of Republicans who were willing to take this rare procedural action, 165 Democrats responded by taking the extraordinary step to vote for the rule, giving evidence of a prearranged deal in advance of the vote.
I ultimately voted against all 4 bills in the package because of the borrowed money, my opposition to more aid for Ukraine, the failure to address the border invasion, and the $9 billion that will go to Hamas. We are $35 trillion in debt and on track to reach $37 trillion by the end of the year. More than $10 million illegals have invaded our country in Biden's 3 years in office. Our current trajectory is unsustainable, and we have to force change in Washington. |
WHO Agreement Threatens our Sovereignty The Biden Administration is quietly planning to subject the United States to a "treaty" with the United Nations' World Health Organization (WHO) without ratification by the Senate. This new agreement would severely compromise our national sovereignty and require the United States to yield to international law whenever the WHO declared a health crisis. If the WHO declared a health crisis, climate crisis, "gun violence" crisis, poverty crisis, or any other so-called "crisis", the U.S. would be required to submit to whatever mitigation measures the WHO (China) determined was "necessary."
The WHO and the UN have essentially become tools of Communist China, and they collaborated to deceive us during COVID. President Trump wisely withdrew the U.S. from the WHO before leaving office, but President Biden reversed course and reentered the WHO in 2021. I am proud to co-sponsor legislation by my friend Rep. Chip Roy (TX) to defund the WHO. The United States should reject the WHO "treaty", always require Senate ratification for any such agreement, and never agree to compromise American sovereignty. 
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Defund the NPR Act This week I introduced my Defund the NPR Act. Its purpose is to ensure that that no taxpayer dollars fund the biased radical left messaging at National Public Radio (NPR). This legislation prohibits federal funding of NPR and prevents local public radio stations from using federal grant money to purchase content or pay dues to NPR.
NPR was originally created to be an educational news source and to "speak with many voices, many dialects." In the 55 years since NPR was founded, they have become a primary outlet for advancing biased and radical media coverage of political and social issues. Unfortunately, since then the taxpayer-subsidized network has strayed from its initial mission and now serves as a leftist propaganda machine. We should not be using tax dollars to bolster partisan programming.
You can read more about the bill at The Federalist. |
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