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Source: Congress.gov
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at any time. Today, the Rules Committee is convening to consider a single measure, H.R. 4, the Rescissions Act of 2025. As the Speaker indicated early last week, the People's House is acting quickly upon the White House's request to terminate $9.4 billion in wasteful spending at the State Department, USAID, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and within other entities. Let's be clear about the context and precedence of what's going on here. Congress set up a process for enacting rescissions of funds in the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, more than 50 years ago. We're following that thoughtfully deliberated process. President Trump and congressional Republicans campaigned on attacking wasteful spending. The public then gave us a mandate in November. So the new administration, which came into power in the middle of the fiscal year, then found wasteful spending. President Trump then acted and recommended that these funds be permanently canceled. I cannot think of a more textbook scenario of the proper utilization of this process. A new president with a new agenda decides to inform Congress that he wants to save the dollars of hardworking taxpayers. That's really the whole story here. Nothing more to explain. It's not rocket science. What also is clear is the mandate that voters gave this Republican majority, a mandate to act precisely upon the commitments we made. This rescissions package reflects, hopefully, only one step of the good work that the Trump administration has done to root out waste, fraud, and abuse across all corners of the federal government. The administration will need to remain vigilant in ensuring that taxpayer dollars are spent in both appropriate and thoughtful ways. The efforts of the staff of Doge, OMB, and the rest of President Trump's watchdogs have been Herculean, and I'm particularly pleased to see all the progress that has been made.
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This is an exercise in restoring fiscal sanity that was torched by the Biden-Harris administration. Republicans have our attention affixed to eliminating the rot of wasteful programs that have been allowed to fester for entirely too long. In contrast, Our Democrat colleagues simply cannot prove to the American people that they're in favor of eliminating a single federal program outlay or tranche of taxpayer money otherwise. It's not in their DNA. Whether it's the $1.6 trillion in waste, fraud, and abuse cut in H.R. 1 or this humbler nearly $10 billion in discretionary waste before us, House Republicans are serious about going after every morsel of wasted taxpayer money. It's the people's money. A single dollar wasted is one too many in our view. Let's take a quick minute or so to preview the waste that's going on here, although I will not spend an exorbitant amount of time because it will inevitably be covered during our debate here today. With respect to foreign aid, $14 million in cash vouchers for migrants at our southern border. $24,000 for a national spelling bee in Bosnia. $1.5 million to mobilize elderly, lesbian, transgender, non-binary, and intersex people to be involved in the Costa Rica political process. $20,000 for a drag show in Ecuador. And $32,000 for an LGBTQ comic book in Peru. And then there's NPR. I honestly don't even know where to begin on that one. Even if someone were to accept the premise that we need to finance a public radio outlet, certainly we can all agree that it simply cannot be NPR any longer.
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NPR's own CEO testified before Congress that she's never seen any political bias at NPR. I don't know what reality she's living in, But it certainly isn't this one. Here's the kicker. NPR does harbor political bias. It took a $1.9 million grant to, quote, improve objectivity and diverse viewpoints, end quote. There's the proof, and it's a concrete example that NPR's CEO was giving false testimony to Congress. You either understand that you're biased and need help, apparently in the form of taxpayer grants, or you haven't witnessed any bias.
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