Senator Marsha Blackburn
When I talk to Tennesseans, one of the biggest concerns they have for our nation’s future is our national debt. After four years of reckless, far-left spending under the Biden administration, it now sits at $37 trillion—$108,000 for every American citizen. As a result, we are spending more money to pay the interest on the debt than we are spending to fund the U.S. military.
Tennesseans and the American people know that this path is unsustainable. And in November, they gave President Trump an overwhelming mandate to root out waste, fraud, and abuse.
That’s why, since Inauguration Day, the administration has identified more than $190 billion in wasteful spending across the federal government, on everything from unused office space to far-left DEI programming.
But although President Trump can stop these funds from being spent, it is Congress’s responsibility to return them to the treasury and make these savings permanent.
Otherwise, a future Democrat President could open the floodgates of wasteful spending once again.
That’s why, last week, Republicans passed a rescissions package that will claw back these dollars and save American taxpayers $9 billion. Across the board, this legislation eliminates wasteful spending that serves no benefit for the American people—and it marks only the beginning of the Trump administration’s efforts to restore fiscal sanity.
It eliminates $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the organization that funds NPR and PBS, which have pushed left-wing ideology on the taxpayers’ dime for years. NPR’s CEO, Katherine Maher, has called President Trump a “fascist” and a “deranged racist.” Ahead of the 2020 election, her outlet refused to cover the revelations about Hunter Biden’s laptop and overseas business deals, claiming that they didn’t “want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time.”
The rescissions package also eliminates $1 billion in funding for international organizations that work against American interests, including $135 million for the corrupt World Health Organization, which covered for Communist China throughout the COVID pandemic, and $8 million for the United Nations Human Rights Council, which supports dictators and repressive regimes while demonizing our ally, Israel.
At the same time, the package cuts billions in foreign spending that does absolutely nothing to promote American values and interests abroad: $4 million for “sedentary migrants” in Colombia; $3 million for an Iraqi version of Sesame Street; $1 million for voter ID efforts in Haiti; $500,000 for electric buses in Rwanda; $6 million for “Net Zero Cities” in Mexico; $2.1 million for “climate resilience” in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, and on and on.
No American voted for any of these measures. Yet for years, government agencies and NGOs that receive federal funding have abused taxpayer dollars by funding anti-American, far-left causes, often with little transparency or oversight.
Under President Trump and Republican leadership, this abuse is coming to an end.
The American people want fiscal responsibility because they want a future where their nation is free and sovereign and where their children and grandchildren do not have to bear the burden of crippling debt. The rescissions package is an incredible first step in addressing this problem.
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Senator Marsha Blackburn