Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast. This is a show where we discuss the critical crossroads, the Shape, SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company, and Neurolink. I'm your host, Will Walden. Thank you, Chair Collins, Vice Chair Murray, members of the committee. This is the first time I've been on this side of the dais. I have to say the the altitude difference is, is affecting me a little bit.
It really is an honor to be here to argue against this rescissions package on behalf of all of you, on behalf of all of you as appropriators. And now I want to be abundantly clear, I like Eric Schmidt a lot, but this is a very important point. And it's actually fatal to the rescissions package. Every single program that Senator Schmidt just mentioned has already been cancelled. Every single program. And there's a longer list that was on a Fox News Chiron and Senator Graham and I have kind
of gone over all of this. There are a bunch of different examples of of terrible sounding things. They are all done and they all belong in the previous federal fiscal year. So now that it's Marco Rubio's State Department and Marco Rubio's USAID agency, and now that it is Donald Trump's White House, none of these things are happening. This is a rescission of Trump's CR in the current federal fiscal year.
And so if you have a problem with any of those programs, let Lindsay and I write a bill that prohibits the use of funds for any of those seemingly improper uses of funds.
That's the way to do this. Colleagues are being asked on this committee to cut programs that I know each one of you have personally prioritized because we get the letters, whether you're a chair or the rancor of a subcommittee, you get a letter from your colleagues saying could you please prioritize XYZ program and many of the programs that at this, I mean, I'm talking about right now in the same time period we are receiving letters, please save this, please save that, please,
plus up that. That's what we're cutting right now in this rescissions package. We do not have to spend foreign assistance dollars in the same way that we always have been spending foreign assistance dollars. There's plenty of room for reform. You're pushing on an open door and in fact, the administration hasn't until the end of next year. This is 2 year money. There's no rush on this.
This is 2 year money to align this funding with with its new priorities, but we're being asked to rescind billions of dollars without even knowing which programs are being cancelled. Just so you understand how this legislation works. It's big baskets of money. So you have no idea whether the program that you are prioritizing is going to be cut or not. And they are not providing any clarity about that.
You would think that if you're asking the Congress to use this extraordinary authority under statutory law that you would have a line by line. Here's what we're cutting, here's what we're keeping. Here's what we're cutting, here's what we're keeping. The answer that we are going to receive is let me take that under advisement or and get back
to you or I don't know. That's none of your business or, or I'm not sure what it is. There is no reason not to have specificity other than the math doesn't add up. The things that you care about are being cut in here, and they don't want to specify it. And that brings me to what it is definitely in this package, $900 million in cuts from global health programs, including PEPFAR and efforts to combat
diseases like malaria, TB and polio. $1.3 billion in cuts to humanitarian assistance, which save lives, provide food and shelter and water, and support victims of sexual assault. And $4.6 billion in cuts to economic development assistance to key partners, whether it's Jordan increasing in with increasing regional tension, the Philippines as it counters Chinese aggression, the Burmese opposition, or Ukraine. And gone is a billion dollars in support for organizations like
UNICEF. Everybody that was opposed to those things that were on that Fox chyron, everybody that found some of the things that Senator Schmidt talked about as objectionable also hastened to say, I don't want to cut UNICEF. I don't want to cut cut PEPFAR. I don't want to cut the World Food Program. Guess what is in this rescissions package? All of those things are being cut. And none of the things that you object to, they've already been eliminated. This is not just a question of policy.
This is also a question of what this committee is even for. Being a Senate appropriator is an honor. It means something. It means that the executive branch proposes and the legislative branch disposes. It means that we, as the Article 1 branch, hold the purse strings, that that is subject to cloture. So what's at stake here is more than the particular provisions
of the rescissions package. It is whether we're going to willingly set up a situation where bipartisan negotiations are ripped up whenever there is a trifecta. If that's what you want, I think you should vote yes. But if you want to preserve your prerogative for yourself, for your home state, and for this institution, then this is not a particularly close call. Why be an appropriator and just turn around and surrender your authority?
Because it is S fobs today, but it's going to be T Hut it's going to be AG, it's going to be labor H, it's going to be milk on VA, it's going to be CJS tomorrow. So I encourage all of my colleagues on a bipartisan basis to think hard about the precedent that we would be setting if we voted yes on this package. Thank you very much. Thank you. Hey, thank you so much for listening today. I really do appreciate your support.
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