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The Department of State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2008

Floor Speech

By: Mark Kirk
By: Mark Kirk
Date: June 21, 2007
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: National Security


THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE, FOREIGN OPERATIONS AND RELATED PROGRAMS APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008--Continued -- (House of Representatives - June 21, 2007)

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Mr. KIRK. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman from Indiana for yielding.

He makes a good point. I am actually for this bill coming forward, but we need to send an important signal.

The administration has said that they are going to provide direct aid to the Palestinian Authority and provide $40 million to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency in Gaza. U.S. taxpayers should not be forced to finance a culture of ``welfare terrorism.''

This morning, Secretary Rice agreed to work with us in upgrading the auditing regime of UNRWA, and we hope that that will include an end to Cash Assistance payments to terrorists and martyr families, with a full independent audit of UNRWA programs outside the U.N. structure.

We have looked in the past at our errors, in the 1990s, when the U.S. poured hundreds of millions of dollars into assistance for the Yassar Arafat government and the return on taxpayer investments was very low indeed. In haste, we should not repeat our errors made just a few short fiscal years ago.

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