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Floor Speech
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Mr. LEE. Madam President, I have come to the floor today to talk about some of the spending requests--known as earmarks--that are placed in this legislation. Earmarks have long been used by Members of Congress as ``sweeteners,'' as things that make the bill package go down more smoothly, more easily, than perhaps it would otherwise-- special interests give-outs, handouts to business entities, nonprofit entities, or otherwise that individual Members request, sometimes successfully.
One of them involves a significant sum of $850,000--just shy of a million dollars--to a leftwing organization known for publicly calling for the granting of citizenship to illegal immigrants, persons who have entered our country, whose common characteristic that they hold in common--that unites them--is the fact that they entered the country unlawfully, in violation of our laws.
This arises during a significant period of time; one in which we are experiencing the worst immigration crisis that we have ever known. And Congress wants to send $850,000 to an organization that is interested in enabling and inflaming it.
Why, exactly--even if you agree with the objectives of this organization called the New Immigrant Community Empowerment organization--or NICE--even if you agree with that entity, which many Americans don't, why exactly is it that we are going to take money away from U.S. taxpayers and use that to fund this organization that actively assists in helping illegal aliens get American jobs?
NICE's LinkedIn page says as follows:
At NICE we envision a world where all people, regardless of immigration status, live and work with dignity and justice.
And ``dignity'' and ``justice'' are nice things. They are things that the American people aspire to; and they are the very things that cause immigrants worldwide to want to come to the United States of America.
For this to work, for us to continue to be a nation of immigrants, we need to be a nation that also honors our own laws and enforces them.
So if you support this bill--the Schumer minibus bill--with this earmark, then you are voting, in one way or another, to fund this organization to the tune of $850,000, which, in turn, goes to help perpetuate, inflame, and extend the immigration crisis--the border security crisis.
4366, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024, that was printed in yesterday's Record with the following changes and that this amended version be considered the joint explanatory statement to accompany H.R. 4366:
[T]he removal of a House CDF project that would give $850,000 to the New Immigrant Community Empowerment organization in T-HUD.
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Mr. LEE. Madam President, first of all, with regard to the last unanimous consent request, it is important to remember a couple of things: First of all, we saw that the whole bill together, with the congressionally directed spending elements, for the first time in just the last 48 hours or so. So it is not as though this has been through a public process with debate back and forth. An essential element of any legislative body is that there is an opportunity to amend, to discuss, and debate. In fact, that has been taken advantage of within the last 24 hours as another measure--a measure to remove something that has been characterized online as providing a million dollars to fund BDSM sex parties. That was removed. So if that can be removed, I don't know why this one can't.
In any event, to say that this cake is baked--that this legislation must be treated as now passed when it is not passed is folly. And it doesn't bode well for this institution, which has long heralded itself and held itself out to the world as the world's greatest deliberative legislative body.
Let's go to another one: Georgetown University. We have got nearly $1 million also going to Georgetown University--$963,000--nearly a million--to Georgetown University for something called the Prison Justice Initiative.
Now, I don't know a whole lot about exactly what this will accomplish. It may well have good elements to it. But the point is this: Georgetown University is not only one of the wealthiest universities on planet Earth, it is one of the wealthiest entities of any kind on planet Earth.
Indeed, it has an endowment. Its endowment alone is valued at over $3.2 billion. And this begs the question: Why does it need to be subsidized to the tune of nearly a million dollars by U.S. taxpayers?
4366, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024--it was printed in yesterday's Record with the following changes--and that this amended version be considered the joint explanatory statement to accompany H.R. 4366:
[T]he removal of a House project that would provide $963,000 to Georgetown University for the Georgetown University Prison Justice Initiative, in CJS.
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Mr. LEE. Madam President, here again, this is unfortunate. We have a small handful of people who have negotiated this thing behind closed doors. They have agreed to what they have agreed to. They have taken out things that they themselves have found controversial.
So, apparently, it is not the hermetically sealed chamber that it is purported to be and has been purported to be just moments ago by my friend and distinguished colleague, the Senator from Washington. And yet we are told that the cake is sufficiently baked, and not for their purposes but for ours. When we want to make a change to it, when we even want to have a debate about it, we are shut down. We are told: Sorry, no dice. That cannot happen.
That is unacceptable.
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Mr. LEE. Madam President, there is also a measure in this legislation--a measure calling for $2.5 million to be set aside for outdoor recreation purposes--funding kayaking and slalom facilities in Franklin, NH.
These sound like fun activities. They are fun activities. I mean, who doesn't like those kinds of activities? I think most of us could agree this is completely inappropriate. And it is an unnecessary use of Federal taxpayer dollars. This ought to be funded solely at the State and local level or with private funding and not here.
4366, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024, that was printed in yesterday's Record with the following changes and that this amended version be considered the joint explanatory statement to accompany H.R. 4366:
[T]he removal of a Senate Community Development Fund project that would provide $2,500,000 to the city of Franklin, NH for outdoor recreation, in THUD.
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