Ranking Member DeLauro Statement at the Subcommittee Markup of the 2025 State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Funding Bill

Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03), Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Committee, delivered the following remarks at the Committee's markup of the fiscal year 2025 State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs bill:

Thank you, Chairman Diaz-Balart and Ranking Member Barbara Lee, and thank you Chairman Cole for holding this markup and for your work on this bill. I would also like to thank the majority and minority staff.

Once again, we are marking up a State and Foreign Operations bill that resurrects the doomed isolationism of the early 20th century. Just a few months after Democrats and Republicans voted for final bipartisan 2024 funding bills, the majority proposes we decimate the State and Foreign Operations bill with a 12 percent cut from where we just were in March.

Let us take stock for a moment. Around the globe, America's adversaries threaten the peace and prosperity of the free world. Wars in the Middle East and Europe and humanitarian crises on nearly every continent call for American leadership. Not since the Cold War have our diplomatic influence and soft power been more critical to keeping Americans safe, yet House Republicans have proposed a bill that would diminish America's world leadership and obstruct our ability to support our allies, deter our adversaries, surpass our competitors, wage our influence, and to continue leading the free world.

We must lead the free world. America is still the indispensable nation for any serious global action. But whether we are talking about our diplomatic strength, economic investments, or humanitarian assistance, this bill unravels the hard-fought credibility and influence we have earned to be a global leader.

This bill threatens our national security, threatens women's health globally, hampers our response to the climate crisis, undermines our diplomatic corps by underfunding the State Department and USAID, and completely blocks support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency – leaving behind some of the most vulnerable people facing the most unthinkable humanitarian disasters around the world.

The majority is yet again diminishing the global standing of the United States, and what we stand for, and what our values are – for our own people and for people around the world who look to America, the world's largest economy and oldest constitutional democracy, for inspiration and hope.

This bill abdicates U.S. leadership at the United Nations and other multilateral and international institutions by not including any funding for the UN Regular budget, the UN Development Program, UN Women, and UNICEF. When it comes to international cooperation, withdrawing from these organizations allows our competitors and adversaries to take our place, and to replace our influence.

And by shortchanging USAID at a time when a historic number of people are facing conflict and instability, we are abandoning the most vulnerable people in the world, and failing to live up to America's ideals.

I am awestruck that the majority is once again dragging us through the same ridiculous song and dance on these appropriations bills that leads to chaos, division, and shutdown threats. As I said throughout last year and as we proved together this spring, final spending bills will be the product of negotiations between Democrats and the Republicans in the House and Senate. The majority's topline funding levels fall short of the American people's needs, and short of what both parties just agreed to in March. 80 percent of the Appropriations Committee voted to pass the final 2024 Appropriations Acts.

Our starting point for 2025 must provide, at a minimum, a one percent increase in defense and nondefense funding, consistent with the framework set in the Fiscal Responsibility Act that Republicans demanded.

Democrats will accept nothing less than a one percent increase over 2024 in nondefense and defense funding. That is what the law provides for.

For the sake of our national security, for women's health globally, and our response to the climate crisis, Republicans must abandon their reckless and partisan path and join Democrats at the table to govern. For all of these reasons, I cannot support this bill.

Thank you, and I yield back.

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