00:00One of two Georgians on this committee, yourself included, Madam Chair, I'd like to first rebut the
00:04charge from one of our Democrat colleagues that we are today trying to politically tear down
00:09Stacey Abrams. To remind our Democrat colleagues, Madam Chair, a majority of Georgia voters have
00:15twice rejected Stacey Abrams in 2018 by 2% and 2022 by 8%. So there's no need for this committee
00:23to politically tear down Stacey Abrams when the people of Georgia already have. But this committee
00:29is focused on eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse across our government. And again, the purpose of
00:34our hearing today is to talk about waste, fraud, and abuse among non-governmental organizations or
00:39nonprofits. And if I could start, Ms. Yintel, as the President and CEO of the National Council of
00:44Nonprofits, is it fair to characterize your organization as an informed source of data
00:49for nonprofits and NGOs? Sorry, yes, sir. And how many, just an estimate, how many NGOs receive a
00:58majority of their money from the government as opposed to citizens, to the best of your knowledge?
01:03The latest number I saw is that about 27% of nonprofit organizations receive federal funding.
01:10Does it concern you at all that a non-governmental organization is receiving a majority of its funding
01:16from the government? Well, I didn't say it was the majority. Let me correct myself. Thank you. 27% of
01:21nonprofit organizations receive some of their funding from the federal government. It doesn't concern me,
01:27no. The federal government appropriates funds to be used for specific purposes, and they often
01:33partner with nonprofit organizations who are best equipped and able to meet local needs with that
01:40funding. Mr. Walter, in your opening statement and your written testimony as well, I think you
01:45address this. Could you inform and expound upon the issue that I see, and I always think you see,
01:50that a non-governmental organization is receiving a majority of its funding from the government? To me,
01:55that's totally contrary to the title of the organization itself. Sure. And the statistic from
02:01Candid, which is a nonprofit group, is about 35,000 receive the majority of their funding from
02:10government. And that is obviously a dangerous thing. Now, some of them may do good work, but of course,
02:15as everybody in Washington, D.C. knows, if you're getting federal dollars, you deserve a lot of scrutiny.
02:21The idea that they should just be passed over without scrutiny is quite unreasonable.
02:28I'm sorry. I'm going to continue on my line of question. Thank you. Mr. Krikorian, I want to also
02:33give you an opportunity just to affirm for the record, I know one of our Democrat colleagues tried
02:37to suggest that you're immune from doge cuts. I heard you loud and clear, though, the funding and
02:42the contracts with Department of Justice and the Census Bureau were, to your point, decades ago. You're not
02:47receiving government funding right now. No. No. Thank you. So earlier today, Mr. Krikorian,
02:53we had the administrator of the Small Business Administration testify before the Small Business
02:57Committee. And the reason I mentioned that is one of the issues we talked about was trying to turn off
03:02and eliminate the incentive structure that rewarded illegal immigration over the last four years
03:06under Joe Biden's administration. Specifically, we talked about relocating small business offices from
03:12sanctuary cities or sanctuary jurisdictions to jurisdictions that honor federal law enforcement
03:18law and immigration law. And I bring that up because I'd love for you in these last 90 seconds
03:24to walk us through what happened these last four years. If you want to look at the incentive structure
03:28that rewarded illegal immigration, I suspect you could look no further than a lot of nonprofits
03:32that operated on our southern border. So would welcome thoughts for you in closing in this hearing.
03:36Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the whole point of enforcing immigration law is to make it impractical to live here
03:44as an illegal immigrant. In other words, it's not even just not rewarding, obviously, it's that, but it's also
03:49to make it difficult. It's why you shouldn't get driver's licenses for illegal immigrants, that sort of thing.
03:53And so what nonprofit groups during the previous administration did, and frankly, even before that,
03:59was to make it practical, to make it easier for illegal immigrants to live here illegally.
04:07Thereby kind of undoing any deterrent effect or any incentive to self-deport, to go home.
04:13And so that's one of the things that we need to reverse, is to not just take away the incentives,
04:20but to make it impractical to remain here so that people will take the administration up on its offer
04:26of a free plane ticket home and $1,000 when you get home. There has to be some reason you want to do that.
04:31What a lot of nonprofit groups have done is take away the incentive to go home, and that needs to change.
04:39And by the way, 70% to 75% of Americans agree and support President Trump's immigration policies,
04:46House Republicans' border priorities. Just a closing number from you in statistic,
04:51can you estimate over the last four years how much taxpayer money was funding, to your point,
04:57the incentive structure we're trying to eliminate today?
04:59I wish I had a number, but it's all over the, it's billions, but I have no idea how much exactly.
05:03Billions of dollars, with that, Madam Chair, I yield.
05:05The gentleman yields. I now recognize Mr. Gosar.
05:08He wants to
05:08thank you.
05:09Got you, thank you.
05:09We saint-
05:27All right.
05:34We're great.
05:35Amen.
