During a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, Rep. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) grilled OMB Director Russell Vought on President Trump's rescissions package, and Congressional authority.
00:00Thank you, Madam Chair. Before I get to my questions, I want to just try to address some of my colleagues,
00:08because if there's one thing I've learned about this place, it's that whatever foot the shoe is on today,
00:14it's going to be on the other foot in a few years. And you can imagine, if we go down the road of this body being purely advisory
00:24and having a very different president in the White House in a few years and maybe a different house and a different Senate,
00:31what that's going to mean for a number of red states. Because if you care about defense approves,
00:38you know, what happens when we have a president who decides that Air Force base in Missouri shouldn't get the funding we appropriated for it,
00:46or the Army base in Arkansas, or the highway in Alabama, or the National Park Unit in Alaska.
00:52And so we just have to think through this and make sure that we're still relevant here.
00:57And I want to address one of the fundamental disconnects, because it's not just talking points.
01:06The chair held up this RUTF. That's something we've actually been able to work on on a very bipartisan basis.
01:17Director, how familiar are you with RUTF, what it's used for?
01:21I'm familiar to be able to come here knowing it would be addressed.
01:27It's something you use when kids are so severely malnourished that they need to eat this before they can eat other food.
01:40They can't eat rice. They can't eat normal food.
01:43And so when I hear that none of the life-saving stuff has changed, I'm trying to square the fact that I and a number of other colleagues were at a refugee camp in northwest Kenya where the funding got cut off.
01:59It got cut off for rice. It got cut off for this kind of stuff.
02:04And now mothers are on a 600-calorie-a-day diet.
02:12That's slow starvation.
02:15So if that's not what this administration means to do, then you need to get together with Secretary Rubio and fix it.
02:25Because I saw kids that when they get malaria, when they get dysentery, they can't eat food anymore.
02:32And if we're not doing this, and notice it has an American flag on it, that is smart, soft power.
02:38Because we have allies like Kenya who are the last bastion of defense against the lawless terrorism that occurs further north.
02:50I mean, that's why there's a refugee camp there is because of the South Sudanese War, not to mention the terrorism that tries to move into Central Africa from the east.
03:00It is a smart investment so that we don't have to send troops.
03:05And we are not meeting that obligation right now.
03:12And that has life and death consequences.
03:15So it's one thing to talk about somebody's report.
03:19It's another to have to look at mothers and kids who are slowly starving.
03:27Director, you impounded USAID funds to Columbia.
03:33No, sir, we did not.
03:34You did not?
03:37We have not impounded any funding.
03:44I'll get back to that.
03:45If I misspoke, then otherwise I'll just put the communication in writing.
03:49I want to return once again to this issue of public broadcasting, because there are a number of places where there is no CNN.
04:03There is no Fox.
04:05There's no nothing for emergency broadcasting except for public broadcasting.
04:12Alaska has the most stations that receive over 25 percent of their funding from NPR, but New Mexico is the second most.
04:24What do you say to communities like Zuni, New Mexico, or Raymond, New Mexico, tribal communities,
04:29that simply don't have any other form of emergency broadcast backup, where you're not replacing, you know, the for-profit radio station down the street?
04:40You're just telling people that when there's a wildfire, you're not going to have emergency information.
04:46And how did you rack and stack that approach?
04:50Thanks for the question.
04:51Those important stations would not go away.
04:54I heard the number 25 percent, I think, from the center from Wisconsin.
04:58Our number is about 17 percent in terms of the revenues that they rely on CBP for.
05:03There is ample time for them to adjust, but even the funds that they receive, they then send back to Corporation for Public Broadcasting,
05:13or specifically NPR and PBS, for programming.
05:17So our view is that they should be more judicious with where they are paying for content, and that is no longer a need.
05:24Similarly, we protect other government programs in which important information, emergency information, weather, is getting put out to the public via these stations.
05:36So our view is that we specifically did not rescind fiscal year 25 funding.
05:41This is about 26 and 27 advanced appropriations.
05:44We have not created a cliff.
05:46We have given an opportunity to work through these things and allow them to plan accordingly
05:50so that they can continue to serve the communities that you represent and that they serve.
05:57Chair Collins, I hope we'll take extra time to make sure that those communities have what they need.
