00:00Are there further comments?
00:02Madam Chair.
00:03Senator Graham.
00:05Is this thing working?
00:08Yeah.
00:09There we go.
00:12As to Senator Merkley, he is the ranking member of the Budget Committee and I've really enjoyed
00:18working with him.
00:19Believe it or not, we've done some things together.
00:22So let me give you my concern about this amendment.
00:25All of us have used reconciliation to get what we want that the other side wouldn't
00:33agree to.
00:35There's no Obamacare with us.
00:37So you went through the reconciliation process.
00:41The Trump tax cuts weren't going to happen with y'all.
00:45So we did the Trump tax cuts and we did the one big beautiful bill and we'll see if it
00:50stays the one big beautiful bill politically over time.
00:53So the reconciliation process has been used by both parties under the 1974 Budget Control
01:00Act that allows us to do that.
01:02There are partisan exercises about reshaping the budget and getting things done that you
01:09want done that fit within the Byrd rule.
01:12Y'all have done it and we've done it and it was there.
01:16It's been there since 1974.
01:18Revision is part of that Budget Control Act.
01:22And what Senator Merkley is doing is amending the act in a way to avoid the fast-track process
01:29that the law gives us.
01:31So this is a military VA appropriations bill.
01:36And what would happen here is if passed it would be a point of order against this appropriations
01:42bill because it would be changing the Budget Control Act that's in the Budget Committee.
01:48And I would obviously make that point of order.
01:51But a little bit about normal.
01:55I think I vote for most everything coming out of the committee because I like appropriating
02:01versus CRs.
02:02I've been a pretty good supporter of the 150 account and I'm the chairman now and I've been
02:08the ranking member and here's what you've got to understand.
02:13Last night was one-tenth of one percent of entire federal spending.
02:18And there are a lot of people out there in this country thinking, hmm, maybe we could
02:23reduce spending by one-tenth of one percent.
02:27If you listened last night, the answer is a resounding no because of some of the programs
02:33of which I have been generally very supportive of.
02:37But to my Democratic colleagues, you've got to understand this.
02:40What we have found in the appropriations process is spending on things that are completely
02:48violates the trust.
02:52You have, in my view, Samantha Powers and others violated my trust.
02:58You'll have a hard time dealing with me in the future because I've been out there at my
03:04own political peril.
03:06Soft power is something easy said, hard to sell.
03:11There's an isolationist movement in our party.
03:15And I've tried, along with my colleagues, to stand up to it.
03:18I've tried to say that if you help somebody raise their child with clean water and you
03:25provide vaccines, treatment for AIDS, that family would probably like America better.
03:32It's hard to recruit if you're, you know, helping people if you're ISIS or the Taliban.
03:38So I buy in the concept of soft power, big time.
03:42But what happened is destroyed my trust.
03:46That y'all care more about your liberal causes than the underlying premise of these bills.
03:52So I want you to hear it, Senator Schatz.
03:54You've got a real problem with me going forward.
03:57You had control of this account for four years and I am going home weekend after weekend.
04:04Why didn't you know about that?
04:06How could you, Senator Graham, authorize money to be spent on this garbage?
04:12You know, I'm saying, well, we appropriated the money and people in the government spend
04:16the money and, you know, these agencies have their priorities.
04:21The priorities that I support were obliterated.
04:26I want to save children from a terrible death in AIDS.
04:30I want to help stop mother-child transmissions of AIDS.
04:37Count me in for PEDFAR.
04:39But some of the money that's been spent has got zero to do with the underlying premise
04:44of soft power and everything to do with your pet peeves.
04:49So you've lost my trust.
04:52So I would urge you to vote no.
04:56Madam Chair.
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