US Senate News:
Source: United States Senator for Connecticut – Chris Murphy
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WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, took to the floor of the U.S. Senate to speak out against President Trump’s unprecedented partisan rescissions package, which would codify devastating cuts to foreign aid and counter-propaganda efforts, surrendering American global power to China and our adversaries. Murphy also argued that Republicans’ bad faith exploitation of Senate rules imperils the bipartisan budget process, eroding longstanding Congressional norms and making it likely that Democrats will do the same when in power.
Murphy highlighted that Trump and Senate Republicans’ actions are unprecedented: “Never before has either party done what Republicans are doing today – pass a partisan rescissions bill, double crossing the minority party and cancelling spending that just months before, both parties had shook hands on…That’s a double cross. That’s immoral. Suckering your partner into a deal, in which you each get something, and then using the back door to cancel the part of the deal you don’t like. That’s immoral. That’s bad faith. And that’s why no party has done this in 40 years.”
Laying out the stakes for longstanding Senate norms and the bipartisan budget process, Murphy continued: “It will become hard, maybe even impossible, to write a bipartisan budget ever again, because the minority party knows they can get double crossed. And believe me, if you do this now, Democrats will do it to you when we are back in charge.”
Explaining why American soft power matters, Murphy said: “You need a lot more than just planes and tanks and ships to protect your interests. You need a powerful military, but adults – in particular, adults who have any experience in national security – know that the octopus of global power has a lot of arms. Military might. But also information might. Economic might. Diplomatic might. Energy might. Humanitarian might. This revisions bill cancels billions of dollars in investments in non-military foreign policy tools. And it is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to destroy almost every tool that protects American interests other than our military…And this military myopia, it makes me remember my 8-year-old self, because it is so childish, so immature, so divorced from reality. Donald Trump’s national security strategy, fund the military and destroy every other way that we confront Russia, China, Iran, non-state actors, it could have been constructed by an 8-year-old. It’s that unsophisticated. And it really amounts to surrender.
Noting how China is fast expanding their global power to capitalize on Trump’s surrender of American leadership, Murphy said: “China is now the preferred economic development partner for many nations. China is now the dominant force in standard-setting boards for global commerce. This is a choice the Trump administration is making, to make China – and to a certain extent Russia, in certain forms – the dominant power when it comes to economic statecraft, information statecraft, energy statecraft.”
Murphy continued: “Trump terminated tens of millions in projects to help upgrade Africa’s power grid. China’s not dumb. They know Africa’s economy is going to boom in the next fifty years. They want Chinese companies, not American companies to have relationships there. They know that many of the critical minerals that are going to be critical to AI and the future of defense come from Africa. They want better relations in Africa to corner those markets. So, what did they do? Trump pulled back $80 million. China stepped in and announced $50 billion in financing for economic development and infrastructure in Africa. Now, a lot of that is bluster and some of the financing is predatory. But it’s something. At a moment when America is just withdrawing from Africa.”
Murphy concluded: “Trump’s national security strategy—fund the military and destroy every other way that we confront Russia and China and non-state actors—could have been constructed by an 8-year-old. It’s that unsophisticated… It’s all surrender. China is throwing a blowout party as we disappear our non-military power from the world.”
A full transcript of his remarks is available below.
MURPHY: “Thank you, Mr. President.
“Mr. President, eight times since 1974, when Congress created the rescissions process, one party has controlled the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. Eight times. It’s actually four times Democratic control and four times Republican control. Eight times, one party had total control over the elements of the federal government necessary to pass legislation. And never before has either party done what Republicans are doing today: pass a partisan rescissions bill, double-crossing the minority party and canceling spending that just months before both parties shook hands on.
“Why? Why has this never happened before? Well, because this is just an old-fashioned double-cross. It’s a con job. Republicans and Democrats agreed on spending levels. First, in a bipartisan appropriations bill passed in March of 2023, and then again, in multiple bipartisan continuing resolutions.
“When a party controls the White House and both houses of Congress, it always has the power to use the rescissions process to pull a fast one. To agree with the minority party on a budget – because the rules say you need 60 votes to pass a budget – to get majority party priorities funded in exchange for funding minority party priorities, and then to use the rescissions process to just double-cross the minority, by using that process – which only requires 50 votes – to just then cancel the minority party’s priorities.
“That’s immoral. It’s unethical. Suckering your partner into a deal, in which you get something and they get something, and then using the back door to cancel the part of the deal that you don’t like. That’s bad faith. It’s why no party has it since 1972. The power has always existed: eight different times, either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party could have cut a bipartisan spending deal and then then used the rescissions power to just cancel the parts of the deal they don’t like. But it’s never happened. Because it’s bad faith, because it destroys the ability of the Senate to function in a bipartisan way.
“It’s kind of like if you traded baseball cards as a kid and you made a trade with your best friend. And then in the middle of the night, you snuck into his house and you took your cards back. So that you had his cards, and now you had your cards as well. Nobody would think that’s right, but that’s exactly what’s happening here.
“It will become hard, maybe even impossible – Senator Tillis laid this out very well – to write a bipartisan budget ever again, because the minority party now knows that they can get double-crossed. And believe me, if Republicans do this now, Democrats are going to do it when they are in charge. This will become the norm. Sit down, do a bipartisan deal, wink wink, and then a couple months later, just cancel the agreement through a partisan rescissions process.
“And of course, this is now the third time in seven short months that the new Republican majority has made substantial, meaningful changes to Senate rules and norms.
“Senate Republicans created a brand-new rule that massively expands their ability to invalidate actions of the previous Democratic administration.
“Just a couple weeks ago, Republicans walked away from decades of precedent on how Senate bills are scored, and they used new, magic math to create a score that hid the actual cost of their budget bill.
“And now, this double cross.
“But, Mr. President, this isn’t just about breaking the Senate. That’s actually probably the least serious consequence of what is happening here.
“The most serious consequence is what is happening to American power around the world as Donald Trump and Republicans, in part through this rescissions bill, destroy every single non-military tool that we use around the world to protect our interests.
“When I was eight or nine years old, I collected G.I. Joe figures, and one Christmas I remember being so excited because Santa Claus brought me the huge G.I. Joe aircraft carrier. It was awesome. I was obsessed with the military like a lot of boys that age. The planes, the tanks, the ships.
“That’s what I thought American power was – the U.S. military, period, stop.
“And of course, that’s an eight-year-old’s view of the world. The world, as it turns out, is a lot more complicated. You need a lot more than just planes and tanks and ships to protect your interests. You need a powerful military, but adults – in particular, adults who have any experience in national security – know that the octopus of global power has a lot of arms. Military might. But also information might. Economic might. Diplomatic might. Energy might. Humanitarian might.
“This revisions bill cancels billions of dollars in investments in non-military foreign policy tools. And it is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to destroy almost every tool that protects American interests other than our military. Over the last 10 years, the defense budget has grown from about $502 billion to $825 billion. That’s an extraordinary ten-year increase of about $323 billion. Over that same period of time, the State Department budget has grown from $54 billion to $56 billion. – a $2 billion increase. Now if you layer in emergency funds, that increase is more like $30 billion. But you’re still talking about an increase for the military over the past ten years that is ten times the size of the increase for nonmilitary tools.
“And this military myopia, it makes me remember my 8-year-old self, because it is so childish, so immature, so divorced from reality. Donald Trump’s national security strategy, fund the military and destroy every other way that we confront Russia, China, Iran, non-state actors, it could have been constructed by an 8-year-old. It’s that unsophisticated.
“And it really amounts to surrender.
“Because as we stop projecting nonmilitary power around the world, China and Russia, but especially China, they just celebrate and step into the void.
“Secretary Rubio announced on March 10 that 83% of USAID programs will be terminated.
“Meanwhile, China just announced an 8.4% increase in its own diplomatic budget for 2025, committing 500 million additional dollars to the World Health Organization over the next five years – an organization that the United States no longer belongs to. As a result of our cuts standing next to China’s investments in diplomatic power, China will surpass the United States – this year for the first time – as the largest bilateral assistance partner for 40 countries. China is the power at the World Health organization. They call the shots about the standards of global health and pandemic relief.
“China is now the preferred economic development partner for many nations. China is now the dominant force in standard-setting boards for global commerce. This is a choice the Trump administration is making, to make China – and to a certain extent Russia, in certain forms – the dominant power when it comes to economic statecraft, information statecraft, energy statecraft.
“Let me give you a specific example. Today, information is power. If you control information flows, man, you control politics, you control economics, you control culture.
“China spends about $7 billion a year to promote their communist narrative to undermine U.S. leadership around the world and foster a China-friendly media environment globally. Russia, it’s really hard to know how much Russia spends because they’re not publicly reporting much of it. But they certainly spend at least $1.5 billion, but probably double that. And in many countries, Russia and China control the information space. Russian-backed candidates win elections in countries on their periphery simply because of Russian information programs. Asian countries box the United States and U.S. companies out of economic competition because of Chinese information programs.
“And so faced with China and Russia spending somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 billion, when the United States, today, is spending only a fraction of that amount of money, it would stand to reason this would be a moment where we should come together, Republicans and Democrats, and dramatically increase our information warfare investments.
“But of course, we are doing exactly the opposite. Trump is in the middle of a purposeful, relentless campaign to destroy – to destroy America’s global information power.
“The Trump administration just shut down the Global Engagement Center – that is the capacity at the State Department to try to counter Russian and Chinese propaganda around the world – gone, just gone. Global Engagement Center, bipartisan commitment set up years ago by myself and Rob Portman, supported by Marco Rubio when he was a senator, now just doesn’t exist anymore. The administration is dismantling the U.S. Agency for Global Media – that’s the umbrella arm that oversees our information programs around the world – they laid off 92% of its staff. Voice of America, the Middle East Broadcasting Network, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, they are on track to disappear. The arm of the VOA that combats Iranian anti-American information – gone. 54 different radio frequencies operated by Radio Free Asia to counter Chinese anti-American propaganda – gone.
At the same time, China is opening up 80 new radio frequencies in multiple languages, including in those regions where America is disappearing. We are handed the world to China and Russia by deciding to view American power only through a military lens. And this rescissions bill makes it worse by enacting billions of dollars of cuts, to diplomacy, to economic development programs, likely to information programs because we actually can’t see the impact of all of these cuts.
“It’s all surrender. China is throwing a blowout party as we disappear our nonmilitary power from the world.
“Trump terminated tens of millions of dollars in projects to upgrade Africa’s power grid. What did China do? They announced $50 billion of new financing for Africa. Africa, a place where the critical minerals exist to power A.I. and future defense systems. Africa, the part of the world whose economy’s going to explode with opportunity – now opportunity that will go to Chinese companies, not American companies, as we withdraw our relationships with that continent. As China steps into the breach.
“This revisions bill, standing next to Trump’s destruction of all of our non-military foreign policy tools, it’s surrender to our enemies.
“This bill is a double-cross. It is. It’s a double-cross. It’s going to harm our ability to ever be able to do a bipartisan budget process in the future. But even worse, this bill is surrender to our adversaries who are chomping at the bit to fill the void that we are creating by adopting the national security strategy of an 8-year-old boy.”
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