Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, last November, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, came to meet with my colleagues and me who serve on the Foreign Affairs Committee. In that meeting, Ambassador Power told us that despite U.S. law that prohibits any funding to UNESCO because of its decision to admit a nonexistent state of Palestine to its membership, the administration was going to make it a priority to seek waiver authority to continue U.S. taxpayer funding to UNESCO. Indeed, this is coming to fruition. There is a congressional push by some to grant the administration this waiver or to seek other ways to get around this prohibition. I am here today to voice my unconditional and unyielding opposition to this push, and I urge my colleagues to join me in removing that in the budget that will be before us soon and not allow the administration to yet again circumvent U.S. law and to throw away hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money. The administration is seeking to not only restore $80 million in taxpayer funds to UNESCO for this fiscal year, but it is also seeking to pay nearly $250 million more in arrears--dues--that we owed to UNESCO, an agency that has an anti-U.S. and an anti-Israel agenda. If we restore funding to UNESCO, we are tacitly agreeing with their support for Abbas, the PA, the PLO, the nonexistent state of Palestine, and the U.N.…”