Lincoln Diaz-Balart: “this full-year funding really refocuses our Nation's foreign policy in historic ways. It focuses on the United States'…”

“this full-year funding really refocuses our Nation's foreign policy in historic ways. It focuses on the United States' national security, but it does so while also restoring fiscal sanity. In the foreign policy arena, it actually reduces spending by 16 percent. Within those really historic reductions, the bill does more to counter our adversaries like China and Iran, the cartels in our hemisphere, and support our allies and friends. It does a lot more while spending a lot less money. Madam Speaker, the bill increases funding to counter fentanyl. It increases support for religious freedom and to address religious persecution around the planet. It maintains our longstanding pro-life provisions, and this bill removes controversial funding directives like the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. It makes double-digit reductions to the U.N. funding. More importantly, or equally as important, it gives the Secretary of State the tools and leverage to demand much-needed reforms. These are historic changes, and this approach, again, protects American taxpayers but also the national security interests of the United States.”