John Kerry: “one of the amendments we will vote on shortly is an amendment by Senator Rand Paul with respect to cutting-- or an…”

“one of the amendments we will vote on shortly is an amendment by Senator Rand Paul with respect to cutting-- or an offset, if you will--of $6.9 billion from the State Department and USAID in order to fund FEMA disaster relief programs. First of all, a number of colleagues have come to the Senate floor over the last couple of days and talked about the principle that has governed our efforts to provide disaster assistance through all of the years of this institution. We do not know how to plan on the amounts. We do not hold people accountable to other programs because of acts of God, natural disasters that arise suddenly, and the Nation has always been rich enough and responsible enough to guarantee that we provide assistance to communities that have been hard hit by a flood, by a tornado, ravaged by fires--by some natural disaster. I think the notion that suddenly we are going to start offsetting at a time when we are engaged in a very delicate balance of offsets with respect to the regular budgeting process is to try to put in place an inappropriate principle at an inappropriate time. That argument has been made considerably. I want to talk for a minute about the merits of this particular proposal on its face. Let me make as clear as I can that this amendment would be absolutely devastating to our foreign aid and development programs.…”