On the recordFebruary 16, 2011
I appreciate the opportunity to speak. Earlier this evening, or I should say last night, I had a tele-town hall meeting. I do this once a week. Generally what I do is I ask and we talk about what we're doing on the floor today: trying to create jobs to reducing the size of our Federal Government. So I open it up and I ask people, What would you cut? Or, Send me an email. Go to heller.house.gov, hit the prompt button to send me an email. Tell me what you would cut out of this Federal Government. And I got, obviously, numerous responses, as I'm sure most people in this audience would. But I have to tell you, at the top of everybody's list, frankly, if it's not the top two or three, it's always in the top five, is to cut foreign aid. So we have an opportunity to do that today. So what my amendment does is it cuts $211,244,700 from the Multilateral Economic Assistance Account in the State Foreign Operations section. This number is 14.5 percent of the account. And I am asked, What is the purpose of the 14.5 percent of this particular account? Well, 14.5 percent happens to match the State with the highest unemployment in the country, and that State happens to be the State of Nevada, the State that I am from. This money is going to go to debt reduction.





