Video: Kaine Speaks on Senate Floor to Slam Republican Defunding of Faith-Based Organizations
BROADCAST-QUALITY VIDEO IS AVAILABLE HERE.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Last night, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC), spoke on the Senate floor slamming President Trump and congressional Republicans’ rescissions package, which includes massive cuts to funding for faith-based organizations that provide important services, such as implementing foreign assistance and national security programming overseas and supporting refugee resettlement in the United States. The Republican rescissions bill, which Kaine opposes, cancels $9.4 billion in federal funding previously appropriated by a bipartisan majority in Congress for public broadcasting and national security programs.
A transcript of Kaine’s speech is below:
Mr. President.
I wish I could tell you my speech will be short. I don't think it will be long, but I will try to make it interesting. I want to tell you a story, and it's not a story about anything that's happened in this building. It's a story about a very humble Catholic parish in Northside Richmond, Virginia called St. Elizabeth of Hungary.
It's a very humble parish. It’s a small parish. It’s slightly over 100 years old. It’s the church where my wife and I were married more than 40 years ago, where all three of our children were baptized, where we attended Mass just this last Sunday to hear the Gospel reading, the story of the Good Samaritan.
The church was founded more than 100 years ago in an unusual way.
There were Italian and German immigrants in Richmond who felt looked down upon because of where they had come from and because of the accents that they spoke with and that their English wasn’t so good. And in the aftermath of World War I, people looked at German Americans and Italian Americans with some suspicion. German language was being criminalized in some of our states in the aftermath.
And these immigrant refugee Catholics decided that they wanted a place where they could feel welcomed, loved, and safe as they worshipped in accord with the American value of freedom to worship. And so they set up this little parish in the Highland Park neighborhood of Northside Richmond, Virginia, where they could go and be together and feel safe.
They chose an interesting name: St. Elizabeth of Hungary. St. Elizabeth of Hungary lived 1,000 years ago. She was a teenager and queen in a time of great poverty, and against the wishes of her husband and other officials, she would take bread and put the bread inside of her garments and go out and distribute it to the poor.
And once she was caught and she was made to open her garment—and when she did open her garment, the bread had turned into roses—and that’s the miracle attributed to her. She lived only a short time and died, but she was made a saint by the Catholic Church.
And these immigrants who started my parish chose that name because they felt like that was what was needed in the world—people who would try to serve others in need.
100 years later, we celebrated the centennial of my church, Mr. President, a couple of years ago. And I was sitting there—I’ve now been a member of the parish for 40 years—and I was looking around, and I realized times change, and they don’t.
Catholic Relief Services, which is one of the largest agencies in the United States that helps settle refugees who are legal immigrants—refugees are legal immigrants—about 15 years ago, settled a Congolese family into my church who had been in a refugee camp after fleeing violence in the Congo. Catholic, French, and Swahili-speaking. One Congolese family came to my church.
And then over time, Catholic Relief Services decided, ‘well, this family likes St. Elizabeth, and they feel welcomed here.’ And other families started to come to my church. And so by now, as we were celebrating our centennial and I’m looking around the parish where I go, this small, very humble parish, it is sizably a Congolese refugee population—legal immigrants to the United States who have been settled through the Catholic Relief Service—and they’ve come to a place where they feel loved and cared for and safe and welcome.
The color of their skin, the accent that they use, the fact that they're unfamiliar with American culture might make them feel not so welcome in other venues, but in my church, they feel welcome.
And it made me realize, as we celebrated that centennial, that my church looks real different in some ways than when it was founded 100 years ago, but in other ways it's exactly the same. It's a haven for people who are legal immigrants to the United States, but need a place where they can gather with others and feel welcome.
Why do I tell that story? How is it connected to the rescission bill that we're going to be voting on tomorrow?
President Trump has sent a bill to Congress, and one of the pillars of that bill is to rescind the funding for refugee resettlement programs in the United States—run by churches.
Seven of the ten organizations that resettle refugees in the United States are faith-based organizations. The largest two are the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops operating through Catholic Relief Services and the Evangelical organization World Vision. But it’s not just them. Church World Service, Lutheran Social Services, the Episcopal Church of the United States, World Relief. Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society—founded more than 100 years ago to try to bring Jews, at that point, from Europe to the United States and make sure that as legal immigrants, yes, they would be allowed to be here legally, but they needed someone to teach them about American culture and integrate into American life.
The practice of American religious organizations assisting in legal immigration goes back more than a century, and President Trump’s rescissions package that is before us wipes out funding to a dramatic degree for virtually all of them.
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society has had to lay off hundreds of staff.
World Relief said this, ‘President Trump said he will defend persecuted Christians, but the U.S. refugee resettlement program is one of the primary ways that the U.S. government protects Christians and others fleeing persecution.
The Episcopal Church of the United States has had to end its long standing refugee resettlement program because of President Trump's budget cuts.
Lutheran Social Services has … struggled to make payroll. They've had to lay off so many people. They've reduced the services that they're able to provide, especially to Afghan allies who were in the United States because they worked with the United States military in Afghanistan to protect our troops.
Catholic Charities has laid off all kinds of staff.
The families at my church, they come up to me after Mass on Sunday, and they're so frightened about what might happen because many of them have families still in refugee camps who might want to come here as legal refugees, as legal immigrants.
I don't know of a president who has attacked religious organizations—Catholic, Evangelical, Jewish—that have been doing this work, in many instances for more than a century, in such an orchestrated, intentional, and calculated way as President Trump.
Matthew: I was a stranger and you welcomed me in. I was sick and you cared for me. I was hungry and you fed me.
This is a bedrock belief of our nation’s religious organizations. That they will follow the law—legal refugee program—but they will help the person who is accessing legal refugee programs to be able to integrate into a society so they can live with some sense of dignity and have some chance of success.
Why cut these programs? Why look in the face of these religious organizations that, out of a motivation of conscience, for decades, even a century, have decided that they will try to smooth that path, to integrate people into American life who are here lawfully. Why cut their funding? Why force them to be laid off? Why debilitate their ability to provide services?
It's an attack on the religious organizations so that they cannot do the work that their faith in their Creator compels them to do.
I'm not surprised that President Trump would propose this. The language and the rhetoric and the behavior that he has exhibited toward even legal refugees, legal immigrants to this country, lead me to not be surprised that this important funding is on the chopping block in the bill that he sent to the Senate.
But I have to admit that I am surprised that it seems to be just moving on a path to being accepted. It was accepted in the House without much drama, including by a whole lot of people who go to churches just like me and hear sermons preached about the Good Samaritan, just like I do every Sunday.
And we'll have an opportunity tomorrow to grapple with it here. I intend to, at least, offer an amendment to try to strip this piece of the bill out so that the bill will not be an attack on religious organizations doing what they feel compelled by their faith to do.
And it is my prayer that the entire rescission bill fail for the reasons my colleagues have said. A deal is a deal, and we shouldn't backtrack on it.
But if we can't defeat the entire rescission bill, it is my hope that we will allow organizations like Catholic Relief Services and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and the Episcopal Church and World Vision and World Relief and Lutheran Social Services. It is my hope that we will at least allow them to practice the faith they sincerely believe and do it in a way consistent with what their practices have been for decades and in some cases, even more than a century.
And so that's what I'm going to be praying for tonight, that there's a bit of a an epiphany in this body, and we realize that the work that these church-based organizations are doing isn't bad. This work isn't something that should be slashed and cut with these valuable faith workers laid off.
My hope is that the Senate will realize this is good work that is really at the core of who we are as Americans. And tiny little parishes like St. Elizabeth of Hungary or synagogues or other churches all over this country who pride themselves on offering a welcoming environment for people who are here lawfully and want to make a way in America will be able to continue to do just that.
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