Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2024

Floor Speech

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Mrs. BOEBERT. Mr. Chair, I rise today to offer my amendment that utilizes the Holman rule to reduce the salary of U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield to $1.

Ms. Thomas-Greenfield has been entrusted with representing the United States on the world stage and has done a terrible job. She made the decision to allow the U.S. to rejoin the anti-Semitic United Nations Human Rights Council, which routinely ignores some of the world's worst atrocities and grants membership to countries with egregious human rights violations, giving countries like China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Pakistan, and Somalia an international platform to speak on human rights.

Rather than focusing on China's systematic oppression of millions of Uyghur Muslims or the inhumane treatment of women and ethnic religious minorities across the Middle East, this council disproportionately targets the State of Israel.

She was also involved in the decision to resume funding the U.N. Population Fund account, which supports coercive abortion and involuntary sterilization.

During her Senate confirmation, Ms. Thomas-Greenfield expressed support for taxpayer-funded abortions in foreign countries.

In 2021, Ms. Thomas-Greenfield was quoted saying: ``White supremacy is woven into America's founding documents and principles.'' In the same speech she went on to say: ``We have to acknowledge that we are an imperfect Union and have been since the beginning . . .''

Let's give this very important job to someone who loves America and doesn't hate the values that our Founders ingrained into the strongest country in the world.

I urge my colleagues to support my amendment and hold Ms. Thomas- Greenfield accountable for her poor representation of America on the world stage.

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Mrs. BOEBERT. Mr. Chair, I once again urge my colleagues to support this amendment to hold Ms. Thomas-Greenfield accountable. This is an unelected, rogue bureaucrat, not a public servant. This is someone who has not taken her role seriously, being involved in the decisions to resume funding the U.N. Population Fund account, which supports coercive abortion and involuntary sterilization. This is absolutely grotesque to me.

There are many other reasons that I have listed here that we should be utilizing this Holman rule to hold this unelected, rogue bureaucrat accountable.

Mr. Chair, I urge adoption of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mrs. BOEBERT. Mr. Chair, I rise today to offer my amendment that utilizes the Holman rule to reduce the salary of the director of the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff, Salman Ahmed, to $1.

This extreme leftist was a partisan hack for the Obama administration for 8 years and, prior to that, spent 15 years pushing globalist and anti-America First policies for the United Nations.

In his role with the State Department, Ahmed has pushed for squandering tens of millions of dollars on misguided policy pursuits like the Green New Deal and climate change, which he wrongfully believes is an existential threat.

Ahmed is a pro-China sympathizer who consistently criticized President Trump for taking a tough stance on Chinese adversaries.

As the director of the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff, Ahmed also played an instrumental role in the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.

This poor planning and not-well-thought-out withdrawal resulted in the death of 13 American heroes, a shameful surrender to the Taliban that left our own lifeless.

Ahmed is a principle player and one of the main reasons America has become an embarrassment on the global stage. Our brave men and women in uniform and Department of State public servants overseas deserve better than Salman Ahmed.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to support my amendment and hold Mr. Salman Ahmed accountable for his terrible performance and reduce his salary to $1.

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Mrs. BOEBERT. Mr. Chair, I see nothing wrong with taking a stand as an elected official to hold unelected, rogue bureaucrats accountable. The one way that we can effectively do that is through our House rules, utilizing the Holman rule, to affect the salary of these bureaucrats who are abusing their position, not taking it seriously, or should not have been appointed there in the first place.

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Mrs. BOEBERT. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mrs. BOEBERT. Mr. Chair, I rise today to offer my amendment to reduce the salary of the Department's acting chief diversity and inclusion officer, Constance Mayer, to $1.

Simply put, Ms. Mayer is working in an office that should not exist doing a job that should not exist.

In addition to hundreds of ambassadors, the Department already boasts a whopping 55 personal envoys, representatives, and coordinators with overlapping responsibilities.

Special positions, like Ms. Mayer's, often create both resentment within the Department's existing bureaucracy and confusion among foreign governments as to who is actually setting policy.

At the direction of Joe Biden's DEI executive order, the State Department produced and published a 19-page equity action plan, the first sentence of which proclaims: ``Addressing systemic racism . . . is a core tenet of President Biden's foreign policy.''

The core problem with this plan is that it does not identify a clear set of problems, and it does not prescribe specific, measurable solutions. It simply cuts the American social justice template and pastes it into a plan that is supposed to inform U.S. foreign policy across the world.

This office is also functionally redundant. To the extent that it has a mission, the responsibilities of the chief diversity and inclusion officer overlap with the Office of Civil Rights, which is charged with propagating ``fairness, equity, and inclusion at the Department of State.''

This job is yet another unaccountable, ideologically motivated, politically charged senior office with vague goals and no yardsticks for measuring success.

The Federal Government's obsession with diversity, equity, and inclusion needs to come to an end.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to support my amendment to remove this unnecessary position that has proven to undercut our core American values and waste more taxpayer dollars.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mrs. BOEBERT. Mr. Chair, I just want to clarify, once again, that the diversity inclusion officer should not exist. This office is functionally redundant to the extent that it has a mission. The responsibilities of the chief diversity and inclusion officer overlap with the Office of Civil Rights, which is charged with propagating fairness, equity, and inclusion at the Department of State.

This is yet another unacceptable, ideologically motivated, politically charged senior office with vague goals and no yardstick for measuring success. That is why I am offering this amendment to reduce the salary of the Department's Acting Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, Constance Mayer, to $1.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mrs. BOEBERT. Mr. Chair, I rise today to offer my amendment that utilizes the Holman rule to reduce the salary of Palestinian Affairs Officer George Noll to $1.

On March 13, the Office of Palestinian Affairs in the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem posted on Twitter photos of its director, George Noll, visiting the Tomb of Lazarus north of Jerusalem.

The post referred to the tomb as ``an important religious site maintained by the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Tourism.''

Mr. Noll praised the Palestinian Authority's ``work preserving beautiful historical and religious sites like this throughout the West Bank.''

We all know the truth. Instead of preserving beautiful historical and religious sites throughout Judea and Samaria, the Palestinian Authority is deliberately destroying them.

Shortly after this exchange, the State Department published its Country Reports on Human Rights practices. The section on Israel was incredibly hostile. This report attacks Israel for denying prison furloughs to Palestinian terrorists, fighting terrorism, and preventing unrestricted illegal immigration.

From Noll's praise for the Palestinian Authority, which is committed to erasing Jewish history, to the State Department's denunciation of Israel's right to defend itself and enforce its laws, the Biden administration's abusive treatment of Israel needs to end.

As we all know, the Palestinian Authority is also known to pay the families of terrorists lavish monthly pensions for attacks against Americans and Israelis as a part of their so-called Martyr's Fund.

The taxpayers here in this country should not be footing the bill to pay a government employee to praise a terrorist organization.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to support my amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mrs. BOEBERT. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mrs. BOEBERT. Mr. Chair, I rise today to offer my amendment that ensures no funds to enforce or implement a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for international travelers.

This simple, straightforward amendment will ensure that Joe Biden's bureaucrats can never, ever again implement or enforce another ludicrous and unscientific vaccine mandate for international travel.

When this rule was in place from 2021 to earlier this year, it made everyday life so much harder for so many people, from tearing apart family reunifications to punishing companies overseas for doing business with America.

Just a few stories my congressional office has come across include:

The mother of a Dutch tourist who died on the Appalachian Trail was unable to come to the United States to collect her son's body;

A woman's fiance who lives in Canada has been unable to visit her on American soil for the past 3 years;

A man working for a company in the United Kingdom who is unable to travel to the United States for business meetings; and

A family in New Hampshire with Canadian in-laws has been unable to have Canadian family members visit for Christmas in the United States since COVID started.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle have already started ramping up the new round of COVID hysteria.

Last month, it was reported that TSA team members were told that they will receive new guidelines on how the restrictions will evolve and that by mid-October, pilots, flight staff, passengers, and airport patrons will be required to once again wear masks.

Allegedly, administration officials were told that it was not a matter of ``if'' but ``when'' COVID numbers rise, the Biden administration plans to roll out a new round of COVID restrictions.

Moreover, numerous Federal agencies have reported purchasing more COVID-19 equipment and have awarded contracts to private companies to help enforce COVID-19 pandemic-era safety protocols.

Joe Biden's unilateral vaccine mandates posed an existential threat to our system of government. It is long past time Congress takes our Article I authority outlined in the Constitution to rein in Biden's overreaching mandates that are trampling on our liberties.

The Biden administration fumbled the bag on handling COVID last time around. We should all be concerned that hysteria regarding the new COVID-19 variant will be used as justification to return to shutdowns, mandates, restrictions, and so much more, despite the fact that the evidence shows that these measures did nothing to combat this virus.

COVID is over. Let's ensure Biden's bureaucrats don't have the power to impose unpopular and unconstitutional liberty-stripping vaccine mandates again. I urge my colleagues to support my amendment and put an end to this COVID hysteria led by the ``branch Covidian'' Joe Biden.

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Mrs. BOEBERT. Mr. Chair, I appreciate the gentlewoman's concern for lives lost in America, and I would hope that the gentlewoman would join our efforts in securing our southern border. This administration has stripped title 42 away that prevented illegal aliens from coming into our country who may pose some sort of threat with an illness or a virus. If they were serious about COVID-19, this should never be something that they would want to eliminate. Instead, it is American citizens and those trying to travel to our country and from our country who are restricted by these unconstitutional vaccine mandates.

If the gentlewoman is concerned about the numbers of lives being lost, maybe she should join us in supporting our efforts to secure the southern border, where there is a flow of fentanyl coming into our country killing 300 Americans a day, making every State a border State.

It is hard to take any of the paper masks seriously when we know that they don't work. It has been proven time and time again while they are on their seventh booster shot and still supposedly getting COVID.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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