Just gay....

“Don’t lecture me about being mean or cruel.”

By Katherine Tully-McManus and Jennifer Scholtes

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) says he will vote for the $9.4 billion White House rescissions package that will cancel $1.1 billion for public broadcasting and $8.3 billion in foreign assistance, including a key AIDS prevention program.

Graham has long been a supporter of PEPFAR, the AIDS-fighting program credited for saving millions of lives since then-President George W. Bush launched it more than 20 years ago. But he told Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought and his Senate Appropriations colleagues that the program fell into mismanagement under Democratic leadership.

“You opened my eyes,” the senator told Vought at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing Wednesday, after the budget director cited a list of ways PEPFAR funding has been spent, including to support abortions and gender care.

“No more preaching to me. I’m gonna vote for this package. You know why I’m going to vote for it? Just as a statement that PEPFAR is important, but it is not beyond scrutiny. That the way you run the government has consequences,” Graham added. “Don’t lecture me about being mean or cruel.”

Several of Graham’s Republican colleagues on the Senate Appropriations panel, including Chair Susan Collins of Maine, pushed back on Vought’s effort to cut the funding, citing lifesaving health care programs and U.S. funded nutrition for starving children.