Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry has a new target: the Peace Corps.

This month, Perry filed amendments to the House spending bill for the State Department and foreign operations that would eliminate funding for the Peace Corps and a string of other programs in the 2027 budget year. Not trim them. Zero them out.

It's the same instinct that has defined Perry's whole career in Washington: when in doubt, cut it — and don't worry too much about who gets hurt or what it costs us down the road.

What he's trying to kill

Perry's amendments would wipe out three things in particular:

• The Peace Corps. Perry filed an amendment to eliminate the agency's entire $410.5 million budget. For more than 60 years, the Peace Corps has sent Americans abroad to work on clean water, education, health, and farming — and brought home Americans with deep ties to other countries. The National Peace Corps Association is urging people to oppose the amendment, which it says "would eliminate the Peace Corps' entire $410.5 million appropriation."
• The Millennium Challenge Corporation. Perry wants to zero out the $830 million for this agency. Here's the part that should make even a budget hawk pause: the MCC partners with poor countries to build roads, power, and infrastructure — and by its own account, it does so to "create new opportunities for U.S. investment, trade, and jobs" while "countering the growing influence of China's Belt and Road Initiative." In other words, Perry wants to cut one of the main tools the U.S. uses to compete with China for influence around the world.
• The Democracy Fund. Perry's amendment would also eliminate $205.2 million for the State Department fund that supports human rights and democracy programs abroad.

The House Rules Committee cleared the bill and Perry's amendments to come to the floor for a vote.

"Cut everything" is his actual philosophy

This isn't a one-time stunt. Cutting is the through-line of Scott Perry's record.

When Elon Musk's DOGE went after the federal government, Perry was, in the Capital-Star's words, "a champion of the work of" DOGE, echoing its claims about fraud and waste in foreign spending, many of which were never verified. He has co-sponsored legislation to completely repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, the law that capped insulin at $35 a month for seniors. He has supported raising the Social Security retirement age. He voted for Trump's budget bill even though Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee estimate its Medicaid cuts could cost 17,478 people in his own district their coverage.

So an amendment to delete the Peace Corps fits the pattern perfectly. The programs change. The answer is always the same: cut it.

Who actually pays

Cuts like these get sold as saving taxpayer money. (Perry's office didn't answer the Capital-Star when it asked why he wanted them.) But look at what's really on the chopping block.

The Peace Corps and the Millennium Challenge Corporation are not where America's budget problems live — they're a rounding error in a multi-trillion-dollar budget. What they buy is American influence: goodwill, trade relationships, and a counterweight to China in exactly the developing countries where China is spending aggressively to win friends. Gut them, and the money saved is tiny while the ground we hand to Beijing is real.

And it's worth remembering who Perry is when he tells us what to cut. This is the only sitting member of Congress whose phone was seized by the FBI in the 2020 election investigation — a man who spent years as one of the most extreme members of the House. His judgment about what America can afford to throw away is not judgment Pennsylvanians should take on faith.

The bottom line

Scott Perry wants to eliminate a 65-year-old service program, kneecap a key tool against China, and zero out support for democracy abroad — and call it savings. It's the cheap, slash-and-burn politics he's practiced for 13 years, dressed up as fiscal responsibility.

His constituents deserve a representative who thinks harder than "cut it." We deserve better.

Source

This post is based on reporting by the Pennsylvania Capital-Star: Pa. Rep. Scott Perry proposes cutting funding for the Peace Corps and other foreign aid programs. Lead image: Peace Corps Volunteer John Menz in Paraguay, courtesy of the Peace Corps, via the Pennsylvania Capital-Star.