{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-sen-rand-paul-uncovers-247-million-usaid-project-aimed-inform-philippines-climate-change/", "Sen. Rand Paul Uncovers $24.7 Million USAID Project Aimed to Inform the Philippines on Climate Change", "2016-06-06", "2016", "2016-06", "Republican", "Senate", "KY", "Rand Paul", "P000603", "www.paul.senate.gov", "paul", "https://www.paul.senate.gov/news/", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 U.S. Senator Rand Paul today released the latest edition of \u2018The Waste Report,\u2019 which is an ongoing project cataloguing egregious examples of waste within the U.S. government.\n\nIn the latest edition of \u2018The Waste Report,\u2019 Sen. Paul uncovers plans for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to invest as much as $24.7 million on a project to help the country of the Philippines adapt to climate change.\n\n\u2018The Waste Report\u2019 can be found HERE or below.\n\nFollowers of The Waste Report will remember the National Science Foundation\u2019s (NSF) funding for a futuristic climate change video game focused on the impact of Florida communities of sea-level rise. The justification for the game was that high school students, when presented with the catastrophic climate change narrative, were not particularly motivated to act. Well it turns out Uncle Sam wants to act, not in Florida, but in the Philippines.\n\nThat\u2019s right!!! The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) plans to invest as much as $24.7 million as part of the \u201cClimate Ready\u201d project to help the Philippines adapt to rising sea-levels and extreme weather caused by climate change.[1] Individual awards are limited to $2 million, so we\u2019ll probably see about 12 different projects across the Philippines.\n\nSo what will these projects look like? Turns out we do not know. USAID\u2019s solicitation is an RFP (Request for Proposals) for cost-plus contracts. RFP\u2019s are used at all levels of government to solicit detailed plans of how to achieve stated objectives and working within established constraints. For example, if your local town wanted to build a park on an abandoned lot, an RFP might give general parameters of what kind of park \u2013 recreational or passive \u2013 and what features are desired and what are not, etc. Kind of a, \u201cgiven these parameters, what would you do?\u201d\n\nHowever, where this RFP would normally delineate such parameters, it simply states, \u201cthe Contractor\u2019s Performance Work Statement, based on the content of this RFP, will be inserted at the time of award.\u201d[2] In other words, submit any idea to prepare the Philippines for climate change, and if it is accepted, that idea will be the standard we hold that idea to.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-08T20:54:04Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-sen-rand-paul-uncovers-247-million-usaid-project-aimed-inform-philippines-climate-change/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.9735696949064732, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}