[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 101 (Monday, June 18, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3973-S3976]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ENERGY AND WATER, LEGISLATIVE BRANCH, AND MILITARY CONSTRUCTION AND
VETERANS AFFAIRS APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2019
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
A bill (H.R. 5895) making appropriations for energy and
water development and related agencies for the fiscal year
ending September 30, 2019, and for other purposes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
Amendment No. 2910
(Purpose: In the nature of a substitute.)
Mr. SHELBY. Mr. President, I call up the substitute amendment, No.
2910.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Alabama [Mr. Shelby] proposes an amendment
numbered 2910.
Mr. SHELBY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading
of the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
(The amendment is printed in today's Record under ``Text of
Amendments.'')
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
Amendment No. 2911 to Amendment No. 2910
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 2911.
[[Page S3974]]
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Tennessee [Mr. Alexander] proposes an
amendment numbered 2911 to amendment No. 2910.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the
reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:
(Purpose: To make a technical correction)
On page 37, line 19, strike ``$220,000,000'' and insert
``$222,142,000''.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, tomorrow the distinguished Senator from
Alabama, Mr. Shelby, and the distinguished Senator from Vermont, Mr.
Leahy, will lead us in the beginning of the Senate's appropriations
process for the year that begins this October 2018. This is also the
best opportunity we have had in a long time to do the appropriations
process properly.
For the last several years, we have finished and reported our 12
bills out of the Appropriations Committee on which about one-third of
the Senate sits. We have reported those bills to the Senate floor. We
have usually done that with bipartisan support and often unanimously.
This is no small task.
For example, in our Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee,
which I chair and which the Senator from California, Mrs. Feinstein, is
the vice chair, this year we have had three hearings. We have received
comments from 83 Members of the Senate. We have considered their
comments. We considered our bill in a subcommittee markup, and then we
approved the bill 30 to 1 in the Appropriations Committee on May 24. We
are on pace this year, thanks to the leadership of Senator Shelby and
Senator Leahy, to take those same steps with all 12 appropriations
bills.
The Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, which has not been able to
get bipartisan agreement since fiscal year 2010, was able to reach an
agreement this year. So I thank Senator Shelby and Senator Leahy, and I
thank Senator McConnell and Senator Schumer, the Democratic and
Republican leaders, for creating an environment in which all of this is
possible.
We are saying to all Members of the Senate, we would like for the
appropriations bills to be considered by more than one-third of the
Senators. We know we have considered your thoughts in our committee
process. We have done that, and we have done that carefully, but to the
extent Senators want to, we ought to be able to consider relevant
amendments--amendments that have something to do with the bill on the
floor of the Senate.
So the key now is whether we know how to consider amendments, whether
we can remember how to consider, talk about, agree to time agreements,
and then vote on amendments; how we can occasionally show restraint and
not offer an amendment that would blow up the whole bill, keeping in
mind that our goal is to pass an appropriations bill--literally a
series of appropriations bills--that will spend more than $1 trillion
of the taxpayers' money in the year that begins October 2018.
Now, too often, once we have gotten on the Senate floor in this
shape, we have gotten ourselves into this situation: Senators blocking
other Senators' amendments--which Senators can do--but if Senators
block other Senators' amendments and the tit for tat gets going back
and forth, then no amendments are considered, and we are back in a
situation where only the 31 Senators on the Senate Appropriations
Committee have a say in the final bill. This is a chance for the other
69 Senators to be more involved by offering their amendments on the
floor.
So it is my hope that beginning tomorrow, we will return to the
practice of offering amendments that have something to do with the
bills at hand, and then we will either accept it, modify it, try to
talk a Senator out of offering it, or agree to a short period of time
to talk about an amendment and then actually vote on the amendment. If
we do that, we can finish our work in a timely way. We can restore to
the Senate its most basic process, which is its article I of the
Constitution responsibility for appropriating dollars.
Tonight I will make my opening remarks on one of the three bills we
will be considering this week, the Energy and Water Development
appropriations bill. Tomorrow, Senator Shelby and Senator Leahy will
officially kick off our appropriations process. Senator Feinstein, my
colleague on the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, with
whom I have worked for several years, will make her remarks and so will
other Senators from the other two subcommittees. Then we will begin to
vote on amendments. Our plan is to begin voting on amendments tomorrow.
We have a number of amendments already proposed that are bipartisan.
Of course, it is up to the Republican leader and the Democratic leader
how we proceed, but I have talked with them. I have talked with other
colleagues. Our hope is to have a couple of amendments to vote on just
before lunch, two more amendments to vote on right after lunch, and
other amendments to vote on tomorrow afternoon.
I would say to Senators and to staff that all of us--all six of us
Senators involved in the three subcommittees, plus Senator Shelby and
Senator Leahy--hope Senators will file their amendments tonight and
tomorrow. We want to finish the bill this week. That is what Senator
McConnell has asked us to do. That means, in order to have timely
consideration of amendments--and we could do a number during the week;
those that are not accepted, we could vote on--we need to get on with
it. We can still consider several amendments tomorrow, other than the
ones already planned. This information has been available to Senators
and staff for them to consider.
The Energy and Water appropriations bill went through the entire
process I just mentioned. That has been public, and it has been
available for anybody to read since May 24. It was approved 30 to 1--
one-third of the Senate--and 83 Senators made suggestions that we tried
to accommodate in the bill.
The Military Construction and Veterans Affairs bill has been
available to the full Senate since June 7. It was approved unanimously,
after going through the full committee process, by a vote of 31 to 0.
The Legislative Branch appropriations bill is the third subcommittee
bill that will be considered this week. It has been available since
June 14. It went through the entire committee process and was approved
31 to 0.
Last Saturday, all three of these bills were stitched together into
one bill. This has been available; we call it in our way of talking a
minibus--three subcommittee appropriations bills fully vetted, fully
public. It is time to deal with it.
Before I describe the Energy and Water appropriations bill in detail,
I wish to tell the Senate a story told to me by the Senator from
Colorado, Mr. Gardner, who has taken an active interest in research,
technology, and development ever since his arrival in the U.S. Senate 4
years ago.
Senator Gardner came by my office a few weeks ago, and this is what
he said to me: You know, I was flying over the Middle East, and I
looked down, and there were cars everywhere. I thought, well, Henry
Ford invented the assembly line. Then it got to be dark, and there were
lights everywhere, and I thought, well, Thomas Edison invented the
light bulb. We were flying at 30,000 feet, and I thought, the Wright
brothers invented the airplane. They are all Americans. I got to
thinking that is not all; we have invented the internet, the personal
computer, nuclear power, the polio vaccine. It is hard to think of a
major technological invention since World War II that didn't have some
support from government-sponsored research.
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine in Nashville came up to me and
lamented the fact--he said: I'm so sorry that Congress hasn't been
funding research. He understood that since World War II, it has been so
important to our country.
I told my friend: I think you have been missing what has actually
been happening, because quietly, with bipartisan support, this
Congress--which has a Republican majority and, for the last two
appropriations bills, a Republican President--has been approving record
funding for science, research, and technology. It is important that the
American people know that.
[[Page S3975]]
Since January of 2015, it is true we have had a Republican majority
in Congress, but there has been a consensus with Democratic Members of
Congress. We have worked together to provide those record levels of
funding for science, research, and technology.
Let me be specific. In the current year--fiscal year 2018--for the
third consecutive year we provided record funding levels in regular
appropriations bills for the following activities:
The Office of Science. The Office of Science provides funding for our
17 national laboratories, including the Oak Ridge National Laboratory,
which are America's secret weapon. No other country has anything like
them. Funding for the Office of Science in this fiscal year's
appropriations bill--the one we are voting on this week--would increase
funding by 6 percent.
Let's take supercomputing. Last Friday, Secretary of Energy Perry
traveled to Oak Ridge, where he announced that the United States will
regain the No. 1 position in the world in supercomputers, which we
compete for every year with China and Japan. This is the result not of
1 year of funding, but of 10 years of bipartisan effort through three
different administrations--Democratic and Republican--to try to make
sure that America is first in supercomputing in the world. We continue
to do that in the appropriations bill we are considering this week.
Or take an agency we call ARPA-E. ARPA-E is a cousin of DARPA which
is an agency that was created in the Department of Defense some time
ago, out of which came a variety of wondrous new technologies--from
stealth to the internet, for example. So 10 years ago, Congress decided
``Why not try the same thing in energy?'' and created what we call
ARPA-E to invest in high-impact energy technologies and then quickly
get those technologies added to the private sector.
That is just our subcommittee. In other subcommittees--the Commerce,
Justice, Science Committee, chaired by Senator Moran and Senator
Shaheen, the fiscal year 2018 bill increased funding for the National
Science Foundation by $200 million. The fiscal year 2019 bill, approved
by the Senate Appropriation Committee last week, proposes to increase
funding another $300 million. The National Science Foundation makes
about 11,000 grants to universities and other institutions around the
country--$8 billion next year--as a part of our effort to stay first in
research, science, and technology.
Then there is one more example. In fiscal year 2018, for the third
straight year, the Labor, Health and Human Services Subcommittee,
chaired by Senator Blunt and Senator Murray, has provided increased
funding for the National Institutes of Health and biomedical research--
2 billion additional dollars in the first year, 2 billion the second
year, and 2 billion the third year, which is in addition to 21st
Century Cures Act funding to focus on the Precision Medicine
Initiative, the Cancer Moonshot, among other things. Senator Blunt has
said that is a 23-percent increase over three years.
So I would say to my friend in Nashville--and to others who may not
have noticed this quiet development--that this Republican Congress and
the Democratic Members of Congress, as well, understand that a
principal reason why this country produces 24 percent of all the money
in the world for just 5 percent of the people--the principal reason for
this extraordinary concentration of brain power in the United States
has been support by Federal dollars through our National Laboratories,
the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and
other agencies.
Let me make one other statement right upfront. That funding is not
the cause of the Federal deficit. Funding for the National
Laboratories, national defense, national parks, and the National
Institutes of Health is all part of the 30 percent of the Federal
budget we call discretionary spending. That is what we are talking
about this week. That is the money Congress appropriates every year--
more than $1 trillion.
Over the last 10 years, this part of the Federal budget--the 30
percent that is the discretionary funding--has gone up at a little bit
less than the rate of inflation, according to the Congressional Budget
Office, and the Congressional Budget Office projects that over the next
10 years, this part of the budget will rise at a little bit more than
the rate of inflation.
So record funding for the National Institutes of Health or the
National Science Foundation or ARPA-E or to keep our position in
supercomputing--or, for that matter, national defense--is not the
source of the Federal deficit. What has happened is that the Congress--
Democrats and Republicans alike--have placed a priority on science,
technology, and research and, within the budget limits established, we
have given that excellent funding--record funding. The source of the
Federal budget deficit is mandatory spending, which amounts to more
than 63 percent of the budget.
Now to the Energy and Water appropriations bill. This legislation
provides a total of $43.8 billion, $566 million above what Congress
provided last fiscal year--the year we are in now--and $7.24 billion
above the President's budget request. Funding in this bill supports
several agencies, including the U.S. Department of Energy, the Corps of
Engineers, the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the regional
commissions, including the Appalachian Regional Commission and the
Delta Regional Authority.
I am pleased that the bill provides the fourth year of record funding
for our 17 national laboratories and increases funding for
supercomputers so that we can stay first in the world. The U.S.
Department of Energy's Office of Science, which supports basic science
and energy research and is the Nation's largest supporter of research
in the physical sciences, is funded at $6.65 billion, a new record
funding level.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency--we call it ARPA-E--is funded
at $375 million, record funding in a regular appropriations bill. As I
said, it was created in 2007 by the America COMPETES Act, a bipartisan
effort to invest in high-impact energy technologies.
The bill provides a total of $1.68 billion for high-performance
computing, including $980 million within the Office of Science, and
$703 million within the National Nuclear Security Administration. This
amount includes $677 million to deliver at least one exascale machine
in 2021, the supercomputer that will reassert U.S. leadership in this
critical area--the one Secretary Perry announced last week.
The bill also advances efforts to clean up hazardous materials at
Cold War-era sites. The bill provides $7.2 billion to support cleanup
efforts, which is $581 million above the President's budget request.
This bill also includes provisions regarding the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers. The Corps of Engineers touches the lives of almost every
American. Based upon the number of appropriations requests we have
received from my colleagues in the Senate, the Corps of Engineers is
the Federal Government's most popular agency. I can remember a hearing
of one of our committees shortly after the Missouri and Mississippi
rivers flooded a few years ago, and 18 different Senators showed up to
suggest that we needed more money for the Army Corps of Engineers.
The Corps maintains our inland waterways. It deepens and keeps our
ports open. It looks after many of our recreational waters and lands.
It manages the river levels to prevent flooding and its dams provide
emission-free renewable hydroelectric energy.
The bill restores $2.142 billion that was cut from the President's
budget request, bringing the Corps budget up to $6.9 billion, a new
record funding level under regular appropriations bills. For the fifth
consecutive year, the bill makes full use of the Inland Waterway Trust
Fund revenues for water infrastructure projects. In other words, when
we take tax money from the barges that use the waterways, we spend that
tax money to improve the waterways rather than put it in some account
somewhere.
The bill also provides funding that exceeds the Harbor Maintenance
Trust Fund spending target established by the Water Resources Reform
and Development Act of 2014. This is the fifth consecutive year the
bill has met or exceeded the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund spending
target, which is necessary to adequately fund our Nation's
[[Page S3976]]
harbors, including Mobile Harbor in Alabama, Savannah Harbor in
Georgia, Long Beach Harbor in California, and many others across the
country.
We hear a lot of talk about infrastructure and the need to do
something about it. Well, this bill does something about it for 5
straight years. We are spending all the money we have collected--and,
in fact, we raised the revenues a couple of years ago--for the last few
years at record levels to improve our inland waterways and deepen our
ports.
A key pillar of our national defense is a strong nuclear deterrent.
That has been in the news these last few weeks because of the
President's discussions with the leader of North Korea. The bill
includes a total of $14 billion for the National Nuclear Security
Administration, including $1.9 billion for six life extension programs,
which fix or replace components and weapons systems to make sure they
are safe and reliable. Congress must maintain a safe and effective
nuclear weapons stockpile and keep big construction projects on time
and on budget. This bill achieves those goals. Nuclear power is our
best source of inexpensive, carbon-free baseload power. It is important
for our national security competitiveness. Nuclear power provides 20
percent of our Nation's electricity, more than half of our carbon-free
electricity.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees our 99 nuclear
power reactors, is also funded in this bill. We included funding to
ensure that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is prepared to review
applications for new reactors, particularly small modular reactors and
advanced reactors, and to extend the licenses of our existing reactors
if it is safe to do so.
The bill also provides $47 million for research and development at
the Department of Energy to support existing nuclear reactors, $30
million for the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water
Reactors, and $30 million for the transformational challenge reactor.
The legislation again includes a pilot program to allow consolidated
nuclear waste storage that I have worked on with Senator Feinstein for
the last 6 years. This has been a special priority of the Senator from
California, as it is of mine. Funding is also included for the
Department of Energy to take the first steps toward being able to store
nuclear waste at private facilities.
Tomorrow, Senator Shelby and Senator Leahy will formally begin the
process of the appropriations of the Senate for the year that begins
October 1. As I said at the beginning, this is our opportunity to do it
right--something we haven't done in a long time.
We have done our work in committee. We have gotten our bills through.
We had our hearings. We considered everybody's ideas. But that is just
31 of us. What about the other 69 Senators? They might like to have
more of a say when the bill reaches the floor.
What we are asking tonight is that Senators and staff read the bills.
We don't have 2, 3, 4, or 5 days to sit around and read the bills.
Senator McConnell would like for us to be through with this bill this
week.
We have 12 appropriations bills to consider. We ought to be able to
do that in 2 or 3 days. If we read the bills and decide which
amendments haven't already been considered and file the amendments
tonight, tomorrow we can ask consent for a time agreement of, say, 20
minutes and give each side 10 minutes to speak, and then we can
actually vote on the amendments. That is what we are supposed to do.
Sometimes the U.S. Senate has been like joining the Grand Ole Opry
and not being allowed to sing. It is rare that we have an amendment.
The appropriations process is a chance to do that. I hope we will have
a chance to do that.
I wish to make one other plea to my fellow Senators. The Senate has
enormous power. Each Senator is equal. As a result, when the majority
leader gets up and says we are going to start tomorrow with a prayer
and this bill, and then we are going to move to something else, he
says, if you listen carefully: I ask unanimous consent that we open
tomorrow at 9:30. I ask unanimous consent that we move to this bill.
He gets that. He gets that because Senators recognize that although
any one of us could have stopped that by objecting, we demonstrate some
restraint. Just because you have the freedom to do something doesn't
mean you should always try to do it. We learned that in kindergarten.
We are well past that level now; we are in U.S. Senate.
I am hopeful that we can begin tomorrow with our speeches from at
least eight of our Senators who have been working on this bill,
including our leaders. I am hopeful that we will have a couple of
amendments to vote on before lunch--bipartisan amendments--maybe a
couple more after lunch, and maybe two or three more in the late
afternoon. That is up to the Democratic leader and the Republican
leader to finally decide, but I think the chances are good.
I will ask all Senators and staffs who are paying attention tonight,
please read these three bills. If you have amendments that need to be
considered that are relevant to the bill, please file them tonight or
first thing in the morning. Talk with our staff, and let's see if we
can accept them, modify them, and, if necessary, vote on them. Let's
try to get that done this week and show ourselves and the world that
the U.S. Senate is still capable of a complete appropriations process.
After all, that is our most basic responsibility.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that for the purpose of rule
XVI in relation to the substitute amendment No. 2910, division A of
H.R. 5895 serve as the basis for defense of germaneness for division A
of the amendment, division B of H.R. 5895 serve as the basis for
defense of germaneness for division B of the amendment, and that
division C of H.R. 5895 serve as the basis for defense of germaneness
for division C of the amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sullivan). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. ALEXANDER. I see the Senator from Hawaii. I don't know whether he
has any remarks to make.
I see the Senator from Oklahoma.
____________________