[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 136 (Thursday, August 16, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Page S5673]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             APPROPRIATIONS

  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, as the Senate continues to work on 
appropriations, I want to thank the chairman, Senator Shelby, and the 
ranking member, Senator Leahy, for their work. The process has so far 
been productive and bipartisan in the Senate. Both sides have worked to 
avoid poison pill riders. That has meant steady progress. Next up are 
the annual appropriations bills for the Departments of Labor, Health 
and Human Services, and Defense, which I hope will follow the same 
bipartisan course of the previous few bills.
  We have already achieved substantial increases in funding for 
important priorities through the appropriations process, including 
significant new resources for the NIH, significant new resources to 
combat the opioid epidemic, and significant new investments in 
infrastructure, childcare, college affordability, Social Security, and 
the VA. That is a big victory for the American people, who have waited 
too long for our country to invest in them.
  Middle-class people are worried about staying in the middle class. 
People trying to get to the middle class are worried--the ladder is 
steeper and longer. These kinds of things help them: college 
affordability, help with childcare, building infrastructure, making 
sure Social Security is around. All of that helps the middle class. For 
years, a hard-right group on the Republican side cut the smithereens 
out of these things, but this year, we managed to restore them. The 
American people will do a lot better because of it.

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