[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 40 (Wednesday, March 6, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2232-S2233]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                           Government Funding

  Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, I urge my colleagues to support the 
six-bill fiscal year 2024 appropriations package that is before us.
  I am pleased to report that the House of Representatives 
overwhelmingly passed this bill earlier today by a vote of 339 to 85. 
It was strongly bipartisan. And now the Senate should follow suit.
  I want to express my thanks to the Republican ranking members on each 
of the six subcommittees--Senators Murkowski, Moran, Hoeven, Boozman, 
Kennedy, and Hyde-Smith--for their tremendous work in assembling this 
package.
  I also want to recognize the chair of the committee, Senator Patty 
Murray, who has worked so hard--since she was named chair and I, vice 
chair--in order to bring us to this point.
  I also want to salute the Democratic chairs for their work.
  My point is that everyone involved, including our incredibly hard-
working staff, has worked night and day to bring us to this point.
  The measure before us includes the following fiscal year 2024 
appropriations bills: Interior; Commerce, Justice, and Science; 
Agriculture-FDA; Military Construction and Veterans' Affairs; Energy 
and Water Development; and Transportation and Housing.
  And, again--although I wish this had happened months ago--these are 
full-year appropriations bills. In other words, this is not another 
continuing resolution, not a short-term patch, but, rather, a package 
of bills that will fund these important programs and Agencies and 
Departments through the end of the fiscal year.
  This package fully funds veterans' medical care; supports our 
farmers, fishermen, and ranchers; protects our Nation's food and drug 
supply; provides critical resources for law enforcement; helps us 
better compete with China; advances American energy independence; and 
invests in our Nation's infrastructure and public lands.
  This legislation also complies with the Fiscal Responsibility Act, as 
well as the top-line spending agreement reached between Speaker Johnson 
and Senator Schumer. Under that agreement, defense funding for this 
fiscal year will increase by 3.3 percent relative to fiscal year 2023 
enacted levels, while nondefense funding will be held flat.
  That is not easy to do, particularly given the impact of inflation 
and the 5.2 percent Federal employment pay raise, which many of these 
Agencies are going to have to absorb. So it took a great deal of 
negotiation and hard work for us to get to this point.
  It certainly has not been easy, but I am proud of the legislation we 
are bringing to the floor today. I urge my colleagues to join me in 
voting to move this important legislative package forward toward 
enactment.
  I look forward to further floor discussion tomorrow, but, right now, 
I do urge a ``yes'' vote on the motion to proceed.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I want to thank the vice chair, who 
spent innumerable hours with me for a very long time, through many, 
many different discussions and meetings and hearings, and for her 
incredible work to get here tonight to this vote. Thank you so much.
  This week, we will, at long last, be voting on our bipartisan, 
bicameral full-year funding bills. In fact, this package passed the 
House in a huge bipartisan vote today, with over 300 Members voting in 
favor.
  It has been a long road and a tough negotiation to get here. We are 
not done yet, and I will have more to say. But I come to the floor 
tonight to briefly talk a bit about what is actually in these bills and 
why this is so important to families across the country and to people 
in States like mine everywhere.
  My focus all the way through this process, from day one, has been: 
How can we produce the strongest bills given some very tight 
constraints? And how can we get a result that will make people's lives 
better?
  While this package may not be what I would have written on my own--
and I am sure my vice chair would say it would not have been what she 
would have written on her own--we fought very hard to protect 
investments that matter to working people everywhere and to help keep 
our economy strong, rejecting devastating cuts to housing, nutrition 
assistance, and a lot more.
  Importantly, we blocked countless extreme Republican policies, like 
efforts to restrict abortion rights, that would have set our country 
back decades.
  This package includes investments in our economy, like cutting-edge 
research, renewable energy, key programs to continue rebuilding 
America's infrastructure, and funding for my 21st Century Cures Act to 
support America's world-class biomedical research enterprise.
  Democrats fought hard to protect investments in rural communities in 
support of our farmers.
  It includes investments to keep America safe, like funding for more 
air traffic controllers, rail safety inspectors, food safety 
inspectors, and to implement the law I passed, along with Senator 
Collins, starting up FDA's cosmetics oversight. That is a major 
achievement in this bill.
  And our bills reject unthinkable cuts proposed by House Republicans 
to Federal law enforcement--the people who go after drug traffickers 
and do so much else to keep our families and communities safe.
  Not to mention, these bills protect pay for Federal firefighters, 
boost our investments in preventing violence against women, and fund a 
new program to increase sexual assault nurse exam access that I have 
worked on.
  This package also includes investments in our environment and allows 
Democrats to continue to deliver on historic climate action, even as 
House Republicans sought to gut Agencies like EPA and Interior.
  We deliver in this bill investments to keep our commitments to 
Tribes, including by continuing to provide advance appropriations so 
the Indian Health Service can serve patients with certainty and hire 
staff for hospitals.
  It also includes investments supporting our servicemembers, which is 
especially important to me as a daughter of a World War II veteran.
  It has crucial resources for military construction projects, 
including childcare centers, housing, and other quality-of-life 
improvements for our troops and their families.
  It increases funding for the Veteran Caregivers Program that I helped 
establish and expands and makes record investments to help end veteran 
homelessness, deliver mental healthcare for

[[Page S2233]]

our veterans, and support women veterans' healthcare--all longtime 
priorities for me.
  And, of course, it includes support for American families. And that 
means protecting investments to address the housing crisis--something 
important to my home State of Washington--programs that the House 
Republicans wanted to hollow out. But we together were able to protect 
and strengthen essential rental assistance, boost investments to reduce 
homelessness, and increase our Nation's affordable housing supply.
  And it means full funding for food assistance programs families rely 
on, like SNAP, the Summer EBT Program I helped establish, which will 
help half a million kids in Washington State alone, and WIC.
  As someone whose family relied on food stamps after my dad was 
diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, I know firsthand that action here 
can be the difference between families having food on the table for 
dinner or kids going to bed hungry.
  So when I saw that the House Republicans proposed devastating cuts 
that would have forced States to deny families with benefits for the 
first time ever, that was never going to be an acceptable outcome.
  I said from the outset I would move mountains to fully fund WIC, and 
that is exactly what I did. But let's be clear: WIC should never have 
even been put into question, because ignoring the mountains of evidence 
that this program works, the long history of bipartisan support for 
WIC, and the fact that this program actually saves us money in the long 
term--ignoring all of that, there is still just no ignoring the fact 
that the basic question with WIC is: Can the richest country in the 
world afford to feed babies? And the answer is yes. It has to be.
  I can't believe I have to say that, but I will say it as many times 
as it takes. And I am glad that we were able to work together to reach 
a good outcome and fully fund WIC in this bill.
  And here is the thing about our appropriations bills. They reflect 
the input and priorities of nearly every Senator. As a voice for 
Washington State, I am proud of the ways these bills invest in the 
communities that I know from every part of my State, with funding for 
researchers, salmon recovery, infrastructure projects, fixes to make 
sure that our ferries and harbors are getting their fair share, a 
historic amount of funding for Hanford Cleanup, and more.
  I will have a lot more to say about these efforts and other 
Washington State projects I fought hard to include in these bills, but 
I am so excited to see this funding make progress and make a difference 
for folks back home.
  We said from day one that partisan poison pills were nonstarters. We 
said that together. Getting a result in divided government means 
putting aside that partisanship and working to find common ground. That 
is how we managed to put together these six strong, bipartisan, 
bicameral bills. And it is the only way we will wrap up the next six as 
well, which, you should all know, we are working very hard on right 
now.
  I think we all recognize that some far-right House Republicans have 
been trying to derail this entire process from the start. But as we saw 
today in the House, an overwhelming 300-plus Members voted to pass this 
bill. The vast majority from both sides want to get this done. By 
passing these bills, we can turn the page and show America that the 
vast majority of Congress is still focused on doing its job, working 
through tough negotiations so we can help people and solve problems.
  Again, I want to thank my partner, Senator Collins, who has been just 
tremendous in working with us, and all of our staffs, who have been 
working on this 24/7 for so long. They are exhausted, and they still 
have six more bills to go.
  I want to thank our chairs of the Appropriations subcommittees that 
are in this bill: Senators Schatz, Heinrich, Shaheen, and Merkley for 
their tremendous work, and their Republican counterparts as well, who 
having really put in a lot of time and energy and have had to say 
``yes'' and ``no'' way too many times. But we got this done.
  So I hope all of our colleagues tonight will join us in sending that 
message by voting on the motion to proceed this evening--voting yes--
and then working together to make sure we get this to the President's 
desk before the deadline on Friday.