Congressional Record, Volume 171 Issue 132 (Thursday, July 31, 2025)

[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 132 (Thursday, July 31, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4981-S4986]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

Order of Procedure

So, Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that at a time to be
determined by the majority leader, in consultation with the Democratic
leader, the Senate resume consideration of Calendar No. 121, H.R. 3944,
and the committee-reported substitute amendment be withdrawn; that
during the consideration of H.R. 3944, the Collins substitute amendment
No. 3038 be considered an Appropriations Committee amendment for
purposes of rule XVI, with no other rule XVI points of order waived by
this agreement; that H.R. 3944, MILCON, as engrossed by the House of
Representatives on June 25, 2025; H.R. 4121, Ag, as reported by the
House Appropriations Committee on June 25, 2025; and the bill making
appropriations for the Departments of Commerce and Justice, Science,
and Related Agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2026, and
for other purposes, as reported by the House Subcommittee on Commerce,
Justice, Science, and Related Agencies to the House Appropriations
Committee on July 15, 2025, serve as the basis for defense of
germaneness under rule XVI for any floor amendments and that it be in
order for floor amendments to amend the substitute in more than one
place; that the following manager's package of amendments be considered
and agreed to en bloc to No. 3038; that is, Paul No. 3070, Shaheen-
Grassley No. 3042, Smith No. 3025, Hirono No. 3090, Rounds No. 3081,
Rounds No. 3082, Budd-Shaheen No. 3072, Hawley No. 3080, Rosen-Cortez
Masto No. 2975, Cornyn No. 3073, Hirono No. 3110, Shaheen No. 3041,
Klobuchar No. 3121, Crapo-Rosen No. 3163, Blumenthal No. 3000; and that
upon adoption of the manager's package, the only amendments in order be
the following amendments, if offered, to No. 3038; and that at a time
to be determined by the majority leader, in consultation with the
Democratic leader, the Senate vote in relation to the following
amendments: Merkley No. 3114, Murphy No. 2972, Van Hollen No. 3115,
Kennedy No. 3088, Kennedy No. 3089, Scott No. 3113, Scott No. 3108,
Johnson No. 3079, Van Hollen No. 3126; further, that upon disposition
of the amendments listed above, the Senate vote on adoption of the
substitute amendment No. 3038, as amended, with a 60 affirmative vote
threshold required for adoption; the bill, as amended, if amended, be
read a third time and the Senate vote on passage of the bill, as
amended, if amended, with a 60 vote affirmative threshold required for
passage.
Finally, Madam President, notwithstanding passage of H.R. 3944, as
amended, if amended, that it be in order to consider an amendment the
text of which is identical to S. 2257, Leg Branch appropriations, the
Senate vote on adoption of the amendment, and if adopted, H.R. 3944 be
further amended, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and
laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
Madam President, what all those words mean is that we are taking
three appropriations bills, adding them to the underlying House bill
that is on the Senate floor for consideration, and that we have
outlined what amendments we will adopt by a manager's package and what
amendments will be made in order for consideration by the full Senate
as to whether or not they should be adopted.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from Maryland.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, reserving the right to object--and I
object to the end request, but I want to begin on a point of agreement,
which is, other than the final request made by the good Senator from
Kansas, I agree with everything he said.
As he said, we have four appropriations bills bundled together here--
proposed to be bundled together here: Military Construction and
Veterans; Agriculture; Leg Branch; and the Commerce, Justice, Science
bill. And I have the privilege of working with Chairman Moran on what
we call the CJS bill, and it makes very important targeted investments
in a whole range of areas that he described.
And, of course, one of the areas of jurisdiction of this subcommittee
is the Department of Justice and the FBI.

[[Page S4982]]

And, in my view, we absolutely have an obligation to make sure we
address the needs and the mission of the men and women of the FBI, that
we provide the resources to carry out that mission, and that we make
sure that they are safe in conducting that mission.
And I am here on the floor objecting to this request today because,
just a short time ago, the Trump administration took $1.4 billion that
this Congress had set aside on a bipartisan basis and proposed that,
instead of going to a site for a new headquarters that had met the
security requirements and that had gone through a competition, the
administration proposed to effectively rescind those funds and use them
for a different purpose, without presenting a plan as to how their
alternative would meet the security requirements for the men and women
of the FBI.
I am not going to repeat the whole history over many, many years that
this Senate has gone through with respect to ensuring that the men and
women of the FBI have a new headquarters that is fit for the purpose
and meets the security requirements. I will only point out that the
FBI, in making the determination with respect to where they had planned
to go before the Trump administration's intervention said this:

Because of the symbolic nature of the client mission and
performance of functions critical to the security of the
United States, a Facility Security Level 5 designation was
selected for this campus.

In all the work that this Senate has done and all the work to date at
the FBI, it has been determined that, wherever the FBI makes its new
home and new headquarters, it has to meet the level 5 security
requirements because of the special mission of those men and women and
because, I think, all of us want to make sure that they are protected
in the greatest degree that we can make sure their security is
protected.
So in the Appropriations Committee, I worked on an amendment that
would have said that the FBI has to move its new headquarters to the
place that had already won the competition, that had already been
selected, and one of the reasons is the level 5 security requirement.
I am not asking that in the amendment that I proposed for the floor
today. I asked for something very straightforward. I proposed an
amendment that simply says that wherever the FBI chooses to make its
new headquarters, it has to meet the level 5 security requirements that
it, itself, has laid out as necessary to defend the safety of the men
and women who do that important work.
That is an amendment that we should include in this bill, and that is
why I am here right now objecting to the proposal that is being put
forward, because while we put an even stronger version of that
amendment at one point in our bill in the Appropriations Committee,
that action was then reversed. And so now I am proposing that we just
put the other alternative forward.
And, again, based on the consistent position taken by the FBI, taken
by Members of the Senate, that level 5 security requirement is
important, and wherever they go, they should be able to do a study.
They should be able to conduct a study before they move people into a
new headquarters, before they put people at risk, to show that that new
place--wherever it may be--is fit for purpose and meets those security
requirements.
That is a simple request that I would have thought all of us could
stand behind: making sure that the new headquarters of the men and
women of the FBI meets the security requirements that we and they have
set out.
And so that is why I reserve the right to object, and I will now ask
the Senator to modify his request so that my amendment No. 3126 be
included in the list of amendments in the managers' package to be
adopted en bloc.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Will the Senator from Kansas modify his
request?
Mr. MORAN. Reserving the right to object, Madam President, let me
explain what the Senator from Maryland is asking to be done, and I
explained earlier that there is a set of amendments that is in this
unanimous consent request that are put into a managers' package where
they have been agreed by both the Republican and Democrat leaders of
the Senate. In other words, there has been agreement that these
amendments are satisfactory and will be adopted upon the adoption of
that amendment.
The Senator from Maryland's amendment that he seeks is not in that
list because it is in the other list I described. That list requires a
vote of the Senate to determine whether or not that amendment should be
adopted, in this case, by 51 votes of the Senate.

So Senator Van Hollen, the Senator from Maryland's request is: Can I
move my amendment? Can we modify the unanimous consent request to move
my amendment to the place that it is assured of being passed, rather
than leave it in the place in which he offers that amendment during the
debate of the bills--the underlying bills that we are talking about
this evening, in this case, Commerce-Justice-Science--and allow the
Members of the U.S. Senate to agree or disagree by approving his
amendment with 51 votes or not?
Madam President, the change in procedure is: Do I get my amendment
approved by unanimous agreement or do I have to earn the votes of 51
Senators to have my amendment approved?
The reality is, there is not unanimous agreement that the amendment
that the Senator from Maryland is speaking about--there is absolutely
not unanimous agreement across this Senate floor, perhaps, not even in
a partisan way. There may not be agreement from the Democrat Members of
the Senate, and there may not be agreement from the Republican Members
of the Senate. Therefore, it is impossible for us to agree to allow an
amendment that we know has controversy and is not acceptable to 100
Senators to get this special privilege of being adopted so easily.
The underlying unanimous consent request allows for the amendment
that the Senator from Maryland is proposing--he has the right to offer
the amendment on the floor. That has been agreed to. But that is
insufficient for the Senator, and he wants to modify his amendment to
be more easily--in fact, automatically accepted.
This issue is, sadly, if the Senator from Maryland ultimately objects
to the underlying request, if he is not able to have the consent
agreement modified to get the amendment in the position he wants, he
then has to decide--if he fails in that regard--he has to decide: Do I
want to object to all the bills, all four of them, from being
considered? Unfortunately, that includes Commerce-Justice-Science,
which I and the Senator from Maryland have worked on together as the
chairman of that committee and as the ranking member or vice chair of
that committee.
Should he ultimately object to the entire package here because he
isn't successful on this request to move his amendment, then all the
work that he and I and the members of the subcommittee and the members
of the full committee and other Senators and their input have put
together, that passed in a bipartisan way out of the committee, that
bill will fall by the wayside.
We will then not consider Commerce-Justice-Science tonight, tomorrow,
next week, and, in my view, the U.S. Senate will never see the
Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill on the Senate floor. And,
therefore, our work to fund NASA; to fund the National Science
Foundation; to fund our police in our home communities and our sheriffs
in our home counties; to support the FBI, DEA, ATF, and the U.S.
Marshals; and to support the Department of Commerce in its efforts to
grow the country's economy, provide broadband to our constituents at
home, rural and urban; and to support the efforts of trying to find
trade agreements by this administration and the efforts at USDR to find
those satisfactory agreements that grow our Nation's economy--the work
that we have gone through to this point becomes irrelevant.
If this was a momentary setback, I would feel less concerned, less
emotional, less connected to the desire of having this bill see
consideration on the Senate floor in this package. Our appropriations
process, which I have bragged about tonight--our appropriations process
is fragile. We have been successful because we have each set aside
things we find objectionable and

[[Page S4983]]

worked for the common good of the committee and the American people. It
has been so long since the U.S. Senate has done its work in this arena
and too many others.
All of us in this Senate, we have other things we would like to do,
but we devote our time and effort to public service, presumably, to the
public good of our constituents at home and the well-being of Americans
across the country. And whether we do that well or not has a
consequence around the globe. The United States of America is a place
that needs to demonstrate to others--in our own country but others
around the world--that we still have the capabilities of governing.
My view is that I have never served in the U.S. Senate when it was at
its best. What I know about the Senate is what I read as a kid. What I
know about the Senate as the way it should be is the way I learned
about it in history. And I want to work here where we do our jobs. If
we fail here, we don't just fail for the moment.
Once again, the appropriations process is set aside. When we return
in September, I hope we are able to do more appropriations bills. But I
doubt that this is the first one to be considered, and I doubt that the
Senator from Maryland's amendment goes away so the problems we have
tonight aren't going to disappear. We won't see this, and then we will
immediately turn to the consideration of a continuing resolution--a
continuing resolution that funds the Federal Government at the same
rate, at the same place, the same amount of money as we did last year.
Incidentally--it is not incidental. We had the same problem last
year. We didn't get our appropriations bills--not 1 of the 12
appropriations bills were considered on this Senate floor, and we had
to do--we did; I shouldn't say we had to do--we did a continuing
resolution saying we can't decide this. We can't get our act together
well enough as Republicans or Democrats or as whatever--however you
want to categorize people--we can't work together well enough to pass
12 appropriations bills on the Senate floor, if we were ever given a
chance.
This is an indictment of all of us. And I take it very personally as
a member of the Appropriations Committee with responsibilities to do
our work. And none of us--to go back to the point I attempted to make
earlier and got sidetracked--none of us want to be here if we are not
making a difference. We have families, we have homes, places that we
love to be. And we devote our time and effort to something that is of
worthy cause. But the worthiness of that cause--if it is just to be
here because you have your name on a door, you have perhaps an
important-sounding title, ``Senator,'' there is no joy. There is no joy
for me, and I can't imagine there is joy for others if the answer is:
Well, we just can't work together well enough to do what the American
people insist on, demand, and certainly deserve.
This place needs to prove its relevance. And, once again, if we see
failure tonight, that failure will continue, and we will demonstrate it
one more time: Well, they just couldn't do it. They didn't get it done.
Well, they passed 3 out of 12 appropriations bills.
And in September, as the government is approaching a shutdown because
we haven't funded these 12 bills--we haven't passed these 12 bills--we
are, once again, on the Senate floor scrambling to figure out how we
keep the government open.
What message does that send to our constituents that we can't even
figure out how to have a budget or top-line number and appropriate
money? Every county commission, every school board, every city council
has a budget, and they figure out how to spend money in a year. Why are
we less than that? Why is it so difficult for us?
I want to work in a Senate that works together. I don't expect us to
agree, but there is common good that can be found in so many instances.
And we are so close.
The Senator from Maryland's amendment is about where the FBI
headquarters should be located and the process by which that decision
should be determined. I appreciate the Senator's interest, but this is
not even in the jurisdiction of the subcommittee I chair. This is
before us tonight because one of the Senator from Maryland's successors
put money into the Commerce-Justice-Science bill for the purposes of
building an FBI headquarters, perhaps, in her home State of Maryland.
We have dealt with this issue. Let me say it this way. This issue has
appeared before us before. The jurisdiction is in a different
subcommittee of Appropriations. And the jurisdiction in the
administration rests with the General Services Administration, the GSA,
not funded by Commerce-Justice-Science or any of the other bills we are
considering.
The Senator did offer an amendment in the committee, and it
ultimately failed. And one of the things I know about the Senate is it
takes a majority, at a minimum, to pass a piece of legislation. And the
Senator from Maryland does not have a majority, in my view, who will
vote for his amendment.
He can work to make that happen. The Senator from Maryland can lobby
and encourage and educate Senators on the Senate floor and in their
offices from now until the time that this bill passes. If he objects--
if he ultimately objects because he doesn't have a modification to
where he fits in the adoption of what we are talking about, then none
of the things in the bill become law, and he has lost his opportunity
to make the case to 99 of his colleagues about whether he is right or
not.
The Senator and I have worked to find a conclusion that would be
satisfactory and I have been unable to--we have been unable to. I don't
know exactly what my reputation is in this place, but I do think that
people think I work hard and work hard together, and that has been the
case in this circumstance. But as I have assured the Senator from
Maryland, I know no path forward with his amendment that allows this
bill to pass the U.S. Senate.
So when he decides whether or not he is going to object to the
underlying question, the question to the Senator from Maryland is, the
things that we worked on together, do they matter more than the
amendment that you want in such a way that you are unwilling to offer
the amendment on the Senate floor and let the Senate work its will?
I think I am about ready to conclude my remarks. But it reminds me
that so many times, by our colleagues who are not on the Appropriations
Committee, I think we get criticized for being insular. That is not
true. We take input from every Senator. Ninety-nine of the Senators in
this body provided information to the Appropriations Committee to tell
us how to do our work, but there is this sense that we do our own
thing.
I have always said the reason we have the Senate is to bring the
bills to the floor so everybody--those who are not on the
Appropriations Committee--have the chance to have their input. I can't
turn what was a majority vote against the Senator from Maryland's
amendment into something that a majority of my colleagues would
support.
But we are willing--the majority leader has indicated to the Senator
from Maryland, he can have a vote to see if he can do it. While I tried
and failed to find 51 votes for the Senator's amendment, I am quite
certain he is more skilled than I am. I am quite certain that he is
passionate enough about this issue. Let him find the folks who would
support his amendment, and he can do so. It has been given to him, that
opportunity. All he has to do is find 50 Senators to join him to say
it. I don't think it is easy, but I think that effort on his part is a
better outcome--whatever the outcome of what that amendment is--it is a
better outcome than this legislation, Commerce-Justice-Science, the
Agriculture Department, the Legislative Branch, and Military and
Veterans Affairs. It is more important for us to demonstrate that we
actually can legislate and appropriate.
And here we are, starting on our first effort in 2025, and we are
already hung up on something that is not really our business.
I started to say earlier that this issue has been around a long time,
and it has always been resolved by somebody way above me as a chairman.
Sometimes it has gone higher than, certainly, the--I don't mean
``certainly.'' There is not much higher than the chairman and the vice
chairman of the committee, but even they have struggled in the past to
find a resolution to this issue about where the FBI headquarters should
be. It has gone to the other

[[Page S4984]]

leaders--the two House leaders and to the Senate leaders--to see if
they can find a conclusion.
I can't solve the problem even if I wanted to. I shouldn't say it
that way. I can't solve the problem as I want to solve the problem for
the Senator from Maryland. Perhaps somebody else can in this process.
But don't let it affect the work product that the Senator from Maryland
and I and members of the committee and this Senate have worked so hard
to find common ground on. We were successful and got complimented for
the work we did in accomplishing this goal.
I will not modify my request.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. McCORMICK). Objection to the modification
is heard.
Is there an objection to the original request?
The Senator from Maryland.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.
I just want to take a few moments to respond to the Senator from
Kansas.
First of all, I do think it is the business of the subcommittee that
oversees the Department of Justice and the FBI to ensure that the men
and women of the FBI have a headquarters--wherever it is--that meets
the security standards that they have set out for themselves for their
own protection.
I also agree with the Senator from Kansas in that we should and do
work together on a bipartisan basis on the Appropriations Committee and
that we should do that as a separate branch of government than the
executive branch.
The only reason we are here is that the President of the United
States decided to seize funds that had been set aside by this committee
on a bipartisan basis and others and use them for another purpose.
This is a moment, actually, where, if the Senate were adhering to its
traditions of bipartisanship, it would stand up together against the
President of the United States. But that is not what we are witnessing
on so many of these appropriations bills.
What happened in this case was the President of the United States
interfered with the process. I did offer an amendment in the Senate
Appropriations Committee. It was actually adopted on a majority basis.
It was an amendment not only to ensure that the FBI would go to a level
5 security facility, but it was an amendment that said it should go to
the one that was selected after a long process.
After that was adopted on a bipartisan basis, our Republican
colleagues on the committee said that all of the work that we had done
on the bill--all of the work the Senator from Kansas is talking about
when it comes to the NSF, when it comes to NASA, when it comes to
NOAA--that we were not going to let all of that good work go forward if
that amendment to ensure the security of the FBI facility at the
selected site were attached.
I have never seen anything like it in Congress. Even before I got
here, I, too, was a student of Congress and loved the process. What
happened was, after that amendment got on in the Appropriations
Committee on a bipartisan basis, our Republican colleagues said: We
don't want that so badly that we are now going to undo that entire
process.
That is not bipartisanship--and we know why that happened too. It
didn't happen because members of the Senate Appropriations Committee--
Republicans and Democrats--didn't think that it was the right thing to
do to preserve what we had set out before and make sure that the men
and women had a level 5 security headquarters. We did it because the
President of the United States was going to throw a fit if that
provision stayed on. That is why people reversed the position.
So I say to my friend from Kansas: We should do our work on a
bipartisan basis, and we shouldn't make our decisions out of fear about
what somebody in the White House is going to do, because that--that--
distorts the entire process here in the U.S. Senate.
I believe that, if we set this aside for now, we will, I hope, be
able to get it back on track in September. I hope we will return to
what has been that bipartisan tradition and not allow the executive to
come in and undo work that has been done on a bipartisan basis. This is
not about picking the location in this amendment. This is simply about
making sure that the men and women of the FBI have a building that is
secure.
I will just end with this: The last time the Trump administration was
in the White House, they also played with this whole issue. They said
they wanted to construct a new headquarters on the site of the current
FBI building, the Hoover building. Then they submitted to Congress a
25-page prospectus that they said would meet the security requirements
of the men and women of the FBI. Guess what. The inspector general of
the Department of Justice and the inspector general of GSA said that
the work they showed did not meet those security requirements. It did
not meet those security requirements.
We should make sure wherever they go--Maryland, Virginia,
Washington--that the congressional directive, that FBI directive, for
the purposes that I set out at the beginning because of the kind of
work the FBI does--we need to honor that. That is what this amendment
does. That is what it did when it was first adopted by the
Appropriations Committee on a bipartisan basis before everyone ran the
other way because they were going to make the White House mad.
So I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
The Senator from Maine.
Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, it is so disheartening that the Senator
from Maryland is not taking to heart the eloquent words of the Senator
from Kansas.
Let me make a point very clear.
The Senator from Maryland is not being denied the opportunity to
offer an amendment on this issue. Indeed, the unanimous consent request
which the Senator from Kansas put forth specifically recognizes, makes
room for, allows the Senator from Maryland to offer his amendment. What
we cannot do is guarantee that he will be successful in his amendment.
That is the way the legislative process works. But he is not, in any
way, being denied the opportunity to offer his amendment, to debate his
amendment, to make the case for his amendment. Yet he is opposing this
unanimous consent agreement. That is so disappointing because I know
that the Senator from Kansas and the Senator from Maryland have worked
together to craft an excellent bill and an important bill.
The Commerce-Justice-Science bill supports programs that enjoy
overwhelming bipartisan support and are critically important to
communities in every single one of our States, including the State of
Maryland. The State of Maryland, for example, has the Goddard Space
Flight Center. It is funded functionally at $200 million above the
fiscal year 2025-enacted level.
There are many other provisions in this bill that directly benefit
the State of Maryland, represented by the Senator.
There are programs in this bill that need our support. It includes
the National Weather Service. It warns Americans of life-threatening
weather events. It includes everything from tornadoes in the Midwest;
hurricanes in the gulf and on the Atlantic seaboard; ice and snow
storms; blizzards in New England and in the Northeast in general;
flooding events such as the tragic flooding that we saw in Texas just
recently and, just last night, the risk of catastrophic tsunamis in the
Pacific. The American people are counting on us to ensure that the
Weather Service is able to execute its safety-of-life mission as well
as to deliver a reliable forecast each morning.
The legislation funds public safety programs that are so important to
our police departments, our sheriffs, law enforcement in general, the
FBI.
It funds programs that help combat substance abuse and drug
trafficking.
It also supports pro-growth programs that are so strongly supported
by so many Members of this Chamber. These include the overwhelmingly
popular economic development assistance programs at the EDA; the
Manufacturing Extension Partnership Program. So many Senators wrote to
us about the importance of that program; trade promotion for our
smaller businesses provided by the International Trade Administration.
There is a program run by the Commerce Department that is
particularly important to my State of Maine and to some 30 other
States, and that is the Sea Grant program, which helps our fishing and
lobstering industries, our

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seafood and fishing processors, and our coastal communities.
It supports American leadership in scientific research. That includes
the cutting-edge research supported by the National Science Foundation
in critical fields like artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
We absolutely cannot cede our dominance in these fields to China. That
is why this bill is so important.
I would urge my colleagues to call the presidents and the chancellors
of your States' public and private universities and ask them for their
thoughts on the value of the National Science Foundation's supported
research. I can predict that you will be told just how important it is
that we fund the NSF, and that is what we have done in this bill.
Of course, this legislation supports NASA--one of the jewels of the
U.S. Government and our country. I know that the funding for NASA is
particularly important in States with a major NASA presence, including
Maryland--Maryland--as well as Alabama, Mississippi, Florida,
California, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, and Louisiana.

A final note on this bill: The allocation for the Senate version of
this legislation, the CJS legislation, is $79.7 billion. This is very
close to the amount that the House subcommittee has reported. So this
is a bill that we could send to conference with the House and be
assured that we could get a product to send to the President's desk to
be signed into law to avoid a continuing resolution that just puts
these important programs, these vital Agencies, on autopilot. We don't
want to do that. We want these important programs, these vital Agencies
and Departments, to reflect the deliberation, the debate, and the
hearings that we had through the Appropriations Committee.
Let's not miss this opportunity. Let's not kick the ball down the
road and hope that somehow it can be worked out.
Again, let me emphasize what I believe to be the absolutely key point
here: No one--no one--is denying the Senator from Maryland the
opportunity to offer his amendment on the Senate floor.
There are many Members of this body who decided to withhold
amendments that they might want in the interest of expediting
consideration of this package. But in the case of the Senator from
Maryland, we knew that he had this amendment that he cares about, and
we have accommodated his ability to offer his amendment as part of the
unanimous consent request.
So, therefore, I would implore the Senator from Maryland to withdraw
his objection and allow us to proceed with this package of four
appropriations bills--bills that came out of committee with
overwhelming bipartisan support, bills that were carefully drafted,
bills that reflect the input from so many Members of this body, and I
would urge him to let us get on with the business of the Senate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I want to start by thanking the chair
of the Appropriations Committee. And I see the vice chair of the
Appropriations Committee is here on the Senate floor, Senator Murray. I
want to thank them for the work that we did together.
The Senator from Maine described very well the important initiatives
and funding that are contained in the Commerce-Justice-Science bill,
CJS bill. For all those important purposes, I agree.
I would ask why our Republican colleagues are saying that they won't
let this package go through if it includes a provision that requires
that wherever the FBI moves its new headquarters, that it meets the
security requirements that we have set out for the men and women of the
FBI.
I appreciate the fact that the Senator from Maine talks about how I
can offer an amendment on the Senate floor. I offered an amendment in
committee to, essentially, accomplish this purpose. In fact, it went
even further. It not only said you had to meet the level 5 security
requirement, but you had to do it by selecting the place that had
already been established to meet that purpose.
The amendment passed through the democratic process in the
Appropriations Committee. It passed. Apparently, there was such great
concern down at the White House--I don't even know who exactly. I have
been asking for a long time for a discussion on the merits of this: Who
is it that is actually objecting to the provision that requires that
the FBI headquarters building, wherever it is, meets level 5 security?
Who is objecting to this?
That amendment passed, and then all of a sudden, it was undone. That
democratic process was undone by another vote when it became clear that
the White House wanted to have a different outcome.
So I just say to my colleagues again: If we are going to be true to
article I, if we are going to work together as colleagues to do the
work of the Congress, we need to make independent decisions among
ourselves and not be so easily turned around by the dictates of the
person at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
It is no secret to anybody here that that is what is happening on so
many occasions, on so many issues during this appropriations process.
I hope that will change. I hope it will change in the coming weeks
and the coming months. I hope the Senate can get back to operating as
an independent branch of government, along with the House, because if
that doesn't happen, we are going to continue to be able to see the
executive branch interfere in the independent decision of Members of
this body and reverse decisions that were made in a democratic process.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, it has been a good discussion.
I want to reiterate something that was said by the Senator from
Kansas who chairs the relevant subcommittee and the chairman of the
full committee, Senator Collins, when I say that the Senator from
Maryland was offered an amendment to vote here on the floor of the U.S.
Senate. That is--that is--the article I branch of the government
working.
You had a markup at the committee. The Senator offered his amendment.
And, yes, there was a lot of swirl when that amendment was offered. But
at the end of the day, the committee voted, and the committee defeated
it. That is article I working.
Now the Senator from Maryland wants to see article I work and have
Congress be restored to its constitutional responsibility, the power of
the purse. The way to do it is to let us get on these bills and debate
them and vote on amendments. That is what we are talking about here.
That is what we didn't do last year.
He could have had a vote on the floor on the amendment last year,
but, oh, that is right, we didn't do an appropriations bill last year.
Actually, he is actually trying to restore regular order where people
like the Senator from Maryland, who has an important role on the Senate
Appropriations Committee, has an opportunity, in front of all U.S.
Senators, to get a vote on his amendment. What he is insisting on is a
guaranteed result. Well, that doesn't happen here. In the process, he
is holding hostage 99 other Senators who want to proceed to this bill--
99 other Senators--because many of them have an interest in this
legislation. As was pointed out by Senator Moran, there are lots of
things funded, programs that are important to Senators here on both
sides of the aisle.
We are trying to do something here this year that wasn't done at all
last year. Despite the fact that the Appropriations Committee reported
11 of the 12 bills out of the committee last year, not a single one was
brought to the floor for consideration. We are trying to do not one,
not two, not three but four appropriations bills with an amendment
process that enables Senators from all parts of the country to have an
opportunity to shape the bill or, in their view, perhaps improve the
bill to their liking. The Senator from Maryland has decided that he is
going to stand in the way of that because he can't get a guaranteed
result--something that nobody around here is guaranteed.
That is why we have votes. And that is what I would love to get back
to, is actually voting, actually putting bills on the floor, having an
amendment process, and letting the Senate work its will.
It doesn't look like we will be able to do that, at least not on that
bill. The

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unfortunate outcome, as has been pointed out multiple times now, is
that it probably ends up in some continuing resolution where all the
work that was done by the Senator from Kansas, the Senator from
Maryland, the Senator from Maine, the Senator from Washington, and
others could very well go by the wayside and we end up funding the
government at some CR level without all the input that all the members
of the committee have had up to this point. I find that really
unfortunate, but that is where we are.
Just so everybody understands what happens next, if this consent
agreement fails, we will have to strip out the Commerce-Justice-Science
appropriations bill, which carries a lot of things that people have
worked for some time on, and then we will see where it goes from there.
But I can't predict the fate of that bill from this point forward.
And, at least, what the Senator from Maryland gets, if we get on this
package of bills, is a vote on his amendment by the U.S. Senate. He had
a vote in committee. We have had process. We have more regular order
ahead of us. He is going to hold 99 Senators hostage to try and get a
guaranteed result on his amendment. It is not the way this place works.
I hope that we can get back to where it works like it is supposed
to--where bills come to the floor, we have an open amendment process,
and we don't have individual Senators blocking the opportunity for
every other Senator in this country to be heard from.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I will be very brief because we have
covered a lot of territory here.
I hope we can get to the place where we make decisions in this
Senate, in this Congress, on their own merits, among ourselves, without
direct intrusion by the President of the United States.
That, unfortunately, is what we witnessed in the Appropriations
Committee process.
We would be in a very different place here on the floor today if we
hadn't seen the effort to overturn a decision the committee had made on
a majority vote with respect to the security of the men and women of
the FBI. It would have been a very different situation.
So, again, let's dedicate ourselves to making sure that as we move
forward, we do so as Senators--Republican and Democratic Senators--and
not essentially take direction from the President of the United States
who is trying very hard to interfere with this process.
I yield the floor.

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