[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 5 (Thursday, January 8, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S107-S108]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act
Mr. BENNET. Last week, President Trump vetoed H.R. 131, the Finish
the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act, a bill that passed both Chambers of
Congress unanimously with broad bipartisan support. The President did
not veto this bill for any substantive objection. He did so out of a
desire to punish the State that he believes didn't support him
politically.
In my opinion, this is the last reason any President should make a
decision about anything. An election is one thing, but once we hold
office, we have a responsibility to represent every American,
regardless of their political party, regardless of their politics.
The President's veto will inflict real harm on people in my State by
denying 50,000 Coloradans living in tiny rural towns across the
Arkansas River Valley and southeastern Colorado access to clean,
affordable drinking water. Those farmers and ranchers have been forced
to rely on unsafe, carcinogenic water for generations, despite the
Federal Government's six-decade-old commitment to fix their water
infrastructure.
The Arkansas Valley Conduit is the final unfinished piece of a water
delivery project that Congress authorized in 1962, 2 years before I was
even born. The conduit would wind its way for 130 miles, from Pueblo,
CO, to the State line, traversing farming communities that had to rely
on bottled water or prohibitively expensive water treatment.
This area covers a quarter of the land mass of Colorado. It is
sprinkled with small towns and populated with small business owners and
farmers and ranchers who are dedicated to a rural way of life, who have
been fighting--generation after generation after generation--to try to
bring this clean water to their valley but are living in fear that they
or their children are delivering poisonous water.
There are probably not a lot of Senators here who aren't confident
that the water that is consumed by their children or their
grandchildren--the water that is consumed in their neighborhoods or
part of their State--isn't safe. That, I think, would be a reasonable
expectation in the richest country in the world.
Yet the inability of us to be able to finish this project--this joint
project--has made it impossible for the hard-working people in
southeastern Colorado to have the benefit--a benefit that other people
just take for granted because they live maybe closer to a city or in a
wealthier area than where the people in the Arkansas Valley live.
For 64 years, Coloradans have been relying on Washington to fulfill
its promise to build on their efforts--they have been a big part of
this in southeastern Colorado--to build on their efforts to deliver
clean drinking water. The effort to complete the conduit has always
been a partnership between the Federal and local government, driven by
the leadership of the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District.
In the face of rising costs and materials and labor, once again,
southeastern Coloradans, just as the generations before them have, came
together to put forward an inventive solution to lower costs by
changing the project's financing, with no increase at all to the
Federal obligation here.
The House passed the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act last July, and the
Senate passed it just 3 weeks ago, with the support of every single
Member of Congress--every Member of the House, every Member of the
Senate. There is almost nothing that ever gets through with that kind
of universal bipartisan support.
Republicans and Democrats, under the leadership of Representatives
Lauren Boebert and Jeff Hurd, my colleagues from Colorado, and Senator
Hickenlooper, my colleague here in the U.S. Senate, we all worked
together to ensure that rural Colorado would finally have access to
clean drinking water, something every American should reasonably
expect. And the folks in southeastern Colorado deserve it just as much
as anybody else does.
Instead, when it got to his desk, President Trump used his first
Presidential veto of his second term to deny Coloradans what should be
a fundamental right as an American.
Article I of the Constitution explicitly provides Congress with the
power to override a Presidential veto. Although overrides should only
be used when necessary, they are essential when both Chambers of
Congress have spoken clearly and spoken unanimously. There are very few
places in the Constitution where the Founders actually themselves wrote
about having a supermajority vote in the Chambers of Congress, and this
is one of those things, because while they believed that a veto
override should be rare, they believed that it was an essential part of
this branch of the Federal Government exercising its oversight when a
President does something like veto the Arkansas Valley Conduit, which
is wildly out of step with what the people that we represent want all
across this country.
If Congress allows this veto to stand, we set a troubling precedent.
It would mean that noncontroversial, bipartisan bills that pass without
objection can be rejected for reasons wholly unrelated to the substance
and be weaponized politically.
It is no secret--and I am sorry to come to this floor to have to say
this--that President Trump is, at the moment, engaged in a political
vendetta against the State of Colorado. I don't think any President
should be engaged in a vendetta against any State--obviously, least of
all, the State that I represent. But what I worry about more than
anything is that this is going to become a normal practice around here,
which it hasn't been until now, where Presidents reward the States that
support them and punish the States that haven't politically.
[[Page S108]]
That is not how we should run this democracy. That is not how the
Founders of this country wrote the Constitution. They didn't even think
there would be political parties. They felt that it was very important
for Congress to be able to be the backstop at a moment when, for
whatever reason, a President made a decision that didn't serve the
American people properly or well.
If we can't overcome this veto, I think it would say that no bill is
safe and that the efforts of every single elected Member of Congress
would now be at risk to one person's view and one person's decision.
Later today, I am pleased to say the House is considering whether to
override the President's veto. They are putting it on the floor of the
House.
I congratulate the work of Congresswoman Boebert and Congressman Hurd
and the rest of the Colorado House delegation to work with the Speaker
to get this on the floor of the House. It is absolutely critical for
the people of Colorado that Congress act, that we support, once again,
the Arkansas Valley Conduit, which we have unanimously.
Next week, this bill will come over to the Senate floor. I urge every
single Member of the Senate to do what you did the last time, which is
to support with your vote the 50,000 farmers and ranchers in
southeastern Colorado who need the benefit of this clean water.
They are not asking, by the way, for a handout here. They have done
their part, generation, after generation, after generation, to keep
this project alive. They have done their part to get a unanimous vote
in the House of Representatives and on the floor of this Senate to be
able to keep their faith with their children and their grandchildren.
The least we can do in this Senate is to uphold the work that they have
done and also the Constitution of the United States of America.
I hope every person in this room will use this as an opportunity to
stand with the people in southeastern Colorado; to stand with our
Constitution; and to make sure that we all--all--take seriously the
legislative responsibility we have as an independent branch of
government.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.