[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 21 (Thursday, January 29, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S373-S374]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               H.R. 7148

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, we are considering an appropriations 
package on the floor this week, and there has rightfully been a lot of 
focus on the section of the bill that funds the Department of Homeland 
Security, a section that I and my Democratic colleagues continue to 
insist should be considered separately, as it was in the House, to 
secure essential reforms to end the Department's abuses, stop the 
killings, protect people's rights, and ensure real accountability. Any 
additional funding for this unconstrained, lawless operation at DHS is 
unacceptable as we witness executions of civilians in our streets, 
unaccountable and warrantless raids, and in my home State of Maryland, 
inhumane conditions at the Baltimore Holding Center even as ICE moves 
to set up a warehouse with the capacity to process and detain 1,500 
persons. I said I would not support one more dime for Trump's lawless 
ICE operation, and I meant it--not even for 1 more day.
  But I also want to take a moment to speak to the rest of that funding 
package, which includes the work of five other Appropriations 
subcommittees: Defense, State and Foreign Operations, Transportation 
and Housing, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and 
Financial Services and General Government.
  I appreciate the work of the Democratic ranking members of these 
subcommittees and Vice Chair Murray, who secured some important 
provisions in the bill to reassert the congressional power of the purse 
with specific spending directives in legislative text. For example, the 
Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education bill rejects the 
administration's effort to eliminate the Department of Education and 
cut Pell grants.
  It also rejects the Trump proposal to cut NIH nearly in half and 
instead increases funding; and it successfully overrides the OMB 
directive that NIH fund more lump sum multi-year grants, which would 
otherwise result in fewer overall grants and less research activity. 
NIH, which is located in my home State of Maryland, is one of our 
greatest American success stories, where some of our brightest minds 
pursue treatments and cures to diseases that impact virtually every 
American family. This administration has spent the last year attacking 
the critical work of NIH, canceling grants and clinical trials and 
short-circuiting lifesaving research. I am glad this bill roundly 
rejects that and requires the administration to change course. At the 
same time, I am very disappointed that the bill does not reverse the 
rescission cut to public broadcasting, which provides critical services 
to Americans across the country, particularly in rural communities.
  Indeed, while these bills make important investments and include some 
critical safeguards, I have serious concerns that they do not go far 
enough to protect the power of the purse and the Federal employees who 
carry out the programs we fund, particularly as the administration 
continues its efforts to strip away the protections that safeguard our 
nonpartisan civil service and hollow out Agencies. Without enhanced 
guardrails in this package, the administration will continue to wreak 
havoc on the ability of our dedicated, merit-based civil servants to 
provide critical services to the American people.
  I also have deep concerns about the State foreign operations bill, 
now called the national security package. I know and appreciate the 
work of Vice Chair Murray and Ranking Member Schatz to preserve the 
legacy of U.S. foreign assistance in this bill after Elon Musk, Russell 
Vought, and their DOGE cronies took a chainsaw to USAID and the State 
Department.
  The bill includes some new guardrails to prevent deeper cuts going 
forward, but it still reflects a $9 billion cut from FY25 levels. The 
largest share of those cuts comes from humanitarian assistance and 
development assistance.
  Foreign aid is not a giveaway; it is an investment in the world we 
all live in. When your neighbor's house is on fire, it is foolish to 
wait until the flames reach your own home. Conflicts, pandemics, and 
humanitarian collapse do not respect borders. Preventing wars from 
starting and stopping new diseases before they reach American shores 
costs far less than fighting those threats once they arrive here.
  For less than 1 percent of the Federal budget, we can help save the 
lives of the world's most vulnerable children.

[[Page S374]]

Cutting that support is not fiscally responsible; it is morally 
indefensible. A Lancet study estimated that Trump's foreign aid cuts 
will cost 14 million lives by 2030, including over 4.5 million kids. 
Thousands of children are already dying.
  The bill also codifies an $850 million ``America First Opportunity 
Fund'' for an administration that has proven itself to be a reckless 
and unlawful custodian of Federal funding. This risks becoming a 
political slush fund, untethered from evidence-based programs and 
longstanding safeguards that ensure taxpayer dollars are used to 
advance genuine U.S. interests, not pet projects and foreign ventures 
that serve the interests of the Trump family, Trump campaign 
contributors, and his billionaire buddies at the expense of America's 
national security interests.
  The bill imposes a new cap on how much foreign assistance can be 
transferred to the Department of Homeland Security--an important 
check--but it still allows hundreds of millions of dollars to be 
transferred to an already bloated DHS for immigration enforcement. That 
is unacceptable.
  I also object to the bill's $3.3 billion in foreign military 
financing to the Government of Israel with no conditions or guardrails. 
The Netanyahu government has spent years openly flouting international 
law and disregarding U.S. interests, advice, and warnings, including 
concerns ranging from blocking humanitarian assistance and ethnic 
cleansing in Gaza to continued settler violence and mushrooming illegal 
settlements in the West Bank.
  I made clear on October 7, 2023, the day the heinous Hamas attack 
brutally killed over 1,200 people and seized over 200 hostages, that 
Israel had a right--indeed a duty--to go after Hamas. But the Netanyahu 
government's response went way beyond targeting Hamas to imposing 
collective punishment on all the people of Gaza.
  In Gaza, entire neighborhoods have been systematically destroyed. 
Throughout the war, more than 1.9 million Palestinians have been 
forcibly displaced, many of them multiple times, through military 
orders, bombardment, and the deliberate rendering of civilian areas 
unlivable. All of this has occurred with U.S.-funded weapons and 
equipment.
  In the West Bank, 240 Palestinians, including 55 children, were 
killed by Israeli forces or settlers in 2025, according to OCHA. Even 
the IDF found that Israeli settler violence in the West Bank rose by 
about 25 percent in 2025. This violence happened with virtual impunity 
and in many cases with the complicity of Israeli forces in the area. 
Along with settler violence, Israeli settlement expansion continues to 
rise, with a record number of 9,629 settlement housing units being 
approved by the Israeli Government in 2025, more than the previous 6 
years combined. This includes approval for construction in the area 
known as E1, east of Jerusalem. Construction in E1 would effectively 
bisect the West Bank, preventing the development of a contiguous 
Palestinian state and sounding the death knell of the already 
diminishing prospects for a two-state solution. The Netanyahu 
government also retroactively legalized eight illegal outposts, half of 
which are located deep within the West Bank.
  We should be using every tool at our disposal to ensure that the 
Netanyahu government complies with President Trump's stated objective 
of a ``credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and 
statehood'' and end its slow-motion annexation of the West Bank, 
destruction of neighborhoods in Gaza, and displacement of the 
Palestinian people.
  Conditions on foreign military financing and other types of 
assistance are not unusual; in fact, they are the norm. Other U.S. 
partners--including longstanding recipients like Egypt, Lebanon, 
Pakistan, El Salvador, Colombia, and Mexico--have had their assistance 
routinely tied to human rights, accountability, or other statutory 
benchmarks. Yet this bill provides the Netanyahu government with a 
blank check and no meaningful guardrails. That double standard weakens 
U.S. credibility and undermines our commitment to our core values.
  I appreciate that the Defense title in this bill funds a pay raise 
for our servicemembers and makes investments to support military 
families and critical work at Maryland's military bases. But I am 
deeply disturbed by the way Trump has misused and wrongfully deployed 
our military, from our Active-Duty forces to our National Guard.
  The Trump administration's abduction of dictator Nicolas Maduro 
wasn't a ``law enforcement operation'' or an effort to stop drug 
trafficking. It was about oil, seizing and controlling Venezuela's oil 
for the benefit of Trump's billionaire buddies. It is simply wrong to 
risk the lives of brave American soldiers to profit the Trump 
campaign's political contributors.
  And Trump has deployed the National Guard to DC, Los Angeles, 
Memphis, and Chicago, manufacturing claims of emergency and chaos to 
use the Guard in domestic law enforcement and his mass deportation 
agenda rather than using Justice Department resources to work with 
local partners and keep communities safe. And as State and local 
leaders and courts have stood in the way of these deployments, Trump 
has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to bypass them and the 
restrictions of the Posse Comitatus Act.
  Taken together, these abuses of power show an authoritarian 
administration using the military for its own ends, not for U.S. 
national security. These concerns only reinforce my existing 
reservations about the continued uncontrolled growth in defense 
spending, especially when the Pentagon continues to fail independent 
audits for 8 consecutive years.
  Finally, I want to underscore a point regarding the financial 
services and general government portion of this bill, which funds the 
General Services Administration. GSA, together with the FBI, is 
responsible for the FBI headquarters project. This bill provides no 
additional funding for that project, but GSA has funding available from 
prior year appropriations. There are still significant outstanding 
questions about this project and a security assessment and construction 
plan is underway and must be delivered to Congress as directed in the 
CJS Appropriations bill. From the start of this project, Congress has 
expected that the building would meet Level 5 ISC security requirements 
to safeguard the FBI mission, and GSA has shared its expectation that 
this project will meet that standard, though the security assessment is 
not yet complete. In order to ensure adequate congressional oversight 
and use taxpayer resources responsibly, GSA should also pause 
activities until the plan is finished and Congress has reviewed it.
  As a member of the Appropriations Committee, I recognize the 
challenges in negotiating these bills given the radical demands of the 
administration and the complicity of too many of my Republican 
colleagues in the House and Senate. I appreciate the hard-won 
investments and safeguards in these bills and the rejection of dozens 
of partisan House policy riders. That said, for the reasons I have 
outlined and because I believe more can be done to rein in this 
administration's authoritarian impulses, I oppose this package.

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