[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 126 (Monday, August 3, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4404-S4405]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                           Government Funding

  Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, we have our work cut out for us as we 
work to fund the government for the coming fiscal year.
  As costs for our families go up and up and up, the President wants a 
$1\1/2\ trillion war budget, and he wants to cut programs working 
people depend on to pay for it. No. No way. And as his disastrous war 
with Iran rages on, Trump is even asking for another $70 billion on top 
of that to bankroll the war. It is really hard to imagine more backward 
funding priorities, especially as so many families today are struggling 
and being hurt by the cuts to healthcare and food aid.
  Congress is not an ATM to fund Trump's disastrous wars abroad, so, as 
I have said many times, we need to rip up the President's budget and 
write a new one. I have been very clear from the start: We absolutely 
must prioritize helping families and lowering costs as we do that, and 
that means rejecting the President's astronomical defense request and 
instead delivering significantly more funding for our nondefense budget 
so we can invest in helping people here at home.
  It is clear that we will definitely need more time to get this done 
and reach bipartisan agreement on the funding levels, just as we have 
done in the Senate for the last 3 years, which then allows us to draft 
bipartisan bills for fiscal year 2027. So I am very glad we were able 
to craft a bipartisan CR to keep the government funded and to make sure 
we can avert a shutdown that no one wants, while giving us time to 
reach a bipartisan agreement on a top line in our funding bills.
  Two weeks ago, House Republicans sent us an incomplete CR with 
several major issues. It is critical that we address those issues in 
any CR, and that is exactly what we have done.
  Perhaps most important, we closed a loophole in the House Republican 
CR that would have allowed the Trump administration to transfer funding 
provided for other programs to Border Patrol. That was a nonstarter. 
Until Republicans finally agree to enact desperately needed reforms to 
ICE and Border Patrol, we cannot approve another cent for them.
  This new CR that we have written includes some really important 
extensions and language that House Republicans did not, and that 
includes extensions of authorizations for important health, veterans, 
and infrastructure programs and language to make sure that key housing 
programs and a program to help feed low-income seniors can continue 
serving Americans.
  This bill also rejects requests from President Trump for even more 
flexibility and funding for the Pentagon, including $1 billion for 
Trump-class battleships.
  My Democratic colleagues and I pushed very hard and secured an 
important provision to prevent the Office of Management and Budget from 
implementing its corrupt new grants rule, which would have required a 
Trump political appointee to sign off on every last Federal grant and 
empowered them to terminate any grant at any

[[Page S4405]]

point for any reason. That disastrous rule would put politics above 
science when determining, for example, what cancer research grants to 
fund. I am going to keep working to kill that rule outright as our 
spending talks continue later this year.
  Unfortunately, Republicans would not take action in this bill to 
protect our constitutional power of the purse and prevent Russ Vought 
from attempting another illegal pocket rescission, nor would they agree 
to our efforts to extend critical advanced appropriations for 
infrastructure, which were provided by the bipartisan infrastructure 
law. That runs out on October 1. Make no mistake--we will keep fighting 
to get those priorities done in the negotiations in the fall.
  We do have a lot of work ahead, and this CR provides us a reasonable 
runway to get it done. So I hope this CR sets us up to roll up our 
sleeves and focus on getting to a bipartisan top line so we can then 
write good, bipartisan spending bills.
  For all of those reasons, I will be voting yes tonight to advance 
this bipartisan bill.