Mr. President, I come to the floor this afternoon because this week the Senate has a chance to take another crucial step away from the political cliffs and manufactured crises of previous years and to get back to the regular order – to get back to the considered, measured, orderly process on this floor that for so long was characteristic of this body, in the past considered the greatest deliberative body on Earth, but in recent years it has ground to a halt.
It is critical that we return to regular order and that we return to the steady consideration of appropriations bills in a way that will move not just the Senate and this Congress but this country forward.
I thank the chair and ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, Senators Mikulski and Shelby, for their leadership and their steadfast determination to work in a bipartisan manner and bring us back to regular order.
We are considering today a collection – or what is called today a “minibus” instead of an omnibus – of three appropriations bills: Agriculture, Rural Development, and Food and Drug Administration; Commerce, Justice, and Science; and Transportation and Housing and Urban Development – an unbelievable scope across these three appropriations bills that could in combination make a real and significant difference for our communities, our States, and our country. This is an opportunity for this Congress to carry out its duties to provide oversight and direction and to help all the different agencies I just named move forward and address some of our most important priorities.
As a member myself of the Appropriations Committee, I have advocated for some of what are our Nation’s top priorities embedded in these three important bills. So I wish to speak for a few minutes about how these bills will, first, help my home State of Delaware; second, help our country; and then, third, the important obligation we have as Senators to return to regular order and to use the appropriations process for oversight and for management of this whole Federal project.
For Delaware, these three bills invest in a number of areas. I could talk about literally dozens of matters critical to my home State, but let me focus on two – public safety and infrastructure.
When we think about it at the local level – where I served for a decade in county government – these are the foundation of what government does and does well: Keep our people, homes, communities, and families safe, and provide for the sewer water, drinking water, and the highways and tollways and bridges and ports that are critical to moving commerce and our country forward.
This bill extends children’s advocacy centers. Let me talk for a few minutes about what children’s advocacy centers are and why it is so vital to public safety.
Children’s advocacy centers allow communities to bring child abusers to justice without re-traumatizing their victims. Children’s advocacy centers are unique because it is a model that brings together, under one roof in one place, law enforcement, prosecutors, counselors, and child service professionals – all focusing on how to best care for and move forward with a child who has been a victim of abuse.
In Delaware we have three centers – one in each of our three counties. And although I wish we didn’t need them, the fact is they are indispensable. In my experience in a decade of local government, I was exposed over and over to the critical role they play in helping law enforcement secure critical evidence and move forward to conviction against the monsters who commit abuse against our children.
Since the creation of these centers, they have transformed our Nation’s response to child abuse, giving families hope and guidance in their darkest moments and delivering justice to those who have endured the worst.
As we work together to continue to try our best to keep our children safe, this bill allows us to continue to fund child advocacy centers so we can have a more efficient, more effective, more federally sponsored and coordinated way to deliver at a very modest cost this vital resource for our children.
Second, as we work to keep our children safe, this bill also allows us to protect those who protect us. Every day more than 1 million law enforcement officers across this country accept risks to their personal safety. As they leave their families at dawn and head off to their jobs, they know that what they accept as part of their mission is the risk they may not come home that night. That is why it is so important this bill also funds the bulletproof vest partnership.
In Delaware we know its value all too well. Last February at the New Castle County Courthouse in my hometown of Wilmington, DE, a gunman unleashed a hail of bullets into a courthouse lobby, tragically killing two. On what was a difficult morning in Wilmington, two lives were also saved – those of Sergeant Michael Manley and Corporal Steve Rinehart – members of the Delaware Capitol Police – officers who were wearing bulletproof vests funded by the Federal Bulletproof Vest Partnership. This is a partnership launched by my predecessor, now-Vice President Biden. It has been sustained on a bipartisan basis for many years, but without this appropriation, this vital Federal-State-law enforcement partnership would grind to a halt.
Vests work. They save lives. They save officers’ lives, and with this bill we will be able to ensure even more officers all across this country have lifesaving bulletproof vests.
Those are two areas where in law enforcement and public safety this bill continues critical investments in partnership from the Federal Government to State and local governments.
In recent weeks in Delaware we have also been reminded of just how critical our infrastructure is – our bridges, our roads, and highways.
There is a bridge on I-495 that goes across the Christina River. This is a vital highway for Wilmington and for the whole mid-Atlantic region. It carries 90,000 drivers a day, but 2 weeks ago it was closed indefinitely when workers nearby noticed four of its pillars were off plumb, were slanted, and then upon further investigation discovered there were cracks in the very foundation holding this bridge 50 feet in the air. Its closure is hurting families, businesses, and commuters, and it is just one in a string of recent emergencies all across our country that demonstrate the need for investment in fixing America’s roads and bridges.
The funding we are considering this week in this bill recognizes that and takes steps to address some of our most urgent needs across this country. It continues to invest in two innovative funding vehicles: One called TIGER grants and another called TIFIA loans. These are acronyms, but they are inventive ways to mobilize private capital in partnership with States and the Federal Government, to get us moving again in repairing and upgrading the roads and bridges of America. They help State and local governments pay for new highways and bridges, public transit projects, railways, and ports.
In Delaware, the Port of Wilmington – a critical economic engine for our State and region – secured a $10 million TIGER grant last year to renovate facilities built in 1922. On U.S. 301, a little south and west of Wilmington but still in Delaware, TIFIA grants are helping us to do critical work to relieve congestion.
In southernmost Delaware at Georgetown, at the Sussex County Airport, we have also seen the vital role and the value of Federal investment. Since 2012, the Sussex County Airport has received $4 million in airport improvement grants to expand its runway and improve safety and to help grow manufacturing jobs at that Georgetown Airport. With this week’s bill, we will be able to continue making these kinds of critical improvements at airports in Delaware and across our country.
I relatively rarely get to fly, but I commute virtually every day back and forth from Wilmington, DE, to Washington, and I ride on Amtrak when I do so. Today, ridership levels are at a record high, and Delaware’s region in the Northeast corridor brings in $300 million in profits alone. So it is good this bill maintains Amtrak’s national operations and investments in its capital needs, but I believe we need to do more. We need to step up and do more federally to invest if we want to keep these results, not just in the Northeast but across the country.
We have a more than $6 billion backlog to reach a state of good repair for Amtrak. As our bridges, tunnels, and rail lines get older and older, fixing them will only become more expensive. That is why I intend to offer an amendment to this bill to further increase our investment in the capital needs of Amtrak. This is critical. It is something we need, and we need to start chipping away at this long overdue debt we have, this unaddressed infrastructure debt, if we are going to continue to serve our communities.
There are many other great provisions in these incredibly broad bills that are of national and international importance. Let me just briefly reference a few.
At home manufacturing continues to be critical to our economy and our future, and bio-manufacturing plays an increasingly important role; the manufacturing of products and materials from renewable sources, from plant-based sources rather than petrochemicals. For the first time, through this bill, we will dedicate $15 million to the National Science Foundation’s budget for new bio-manufacturing initiatives that will allow us to deploy in the marketplace new inventions and innovations.
Our competitors aren’t holding back on doing so. Countries from the United Kingdom to China are ramping up their investments in new bio-manufacturing. In my view it is time for the United States to refocus our research, to reprioritize our investments, and to stay competitive in this vital field.
Finally, I am proud these appropriations bills also support in the housing area funding for Community Development Block Grant – CDBG – Programs. We used them when I was in county government in Delaware to help rehabilitate homes, to help provide for affordable homes, and to help strengthen and sustain jobs in our communities.
In 2013, so-called CDBG, or Community Development Block Grants, helped 225 families. Some in this body have tried to cut CDBG, but I am thrilled we have been able to successfully move forward and sustain its support in this bill.
While we invest at home, these appropriations bills also make important investments abroad. One I would like to briefly highlight is in our international food aid program, where we feed millions but can do more. This bill provides for flexibility of our food aid that will allow it to be delivered more efficiently, more quickly, and to feed more who hunger around the world.
As businesses also look abroad from the United States, we are doing more to open new markets for them. One of the investments I most value that is in this bill in this regard is the expansion of the Foreign Commercial Service at the Department of Commerce – in particular, its expansion in Africa, where 7 out of 10 of the fastest growing economies in the world are currently growing but where the United States isn’t doing enough to take advantage of these burgeoning export markets for our products.
As chair of the African Affairs Subcommittee, I have had a chance to see up close the great opportunities for growth and partnership that Africa offers. There will be four new Foreign Commercial Service offices in Angola, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Mozambique, as well as expansion in Kenya, Ghana, Morocco, and Libya. Now we can make investments in them jointly so our growing partnerships in the Sub-Saharan countries I listed can thrive.
As I close, I also make one brief point about why this whole process is important – why we need to pass these appropriations bills rather than just continuing resolutions, which go on from year after year, that sustain funding but do not engage the minds and skills of the Members of this body in doing oversight of the Federal Government.
As the Federal Government changes, as our Nation’s needs change, we need to be able to ensure that our spending and our focus adapts as well.
A great example from this particular minibus bill that is on the floor today is the Crude By Rail Safety Initiative. Within the last year there have been a number of accidents on our rail networks that demand our action. America is moving more and more oil and hazardous products by rail every year, so we are putting in place an approach to do it safely.
The Department of Transportation and Transportation Secretary Foxx have done a great job responding with the resources and tools they have, but Congress needs to do more. That is why this bill adds 20 new rail and hazardous materials inspectors, adds $3 million to ensure that oil routes are safe and sound, creates a new short-line safety institute, improves classifications, and extends training for first responders.
Without this appropriations bill and regular order, new and timely investments such as these that are responsive to conditions of the world wouldn’t happen. Thus, if I might say in closing, while our economy changes, we need to change, and we need regular order and regular appropriations bills to be able to do that.
I again thank the chair and vice chair of the Appropriations Committee, Senators Mikulski and Shelby, for their leadership and their efforts to shepherd a bipartisan process forward. It is critical to our country, our economy, and our future.