Mr. President, I rise to speak tonight in support of the omnibus appropriations package that Senator Mikulski, the Chair of our Appropriations Committee, has spoken at great length about, and that Senator Cochran has also dedicated so much of his time and effort and energy to, and that so many Members of this Chamber have contributed to.
There are questions on the minds of my constituents from the home State of Delaware and questions on the minds of colleagues of mine who have spoken earlier this evening about this very large package — this $1.014 trillion spending bill — appropriations package. There have been questions raised about some specific provisions — an issue here about pensions, an issue there about Dodd-Frank and swaps, an issue about an environmental concern. There are a few issues that have Members — particularly of my caucus — who are very concerned. I have messages coming in to me in my office from social media and email saying: Why on Earth would you support this? My Senator, Chris Coons from Delaware, why would you support this? We are going into the holiday season and I want us to take a few minutes and look at what is actually in this package, to unwrap it a little bit and to better understand why on Earth I would stand on this floor and speak in favor of this package.
You have heard of the hard work of our Appropriations Committee Chair. What you don’t know is the tireless and determined and dedicated work of all of the Appropriations Committee members and staff who, across 12 different subcommittees, held more than 60 different hearings to hammer out provision after provision, department after department, and it is difficult sometimes to know what that means.
Let me put this in some context.
First, in terms of bad avoided and good invested. In terms of bad avoided, the version of this that came over from the House — 11 full appropriations bills out of 12 that had within it all sorts of provisions. We call them riders because they are provisions that ride on top of the underlying appropriations bill. You have heard about some of these riders that have been defeated and beaten back. It is not one or two or three. They cover all the same areas where concerns have been raised by colleagues in my caucus — the environment, protections for organized labor and labor concerns, protections for the safety of our communities related to firearms, protections for the safety and soundness and transparency of our financial system through preserving the Dodd-Frank act, preserving a woman’s right to choose and protecting the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.
Dozens and dozens of riders came over in the bill from the House, which our committee Chair and her dedicated staff worked tirelessly to remove from this bill, and you have heard about some of them in the speech just concluded by Chair Mikulski. There was everything from fish and wildlife rules to fiduciary rulemaking, from issues around union elections to concerns about the strength and ability of the ATF to keep our community safe, strengthening and supporting the CFPB and SEC and their ability to enforce Dodd-Frank or ensuring a woman’s right to choose. The actions of our committee Chair ensure that these dozens and dozens of bad — from our perspective — riders were removed from the bill.
Now we stand here on the verge of the end of the authority of the government to continue to function, and we have a package in front of us, and we have two choices. The choices are simple and clear.
If we do not pass this omnibus, we will continue government by crisis, government by continuing resolution, government by chip shot down the lane, and we will fund the government for a temporary three-month extension, and then this entire package will be put back together, not by a Democratic Senate and a Republican House, but by Republicans on both sides of this Capitol. We won’t have one or two or three riders from the perspective of my caucus to be concerned about, we will have dozens and dozens. All of this that has been removed and taken out of the package by the hard work of our committee Chair and her staff will be right back in the mix. If we turn away from enacting this package, we will do two things: We will fail to give the certainty and clarity and predictability to our government agencies and entities that they will have authorization and funding through next September, and we will face a package toxic — far more difficult for us to accept. It will have dozens and dozens of problems riddled throughout it, and frankly, everyone in my caucus, I expect, will vote against it and perhaps the President will even veto it. We cannot let the perfect or the ideal be the enemy of the good.
I will take a few minutes and talk about what there is in this package that is good because you only heard speeches tonight that have highlighted concerns and focused in on the three or four provisions that cause great alarm or concern to all of us who are on my side of the aisle. I don’t think there has been quite as much exposition as there should be about what there is in this package that I hope to unwrap for you that is actually good.
Why would I be standing here, as the Senator from Delaware, defending this hard-crafted, hard-wrought, hard-won package if it were not full of things that are important for the working families of Delaware, for our community and our country, and that didn’t advance our core values?
Well, I will take a few minutes and touch on a couple of things that I think bear your consideration. Infrastructure. The bridges, the roads, the rails, the ports that from the very founding of our Nation have been the work of the Federal Government and that are woefully behind to the point where we are not competitive globally and where we could put people to work right away by infusing more responsible investment and upgrading our infrastructure.
As far as rebuilding American infrastructure, this package includes $54 billion for transportation and housing programs that communities and States such as Delaware care deeply about. It is $1.8 billion more than what passed in the House package. This covers things from the TIGER grants program that encourages and incentivizes and leverages cutting-edge investments in infrastructure to funding for Amtrak. For the east coast of the United States, Amtrak is such a vital means of transportation. It also includes funds for harbor maintenance and dredging, which are so vital to our maritime industries. This is just one of dozens of areas we could talk about this evening.
It will put Americans back to work, it will make our country more competitive, and it will give us more resources in these areas than we would ever get from renegotiating this package from the ground up.
Second, there was an unfortunate story about my hometown of Wilmington in the past week that drew real alarms about the murder rate and violent crime rate. This is a pressing issue in my hometown of Wilmington. There is real concern because we have a record murder rate and a record gun violence rate in my town. This omnibus package includes financial resources that will help communities large and small all over this country keep themselves safe with these sorts of targeted and wise Federal investments in State and local law enforcement that we have come to rely on and that we need. There is something called the Byrne Justice Assistance grant.
When I was a county executive, my county police department relied on that critical program. There is $2.3 billion, which is $55 million more than last year, for the Byrne Justice Assistance grants and will affect States and localities all over the country. Something that I fought hard for on this floor and I care about — the bulletproof vest program that has saved the lives of law enforcement officers in the small towns of Delaware and in our biggest cities. That grant made it possible to fund for state-of-the-art vests that are correct and appropriate and current and save officers’ lives.
There is a regional information system called RISK that provides current intelligence and data so that law enforcement can be more effective regionally. There is the implementation of Violence Against Women Act programs — all of these are at least sustained or increased over previous years and make the sort of investments that are vital for our communities and their safety. There is $1.1 billion in this omnibus package to help the ATF, FBI, and DOJ fight gun violence, and that matters to my hometown. That matters to the families who wonder whether what we are doing here is relevant to them.
To turn back from this omnibus and turn away from those investments in keeping our community safe, I think is unwise. There is more money for criminal enforcement by the ATF to fund straw gun purchases and their investigation and their prosecution, to fund keeping guns away from traffickers and criminals, to improve interstate background checks, to train law enforcement for the responsible carrying out of their public responsibility, to intervene and stop active shooter situations in schools or in public facilities, and, last, the sort of resources we need for the victims of crime. There is $2.3 billion in this omnibus for helping the victims of violent crime and their families to get access to badly needed services. I could go on, but in the area of law enforcement and criminal justice, there are investments that matter to me and that matter to my hometown as we work together to fight violent crime.
Let me lastly take on two other areas.
No. 1, I am on the Foreign Relations Committee. I am concerned that if we turn away from this package, the vital investment in our central ally, Israel, and in the Iron Dome program, which has been shown to keep Israel safe, will not be made; and the multibillion dollar investment in fighting the scourge of Ebola in West Africa, at this moment when the tide is turning and we have a chance to heal three nations and contain this plague, which otherwise may get out, get loose, and become a global pandemic, will not be made. We need to make these investments. To not do so now is to put our children’s future at risk. Imagine if we could go back in time to where HIV/AIDS was just beginning to spread around the globe and for a modest investment, with an international effort, we could have contained it to just two or three countries, instead of the hundreds — the thousands of communities across dozens of countries that have suffered through HIV/AIDS now for nearly 25 years. If we fail to invest in turning the tide in the fight against Ebola now, we put at risk the future public safety of not just a continent, but the world.
We also have to be mindful of what this omnibus makes possible for our health and our safety and our future. Entities most Americans don’t think about or haven’t heard of that perform basic science research or advanced research, from the National Science Foundation to the National Institutes of Health — institutions that are doing cutting-edge, world- class science and developing the cures and the treatments for everything from Alzheimer’s to cancer — we continue to sustain and support investment with billions of dollars in these areas in this bill.
Again, to walk away from this package means to wrap back up and put away the potential for enormous progress.
There is $172 million more for basic science research programs in this bill over last year. It raises up to $7.3 billion the level of NSF funding. That may sound abstract and disconnected from our lives at home, but in my State of Delaware, that funds education, training, and research at the University of Delaware, Delaware State University, and in public schools across our State. At a time when we need science education and when we need the outcomes, the fruits of our labors and research more than ever, I think that is vital funding.
Last, there is an area that I have spoken about on this floor many times in this Congress and that I am passionate about because it is how I came up. I spent years in the manufacturing sector. As a young man working in the private sector for a family manufacturing business, I saw its power to create good, high-wage, high-skill jobs. Manufacturing is an area where most of the research and development in this country that is privately funded is done, and manufacturing is an area that many mistakenly think we have lost our edge in and can never regain.
But the truth is quite different.
Over the last 3 years, we have grown more than 750,000 new manufacturing jobs in this economy, and those are great jobs — jobs people can raise their families on, jobs that provide a renewed growth back to the middle class. If we fail to invest in the things that will make manufacturing grow in this country, we miss a vital opportunity.
There is an entity called the Manufacturing Extension Partnership. In the scope of all of this, it is a tiny little program. But for the dozens of small and medium manufacturers in Delaware that I have visited and that the Delaware Manufacturing Extension Partnership has helped, it makes an amazing difference. It helps them understand how to compete internationally. It helps them with upgrading the skills of their workforce. It helps them with deciding what capital equipment to buy.
I have stood on manufacturing floors from Bridgeville to Lewes, from Dover to Claymont, and heard stories of companies transformed by this powerful investment of Federal services — a public-private partnership that really, genuinely makes a difference.
Lastly, in this provision of the bill, there isn’t just renewed funding for the National Institutes of Standards and Technology, or NIST — a provision that includes the Manufacturing Extension Partnership and the Advanced Manufacturing Technology Program — there is also renewed opportunity for the funding and sustainment of manufacturing hubs, a strategy that our competitor, Germany, has used very well and very wisely to have doubled their GDP in manufacturing — a strategy that this administration has led on and that we hope to emulate, and where I think the investments made in this bill are wise and lay the foundation for middle-class job growth and prosperity.
There are a dozen other areas I could speak to this evening, where throughout this bill the investments made have been cut in some areas that needed to be reduced and increased in others that are wise for our States and our communities.
Some from my home State, watching the speeches on this floor earlier this evening, have contacted me and said, Why on Earth would you vote for a bill with this or this or this provision that concerns me? It is a fair question. I hope in these few minutes I have helped my people hear that our choice is not between a perfect bill from the perspective of Democrats in the Senate or the country and a terrible bill, but a choice between a great bill and no bill at all — a choice between returning to regular order and ending what has been a nearly four-year pattern of government by crisis, by short-term extension, by chip shot, and by near default, and instead respect and honor the very hard work of the dozen subcommittees of this great Appropriations Committee, and move forward a package that strengthens our country, that honors our veterans, that invests in our future, that lifts manufacturing, that makes us safer and healthier, and that does the job of bringing America into the future.
That is why I will be voting for this package, and that is why I hope all of my colleagues will consider doing the same.
Thank you, Mr. President. With that, I yield the floor.