Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies

Floor Speech

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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, today, I will be voting to move ahead with the first spending bill for fiscal year 2026.

Now, there is no doubt that the path forward on appropriations this year has been made extremely challenging by President Trump's flagrant lack of regard for Congress and our laws, and it has not been made any easier by the unprecedented partisan rescissions package that Republicans passed last week. But we cannot afford another slush fund, full-year CR, and we cannot accept the draconian cuts being pushed by Trump and House Republicans. So we do need to chart a different path forward and pass full-year, bipartisan spending bills that invest in folks back home and make sure Congress and our constituents have a say in Federal spending. The way, of course, to ensure that happens is through a bipartisan appropriations process.

So I am very glad that, thanks to the senior Senator from Georgia, working across the aisle with his partner, the senior Senator from Arkansas, we were able to negotiate and report out of committee a good bill to fund our military construction needs and the Department of Veterans Affairs in fiscal year 2026.

As the daughter of a World War II veteran, the programs we fund in the MILCON-VA bill are very personal to me. Doing right by our vets and getting them the care they need and the support they were promised is a moral obligation, which is why I am pleased to say the MILCON-VA bill we are voting on delivers the funding needed to live up to our Nation's commitments to our veterans and makes crucial investments to support our servicemembers and our national security.

The bill includes essential funds for VA care, including rural health, women's health, medical research, and the caregivers program I have long championed, and for the first time, it puts funding levels for those important programs in statute. It also expands the pilot I started to make sure that childcare is not a barrier to any veteran who needs care and increases funding to address veteran homelessness and mental health needs.

When it comes to supporting our servicemembers and their families, there are investments for nearly 300 construction projects, including new family housing construction and child development centers.

There are also investments to bolster our footprint in the Pacific and support our NATO projects. These are incredibly important to our soldiers, to our veterans, and to our national security.

No doubt there is more I would like to see done in this bill. It is not, of course, the bill I would have written on my own. But I do hope Republicans will work with us now to consider critical amendments to improve the bill and make sure the administration actually delivers for veterans, something I think it has certainly failed to do on many fronts over the last few months.

There is also some discussion of adding two other funding bills that we have negotiated and reported out of committee to make this a minibus package. These are solid, compromised bills that reject the truly draconian cuts proposed by President Trump and House Republicans, and I would like to see them considered by the full Senate.

Now, for that to happen, I hope Republicans will work with us to ensure, once again, that there is an opportunity to debate and amend all three bills.

So I am a ``yes'' vote on moving forward today with debate of the MILCON-VA bill, and I hope we can keep this process moving because passing our appropriations bills is the best way we can make sure Federal spending reflects the needs we are hearing about in our States and actually solves problems for people at home.

No one wants a shutdown, and the way we avoid that shutdown is by working together. That is not a secret, not a surprise; it is a reality we all know. As the majority leader noted recently, the math tells us that it takes 60. It takes bipartisan cooperation. Unfortunately, Republicans have been chipping away at that cooperation, especially with the rescissions vote last week.

But, to be clear, if Republicans continue cutting bipartisan deals with more rescissions, that is not cooperation. If Republicans try and jam through another slush-fund CR, that is not cooperation.

So for anyone considering the partisan route, you cannot write a bill without talking to Democrats and then act surprised when Democrats don't support it. You want our votes; you work with us. And this bill today that we are considering shows that is possible. So I want to applaud the bipartisan work of the senior Senators from Georgia and Arkansas to get us to this point, and I hope all of our colleagues can take that lesson to heart as we move forward with consideration of this bill and our work on bipartisan bills to fund the government and avoid a shutdown.

Let's stay focused on that instead of embracing Russ Vought's vision for a Congress that is more partisan, less powerful, and less able to make life better for the people we represent.

Vote on Motion
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