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Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, the appropriations process is well underway here in the Senate. The Senate Appropriations Committee, under Chair Collins, released four bipartisan appropriations bills.

This week, we are doing something a bit unusual. We are bringing appropriations legislation to the floor. Why do I say that is unusual? Because last year, despite the fact that the Senate Appropriations Committee approved 11 out of the 12 yearly appropriations bills with bipartisan support, the Democratic leader never brought a single one of those bills to the floor--not one.

One of the things that I have been determined to do as leader is to restore us as much as possible to a regular-order appropriations process, to have bills move through the committees and then come to the Senate floor for debate and amendment.

That is what we are doing this week with consideration of the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs appropriations bill for fiscal year 2026. This legislation was approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee in a robustly bipartisan vote of 26 to 3. I hope it will receive equally robust bipartisan support on the Senate floor.

The MILCON-VA appropriations bill provides critical funding for veterans' healthcare, veterans' benefits, and construction projects at military bases and installations around the globe.

As a resident of a rural State, I am particularly pleased by the bill's funding for telehealth services as well as for the Office of Rural Health at the Department of Veterans Affairs. This funding will help reduce barriers to care for rural veterans, as will the bill's provision preventing the VA from closing hospitals--something I worked to include.

I am also pleased to see that the bill continues to fund modernization of veterans' healthcare records by providing funding to triple the number of VA sites that use electronic health records.

On the military construction front, I am happy to announce that the bill contains funding for a number of key facilities for the new B-21 bomber--the future of our long-range bomber fleet--which will have its first home at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota. National Guard facilities in South Dakota, like National Guard facilities around the country, will also see funding for essential construction projects thanks to this legislation.

Mr. President, considering the Military Construction-VA bill on the floor is a big step in the right direction appropriations-wise. And our work this week doesn't have to end there. As I said, the Appropriations Committee has reported a total of four appropriations bills so far. All of them have been bipartisan.

I know that the fiscal year 2026 Agriculture appropriations bill is a major priority for all of us--Democrat or Republican--who live in States that depend on agriculture. Whether it is funding for agricultural research programs, resources for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, assistance to ranchers to comply with animal disease traceability requirements, the $223 million for the Agricultural Marketing Service to expand markets for American agriculture products, or resources for the Farm Service Agency to ensure that farmers have access to necessary capital, this year's Agriculture appropriations bill will be a key resource for farmers and ranchers.

Then there is the Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill, which, among other things, provides essential funding for Federal law enforcement officers as well as support for State and local law enforcement.

There is the fiscal year 2026 Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, which funds the work we do here in Washington for our constituents and, this year, also adds additional funding to confront growing threats to Member security.

Mr. President, I am very grateful to Chair Collins, Vice Chair Murray, and all the members of the Senate Appropriations Committee for all their work on these bills. I hope we will be able to consider some of these alongside the MILCON-VA appropriations bill this week and next.

Democrats have indicated they want a bipartisan appropriations process, and we are giving it to them. I hope we will see bipartisan passage of appropriations bills on the Senate floor.

It was disturbing to see the Democratic leader implicitly threatening to shut down the government in his July ``Dear Colleague'' letter, but I am hopeful he does not represent the views of Senate Democrats as a whole. Members of both parties should have a strong interest in a regular-order, bipartisan appropriations process, and I am pleased that we managed to begin on a bipartisan basis this week. I hope the process will continue in a bipartisan way as we move toward September's deadline.

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