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Floor Speech

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Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I rise today to address the moment that we are in here in the U.S. Senate. We are about to proceed to a vote on a motion that the majority leader has laid on the floor.

I am the senior Democrat on the subcommittee of Appropriations that writes the bill that funds our national defense. I have worked well and closely with Senator McConnell in this undertaking this year. I am about to vote no on proceeding to take up the House Defense bill, which may surprise some of my colleagues from both parties or my constituents or folks who are wondering: What the heck is going on here? So I wanted to take a few minutes and speak to this moment, my vote, and hopefully our path forward.

Americans care deeply about security--about the security that comes from knowing that you and your family won't suddenly be bankrupted by unexpected healthcare costs, the loss of health insurance, and the security that comes from knowing that millions of highly skilled, trained, and dedicated American men and women are on the line around the world, shoulder to shoulder with our allies, defending America's security and that of the world, and we need a path towards addressing both.

The Federal Government is currently shut down. It is shut down because we can't come to an agreement here in the Senate, with the President, and with the House to deal with the expiring Affordable Care Act tax credits that make it affordable.

Letters are about to go out in my home State of Delaware that will tell folks who get their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act that their rates are going to go up dramatically--in many cases, more than 100 percent--because of expiring tax credits.

Well, what has that got to do with national defense? Bluntly, the process here in this Senate, the process with our President, and the process of spending or not spending appropriated funds has destroyed a lot of the trust that is essential for the Senate as a body to work, for the Congress to legislate, and for our Federal Government to reopen.

In the last Congress, I was the chair of the subcommittee that wrote the appropriations bill. Roughly, $32 billion went to USAID--an Agency that no longer exists. Some of you may remember DOGE--an Elon Musk-led effort to get into and tear up and, in the case of USAID, to tear apart our longstanding, decades-old, U.S. foreign assistance program. It did a lot more damage than just that.

In many ways, the actions that began in January and picked up speed in the spring caused alarm and concern by many of us in the Senate that we have an OMB Director and an administration willing to violate bipartisan agreements from the last Congress, commitments to spend money, and contracts and agreements with partners and allies around the world and across many different areas.

In fact, just yesterday, a Federal district court judge in California ruled that the reductions in force--the layoffs, the RIFs--announced by the administration during this current shutdown were illegal because they were targeted and partisan.

So many things have happened this year that it is tough to keep track, but the combination of them has led to a reduction in trust between our two caucuses--trust that is essential to having an understanding and an agreement to move forward.

Let me be clear about this year's appropriations process. It was positive from when we started in March-April to when we concluded on the committee in July and voted out eight strong, bipartisan bills. The Senate appropriations process for at least eight of the bills--the biggest bills--was constructive and bipartisan. In fact, the bill that I worked on closely with Senator McConnell was voted out of the committee by 26 to 3. So, too, were other key bills that deal with housing, that deal with education, and that deal with healthcare. They came out of the committee 26 to 3 and are ready for action on the floor of the Senate. Yet we are not proceeding to them today.

There are four bills remaining in committee that are unaddressed, and the committee should focus on them, take them up, and work them through. There are three bills that have already passed the Senate and are all but done being conferenced with the House.

What I have heard from my Republican colleagues is that Leader Thune is trying to move ahead with a process that would put the Defense bill, the Health and Education bill, the Housing and Transportation bill, which we call Labor-HHS, and T-HUD--very compelling names, I know--he wants to put together a package of many of these bills. Well, if that is the intention, we need communication between our leaders and our caucuses.

We have had a positive and productive process in Senate appropriations this year, but the leader's motion to go to the House Defense bill was not expected, was not discussed, and was not clear to my caucus as to what happens next. So it is with some real regret that I will vote no today but will continue to talk with my colleagues about how do we move forward.

I want to take a moment and just speak to the Defense bill that we have worked so hard on and that came out of the committee with such strong bipartisan support. It would provide a better quality of life to the men and women of the American military and their families. It would invest, in total, $852 billion in our national defense--expanding shipyards, expanding munition production, creating stockpiles of critical weapons that we know we need for the future, investing in cutting-edge technologies--and would reject some of the Trump budget cuts in aid to Ukraine, to Taiwan, and to our Baltic allies, who are making positive progress in key areas.

Our work together on this bill has generally been a positive experience between Senators and our staffs. Our challenge was the Department, and it was the Secretary and his budgeteers, who often appeared at hearings and meetings without their homework done, without the details ready, without a budget ready to go.

Some of you may have forgotten this, but a principal focus of the administration and the majority here during this same time was the so- called Big Beautiful Bill and trying to put $160 billion onto the Defense Department not through regular order and not through the usual budget processes but through this one-time infusion of cash.

Senator McConnell and I historically haven't agreed on much, but we certainly have agreed on this in hearings and in speeches: If we are trying to invest in the future of our Armed Forces, whether it be new planes, new ships, new systems, or new technology, doing it with 1-year money is unwise and unsound.

We need to get back to regular order. We need to get back to a reliable and predictable appropriations process. In order to do that, we need bipartisan agreement that rejects severe cuts; that restores funding for programs like the NIH and the CDC, which is done in the bipartisan Labor-H bill; and that rejects cuts to WIC and rural housing, which is done in the Ag bill. We need to move these bills forward.

The way we move these bills forward is by linking arms and making it clear: We reject rescissions. We want to appropriate beyond just defense. We want a broader package and to have clarity from our President, the House, and the Senate about how we address the imminent health security crisis that confronts millions of Americans and, for today and tomorrow, keeps our government shut down.

Americans care about security. We care about security for our families from healthcare costs, and we care about security for our Nation from the threats that are greater than at any time in my adult life.

Let's find a path toward working together to address them.

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