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Floor Speech

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Mr. BENNET. Last week, President Trump vetoed H.R. 131, the Finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act, a bill that passed both Chambers of Congress unanimously with broad bipartisan support. The President did not veto this bill for any substantive objection. He did so out of a desire to punish the State that he believes didn't support him politically.

In my opinion, this is the last reason any President should make a decision about anything. An election is one thing, but once we hold office, we have a responsibility to represent every American, regardless of their political party, regardless of their politics.

The President's veto will inflict real harm on people in my State by denying 50,000 Coloradans living in tiny rural towns across the Arkansas River Valley and southeastern Colorado access to clean, affordable drinking water. Those farmers and ranchers have been forced to rely on unsafe, carcinogenic water for generations, despite the Federal Government's six-decade-old commitment to fix their water infrastructure.

The Arkansas Valley Conduit is the final unfinished piece of a water delivery project that Congress authorized in 1962, 2 years before I was even born. The conduit would wind its way for 130 miles, from Pueblo, CO, to the State line, traversing farming communities that had to rely on bottled water or prohibitively expensive water treatment.

This area covers a quarter of the land mass of Colorado. It is sprinkled with small towns and populated with small business owners and farmers and ranchers who are dedicated to a rural way of life, who have been fighting--generation after generation after generation--to try to bring this clean water to their valley but are living in fear that they or their children are delivering poisonous water.

There are probably not a lot of Senators here who aren't confident that the water that is consumed by their children or their grandchildren--the water that is consumed in their neighborhoods or part of their State--isn't safe. That, I think, would be a reasonable expectation in the richest country in the world.

Yet the inability of us to be able to finish this project--this joint project--has made it impossible for the hard-working people in southeastern Colorado to have the benefit--a benefit that other people just take for granted because they live maybe closer to a city or in a wealthier area than where the people in the Arkansas Valley live.

For 64 years, Coloradans have been relying on Washington to fulfill its promise to build on their efforts--they have been a big part of this in southeastern Colorado--to build on their efforts to deliver clean drinking water. The effort to complete the conduit has always been a partnership between the Federal and local government, driven by the leadership of the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District.

In the face of rising costs and materials and labor, once again, southeastern Coloradans, just as the generations before them have, came together to put forward an inventive solution to lower costs by changing the project's financing, with no increase at all to the Federal obligation here.

The House passed the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act last July, and the Senate passed it just 3 weeks ago, with the support of every single Member of Congress--every Member of the House, every Member of the Senate. There is almost nothing that ever gets through with that kind of universal bipartisan support.

Republicans and Democrats, under the leadership of Representatives Lauren Boebert and Jeff Hurd, my colleagues from Colorado, and Senator Hickenlooper, my colleague here in the U.S. Senate, we all worked together to ensure that rural Colorado would finally have access to clean drinking water, something every American should reasonably expect. And the folks in southeastern Colorado deserve it just as much as anybody else does.

Instead, when it got to his desk, President Trump used his first Presidential veto of his second term to deny Coloradans what should be a fundamental right as an American.

Article I of the Constitution explicitly provides Congress with the power to override a Presidential veto. Although overrides should only be used when necessary, they are essential when both Chambers of Congress have spoken clearly and spoken unanimously. There are very few places in the Constitution where the Founders actually themselves wrote about having a supermajority vote in the Chambers of Congress, and this is one of those things, because while they believed that a veto override should be rare, they believed that it was an essential part of this branch of the Federal Government exercising its oversight when a President does something like veto the Arkansas Valley Conduit, which is wildly out of step with what the people that we represent want all across this country.

If Congress allows this veto to stand, we set a troubling precedent. It would mean that noncontroversial, bipartisan bills that pass without objection can be rejected for reasons wholly unrelated to the substance and be weaponized politically.

It is no secret--and I am sorry to come to this floor to have to say this--that President Trump is, at the moment, engaged in a political vendetta against the State of Colorado. I don't think any President should be engaged in a vendetta against any State--obviously, least of all, the State that I represent. But what I worry about more than anything is that this is going to become a normal practice around here, which it hasn't been until now, where Presidents reward the States that support them and punish the States that haven't politically.

That is not how we should run this democracy. That is not how the Founders of this country wrote the Constitution. They didn't even think there would be political parties. They felt that it was very important for Congress to be able to be the backstop at a moment when, for whatever reason, a President made a decision that didn't serve the American people properly or well.

If we can't overcome this veto, I think it would say that no bill is safe and that the efforts of every single elected Member of Congress would now be at risk to one person's view and one person's decision.

Later today, I am pleased to say the House is considering whether to override the President's veto. They are putting it on the floor of the House.

I congratulate the work of Congresswoman Boebert and Congressman Hurd and the rest of the Colorado House delegation to work with the Speaker to get this on the floor of the House. It is absolutely critical for the people of Colorado that Congress act, that we support, once again, the Arkansas Valley Conduit, which we have unanimously.

Next week, this bill will come over to the Senate floor. I urge every single Member of the Senate to do what you did the last time, which is to support with your vote the 50,000 farmers and ranchers in southeastern Colorado who need the benefit of this clean water.

They are not asking, by the way, for a handout here. They have done their part, generation, after generation, after generation, to keep this project alive. They have done their part to get a unanimous vote in the House of Representatives and on the floor of this Senate to be able to keep their faith with their children and their grandchildren. The least we can do in this Senate is to uphold the work that they have done and also the Constitution of the United States of America.

I hope every person in this room will use this as an opportunity to stand with the people in southeastern Colorado; to stand with our Constitution; and to make sure that we all--all--take seriously the legislative responsibility we have as an independent branch of government.

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