Appropriations

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, at the start of this week, I said that the Senate would be focusing on government funding this month. We have a January 30 deadline to get the job done and avoid another government shutdown. We have already passed one package of three appropriations bills that was signed into law in November. Now we need to finish our work.

Later today, the House is expected to consider another package of three bills: Commerce, Justice, and Science; Energy and Water Development; and Interior and Environmental appropriations.

These three bills were crafted with bipartisan input from both the House and the Senate. The Trump administration supports this package. I expect we will see robust bipartisan support for these bills in today's House vote.

This three-bill package advances some important priorities. It funds programs that support law enforcement, promotes public safety in communities across America, invests in critical infrastructure projects, and it supports efforts to unleash American energy to provide affordable energy supply to the American people.

There is one more thing about this package that is significant. It spends less money than a continuing resolution. That is right. This bill spends less taxpayer money than if we passed another CR or continuing resolution to fund these Agencies. That is not an accident. That is what we can accomplish when we make appropriations a priority, when we put in the work, make tough choices, and put it up for a vote.

Appropriations is one of our core responsibilities, but it hasn't always been treated like the priority that it is. In too many cases in the past, massive omnibus bills were being written behind closed doors. That is not how I want to do things. When I became majority leader, I made it clear that I wanted appropriations to get the attention that it deserves, and we made some solid progress on this front in this Congress. We considered appropriations bills through regular order and passed three Senate appropriations bills before the August work period, something that hadn't been done going back to 2018.

We should be considering bills through regular order, a process that allows all Senators an opportunity to make their voice and the voices of their constituents heard. It is not just a better process; it creates a better product too.

When we receive this next package from the House, there is no reason that we can't take it up and pass it quickly here in the Senate. As I said, this bill was written with input from both parties in both the House and the Senate. It has the backing of the Trump administration. It advances a number of important priorities, and it actually spends less than if we just expended Biden-era spending levels for these same Agencies.

Once we finish this package, we have more work to do. Appropriators are working to finish the remaining bills for fiscal year 2026. One of those is the Defense appropriations bill--which is an especially important priority--to ensure that our military has the funding and certainty it needs to maintain and modernize its capability, support Americans serving in uniform, and protect our national security.

We don't have time to waste. It will require cooperation to ensure we can keep making progress as the end of the month approaches. I want to be clear that January 30 means January 30. We can't afford another extension. As soon as we finish, work will begin on the next appropriations cycle, starting with the President's budget request for fiscal year 2027.

We have done a lot of good work on appropriations this past year. I want to thank our colleagues on the Appropriations Committee, especially Chair Collins, for their hard work throughout the year. This work isn't easy, but it is important, and it is a responsibility we need to take seriously. I know they all do. Let's get fiscal year 2026 funding done and keep up the progress as we begin the process for fiscal year 2027.

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