Appropriations

Floor Speech

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Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, this is a very important week in the Senate for many reasons. We will be voting on whether to proceed to the final six-bill package of appropriations bills sent to us by the House of Representatives. This package includes the following full-year funding bills for the Department of Defense, Financial Services, and General Government; Homeland Security; Labor, Health, and Human Services, and Education; National Security; Department of State and Related Programs; and Transportation and Housing and Urban Development.

Madam President, as a valued and important member of the Appropriations Committee, you know well that these are fiscally responsible bills that reflect many months of hard work and deliberation from Members from both parties and from both sides of the Capitol. They reflect input from nearly every Senator. Our subcommittees received more than 31,000--31,000--requests from Senators for these six bills alone.

Over the last months, our subcommittees have worked through all of these requests and done a great deal of important work. They have also worked hard on a bipartisan basis with their House counterparts to reconcile House and Senate priorities for these bills, as well as those of the administration. This was not an easy task.

In developing the final fiscal year 2026 appropriations bills, the House and Senate committees worked from a top line that is less than what Congress would spend under a continuing resolution. Priorities were realigned. Difficult decisions were made. This process resulted in successful bipartisan votes in the House of Representatives to approve these six bills.

Now, it is the Senate's turn to show that we can work together in a bipartisan manner to finish the job. It is so important that we do so because looming is a government shutdown--another harmful, unnecessary, and disastrous government shutdown--if we do not complete our work. Now, there are so many important provisions in these bills that need to become law, I am not going to go through them at this time, but I will later in this week.

Let me say that the tragic death of Alex Pretti has refocused attention on the Homeland Security bill, and I recognize that and share the concerns. I do want to point out to my colleagues that there are many safeguards that have been put in this bill that I would encourage them to review and that the vast majority of the funding in this bill-- more than 80 percent--is for nonimmigration and nonborder security functions.

It includes, for example, funding for FEMA. We have just gone through a horrific storm that has caused a lot of damage, and FEMA is very important. It includes funding for TSA. Those of us who travel back and forth to our home States every weekend are well aware of the work of TSA in keeping us safe. It includes funding for cyber security and physical infrastructure protection. And important to the States of the Presiding Officer and the State of Maine, it includes funding for the U.S. Coast Guard.

So I know that there will be many more speeches and discussions of all of the bills that are included in this package, but let me just say that I hope we can come together in a constructive way to get this done and to ensure that we do not lurch into a dangerous and detrimental government shutdown. So that is my goal, and I look forward to working with our colleagues this week to accomplish that objective.

As I said, I will have more to say on each of the bills as the week progresses.

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