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Floor Speech
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Mr. RICKETTS. Mr. President, I rise today to note that the House, earlier today, passed a series of appropriations bills that will now be sent to the President's desk that will allow us to continue to fund our Agencies. And that is good news. It represents 11 of the 12 appropriations bills that we pass every year.
I want to thank our Republican leader for bringing these bills to the floor. I want to thank our chair of the Appropriations Committee Susan Collins and Ranking Member Patty Murray for their work to be able to get that done. This is important work.
One of the reasons I came to the U.S. Senate was to be able to help bring fiscal responsibility. As Governor of Nebraska, my budget grew at 2.8 percent per year, on average, across 8 years. That demonstrates the sort of fiscal responsibility you find in States like Nebraska. It is part of our ``Nebraska Solutions, Ready for America'' is bringing that sort of fiscal responsibility here. It was sorely lacking under the Biden administration in Washington, DC.
In 2019, the Federal Government, broadly speaking, spent $4.4 trillion, and we had a $900 billion deficit. Under Joe Biden's leadership, by 2024, that spending had grown to $6.8 trillion and a $1.9 trillion deficit, more than doubling the deficit, a 55-percent increase over those 5 years--a 55 percent-increase over 5 years in that spending.
In 2025, the deficit had declined by 9 percent. Now, we still have a long way to go. We have to get that spending under control, and that is why this appropriations process is so important.
The way we get our spending under control is by bringing appropriations bills to the floor of the Senate and giving us, as Senators, the opportunity to offer amendments and to vote on those bills.
Under the previous majority Democrat leadership, that did not happen. Though the Appropriations Committee was doing its work and passing appropriations bills out of committee--last year, 11 out of 12; the year before that, 12 out of 12--the previous Democratic majority leader would not bring those bills to the floor and, in fact, in some cases, brought the bills after the end of the fiscal year.
Instead, what were we forced to do? We were forced to pass continuing resolutions. Those continuing resolutions are terrible. They are basically just taking the budget and continuing to spend money at the recklessly high levels we saw under the Biden administration.
But it also undermined our national defense because when you pass continuing resolutions, the military cannot do long-term planning. And we are in a very dangerous world right now. We know that communist China wants to supplant us as the world leader. We see a war of aggression by Russia. We see Iran, the largest state sponsor of terrorism, funding groups like Hamas, the Houthis, Hezbollah, and we see North Korea continuing to launch missiles.
National defense is very important to deterring our adversaries. Yet we passed 13 continuing resolutions under the Biden administration. Now, under the Trump administration, with Republicans in charge of the Senate, we are bringing these bills to the floor. We are passing and getting them done. We still have to get to Homeland Security.
I encourage my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to work quickly with what they want to see in that bill to negotiate and get that bill done. This is important, too, because Homeland Security is what we fund our FEMA out of, right? So there are going to be disruptions to FEMA if we don't get this done. We just had a deadly snowstorm on the east coast, and that will disrupt those FEMA payments if the Democrats can't come to some sort of solution on what they want so we can pass Homeland Security.
Homeland Security is also how our TSA folks get paid, people who help us make sure we can fly safely around this country. It is how our Coast Guard gets paid. Again, it is important for our national defense. So all these things are wrapped up in Homeland Security, which is why it is important to get that 12th and final bill done.
I, again, want to compliment the House for passing these bills, compliment the Appropriations Committee here in the Senate, compliment our Majority Leader Thune for getting this done. We have 11 out of 12 done. That is 96 percent of the funding of our discretionary Agencies. Getting that done is an important step forward and getting back on track to fiscal sanity in this Nation. It is sorely needed. Republicans are delivering on that here in the Senate.
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