Space Launch Liability Indemnification Extension Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. I am going to speak briefly. My Republican colleague across the aisle has noted he would like to speak next.

I want to take a moment and talk about what has been unfolding on Capitol Hill, with the House, Senate, the Republican caucus, and the Democratic caucus working together to produce an appropriations bill, a spending bill, a bill we refer to in Congress as an omnibus, meaning that it covers all 12 sections that are normally allocated within the appropriations or spending bill world.

I am a new member of the Appropriations Committee. This is the first time I can stand on the floor and feel as though I have gone through a process that is something similar to what our colleagues have done in a bipartisan way over many generations. But that bipartisan collaboration has been sorely missing in the time since I first came to the Senate. I am pleased to see in this particular moment it is a ray of hope that perhaps we can restore a rational budgeting and spending bill process to address the issues facing America.

I was delighted that Senator Murray led the Senate, working with Congressman Ryan, to produce a budget that went through both Chambers.

I am very pleased that our two leaders in the Senate, the Senator from Maryland and the Senator from Alabama, brought the two sides together to work with the House to produce this spending bill, because in the absence of a spending bill that has been deliberated on, what we have is a continuing resolution--which means we might continue to keep spending the money as we did in the past, even though the needs of the present have diverged from the needs of the past. That is inherently wasteful to keep doing the same thing we did before when different challenges are presenting themselves to our Nation.

I wanted to note a few of the things that were done in the course of this bill that I think are very relevant to the challenges we face in Oregon.

Let me start with the Yellow Ribbon Reintegration Program. When I went over to visit Oregon's men and women in uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan, they said: When we come home, we hope we will have a job, and we hope our public leaders will work to try to help those jobs be there.

Indeed, when someone comes out of that theatre of war and back into civil society, the structure of a job is very important to your sense of purpose, your sense of rhythm, your financial stability, your role in the family. So we have in Oregon a robust Yellow Ribbon Reintegration Program to help bring employers together with our men and women who were in uniform overseas but have now come home. We have so many who serve in the Guard who have gone overseas. They don't come home to work on a military base and still have a daily rhythm, they come home to civilian life.

Restoring and preserving this Yellow Ribbon Reintegration Program that was done in this bill is very important to many of our men and women who were in uniform overseas and have come home. It was zeroed out in the President's budget. It was restored in this process. I was delighted to be part of the effort to make sure that happened.

A second item that is very important to Oregon is hazardous fuels reduction in our national forests. Our forests are dryer than they were before. We have more lightning strikes due to the changing weather patterns and, therefore, we have had more acres, thousands of acres, burning.

We need to invest not only on the back end when there is a fire, we need to invest in the front end to thin out the forests that are overgrown, to get rid of the fuels that are on the floor of the forest that increase fire intensity and make it more likely that the fire will go from the ground of the forest to the canopy and be out of control. Those funds were dramatically cut by the administration and largely restored in the appropriations process. We need more in that area. We need to do more on the front end, but it was a big step forward to do what was done in this bill.

A third issue affecting Oregon is small ports. The last fiscal year there was no set-aside for small ports. I have many small ports on the Pacific coast of Oregon, as I know many States have ports on either coast or the gulf coast. These small ports are very important to our economy, and they shouldn't be neglected. The set-aside is very important to make sure they have the chance to repair their barriers, their breakwaters, to dredge out the slips or to dredge the anchorage in general, and so this is very good.

What about the debris that has been floating over from the tsunami in Japan and then cleaned up on the Oregon coast? Yes, this bill says yes, the funds that are available can be used to reimburse the communities that had to do this on their own because we had not yet acted in this Chamber to provide them with resources. That too is addressing an evolving issue.

I want to speak particularly to the investment in education, the extra $1 billion for Head Start and the extra $1 billion that will go to support IDEA and title I funding, large formula allocations.

We have 200 school districts in Oregon. Those school districts are often way too small to have a grant writer to compete in some newfangled competition for X, Y, or Z. They need core funds to reduce the number of students in the classroom, to address the challenge of providing education for students with disabilities. This budget helps significantly in that direction.

I wish to say thank you again to the leadership that was displayed, the bipartisan leadership of the Senator from Alabama and the Senator from Maryland. Well done. I am honored to be part of this process of trying to shape our Senate spending plan, our congressional spending plan, to address emerging challenges in America.

I yield the floor.

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