Trade Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. President, earlier this week the White House and congressional leadership announced a budget deal that will avert a potential shutdown of the Federal Government and prevent a default on our country's obligations. This agreement would provide relief to the arbitrary sequester

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caps for 2 years and maintain the full faith and credit of the United States by extending the debt limit to March 2017.
For months we have been calling on both sides to abandon any reckless budget cuts and work together to give the American people much needed relief from the sequester. I applaud President Obama and the leaders from both political parties for crafting a commonsense solution that protects the American people and our economic recovery.

This measure passed the House of Representatives, and now it is our turn. This agreement calls for $112 billion in sequester relief, providing necessary funding for critical programs on which many Americans depend. With this additional funding, dramatic cuts in these programs can be avoided.

Yesterday I spoke about the importance of biomedical research. Funding for the National Institutes of Health can lead to medical breakthroughs that keep us healthier and save money in the long run. One illustration: One American is diagnosed with Alzheimer's every 67 seconds in America, and $1 out of every $5 spent in the Medicare system is spent for those suffering from Alzheimer's and dementia. The numbers are growing, the cost is growing, and the research is imperative. If we can find a way to delay the onset of Alzheimer's, treat it, cure it, for goodness' sake, it not only will spare human suffering, but it will save our budget. So is money for medical research well spent? Of course. Yet in past years we have shortchanged it in the name of budget relief.

Well, this is a moment where we can keep our promise to the NIH, to the CDC, and many other agencies that are responsible for medical research. Thanks to bipartisan support--and I especially note the Senator from Missouri, Roy Blunt, as well as the Senator from Washington, Patty Murray--we are going to see an increase in the Senate bill this year for NIH if the Senate number continues, and I hope that it does. But it shouldn't come at the expense of other programs, such as the Centers for Disease Control, which faces cuts in our version of the bill and receives better treatment in the House. We can't be the world leader in biomedical research by cutting funding for NIH or CDC.

We should also restore funding for community health centers and substance abuse and mental health programs. As I travel around the State of Illinois, our State, like most States, is facing a heroin epidemic. We find that the overdoses and deaths associated with heroin are now striking a part of our population that they never struck before. The prevalence of death from heroin in America in the last 15 years has changed dramatically, and now most of the victims are White, between the ages of 18 and 44. And that means we have to do something about it, not only in policing--which is, of course, our responsibility--but also when it comes to treatment for those who are addicted. We can't cut back in substance abuse and mental health programs without paying a heavy price and inviting more human suffering.

We need to ensure that the FDA has the funding to fully implement the Food Safety Modernization Act.

The money in this budget agreement will help us reach these goals and many others. We can work together to chip away at the $850 million underinvestment in programs that help our veterans, ensuring that those who put their lives on the line for America are given the care, the respect, and the quality education they deserve.

We should use some of the sequester relief in the budget deal to fund transit programs and transportation, if necessary. I am proud to represent the city of Chicago. Our mass transit is essential. We, of course, stand by our infrastructure as well when it comes to highways, bridges, and rail service, but it is important that our mass transit systems across America be maintained.

The core capacity and TIGER grants--popular grant programs that have benefited the entire Nation--were facing cuts in early versions of bills. We can reverse it.

Senate Republicans funded the HOME Program, which is $66 million. That was a 93-percent reduction in funding for this essential housing program. We can start to restore money in that area.

Without the sequester relief provided in the budget deal, $770 million would be cut from America's schools. Who in the world thinks that cutting spending on education is the best thing for America in the 21st century? We don't want to eliminate critical title I funding for the most vulnerable kids in America. In my home State of Illinois alone, that amounts to a cut of about $40 million if we stuck with the original budget figures. Now, with this agreement, we could provide more money for education for the most vulnerable kids.

This agreement also protects our seniors by preventing Medicare Part B premium increases and deep cuts to Social Security disability insurance that were scheduled to occur next year. It also extends SSDI solvency to 2022 and prevents a 20-percent across-the-board cut in disability benefits.

The idea of sequester relief is not a new one. A similar agreement to the one we are voting on this morning was reached in 2013 between Senator Patty Murray and then-Congressman Paul Ryan, who yesterday was sworn in as the new Speaker of the House. That had widespread bipartisan support. This should as well. It was the right thing to do then, and it is the right thing to do now.

Government by manufactured crisis is no way to do the American people's business. After months of uncertainty, we have before us a plan to remove the seemingly constant threat of defaults and shutdowns.

The new Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, was very candid yesterday in acknowledging the broken system in the U.S. House of Representatives, and I think he could point to our side of the Rotunda as well, which has a desperate need for more bipartisan solutions. Our work is not done even with this agreement.

I encourage my colleagues to continue in the spirit of compromise and a shared goal of growing our American economy and providing fairness to American citizens. Let's pass appropriations bills free of ideological policy riders that seek to divide us.

I look forward to joining my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in passing this bill. Let's get back to work and face the critical issues which American families face every single day.

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