Department of Defense and Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Act, 2019--Conference Report

Floor Speech

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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I thank my colleague Senator Blunt and echo his comments this morning. I come to the floor to urge our colleagues to support this conference report.

I do thank Chairman Shelby, Vice Chairman Leahy, Chairman Frelinghuysen, and Ranking Member Lowey, as well as Leaders McConnell and Schumer. Because of their hard work and leadership, we have been able to work together across the aisle and pass bills under regular order in a way that we have been unable to do for many years.

I also want to again thank my partners on the LHHS part of this bill--Senator Blunt, Representative Cole, and Representative DeLauro-- and I want to recognize the effort of the staffs on both sides of the aisle who worked extremely hard over the summer. Thank you to all who have brought us this far.

I am very proud that we were able to negotiate and pass our bill through our committees and the Senate floor of Congress--something that has not been done here on the Senate side for over a decade--and that we were able to work together to get this conference report done. I believe this was possible because we rejected partisanship and poison pill riders and worked together to make strong investments in families, patients, students, children, workers, and our middle class.

Our bill builds on the strong work we have done to increase access to child care and early learning. It includes targeted funding to address the opioid epidemic, especially in underserved areas, and significant new resources to address the truly alarming issue of maternal mortality. Senator Blunt just went through much of what is in this bill, so I will not repeat that but will just echo that we have done much in this bill for a lot of our families. I am proud of the work we have been able to do.

I do want to note, I was disappointed that we were unable to include language clarifying that the Department of Education can't allow title IV funding to be used to arm teachers and put more guns into our schools. I believe Congress was clear when we passed the bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act; that is not what the funds are intended for. I was heartened to hear many Republicans on our committee agree. I had hoped we could clarify this further for Secretary DeVos in our bill, and I do want Senators to know that I will keep working with Democrats and Republicans to keep the pressure on her to do the right thing.

The conference report we will be voting on today is a product of hard work and a commitment to bipartisanship. I am really glad we are taking this next step and moving it closer to becoming law.

Again, I thank Chairman Shelby, Senator Durbin, Representative Granger, and Representative Visclosky for their work and leadership on the defense side of this bill. I encourage all of our colleagues to vote in support of this conference report.

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