Budget Agreement

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, yesterday the administration informed congressional leaders that Secretary Mnuchin, White House Chief of Staff Mulvaney, and Acting OMB Director Vought reached a deal with Speaker Pelosi to prevent a government-funding crisis and deliver on President Trump's top priorities.

The agreement secures the most important priority of the Republican conference. In fact, in my view, it is the most important obligation of the entire Congress; that is, securing the resources we need to provide for the common defense. This deal does it.

Over the past 2\1/2\ years, Republicans in Congress have worked with the President to stop and reverse the decline in the strength and readiness of our Armed Forces. After years of insufficient funding that hurt readiness and tied commanders' hands, Congress and President Trump have secured badly needed funding increases to rebuild and modernize the U.S. military.

There is still more work ahead. The progress we have made remains tenuous. America's adversaries are not taking their foot off the gas anytime soon, so we can't either. We have to keep up the momentum. This agreement provides the stability of funding our military deserves and requires. Thanks to tough negotiating by the Trump administration, this deal delivers for the security of our Nation. It delivers for our men and women in uniform. It protects the progress of the last 2 years and provides the fuel for further progress. That is the bottom line.

The nature of divided government means this certainly isn't the agreement Republicans would have written all by ourselves; for example, I will never understand why our Democratic colleagues treat funding the U.S. Armed Forces like a Republican priority that somehow needs to be matched up with additional spending that Democrats like in order to make it palatable for them. It seems to me every one of us, both sides, should jump at the chance to fund defense adequately.

Alas, that is not a mystery that is going to be solved for me in the immediate future. The fact is, the Federal Government is coming up with urgent deadlines with respect to the debt limit and beginning the appropriations process.

The full faith and credit of the United States cannot be in question. The last thing Americans need is for Washington to throw a big wrench in this red-hot economy that is creating historic levels of job opportunities and growing their take-home pay, and so faced with our Democratic colleagues' reluctance, the Trump administration took the high road. They did what needed to be done for our Armed Forces and veterans and negotiated a successful deal. In fact, compared to current law, the administration has secured a larger increase for defense spending than for nondefense. Let me say that again: a larger increase for defense than for nondefense compared to current law.

What is more, the administration successfully kept leftwing poison pills and policy riders far away from this agreement. We know some of the far left have been hankering to claw back the Hyde amendment protections or cut away at reprogramming authorities and flexibility that Presidents rightly possess. I applaud the fact that no leftwing riders like that were allowed into the deal.

This is the deal that was necessary to continue rebuilding our national defense after years of neglect, and it is the deal that was possible in divided government. I am proud to join President Trump in support of it, and I will be proud to support it when the Senate votes on the agreement before we adjourn at the end of this month.

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