Commerce, Justice, Science, Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, Interior, Environment, Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development

Floor Speech

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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Madam President, the substitute amendment to H.R. 3055 contains the Appropriations Committee-reported versions of four bills: Agriculture; Interior; Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, one bill; and Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies.

I was very excited to see today's earlier cloture vote, which passed 88 to 5, which means that we can see those four bills to help fund government move forward.

The Commerce-Justice-Science portion of this minibus, or CJS, was reported out of the Appropriations Committee on a unanimous 31-to-0 vote. I particularly care about this bill as ranking member on that subcommittee.

The CJS bill provides $70.8 billion to protect the Nation from criminals and terrorists, warn us about violent storms and climate change, enable fair trade, promote manufacturing and sustainable fisheries, partner with State and local law enforcement, and provide resources for the census to count every person in the United States fairly and accurately.

CJS Subcommittee Chairman Moran and I took a collaborative approach to drafting this important bill. The CJS Subcommittee held substantive hearings, considered 1,564 individual and group requests from 75 Senators, and worked in a bipartisan way to meet the needs of the Nation and our individual States.

Under the Constitution, since 1790, every 10 years the United States has conducted the census, and we only get one chance every 10 years to get it right. In addition to determining the number of Representatives each State will have, Federal programs rely on census data to distribute more than $900 billion annually, nearly $4 billion of which goes to my home State of New Hampshire.

Chairman Moran and I have worked together to make sure the census has the resources it needs. The bill provides $7.6 billion for the Bureau of the Census--nearly double the amount provided in fiscal year 2019. This fully funds the life-cycle estimate for the 2020 census, along with contingencies that have been recommended by Secretary Ross but were not requested in the budget.

The bill also directs the Census Bureau to invest in partnership and communication efforts in hard-to-count areas in order to increase self- response rates and offset the need for expensive door-to-door followup.

Once again, the subcommittee has provided increases to law enforcement and grant programs that fight gun violence and violent crime. The bill includes at least a 3-percent increase for Justice Department law enforcement agencies--more than $476 million higher than the fiscal year 2019 level for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI, and the Marshals Service.

Especially important, we have provided $131 million for the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System, NICS--$24 million more than last year. This system is the key to making sure firearms are purchased legally and helping keep weapons out of the hands of those who wish to do harm. The bill includes increases for States to improve record submission to NICS and for mental health courts.

We continue to provide the full $100 million authorized for STOP School Violence Act grants. But as we know, gun violence isn't just happening in schools, so we have included funding for other grant programs, like $8 million for community-based violence prevention and nearly 10 percent more for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention to help keep children and their families safe in their neighborhoods.

We are also addressing another form of violence facing our law enforcement officers, and that is police suicide. I would really like to provide more statistics regarding this important issue of police suicide, but unfortunately I can't, and neither can anybody in this body because no Federal agencies collect data on the subject. That is why in the CJS bill, we direct the Justice Department to begin a national data collection to report on police suicide so we can all better understand the scope of the problem. We also direct the Department to report on best practices for officer mental health and wellness programs, including peer mentoring.

One thing we do know about police suicides, though, is that we lose more police officers to suicide each year than we do to officers killed in the line of duty. Our police officers need help now, so we have been able to add $3 million for grants to allow State and local law enforcement to provide improved mental health services, training to reduce the stigma of officers seeking help, and programs to address resiliency for departments and officers to handle repeated exposure to stress and trauma.

This is an issue, sadly, we know all too well in New Hampshire, where in the last couple of months, in the city of Nashua--our second-largest city--we lost a very much appreciated, well-respected, and loved police officer to suicide. We were lucky because the chief of the Nashua Police Department and the family of that officer were willing to talk about that suicide to raise concern about this issue so that we can know and try to address it.

Another area of funding in this bill that will help our first responders, in addition to the support to our State and local governments and community organizations, is the $505 million in dedicated grant programs to fight substance abuse, including opioids, and to fight drug trafficking. This amount is $37 million higher than the fiscal year 2019 level and $127.5 million higher than the budget request.

In part because of the resources we have brought to bear on the opioid crisis in New Hampshire and throughout New England, the substance use disorder epidemic is developing and changing, and we are now seeing a rapid rise in the use and trafficking of meth amphetamines. When efforts are focused on preventing and stopping one drug, sadly, we see others gain traction, and that is what is happening.

After hearing from local law enforcement and community organizations, this bill provides more flexibility to allow communities to respond to a variety of substance abuse issues in addition to opioids in the Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant, and Substance Abuse Program. Communities should not be turning away individuals who have substance use disorders because we have a narrow definition of the programs that can help.

Another way this bill seeks to keep Granite State communities vibrant--and this helps other communities that depend on coastal economies--is we reject the elimination of grants that help our coastal communities and their economies. The bill keeps key weather satellites on track and provides an increase for job-supporting coastal programs like Sea Grant, Coastal Zone Management Grants, the National Oceans and Coastal Security Fund, and the National Estuarine Research Reserve System.

The bill includes continued funding to prevent a burdensome and costly at-sea monitoring fee from being imposed on New Hampshire and other New England fishermen. I have heard directly from our fishermen in New Hampshire that without this support, they would have to stop fishing and declare bankruptcy. So many seacoast communities rely on a strong fishing industry. That is why the bill also includes $2.5 million for New England groundfish research, including looking at measures to improve stock assessments.

Beyond the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, the bill also supports strong investments in research and development at the National Science Foundation; the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA; and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST. The bill includes a 5-percent increase for NIST, which is an agency that promotes U.S. innovation and competitiveness through scientific and technological standards and measurement.

I am pleased that the bill provides $2 million for NIST to study whether firefighters are subject to PFAS exposure, a chemical that has been linked to serious adverse health implications.

What we have seen is that--we think the actual equipment that is used by so many firefighters has PFAS chemicals in that equipment, so that while risking their lives fighting fires, firefighters also may be exposed to a dangerous chemical that can affect their health. The last thing our firefighters need when they are on duty is to be concerned about the safety of their own firefighting gear.

Within NASA, we have provided balanced funding that enables science supported by decadal surveys, supports the International Space Station, continues developing and flying new transportation systems, and allows for an eventual return to the Moon by humans.

We have also provided more than $900 million to restore widely supported programs that the administration proposed to eliminate-- programs like Space Grant; EPSCoR; the Wide Field Infrared Telescope or W-FIRST; the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud ocean Ecosystem mission, PACE; and Restore-L. What is important about these programs is that they allow young people--students in every State--to be involved with NASA and implement high-priority science objectives and to get excited about space and the opportunities space investment offers us.

These are some of the highlights of just the Commerce-Justice-Science portion of this minibus. I believe it is a strong, comprehensive bill. I am proud it is on the floor. I hope it is going to pass with as strong a margin as we saw this morning's vote give us, and I hope we will be able to enact this bill into law before the current continuing funding resolution expires on November 21.

I want to give credit to all of the members of both the majority and the minority on the Appropriations subcommittee that helped negotiate our CJS bill and all of the bills that are on the floor. They do tremendous work, and they deserve our credit for all of their effort.

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