Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024
Floor Speech
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Mr. RUTHERFORD. I thank the gentleman, the chairman, for yielding.
Mr. Chair, I rise in support of this fiscal year 2024 military construction and veterans affairs appropriations bill.
Despite some of the allegations from my friends on the other side of the aisle, this is a good bill. The budget process is not about how much you cut; it is about where you cut. That is what is important.
This bill is a good bill because it supports our veterans and our servicemembers. In fact, this bill fully funds President Biden's request for the VA and even exceeds the administration's request for military construction.
On top of that, the VA funding in this bill is $16.5 million more than the fiscal year 2023 enacted level--the enacted level. Let me repeat. This bill fully funds veterans' healthcare programs, period.
This includes keeping our promise that we just made to provide care to our toxic-exposed veterans, as we did last year through the Honoring our PACT Act.
I am also proud that we robustly funded military construction projects across the world, focusing on our barracks, our child development centers, to the tune of almost $800 million more than the administration's request.
This bill cuts wasteful spending, wasteful spending for programs that my constituents back home do not support, like critical race theory and DEI.
Now, they want to say that we have politicized the issue of abortion within this bill. The fact of the matter is, President Biden's administration, through rulemaking in DOD, put in this language--that is why we are taking it out because they put it in--that they were going to use taxpayer dollars to actually facilitate someone getting an abortion.
That is not what the taxpayers want. That is not what the Hyde amendment allows, and the partisanship that they referred to earlier is their partisanship.
This administration and almost every executive agency in this government now legislates by fiat. They pass rules, 100-page rules. Those aren't rules. That is legislation. That is law. We have got to stop that, and we are doing that in this bill.
I am very proud that in this bill we prohibit the VA from continuing to implement their abortion policy that they put in; it is nothing more than this administration's way of circumventing the Dobbs decision.
House Republicans are delivering on our promise to care for the men and women who have served this Nation.
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Mr. RUTHERFORD. House Republicans, we are simply delivering on our promise to care for the men and women who serve this Nation.
I commend Chairwoman Granger and Chairman Carter for having put this bill together in a fiscally responsible manner. Yes, we have made some cuts, but they were responsible cuts. They were cuts that needed to be made. We cut the waste so that we could help our men and women who serve this country in uniform. I urge support of this bill.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Dean).
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