Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2025
Floor Speech
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Mr. CARTER of Texas. Mr. Chair, I am honored to present the FY25 Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies appropriations bill to the House today.
This bill supports our troops, their families, and the Nation's veterans. The bill makes good on the Republican commitment to bring bills to the floor that comply with the Fiscal Responsibility Act while honoring our commitment to our Nation's veterans and our troops.
To honor that commitment, the bill provides full funding for healthcare and benefits for veterans. They have earned these benefits, and we are making good on our promises to them.
To provide for those who wear the uniform now, the bill includes $412 million over the budget request to support crucial investments in barracks and family housing. We must keep our word to our servicemembers and their families.
In addition, we provide robust funding to build upon last year's work to enable the Department of Defense to meet the challenges in the Indo- Pacific.
We also have multiple provisions in our bill to protect Americans' core values; namely, freedom, equality, and justice, from being trampled on by unaccountable bureaucrats.
I thank Ranking Member Wasserman Schultz for her work on this bill. Though we have our policy differences, I am glad we are at this step in the process and hope we can continue to work together in support of our troops and our veterans.
This bill cares for our veterans, and it supports our troops and their families, and it stands up for American values.
I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 8580, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Chair, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), the distinguished ranking member of the Appropriations Committee.
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Mr. CARTER of Texas. Mr. Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Wagner).
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Deluzio), a veteran of our Armed Forces.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Stansbury).
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Madam Chair, I am prepared to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. CARTER of Texas. Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
This is a good bill. I hear about all these cuts, but what I see is that we have done our duty to both our veterans and our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines around the world. We have gone out of our way to fund the area where we have our biggest fear of combat, which is the Indo-Pacific.
I traveled over there, as did Ms. Wasserman Schultz at a different time. We both saw that we have an awful lot of projects that have to be dealt with over there. We did our part to do that, and I am sure DOD will do their part to do that, too. We have to be ready in case and until the flag goes up, if it should, with the Chinese.
The issues on those islands is that the wind and dampness destroy buildings, so we are going to have lots of building projects that are going to go on over that way. We have provided the appropriate amount of funding as we had it available for those projects. We also had a bunch of barracks issues around the country, and we provided to fully fund a certain number of those barracks and to give guidance funding for the rest because we intend to fund them all.
In my opinion, we are always underfunded in military construction. I think Ms. Wasserman Schultz will agree with me on that. We have more than we can say grace over when it comes to funding projects relative to our military.
For that reason, I think that we have done the best we can for them. I don't see the cuts that are being talked about. I am curious about that, but then I am curious about a lot of things around here.
I am blessed to have a ranking member who I can work with. She is a kind person. We get along just great except we don't agree on any policies, but other than that, we get along just great. I guess that is a blessing, that I can plan to keep going after this.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Takano), who is the distinguished ranking member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee who goes to bat for our Nation's veterans every single day on the authorizing committee.
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Mr. CARTER of Texas. Mr. Chair, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole), who is the chairman of the full committee.
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Mr. CARTER of Texas. Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to support this bill, and I am prepared to close.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Chairman, it is with a heavy heart that we--unnecessarily--oppose this legislation on our side of the aisle because this bill was drafted in a way that it never should have been and doesn't have to be.
The stark reality, by any definition, is that this bill cuts military construction by $718 million from last fiscal year to this one, and it cuts funding for our veterans by $6 billion from last year to this one.
There is no way around that. That is actually what we are doing. That is the math.
It is also pretty unprecedented. We generally increase funding in this bill. That is why it is so bipartisan. It is why our committee goes first, because we have a bill that, as Judge Carter said, we are really able to work very closely together on the nuts and bolts of taking care of our veterans and our servicemembers.
Unfortunately, because the Republicans refused to adhere to the law-- that is, the Fiscal Responsibility Act--and refused to make sure that we, in that agreement, adhere to the agreement where we increased nondefense discretionary and defense discretionary by 1 percent, as a result, the allocations given to our committee were paltry. Republicans decided to make cuts to individuals who have signed up to defend our country, whom our committee is responsible for going to bat for improving our veterans' and servicemembers' quality of life, who are promised that protection no matter who they are, no matter whom they love, and no matter what gender they are.
It is wrong to cut funding for veterans and servicemembers, and it is also wrong to load this bill up with partisan political culture war riders that deny women access to reproductive healthcare.
Let's be clear. What the Republicans have done here is they are eliminating the ability of the Department of Veterans Affairs to ensure that no matter where a woman veteran lives in this country, she is able to access an abortion in conjunction with the recommendation of her medical provider in the cases of rape or incest and in the cases of the life and health of the mother.
What the Republicans do in this bill is that a woman veteran has to be dying in order to be able to get access to abortion care. That is wrong because no one who has signed up and who has served our country, committed to laying their life on the line in defense of our country, should have politicians, judges, or the government making the most deeply difficult personal healthcare decisions for them.
That is what Republicans do in this bill.
In addition to eliminating our ability to ensure that we can have seamless communication and support for our veterans, they are eliminating the DEI programming.
We have a very large agency. It is an agency in which we need to make sure that it can run seamlessly, but they are discriminating against LGBTQ+ people, and they are loading up this bill with unrelated, controversial, and unnecessary amendments that are going to prevent us from being able to make sure this bill can become law.
In fact, all those poison pill culture war riders are not going to survive conference, just like they didn't last year. We are wasting time here when we should be devoted to making sure we care for our servicemembers and our veterans, which is what this committee has always committed to.
I am sad I cannot support this bill. It doesn't have to be this way. I have tremendous respect for my friend, Judge Carter. He is right. We do work very well together.
Mr. Chair, I also thank our incredible staff for the work that they have done. Both of our staffs have changed over a little bit, so we have some newbies managing this. We appreciate all the effort that they have put in.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. CARTER of Texas. Mr. Chairman, this is a good bill. We are above the President's numbers both in MILCON and in veterans, and it just a matter of how you look at things as to whether the social things that we talk about have concern or don't have concern among our various people. We are speaking about the things that concern us that are causing people not to want to join the military because of the added on governmental interference in their lives by these various things that they have set out in regulations, and we are trying to correct that.
Whatever happens, every bill we have, somebody doesn't like something about it, but the reality is we worked hard. I thank my staff. I thank all the staffs for working together on this to come up with a good bill. It deserves a positive vote on the bill, and I hope all my colleagues will seriously consider voting for the bill.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. CARTER of Texas. Mr. Chair, pursuant to House Resolution 1269, I offer amendments en bloc.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Chairman, I rise to support this amendment. It contains a number of noncontroversial amendments from both sides of the aisle. I encourage its adoption, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. CARTER of Texas. Mr. Chair, I support this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. CARTER of Texas. Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment, even though I am not opposed to it.
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Mr. CARTER of Texas. Mr. Chair, the amendment has no budgetary effect, but highlights an important issue for our veterans. I support the efforts for the new treatment of PTSD so long as they are safe and approved for use by the FDA. I am willing to accept the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. CARTER of Texas. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
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Mr. CARTER of Texas. Mr. Chair, I rise in support of this study.
My brother-in-law Kurt Brown died of the brain cancer known as the ghost cancer, and he was both an Air Force pilot and a Delta pilot. I always thought that the exposure to the high levels and the exposure to the Sun had something to do with it. I personally support this and will vote for it.
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Mr. CARTER of Texas. Mr. Chair, I move that the Committee do now rise.
The motion was agreed to.
Accordingly, the Committee rose; and the Speaker pro tempore (Mr. Self) having assumed the chair, Mr. Crawford, Acting Chair of the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union, reported that that Committee, having had under consideration the bill (H.R. 8580) making appropriations for military construction, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2025, and for other purposes, had come to no resolution thereon.
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