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Floor Speech

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Mr. MORAN. Madam President, it is a pleasure to be here on the Senate floor tonight on an occasion that many of us, if not all of us, have waited days, months, years. We have been working a long time to return the U.S. Senate to the position in which we actually legislate, to the position in which appropriations bills, after a topline number, a budget number is determined, Committee on Appropriations begins the deliberation after weeks, months of consideration, of information, of witnesses, of testimony, of reports, and requests from our colleagues across the Senate.

Sometimes I think the appropriators are thought of as a unique group of people, but isn't the reality that every Member of the U.S. Senate is an appropriator? That is because when the committee finishes its work, upon our conclusion of our deliberations and our votes, then every Member of the U.S. Senate has an opportunity to speak and to amend the legislation that we have developed.

Appropriations is really an opportunity for us to make sure that the taxpayers' dollars are well spent, that we look for opportunities to reduce spending where it is inappropriate, and support projects and functions of government that matter to the American people, from things that affect people in their daily lives to the broad picture of our country's national security.

So I congratulate the leaders of the Senate. The majority leader, who upon his election to serve as majority leader, determined that he was going to be certain that we returned to something we called, in days gone by, regular order in which the committee passes 12 appropriations bills, and the Senate considers those 12 appropriations bills.

They are considered by the House, and when conferenced and reconciled, off to the President. In the absence of that, the Congress of the United States and my colleagues in the Senate, we lose authority and control over one of our primary responsibilities. On behalf of the American people, we make decisions about their hard-earned dollars and how they are spent. We make decisions about how to avoid spending that is wasteful. And that appropriation process has been absent for way too long in this body.

The bills that we are about to consider--and there will be a unanimous consent request made by me in a few moments, and that unanimous consent request will ask that four appropriations bills be considered by the U.S. Senate beginning this evening.

Four appropriations bills because those four appropriations bills have come through the committee process. Almost without exception, they have been approved in a largely bipartisan way--in many instances unanimously by every Republican and Democrat on the committee. And in every instance, they were passed by both, supported by both Republicans and Democrats.

The Appropriations Committee, although we, from time to time, have our challenges like every other committee in the Senate, has a reputation for working together to get a good result. And we are accomplishing that in the efforts that we are bringing to the Senate, to our colleagues tonight, to the American people, to see our work product on four bills.

That process requires unanimous consent--that every Member, all 100 of us, has an opportunity to make certain that they are ready to proceed. It is required because we are amending, we are adding these bills to a House bill on the Senate floor. And to do so, we have to ask every Senator: Do we have your permission to do so? And that is what is going to take place here in a moment.

The bills we are talking about tonight, the bill that is on the Senate floor, the House bill, the package by which we have to utilize because the Constitution requires that appropriations bills commence in the House of Representatives--so a House bill is on the Senate floor this evening, and we are going to ask unanimous consent to add three other bills to that House bill. Those three other bills are Agriculture, the Legislative Branch, and Commerce-Justice-Science.

And I hope I am somewhat of an expert on many of the topics included in those four bills, but I chair the subcommittee in the Appropriations Committee that appropriates for the Department of Commerce, the Department of Justice, and a collection of Agencies involved in science. And in that effort to find a balance and support our bills-- and I will speak to the one that I am most familiar with--we have worked in a bipartisan way to create a product that is broadly supported by every Member of the committee, at least has the thought that they had a good chance and opportunity to participate in the process and got a bipartisan result.

For my colleagues who know me, I came here to legislate. I have had the opportunity to work in the U.S. Senate where legislation has been more rare than I want it to be, and I am proud of our efforts to bring Members of this body together to see that we have an end product for consideration by our colleagues, and presumably, passage by the U.S. Senate, consideration by the House, and a signature by the President.

We don't legislate often enough, as I said, and the sad thing is that I have said this before to my colleagues: I don't know why anybody would want to be a Member of the U.S. Senate if it wasn't to accomplish results, to work together to get a product that meant something for the benefit of our constituents back home.

That meant something for the brighter and better future for the American people and made our country more safe and secure.

When we don't do our responsibilities, when we are unable to accomplish that goal, we harm not only the institution of the U.S. Senate and its role in our government, but we harm the American people.

In the bill that I am most responsible for in this package of four, the Department of Commerce is what you might expect it to be. It affects our business communities and climate. It affects international trade. It is important for communications and telecommunications and broadband.

There is a broad array of issues and Agencies within the Department of Commerce that we are monitoring. We are making certain they are performing correctly to the best of our ability, and we are determining how much money they need to operate.

The Department of Justice is one that certainly comes home to the American people quickly. It is in many instances about law enforcement. This Department funds, for example, the FBI, the DEA, the ATF, the U.S. Marshals, and they fund many grants to our local sheriff's and police departments--hugely important for the safety and well-being of American citizens.

We have been at this process, and we are making certain that we have done everything we can to make certain that law enforcement are adequately resourced for the protection of the American people and themselves.

Science--that is the third component of the bill I am most familiar with. Science is, among other things, NASA, our exploration of space; the study of STEM education, the opportunity to excite young men and women, boys and girls, across the country who see an astronaut in space and dream the dream of being that person in their future and, in that process, have a love for STEM education, for science, mathematics, engineering, research--something so important to the future of our Nation, something that protects us as an economy and, as importantly, protects us in our national defense.

We also invest in something called NSF, the National Science Foundation--again, where we produce products and research and information that enhance the quality of life, the future of our country, and our national security. It is a very, hugely important bill to the U.S. Senate, and more importantly, it is important to us because it is important to America.

So the goal this evening is to see that that bill, Commerce-Justice- Science, and the other two bills are added to the House bill that is before us that funds veterans and military construction.

So to start this process on the appropriations process--and, again, let me thank the majority leader, the Senator from South Dakota; my colleague, the vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, the Senator from Washington, Senator Murray; and the chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, the Senator from Maine, who have worked so diligently to get us to the point that we are tonight.

Nothing has been easy, but there have been significant compromises and efforts to work together at a time in which the Senate finds too many reasons to be divided. It is enjoyable to be on a committee in which, even though we have our differences and even though there have been things that have intruded on each of our desires to have something done in the committee--there have been problems that come from the outside that distract us from our ability to work together. This committee said: We acknowledge the distractions, we acknowledge the differences, but we are going to do everything this year to make certain that the appropriations process works.

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