Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009
Floor Speech
OMNIBUS APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2009 -- (Senate - March 03, 2009)
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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from California for yielding me time on this bill and thank her for her support as we move forward in a very critical time to cast a vote that is very important to all of our communities, and that is for the Omnibus appropriations bill from last year that is currently on the Senate floor.
Let me start by commending our leadership, our new committee chairman, Senator Inouye, and our vice chairman, Senator Cochran, who have put this bill in front of us. This Omnibus appropriations bill before us that we are now debating is absolutely essential to every community in our country, especially as we work to address this economic crisis. Both of our Senators, Mr. Inouye and Mr. Cochran, have been very measured and evenhanded as we have brought this bill together, despite the many challenges we face. I thank them for their work.
I chair the Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation and Housing. I rise today to urge all of my colleagues to support this very important Omnibus appropriations bill. As I said, this bill is essential to families and communities across our country. It enables us, our Government, to meet the needs for health care, for housing, to make college more affordable, and to keep our communities safe. Just as important, our communities today are counting on us doing our job and passing this bill.
With this bill, we are fulfilling our commitments we made to them back in June and July of last year when these bills were marked up in our appropriations committees. Senator Byrd, who was the Appropriations Committee chairman at the time, held four separate markup sessions. Almost every committee member attended those sessions to debate and vote those appropriations bills out of committee. While, of course, not every Senator agreed with every line in every bill, they were written with the cooperation of our Republican colleagues. All of us had to make compromises, but in the end each of these bills was reported out of the full committee either unanimously or with a very large bipartisan vote. That is because each of these bills represents a bipartisan consensus and stays within the budget resolution Congress passed earlier last year.
Our Republican colleagues were full participants when we negotiated the final details of this with the House of Representatives. Therefore, the omnibus bill we are debating today reflects many of the same priorities Democrats and Republicans alike approved last July.
Even so, our Federal agencies have now been operating under a continuing resolution for 5 months now, since this fiscal year began. We cannot delay sending them this bill any longer. On Friday night of this week, at midnight, if we do not pass this bill, funding for most of our Federal agencies will stop. It will stop and the money will be cut off. The Federal Government will come to a halt. I think about what that means. Millions of Americans depend on this funding. We cannot afford to let politics stand in the way and risk a government shutdown, especially not when we face the greatest economic challenge since the Great Depression, not with so many of our Federal agencies working day and night to make sure the economic recovery bill we adopted last month can meet the needs of our families across the country, and not when we know communities across the Nation are desperate for help to keep transportation and safety and housing and all the other programs moving forward.
As chair of the Transportation and Housing Subcommittee, I want to take a little bit of time today to give some details about why this bill is so important to address the housing crisis and ensure the continued safety of our transportation system.
First of all, this bill is an essential part of our efforts to restart the housing market. In the last several weeks, I have heard some of my colleagues talk about how they want to focus on housing as we repair this economy. We cannot fix the housing market without the provisions in this omnibus bill.
Let me give just one example. Up until last year, the Federal Housing Administration's market share for guaranteeing mortgages had dropped to a low of 3 percent. But now that the mortgage industry is in crisis, lenders have turned back to the FHA in droves because they know it will be reliable. Yet, under the terms of the continuing resolution, the FHA is prevented from helping willing and qualified buyers get mortgages because that agency cannot guarantee more than $185 billion a year. If we do not pass the bill in front of us and raise that cap to a level above $300 billion, our effort to restart the real estate and housing industry is going to crash and burn. If any of us think it is hard to get a mortgage now, just watch that happen if we keep the FHA's loan volume cap at last year's level.
If we fail to pass this bill, we are going to throw thousands of low-income families out of stable, affordable housing. In the last year alone, 3 million Americans lost their jobs. Communities across this country are struggling to meet those needs. This is absolutely the wrong time to unravel the safety net we have in place. The 2009 omnibus bill would provide enough additional money to keep up with inflation and keep the current tenant-based section 8 recipients in their homes. If we have to keep the funding for that program flat, the consequences will be severe. It is estimated that as many as 45,000 families will be turned out of their homes if we don't pass this bill; that is, 45,000 families who would lose their housing and be forced to turn to relatives, shelters--wherever they can--for help. So this bill is critical to help us address the Nation's housing needs.
But the omnibus is also essential to the safety of our airlines, our railroads, our roads, and our bridges. All of us, I hope, are aware we face very serious challenges today because our air traffic controllers and our safety inspectors are retiring in very large numbers, leaving a lot of less-experienced people to fill their shoes. Those are the people who help us land or take off at our airports, who make sure our planes are safe. We have been working for several years to address this crisis. This bill is going to make sure we can keep hiring new air traffic controllers and safety inspectors so they can get the training and experience they need. This bill provides the money to fully fund some of the safety personnel we brought on last year. I hope it is very clear to everyone how important it is to keep up these efforts. If we do not pass this bill, not only will we be unable to hire new safety personnel, but we are going to have to fire some of the people we hired last year. We face a simple choice: We can hire and train new air traffic controllers and address that huge gap in experience levels between the workers who are retiring and the new employers who are at our towers across the Nation or we can just let those shortfalls get worse. I think that is an investment we cannot afford to not make.
The same is true when it comes to the safety of the rest of our transportation system. This omnibus bill provides critical investments in rail safety inspectors, truck safety inspectors, and pipeline inspectors.
Back in the fall, through the leadership of Senators Inouye and Lautenberg and many others, the Senate passed a comprehensive rail safety and Amtrak bill that was signed by President Bush. That bill laid out a very new vision for a modernized national rail network and a new safety system that requires adequate staffing at the Federal Railroad Administration. With this bill that is before us now, we begin to make those investments. It is not a moment too soon. In the last couple of years, a record number of commuters have parked their cars and started taking the train in response to the economic crisis and high gas prices. We have to expand and improve our rail transportation in America to meet that demand. But if we keep the funding levels flat, we could end up forcing Amtrak to shut down some of those routes instead.
Additionally, we finally got a settlement for Amtrak's workers last year after they were forced to go almost 9 years without a wage increase. That settlement was recommended by President Bush's emergency board. It called for the Government--us--to make a lump-sum payment in backpay to Amtrak workers. The bill before us includes the funding for that long-awaited payment. Those workers earned that money, but if we do not pass this bill, they almost certainly will not get it.
I give those as a couple of examples of what could happen if we do not approve this omnibus bill and get it to the President's desk by Friday. Those, by the way, are just the risks in transportation and housing. I know many of my fellow chairmen on the committee will be talking about what happens to health or agriculture or energy or law enforcement.
Less than a month ago, we came together on this floor to pass a huge bill designed to give our economy the jump-start we need to get the Government working again and make investments that are going to create jobs and strengthen our communities. We are already seeing it begin to work. But the progress we are already making will be forced to a stop before it can get any momentum if we do not put the people in place to carry it out.
That is why this bill is so important. This bill will keep the Government running at a time when we need Federal employees to put all of their efforts, every single day, into helping our economy recover. We need this bill to help ensure that our low-income families keep safe, affordable housing. We need this bill so that the FHA can help more people get loans and buy homes. And we need it to ensure that our transit system runs safely and smoothly. This bill is critical to every one of our communities, and we all have to work together and do what is right for the American people today. We all know our families are struggling and they are scared about what is ahead for our economy. They do not have time for us to play games. They need help now.
I hope we can all join together this week and move this bill, the 2009 Omnibus appropriations bill, to the President's desk by Friday and get our country working again.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the previously ordered vote slated to occur at 11:45 now occur at 12 noon and that the additional time be divided as previously ordered and the remaining provisions under the agreement remain in effect.
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