Fiscal Year 2013 Appropriations

Floor Speech

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleagues in support of Senate debate and passage of the fiscal year 2013 appropriations bills.

I want to begin by commending both Chairman Inouye and Vice-Chair Cochran for their leadership on the Appropriations Committee. In what has been largely a bipartisan process, the Senate Appropriations Committee has approved 9 of the 12 funding bills so far. A lot of hard work on both sides has gone into putting these bills together.

As ranking member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation and Housing and Urban Development, Senator Murray and I worked closely together to craft a truly bipartisan fiscal year 2013 appropriations bill. The T-HUD bill strikes a balance between thoughtful investment and fiscal restraint. In fact, this bill honors an allocation that is nearly $14.5 billion below fiscal year 2010 levels, a 22-percent reduction. These deep cuts reflect an even deeper commitment to getting our fiscal house in order.

I am proud of the work that went into this bill and the strong bipartisan vote this past April to report it out of committee. Like the T-HUD bill, the Agriculture; Commerce, Justice, and Science; Energy and Water; Military Construction and Veterans Affairs; State and Foreign Operations; and Department of Homeland Security bills have all been reported with overwhelming bipartisan support. In putting together these bills, the Appropriations Committee functioned the way committees are supposed to: we worked together to develop thoughtful and responsible bills that could be recommended for the full Senate for consideration.

As such, I was very disappointed to hear the majority leader's recent announcement that not one of the 12 appropriations bills would be brought to the Senate floor until after the election, virtually guaranteeing that we end up with a continuing resolution or catch-all omnibus that the full Senate has not had an opportunity to properly vet. I hope he will reconsider in light of our commitment to work with him to develop a workable and fair process for considering these bills.

Given the immense workload that we have before the end of the year--including enacting appropriations bills and preventing the so-called fiscal cliff, when enormous tax hikes and indiscriminate cuts to defense spending are set to kick in--I am disappointed that we have spent much of July haggling over proposals that never really stood a chance of going anywhere.

I understand that the majority leader has said that he doesn't want to bring the bills to the floor because the House is writing its bills to a lower level, but we have a process to deal with disagreements. It is called a conference. The Senate Appropriations Committee has reported several bipartisan bills that are ready for floor consideration. Why not bring them to the floor, allow Senators to offer amendments, and let the Senate work its will on this important constitutional responsibility?

As our Nation's economy struggles to recover, it is important that we complete appropriations bills on time and through regular order. It is important for the Senate as an institution that we proceed. It is also important for the American people to see that we can work together in an open and bipartisan manner to establish priorities, make hard decisions, and complete the work that the Constitution requires of us.

Last November, I joined Chairman Murray as well as Chairmen Kohl and Mikulski and Ranking Members Blunt and Hutchison to usher the first group of fiscal year 2012 spending bills to final passage, avoiding a long-term continuing resolution for fiscal year 2012. It is my hope that we will build on last year's success and bring the fiscal year 2013 appropriations bill to the floor to be considered through a similarly open and transparent process.

These bills make investments that not only create jobs now when they are needed most but also establish the foundations for future growth. Just as important to our economic future, however, is reigning in Federal spending; we must strike the right balance between thoughtful investments and fiscal restraint, thereby setting the stage for future economic growth. Uncertainty only makes matters worse.

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