Floor Statements

I do.

At this time, I will administer the oath to all Senators in the Chamber in conformance with article I, section 3, clause 6 of the Constitution and the Senate's impeachment rules.

Will all Senators now stand and raise their right hands.

Do you solemnly swear that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Alejandro N. Mayorkas, Secretary of Homeland Security, now pending, you will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws, so help you God?

SENATORS. I do.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the revised memberships on the twelve subcommittees of the Committee on Appropriations for the 118th Congress be printed in the Record. The new assignments reflect my selection as chair of the Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development and Senator Kyrsten Sinema's selection as chair of the Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies, both for the remainder of this Congress.

Mr. President, I move to proceed to legislative session.

Mr. President, I ask the Chair to lay before the Senate a message from the House of Representatives on H.R. 2882.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, we are nearing the end of what has been a long, winding, and tough process. I just want to start by thanking everyone who has worked with me to get here, and that starts, of course, with my vice chair, Senator Collins, who has been a really great partner throughout this process, and I so appreciate it.

I also want to thank our counterparts in the House, Chair Granger and Ranking Member DeLauro. And I want to thank all of my staff and the vice chairs who have worked tirelessly on these bills, all our incredible subcommittee chairs: Senators Tester, Van Hollen, Murphy, Baldwin, Reed, and Coons; our ranking members: Senators Hagerty, Britt, Capito, Fischer, and Graham; Leaders Schumer and McConnell; and all of their staffs; and so many others.

As I have said before, this is not the package I would have written all on my own, but by working together, we were finally able to hammer out an agreement on funding bills that protect and even strengthen critical investments in our families, in our economy, and in our national security.

Make no mistake, we had to work under very difficult top-line numbers and fight off literally hundreds of extreme Republican poison pills from the House, not to mention some unthinkable cuts, but at the end of the day, this is a bill that will keep our country and our families moving forward.

I want to talk about what is in this package before our final vote. I want to start with something that is a top priority for families and for me: childcare, which is far out of reach for so many people right now.

I will seize every opportunity I can to help families get affordable childcare. And in this funding bill, I am pleased to say that we increased Federal funding for childcare and pre-K by $1 billion. That is not even counting steps I secured to protect the CCAMPIS Program that helps young parents who are in college who need childcare or double the capacity for the universal pre-K program we have for our servicemembers.

Ultimately, we need to pass, I believe, my Child Care for Working Families Act to fix this crisis and make affordable childcare a reality for every family. But until we get there, I will keep pushing for every inch of progress to alleviate the stress families are feeling when it comes to childcare.

Can we take steps to help our military families get childcare? What about moms who are looking to get a college degree? What bit of progress can we make to help folks? These are the questions that motivate my thinking on this issue and many others like people's health and well-being.

This package provides crucial health funding. It boosts research funding for cancer, for Alzheimer's, for maternal mortality, and more.

It funds community health centers, local efforts to fight the opioid and mental health crisis, and the new Federal office of pandemic preparedness that I created with former Senator Burr.

In the face of House Republicans' push to gut funding to end HIV and build our public health infrastructure, we protected those vital efforts in this bill.

We protected family planning, not just from the House Republican efforts to defund title X entirely but also from countless far-right proposals to restrict women's reproductive freedom.

The American people should know that Democrats stood firm to reject every single one of those.

We also stood together to make critical investments in education, protecting increases we made to the maximum Pell award in recent years, educator preparation initiatives, and workforce training programs.

We rejected House Republicans' unthinkable cuts in funding for K-12 schools, which would have reduced funding for nearly 90 percent of school districts and force teachers out of our kids' classrooms.

Of course, this package does fund our staffs and Capitol Police here in Congress, our election security, and other essential, basic functions of government.

Then there are the crucial investments for our national security. At a time when Putin is on the march in Ukraine, the Chinese Government is growing its influence in an aggressive posture, and the Israel-Hamas war is still raging, American leadership could not be more essential. That is why it remains imperative the Speaker finally put that national security supplemental bill that we passed overwhelmingly up for a vote, and it is why this bill also includes investments to promote global stability, to keep our country safe, to deter conflict, and to ensure our military remains the strongest in the world.

That means investments in diplomacy, maintaining strong ties with our allies, upholding our commitments, forging new partnerships, providing more humanitarian aid, and promoting stability and global health.

It means investments in defense, not just funds for new equipment-- though that is important--but investments in the men and women in uniform who are our true frontlines of defense.

The bill provides our servicemembers a pay raise. It invests in childcare for their kids, like I mentioned earlier. It invests in food security and strengthens our efforts to prevent suicide and address sexual assault and harassment in the forces, and more.

This bill secured additional visas for brave Afghans who worked alongside our servicemembers during the war in Afghanistan.

Finally, this package provides critical operational funding for the Department of Homeland Security. It is certainly not a perfect outcome, but let's not forget that Democrats were at the table. We were ready to pass a bipartisan border policy deal until Donald Trump told Republicans to kill that deal.

But in spite of that, the funding in this bill shows we can at least agree to some extent that we must not shortchange crucial work: stopping fentanyl from reaching our communities; stopping dangerous human trafficking; cracking down on drug cartels; and ensuring our borders are operating safely, efficiently, and humanely.

Now, I hope my colleagues will work with me to close the book on fiscal year 2024, to avoid a shutdown and get this bill passed ASAP, and then let's make sure we all learn from the hard lessons of the past few months about how we do get things done in a divided government, because what we have seen at every stage of this process is that when we do work together, when we put our heads down and focus on solutions and listen to our constituents, we can find common ground. We can craft bipartisan bills.

But when House Republicans stopped everything to renegotiate the deal they struck with the President; when they insisted on partisan poison pills; when they listened to the loudest voices on the far right, who-- let's be real--were never going to vote for any bipartisan funding bill, that gets us nowhere. It wasted months of precious time far better spent crafting bills that grow our economy and protect our country and make things better for folks back home. After all of that delay, how different, ultimately, was the outcome? Think about that. Yet now we are here, 6 months into the fiscal year, and Agencies will just have 6 months left to leverage these full-year spending bills.

I believe we negotiated strong, bipartisan bills that will help the American people. This outcome is so much better than a shutdown or a full-year CR, which would have had devastating cuts, but it should never have taken us this long to get here. We should not teeter on the verge of a shutdown and lurch from one CR to another. Agencies should not be dedicating so many resources to preparing again and again for a possible government shutdown. Don't we all agree that the Pentagon and the NIH have better ways to be spending their time and their tax dollars? The far-right elements who forced this dysfunction claim to care a lot about fiscal responsibility, but the constant chaos they create is the opposite of fiscal responsibility.

The truth is, these appropriations bills are written over the course of months, after dozens of hearings, with input from nearly every Member, and they reflect the priorities of every State in America.

Working together, focusing on solutions, solving problems for people back home--that is the responsible way to get things done, and it is for the most part how we conduct ourselves here in the Senate.

Vice Chair Collins and I held bipartisan hearings. We gave every Senator an opportunity to weigh in on these bills. We crafted 12 bills that passed out of our committee overwhelmingly, many unanimously. I think we need more of that as we begin our work now on fiscal year 2025 if we are going to keep this process on track.

So as we finally pass this bill, I urge all of my colleagues to really take the lessons of the past year to heart. Congress can still work but only when we come to the negotiating table in good faith and leave politics at the door.

Before I turn it over, I want to submit into the Record a list recognizing our incredibly dedicated staff, the people who truly keep the trains on track and who poured so many long days and nights of hard work into these bills.

I ask unanimous consent to have that printed in the Record.

Madam President, I again want to thank my colleague, who has worked with me side by side, through ups and downs and challenges, for well over a year now to get us to where we are here today. We want to get this bill passed and move on because we believe that by working together, we make America better.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, the CBP One app is a downloadable app to schedule appointments with CBP at a land port of entry. Under our existing asylum laws, noncitizens may apply for asylum at our Nation's ports of entry.

Using this app improves security because it provides the CBP with advanced notice of who is arriving and of those individuals who have already passed security checks. About 1,400 appointments a day occur through the app. By providing people with advanced travel authorization, it allows them to avoid human traffickers and drug cartels and other criminal organizations.

Accepting this amendment will lead to more encounters at the border, pulling our agents from other work and responsibilities, like stopping drug cartels from getting fentanyl through our border, and it will create long lines at ports of entry as individuals travel to the border to apply for asylum, and it will all but guarantee a shutdown for no sensible reason.

I strongly urge my colleagues to vote no.

Vote on Motion to Concur

Mr. President, in that case, I will also yield back my time.

Mr. President, this amendment would create an outright blanket ban on trans kids in K-12

schools participating in any sport activity consistent with their gender identity in every single State.

Let me just say this loud and clear: This amendment is as bigoted and dangerous as it is unnecessary. Of all the challenges facing our Nation, I am stunned this is how any Senator would ask this institution to spend its time.

Trans kids deserve to be kids. They deserve to play sports, go to school, be with their friends. They should not have to worry about hateful rhetoric and laws that attack their very existence, and they definitely shouldn't live in fear of a Congress that is going to stipulate that their school won't get any Federal funding if their coach just simply lets them play sports with their friends.

That is nothing to say that passing any amendment on this bill will guarantee a government shutdown.

I urge my colleagues--

--to vote yes on the motion to table.

Motion to Table

I move to table the motion to concur with the Tuberville amendment No. 1781.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, this motion would impose exactly the sort of poison pill rider we all worked very hard to keep out of this important bipartisan package, and it is worth stating once more that there was a bipartisan proposal on border policy changes just a few weeks ago. Republicans walked away from that issue just as soon as Donald Trump told them to.

And, now, here we are tonight, facing a serious, prolonged shutdown. Some are pressing for measures like this even when they know full well they are putting forward partisan policies we worked very hard to keep out of this bill. And there is no way to support this motion now without forcing a pointless government shutdown--none.

If Republicans want to show that they are serious, they can work with us on comprehensive immigration reform and real solutions to the challenges we are facing at the border.

I urge my colleagues to oppose this motion.

Mr. President, we have a bipartisan, bicameral package of funding bills before us, and right now our job is to pass this as soon as possible. We cannot delay a moment further, and that is what this motion would do--needlessly drag this out even longer for absolutely no good reason at all.

It is already well past midnight. Let us finish this job, pass our bills. I urge my colleagues to vote no.

Vote on Motion to Table

The question is on agreeing to the motion to table amendment No. 1794.

Mr. President.

Exactly like the previous vote, this is a procedural vote that will cause a shutdown. I urge a ``no'' vote.

Like the previous votes, this is procedural vote that will cause a shutdown. I urge a ``no'' vote.

Mr. President, it has been a long road, but we are about to vote on a bipartisan funding bill that the House passed overwhelmingly, and we are finally ready to close the book on fiscal year 2024.

This is not the legislation the Democrats and Republicans would have written on our own. It is the result of tough negotiations. It is a bipartisan package that invests in families and our country's future.

I want to thank Vice Chair Collins and so many others for working with us to get this done.

This was not easy, but we all know how important the investments are that this bill makes in our country. It matters. So I hope all of our colleagues will join us now in voting to send these bipartisan bills to the President's desk. We don't have a minute to spare.

Mr. President, there were a lot of naysayers who didn't believe that this divided Congress could pass full-year appropriations bills. Tonight, we proved them wrong. We have finally passed all 12 bills to fund the government, and I am proud to be sending a $1 billion increase in funding to childcare and pre-K to the President's desk.

As chair of the Appropriations Committee, you have a responsibility: You help decide in a big way how to set the Nation's spending priorities. I wanted to write our bills to put working people--the parents I talk to all around my State who can't afford or find childcare--first.

I remember when I drove 100 miles to Olympia, our State capital, with my two young kids to try and save their preschool program, and a State lawmaker told me I couldn't make a difference; I was just a mom in tennis

shoes. Well, this mom in tennis shoes is now the Senate Appropriations chair. I think it makes a difference when you have a former preschool teacher and someone who lived what it means to be a working mom with young kids holding the pen in our Nation's spending bills. So I decided childcare had to be at the top of our country's priorities, and this time it was not going to get knocked off.

I am so glad we are making this investment in our kids, in our families, and in our economy. But this bill delivers a lot more. President Biden will be signing a bipartisan bill that delivers on the investments that matter most in people's daily lives--on everything from Pell grants to community health centers--this funding, free of the devastating cuts and extreme riders that was pushed by the House Republicans that would have sent our country back decades.

From day one of this process, I said there would be no extreme far- right riders to restrict women's reproductive freedoms in these funding bills--not small, not big; none. And there are none.

Democrats stood firm to protect a woman's right to choose in these negotiations, beating back countless far-right policies from House Republicans to ban abortion and attack reproductive freedom in every way possible.

These bills came about after some tough negotiations, but they will move our country forward.

I have to, once again, thank my vice chair Susan Collins for her partnership. We passed 12 bills with overwhelming bipartisan support last summer, and that was important. I think that bipartisanship and shared commitment to doing what was right for the country served us well in negotiating these final spending bills.

I hope my House Republican colleagues now understand that bipartisanship is the only path forward in a divided government. I hope they understand that when you strike a deal, you have to stick to it. It has to mean something. And I hope my House Republican colleagues will now continue to work with us, not against us, to deliver for the American people.

As Appropriations chair, I am so glad to finally close the book on this year's government funding. I am ready as ever to work with all of my colleagues as we determine what investments our country will make. Let's keep working to help people and solve problems.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H. Con. Res. 100, which was received from the House and is at the desk.

I further ask unanimous consent that the concurrent resolution be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that privileges of the floor be granted for the following staffer in my office for the remainder of the 118th Congress: Claire Monteiro.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the following staffer in my office be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the 118th Congress: Emily Trudeau.

Reserving the right to object, as I mentioned yesterday, we really have to get a move on and close the book on fiscal year 2024. We are 6 months into this fiscal year already. It is time to take the government off autopilot.

We have a carefully negotiated package. It is bipartisan. It is bicameral. It reflects the input of nearly every Senator and the priorities of every State in America and it is ready to go. We need to focus on the deadline in front of us and get this passed in a swift, bipartisan way so we can avoid a shutdown.

I would remind all of my colleagues so we can turn to fiscal year 2025. My focus remains on working with all of my colleagues to get that package over the finish line in a timely way. Therefore, I object.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, we have a clear and straightforward path ahead of us. We have at long last a bicameral, bipartisan agreement on all of our full-year bills. It is time to get them passed and close out fiscal year 2024. After all, we are now 6 months into the fiscal year. We have to get a move on.

So let's stay focused on the deadline in front of us right now. We are working as fast as possible to release the bill, the text of the minibus, as soon as

possible, and if there is bipartisan cooperation, we can get this package passed by the deadline.

This minibus is a carefully negotiated, bipartisan package that reflects the input of nearly every Senator and the priorities of every State in America. We need to turn the page on fiscal year 2024, take the government off of autopilot, and focus on passing these bills before Friday at midnight.

I object.

Mr. President, we have now at long last passed our first six funding bills for fiscal year 2024. While we are still now working around the clock on the final six bills, I am hopeful we will pass them in a timely, bipartisan way very soon. But I do want to take a moment to step back and really dive into the six bills that we did pass last week and what they mean for my home State of Washington.

I come to work every day focused on how I can use my voice here to help folks back home. When I sit down at any negotiating table, I bring with me the stories of every parent who is struggling to afford childcare or groceries or rent; every farmer and fisher whose livelihood depends on our crops, our salmon, and our environment; every researcher focused on making the next big breakthrough; every mayor focused on improving our infrastructure; and every young person who is concerned about climate change and our most basic rights.

And I take those voices that I hear at home in Washington State--the people I meet--into every room I enter and write their concerns into every bill I negotiate. It is a responsibility I take very seriously, especially as chair of the Appropriations Committee.

And I am thrilled to say the legislation that we passed last Friday-- the bill I wrote with my colleagues--includes more than a billion dollars I helped secure for local projects and programs in Washington State and delivers a historic $3 billion investment for the Hanford site cleanup.

I have practically been a broken record in saying the Federal Government has a moral and legal obligation to properly fund the cleanup at Hanford. Our work is far from done. But with this historic $3 billion investment, we are moving in the right direction.

And as long as I am Appropriations chair, I am going to make sure we keep up that momentum. No matter what, we are not going to shortchange the vital cleanup mission at Hanford.

We are facing a housing crisis. And it has been especially hard on families in Washington State. That is why I fought hard to make sure that bill protected and strengthened programs that help families afford the cost of housing and help keep families in their homes.

At the Federal level here, that means homeless assistance grants, eviction prevention grants, and Native American Housing Block Grants, rental assistance programs, programs that help people develop economic independence and help keep kids with their parents, and vital investments to maintain our Nation's affordable housing supply.

But it is not just funding for key national efforts that help Washington State. I am especially proud to have secured funding through congressionally directed spending for the Aurora senior housing development for seniors in Seattle, which will have 90 housing units.

That is a great start, but I know we have a lot more work to do when it comes to tackling the housing crisis. And I will keep pushing for progress with my colleagues every day.

In addition to the roof over their heads, families need food on the table. I held a roundtable in Seattle a few weeks ago, talking with experts and even a mom who depended on WIC; and as I told them, I take this personally.

I remember what it was like when my family fell on tough times and we had to rely on food stamps. Making cuts that leave our kids hungry was never an option for me, which is why I fought tooth and nail to make sure that bill fully funded WIC, which serves over 130,000 moms and kids just in my home State of Washington.

And we fully funded the brandnew permanent summer nutrition program I established--Summer EBT--which will now help feed half a million kids in Washington State alone this summer.

Plus, I secured $1.8 million for the South Kitsap Helpline. This is a resource for struggling families to help expand food distribution. In the richest country in the world, there is no reason to leave our families hungry. It is really that simple.

Now, another important need for working families in Washington State, like in every other State, is childcare. I hear about the childcare crisis everywhere I go.

We are still negotiating the bill that funds the actual Federal investments in childcare. But guess what. For parents to have access to childcare, we need physical childcare centers close to where people live.

So a big priority of mine in the last package was working with local organizations to help them build or expand their childcare centers. And so through Congressionally Directed Spending, we are going to be constructing an early learning center in the Meridian School District and another in Lewis County that will serve 80 students a year; building 17 early childhood education classrooms at the Cora Whitley Family Center in Tacoma; and relocating a Head Start facility for the Spokane Tribe Indians.

We also provided new funding to design child development centers to expand access to childcare for our military families, something I know we need more of.

I remain focused on protecting and strengthening the Child Care Development Block Grant now as we negotiate the next set of bills.

And I will always work to pass my Childcare for Working Families Act, but I will keep fighting alongside that for every step of progress we can make.

In addition to investments to support our families, I worked hard to pass funding for local projects that support our cities and our communities. Congressionally Directed Spending I secured will help Grant County upgrade security at its district court, Bainbridge Island build a brandnew visitors center at the Japanese American Exclusion Memorial, and the Indian American Community Services in Kent rebuild a community hub that will offer everything from small business support to early learning services.

Funds I secured will also support city efforts to improve public safety and make our justice system work better for everyone. And for the first time ever, the funding bill we passed includes $10 million for a new grant program to increase access to sexual assault nurse exams.

I worked very hard alongside Washington State advocate Leah Griffin. She bravely shared her story with me about her sexual assault. And we worked together to pass a new law and fund programs to help survivors get the care and exams they need to pursue justice--from a story Leah came to my office with, to a conversation I had with her directly, to years of advocacy and coalition building on the Hill together, to passing a new law--and now funding a new program to help survivors.

It is so important to me that my constituents know anyone can make a difference and have a voice in their government. And Leah's story and her voice made a difference. I am so proud of her.

I also worked to secure local funding for projects like a public safety radio network in Kittitas and Okanogan Counties and mental and therapeutic court programs in Spokane, Tacoma, and Stevens County.

I was just in Tacoma talking to city officials and others about the partnerships they are building around mental and behavioral healthcare. And I am overjoyed to be able to help and tell them the good news that new Federal resources are on the way to support their efforts.

As another example, I secured a half a million dollars for CHOOSE 180. This is an organization in Burien that is focused on mentoring youth and helping them stay out of trouble and build a brighter future for themselves.

I visited last month, and I got to hear firsthand from amazing young adults who participated in that program. This organization is changing lives for the better. And I am so proud of the work that they are doing.

Infrastructure, critically important. In the bills we passed last week, there are many, many important investments to help build our cities, update their infrastructure, make the streets in downtowns work better for pedestrians, commuters, and families. And that includes safety and accessibility improvements and funding for infrastructure projects in my home State of Washington--in Cle Elum, in Pierce County, in Spokane, in Seattle, in the Heights District development project in Vancouver, and Walla Walla, as well as road projects being undertaken by the Lummi Nation and the Makah Indian Tribe.

Speaking of pedestrians and commuters, we cannot forget about the investments in public transit in this bill. I am thrilled to say I secured new funds in this bill for Sound Transit light rail extension projects to Ballard, West Seattle, and Lynnwood.

And I have to say, House Republicans wanted to cut funding for public transit in their bill to a level where the Lynnwood Link simply would not have had the Federal dollars it needed to get done.

I made sure we stood firm on funding the Capital Investment Grants program. And because of that, we are now going to deliver the full Federal funding this program needs to get across the finish line.

There is also funding in this bill for upgraded bus shelters in Pierce County, a regional transit facility on Whidbey Island. And let's talk about our ferries. When it wasn't easy enough under the toplines in this bill--they were tough--I was able to secure millions in additional funding for the Federal Passenger Ferry Grant Program and include, for the first time ever, language to make sure Washington State Ferries can now apply for the rural ferry grant program.

I can't talk about ferries without talking about our harbors and our ports and our waterways. This package includes a historic $2.77 billion for the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund and new language I have worked hard to get in to make sure Washington State ports get their fair share for those funds.

There are also other crucial investments in our waterways and water infrastructure; millions for maintenance and repairs to the locks of Lake Washington Ship Canal--better known by everyone back home as the Ballard Locks--and preconstruction work at Tacoma Harbor; to say nothing of the bipartisan Infrastructure Law funds that are pouring into our communities. It is so important to all of us.

There is also funding for wastewater treatment projects at Soap Lake, Snoqualmie Pass, and to help the Discovery Clean Water Alliance return more clean water to the Columbia River.

I also worked to protect our State's incredible natural beauty and resources by fighting off devastating cuts and policy riders that House Republicans wanted to make to critical environmental and conservation programs.

This bill that we passed will help our State conserve new public lands, including in San Juan Island National Historical Park, the Willapa National Wildlife Refuge, and the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest to protect the Yakama and Wenatchee watersheds. And there are funds for the Mt. Adams Forest project.

I also secured full funding for essential Federal wildfire programs and protected a hard-earned pay raise for our brave Federal firefighters.

And, of course, there are investments to protect and restore our salmon populations, because everyone knows how essential salmon are to our economy at home and our current culture in Washington State. So I fought hard for investments in this bill to support salmon, on top of everything I have already mentioned.

Under tough constraints, I managed to either protect or build on Federal investments in Puget Sound restoration efforts; the Yakima Basin integrated plan; the Northwest Straits Initiative that I created; the National Marine Fisheries Service, including hatchery operations; and Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund.

Last year, I joined leaders from the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe, local environmental advocates, and experts to track evasive European green crab. This is something I never heard of before the last few years. But they are now invading Washington waters, and I learned more about the threat that they pose to our native species. And I am very glad to say we now have funding to help fight that invasive green crab and language calling for a coordinated Federal approach to this threat.

Another crucial investment: a much-needed $50 million down payment for the fish passage project at the Howard Hanson Dam. And I am so glad the President's fiscal year '25 budget that just came out requested $500 million to build that fish passage facility. And you can bet I will be working to fund that request and finish the job in next year's funding bills.

Of course, how we manage our water resources doesn't matter to just our fish. It is also critical to our communities and farmers, which is why I am pleased we could also include funds in this bill to improve drinking water systems in Dupont and Mattawa and support bridge replacement in Adams and Grant Counties as part of the Odessa Groundwater Replacement Project, which is critical to improving irrigation for our farmers and matters so much to our State's economy.

And I fought hard to secure other critical investments to support our farmers as well.

Last year, I visited WSU for the groundbreaking of their new Plant Sciences Building, which will be at the forefront of responding to challenges Washington State farmers are facing right now.

And I am thrilled to build on that progress by delivering investments in this bill to support researchers at WSU, UW, and the USDA center in Prosser, WA, as they tackle issues like little cherry disease, livestock resiliency, pollution from tires, pulse crop quality, and more.

Of course, when it comes to cutting-edge research, agriculture is just one of

the many fields for where I am very proud to see Washington State researchers leading the way. Whether it is quantum computing in Bothell, clean energy in Tri-Cities at PNNL, or aerospace work in Kent and across western Washington, this bill will propel the innovation that is happening in my State.

And through Congressionally Directed Spending, this bill will help fund new scientific equipment at Gonzaga's Bollier Center for Integrated Science and Engineering, Evergreen State College in Olympia, and Western Washington University's Advanced Technology Laboratory--not to mention funding for WSU to upgrade its electron microscope and develop a new nuclear hot cell facility; and for UW's Tidal-Powered Ocean Observation project in its new lab in Tacoma.

I couldn't leave the floor today without talking about the critical investments in this bill that we made for our veterans and our servicemembers. As chair of the MILCON-VA subcommittee and the proud daughter of a World War II veteran, I worked hard to make sure our funding bill lived up to our Nation's commitment to every man and woman who serves in uniform.

This bill fully funds our veterans' medical care and delivers record investments to tackle veteran homelessness, strengthen mental health services, and support women veterans' healthcare needs.

I also worked hard to secure funding for new barracks and a parachute rigging facility at Joint Base Lewis-McChord; build storage tanks and fuel supply at Point Manchester; update electrical infrastructure at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard; and advance other projects across Washington State bases like equipment, maintenance, and training facilities.

I also made sure our Senate bill reallocated $19 million to build 88 new homes at Smokey Point for our servicemembers and their families who are stationed at Naval Station Everett. I am proud to have gotten this through our final bill to help address a major need for more military houses in Snohomish County.

When it comes to support for our veterans and our VA facilities, I pushed to make sure this bill contains funding to help the American Lake VA Medical Center upgrade its facilities so they can provide quality care and for funding for the Tahoma National Cemetery and its work to ensure we honor the veterans we have lost.

Mr. President, I just covered a lot of ground, so I will wrap things up. The bottom line is: While these first six funding bills are not the bills I would have written on my own, they do protect absolutely critical programs and make needed investments in Washington State and every State in America. Again, let's be clear: We are not done yet. I am working to make sure we see similar results for people in Washington State and across the country in the remaining six bills that we are working on right now, this minute.

I am going to keep bringing the concerns I bring with me to every negotiating room for my constituents and work to get solutions to help them with every bill that I pass.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today in hopes of passing a bill in a few minutes that would support our veterans and our servicemembers by making sure that when they want to grow their family, they can get the care and services they need, including IVF.

The recent chaos in Alabama caused by far-right ideology put a national spotlight on just how crucial IVF is to so many women and families who are desperately hoping and trying to have children. The first thing we heard after IVF was thrown into uncertainty in Alabama was the horror of women and their families who had their dreams turned into nightmares as appointments were canceled--tens of thousands of dollars, months of appointments were callously tossed out of the window by the Alabama Supreme Court. Its decision rested on extreme ideology-- an ideology Republicans are working right now to enshrine into law nationwide.

Next, we heard Republicans tripping over themselves to proclaim that they stand for IVF even while still standing by the same extreme fetal personhood laws that caused all of this chaos in the first place.

I have said this before, but given how Republicans refuse to publicly disavow fetal personhood, it clearly bears repeating: When Republicans support legislation that says a fertilized egg has the same rights and protections as a living, breathing, human person, that is fundamentally incompatible with supporting IVF. That is the very ideology that caused the disaster in Alabama, and right now, the majority of House Republicans are cosponsors of a national abortion ban that would enshrine fetal personhood in Federal law, endangering IVF treatments everywhere.

But if Republicans really do now want to support IVF, if they really do want to help people who are trying to grow their families, why not start with our veterans and our servicemembers? These are the men and women who fought to protect our families. Why don't we make sure they all have the support they need to grow theirs?

I reintroduced a bill with Senator Duckworth last year--the Veteran Families Health Services Act--and it would do just that. I have been working to pass this bill for well over a decade now. It has gone through countless rounds of technical edits and reviews and is more than ready for prime time.

This is exactly the kind of straightforward legislation that we should pass through unanimous consent. It hasn't just passed committee before; it actually passed the Senate before.

The goal of this bill is very simple. It expands the fertility treatments and family-building services that are covered under servicemembers' and veterans' healthcare. That means finally having the coverage that gives servicemembers and veterans the option to freeze eggs or sperm before deployment, it means expanding adoption assistance at the VA, and it means expanding access to IVF for all of our veterans and servicemembers. Current coverage policies for VA and DOD still leave out many committed, loving people who want to start a family. We are talking about a bill that would help our wounded warriors get the care and coverage they need to start a family.

I am really glad DOD and VA have been taking some steps under President Biden to offer this care to more people, including the expansion that the VA announced just yesterday, but we still have a long way to go.

I hope that every one of my colleagues would agree that our country should keep that basic promise we make to our servicemembers to take care of them when they come home; that when a soldier comes home with injuries and subsequently needs IVF because of that to start a family or really when any soldier needs IVF to start a family, they should be able to get it. So how about we take action right now, today, to make that a reality. It should not be controversial, especially if Republicans are serious even in the slightest about supporting IVF.

This bill is just saying: Yes, we want to make sure that all of our veterans, all of our servicemembers have access to the family-building services and fertility treatments they need. Given all that we have heard in recent weeks, this should be hugely bipartisan.

We stand by our veterans. If you stand by IVF, if you want to see our military families growing and thriving, we need to send that message now and send this legislation that I will be asking unanimous consent on shortly to the President's desk as soon as possible.

Mr. President, I know I have a number of Members who are coming to the floor to speak to this, so I will suggest the absence of a quorum until that time.

Mr. President, as in legislative session, notwithstanding the provisions of rule XX, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be discharged from further consideration of S. 2801, the Veteran Families Health Services Act of 2023, and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I am deeply disappointed but not surprised.

Let the record show I have been trying to pass this legislation into law for well over a decade. It wasn't yesterday. It wasn't last year-- for well over a decade.

And for the entire time Republicans have been the ones who have blocked efforts to include this bill in any legislative package.

I had really hoped, after the outpouring of public statements in support of IVF from my colleagues across the aisle, they might finally change their tune, but the American people understand that actions speak louder than words.

On the unofficial CBO score that was mentioned, let's just say, I think it is a real overestimate of how many people dealing with fertility would make use of IVF and other fertility services at that cost.

And my understanding is it also adds the cost of children conceived through IVF being covered on VA healthcare for the rest of their childhood, which doesn't make a lot of sense since many of those families will have children one way or the other anyway. So I dispute that, but I will say, it is pretty clear, Republicans do not support IVF, despite their language, not even for wounded servicemembers and for veterans.

But having said that, my door is open. I am determined. If a servicemember goes overseas and is wounded and comes home and cannot conceive a family, we should be there to provide service for them. It is our promise to our veterans that when they serve us, we will take care of them when they get home.

What is not more basic than making sure they can have a family after serving our country? So I am disappointed once again, but I will not stop working on this. It is the right thing to do.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask that the Senator modify his request so

that the cloture motion with respect to the House message be withdrawn and the only motions and amendments in order to the House message to accompany H.R. 4366 be the following: Lee amendment No. 1623, Schmitt amendment No. 1626, Scott of Florida amendment No. 1645, and Scott of Florida motion to refer; further, that the Senate vote on the above motion and amendments in the order listed, with 60 affirmative votes required for adoption; that upon disposition of the Scott motion to refer, the pending amendments and motion be withdrawn and the Senate vote on the motion to concur in the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 4366, as amended, if amended, with 60 affirmative votes required for adoption of the motion to concur, without further intervening action or debate, and with 2 minutes for debate equally divided prior to each vote.

I object.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum call be waived and that there be 6 minutes equally divided between myself and Senator Collins.

Mr. President, we are nearly there, and I am hopeful that we can all come together and get an agreement to pass this bipartisan, bicameral, full-year funding bill as soon as possible. We all know the deadline. We are here in the Senate, ready to move quickly in order to avoid a senseless shutdown. As I have said for months, we actually can fund the government when everyone sits down at the table and works in a reasonable, bipartisan way, and that is what we have done.

Getting here has not been easy. We had to work through some really tough top lines. We had to fight hard to keep out dozens and dozens of extreme poison pills. We had to work long days and nights and through weekends to hammer out the tricky details of this bill and make sure Members had the chance to weigh in with their priorities.

Our work is not done yet. We have six more bills. We are working on all of them right now. But this first package is evidence that we can get things done when everyone is focused on what can actually help folks back at home and what can actually pass in a divided government.

This isn't the package I would have written on my own, but I am proud that we have protected absolutely vital funding that the American people rely on in their daily lives. This package fully funds WIC, so moms and babies will not be denied nutrition assistance. It sustains our investments to help people keep a roof over their heads. It protects core programs to make sure we can continue to deliver on historic climate action while safeguarding our environment. It invests in keeping Americans safe and in keeping America moving forward as we rebuild our country's infrastructure. It strengthens our investments in cutting-edge scientific research, from advanced manufacturing, to AI, to clean energy. Critically, it delivers record investments in supporting our veterans.

Really, I could be here all day talking about the many investments in this bill that we all care about, but time is of the essence now.

This bill, I will remind everyone, received overwhelming support in the House. It won the vote of a clear majority of both Democrats and Republicans--339 votes in favor. That doesn't happen every day.

I have to say it wouldn't have happened at all without a heck of a lot of people who have been working a long, long time on these bills. So I want to thank everyone who put in the long days and nights for weeks on end to get us here, including my staff on the Appropriations Committee; Vice Chair Collins and her staff; our subcommittee chairs, Senators Heinrich, Shaheen, Merkley, and Schatz; and our vice chairs, Senators Hoeven, Moran, Kennedy, Murkowski, Boozman, and Hyde-Smith; and both of our leaders, Senators Schumer and McConnell. There are many people who worked hard to get us to where we are today.

These are strong bills. They provide crucial support to all of our communities. And, by the way, they are long overdue.

I urge all of my colleagues to vote ``yes'' so we can finish these bills.

Madam President, I have spoken out previously about CDS requests that Members have secured for their communities, but this one really takes the cake. It would, at the eleventh hour, wipe out all of the CDS requests in this bill, all of the hard work, all of the input we asked everyone to provide us about projects that would help their constituents would be gone.

This would completely overrule other lawmakers on projects they requested and secured for their communities that they know best; not to mention, it would sink this bill, all but ensuring a government shutdown. This is completely unacceptable.

It should be unacceptable to everyone who has worked with us to make sure this package includes the projects they know will make a difference to folks back home. I strongly urge a ``no'' vote.

Vote on Motion to Refer

Madam President, this amendment is exactly the sort of poison pill rider we all worked to keep out of this important bipartisan package. The census must be conducted in a nonpartisan, nonpolitical way to get the most accurate data possible, data that is used in countless programs that all of our communities rely on.

This amendment adds detrimental new requirements that would inject politics into the census and have a chilling effect on the Census Bureau's constitutional responsibility to count the number of people in the United States, and, let's be clear, this amendment is probably unconstitutional.

The Constitution requires apportionment by counting ``the whole number of persons in each State.'' The phrase ``whole number of persons'' is quite clear.

So in addition to just being plain wrong, this amendment is fundamentally inconsistent with the clear language in our Constitution. I urge my colleagues to vote no.

Vote on Motion to Concur with Amendment No. 1634

The question is on agreeing to the Hagerty motion to concur with amendment No. 1634.

Madam President, I want to thank everybody who has worked really hard on this.

For all Members of the Senate, I yield back all of our time.

Amendment Withdrawn

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that there be up to 20 minutes of debate between Senators Murray, Braun, Lee, and Johnson prior to the scheduled vote.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, last Congress, Senate and House Appropriations Committee leaders reinstated the practice of congressionally directed spending--or CDS--with bipartisan support.

CDS is one very important way for lawmakers to advocate for the communities they represent; and they know best.

At the beginning of this Congress, the senior Senator from Maine and I laid out a very robust process alongside our counterparts in the House to accept CDS requests for fiscal year 2024. The process includes important guardrails and requirements to, among other things, ensure transparency, ensure Members do not have financial stakes in the project they seek to fund, ensure projects are eligible to be funded, and that for-profit entities do not receive funding, and more.

If a project meets those requirements, it is eligible for funding. This is a Member-driven process, and we respect the eligible projects Members choose to request or to withdraw support for.

All four corners worked in a bipartisan way to make sure these bills could reflect the input and priorities of every Member. And that includes funding for eligible projects they have sponsored.

But what the Senator from Utah is offering would undo all that hard work and overrule Members about the projects they have secured funding for in this package. That is not how this process can or should work.

We have a process here that is driven by the rules we have in place and by Members' requests. And that process cannot be upended now at the 11th hour by a single lawmaker. Doing so would overrule other lawmakers and deny funding for projects they have secured for their constituents. That cannot happen now. I will not let it happen.

I object.

Madam President, I object.

Madam President, I object.

I object.