National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2017

Floor Speech

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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I come to the floor this afternoon to talk against an amendment that would undermine the spirit of bipartisanship we have cultivated with the last several budget deals without fully addressing our national security and domestic needs and to speak in support of an alternative that would do so much more to protect our families, improve our national security, and build on our bipartisan budget deal in a truly fair and responsible way.

As I will go into a bit more, for an amendment to a bill focused on ensuring our Nation is prepared to meet future challenges here at home and across the world, the Republican amendment ignores too many priorities in the nondefense world that are critical to our Nation's security. It only supplements defense priorities, leaving by the wayside domestic challenges, such as the Flint water crisis, the Zika outbreak, the opioid crisis, and domestic law enforcement agencies like the FBI, to say nothing of investments that we also know improve national security in the long run, such as education, health care, a strong economy, and more. It casts aside the principles we laid down in our bipartisan budget deal that we should be building on, not tearing down.

I want to spend a minute or two on that last point, since it is a very important one. As many of us have said before, a budget is far more than simply numbers on a page. A budget truly is a statement of values, of priorities, of the kind of nation we are, and the kind of nation we want to be. That is why I am so proud that following the tea party government shutdown back in 2013, Democrats and Republicans were finally able to come together, break through the gridlock, and reach a bipartisan budget deal.

Our deal wasn't perfect. It wasn't what any of us would have written on our own, but it was a critical step in the right direction. It restored investments in health care and education, in research, and defense jobs. It halted the constant lurching from one crisis to the next, and it showed the American people that we in Congress can make things work when we work together.

We were able to get a bipartisan deal because we kept to a core principle, which was rolling back the cuts evenly across defense and nondefense investments. That wasn't the only hurdle, but it was a big one. Both sides agreed that we may not agree on everything, but we had to solve the problem in a fair and balanced way and one that addressed all of our budget challenges here at home and throughout the world.

Establishing this principle and then sticking to it in our 2015 deal is what helped us make the progress we have made and build a foundation for continued work. I believe it is a principle we need to stick to if we want that good work to continue.

We reached a 2-year bipartisan budget agreement just last fall. If the Senate is about to open that bipartisan budget agreement on this bill, then we should be doing it in a thoughtful and productive manner that allows us to build on the 2-year deal and address a fuller range of security issues.

Unfortunately, the amendment we are going to vote on either later tonight or tomorrow would move us in the wrong direction when it comes to this productive bipartisan work. Instead of building on our deal, it tries to circumvent it. Instead of working together to truly restore investments, it uses a gimmick to pretend to restore investments, and instead of working with Democrats to restore cuts on the domestic side that support our national security as well, it only supports the defense side and leaves far too much behind. I don't think that is right, and I think we can actually do better.

If Republicans truly want to work with us to build on our budget deal in this bill in a way that truly prepares us to respond to domestic and foreign challenges facing our country, we have an alternative. Our amendment, the Democratic alternative, would restore investments that help workers, the middle class, veterans, and families all across our country at an equal level to the defense priorities. It would invest in critical priorities that clearly keep our country safe, including supporting the operations of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and supplying the Transportation Security Administration with the tools they need to keep our airports and other transit hubs safe that have become a target for terrorist attacks and allow us to tackle the opioid crisis that is devastating communities in my home State of Washington and across the country.

It would provide the resources for us to respond to the water and lead issues in Flint and many communities in our Nation, and provide resources to help us address so many of the challenges facing our workers, our families, our communities, and our middle class and do it in the fair and balanced way that we all know works by building on the bipartisan budget deal and treating defense and nondefense equitably and fairly.

I urge my colleagues to support the Democratic amendment so we can restore these investments in critical defense and nondefense programs and invest in priorities that keep us safe and strengthen our communities and the middle class. Having a powerful military is important to our country's safety but so is access to safe drinking water and so are TSA agents protecting our transit hubs, Zika research to prevent further spread of this disease, and so much more.

I hope we can work together to build on our bipartisan progress, stick to our bipartisan principles, and keep our country moving in the right direction.

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