Space Launch Liability Indemnification Extension Act

Floor Speech

Mrs. SHAHEEN. Madam President, I thank the esteemed chair of the Appropriations Committee for her kind words, and especially for all of the work she has done to get us to this point where we have an appropriations bill before us. I know she has worked very hard with Ranking Member Shelby, the House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers and Ranking Member Lowey.

It was Senator Mikulski's leadership on this bill that got us to an agreement to fund the government for the rest of 2014, and to do it in a way that will support job creation, economic growth, and our national security. So I thank the chairman.

I am a new member of the Appropriations Committee. I am currently the chair of the Legislative Branch Subcommittee, and so I also want to thank Senator Hoeven, the ranking member of our subcommittee. It has been a real pleasure to work with him to draft the subcommittee work for the Legislative Branch Subcommittee.

For New Hampshire, this bill includes funding for the continued development for the new KC-46A aerial refueling tanker, of which we are very proud. The first round of those tankers will be based at Pease Air National Guard Base in New Hampshire.

It also makes investments in the new military construction project at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. We are very proud in New Hampshire of both Pease and the shipyard because they play a very important role in our national defense. These strategic investments will create jobs, boost the State's economy, and support our men and women in uniform.

I am also very pleased that this omnibus bill funds the Beyond Yellow Ribbon Program. This is a program that connects service men and women and their families with community support, training, and other services. As we look at the men and women coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, the Beyond Yellow Ribbon Program has been a very important program to help reconnect those returning servicemembers to their community. It has also been very important in New Hampshire. The Beyond Yellow Ribbon Program has been critical in States such as New Hampshire with many members of our National Guard and Reserve returning from duty overseas.

The legislation before us also funds the complete activation of the Berlin prison, just as it funds the Bureau of Prisons. In New Hampshire that funding is going to allow us to get to a full complement of about 340 local jobs in northern New Hampshire, which is very critical to the northern part of our State. It is going to provide a $40 million annual boost to the economy in northern New Hampshire.

I am especially appreciative to the chairwoman of the committee and to all of the members for the effort to help the fishing men and women in New Hampshire who have just been devastated by declining fish populations. The bill authorizes $75 million in disaster relief for those members of our fishing community, so many of whom have had their whole livelihoods taken away from them. This disaster relief money is going to help them during these difficult times. It will help them to recover and rebuild what I believe is one of the most critical economic sectors still in New England. It is certainly one of the oldest.

I am also pleased that this bill reverses some of the reckless cuts from sequestration and instead makes important investments in the future of this country--in our education, infrastructure, and in science and innovation.

Yet it also makes strategic cuts. For example, one of my favorites in the bill is that it prohibits taxpayer-funded expenditures on oil paintings for public officials. This is an idea that Senator Coburn and I have been working on over the last year, and I think it is exactly the kind of government spending we need to get rid of. It sends a message--a signal. Even though it is not a lot of money, it is symbolic for the public to know we are trying to address anything we can, and this is one piece we can agree on, and hopefully it will lead to others. The bill also requires all Federal agencies to become better stewards of taxpayer dollars because it invests in inspectors general in agencies across the Federal Government. Inspectors general help those agencies better identify waste and cut spending.

While making smart cuts, the bill also invests in priorities, such as science and innovation. It provides more funding for medical and energy research and development. Very important efforts are under way at the National Institutes of Health. They are finally going to see some relief in this bill.

It supports education, including funding programs such as Head Start, which have been cut under sequestration. Head Start has been cut in New Hampshire. It is particularly important because the more we learn about the importance of how children learn, the more we understand how critical early childhood education--programs such as Head Start--are to their future development.

The bill also makes infrastructure investments, something on which we have been too far behind in this country. It is going to help us as we look at rebuilding our Nation's deficient roads and bridges and creating jobs.

As we all know--and I know the chairwoman would readily admit--this bill is not a perfect bill, but the legislation before us is a product of the kind of bipartisan compromise that we have to have more of in Washington these days.

While I am very pleased that the bill addresses military retirement cuts for some retirees--survivor widows, survivor benefits, and for the disabled--we still need to keep working until those cuts are repealed entirely for all military retirees. It is something that I have introduced legislation on, and I will continue to work on it. I know there is a commitment from so many of us here in the Chamber to address that.

I will also continue to work to provide full funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, LIHEAP, which helps seniors and low-income New Hampshire families pay their heating bills, especially during the cold winter months. This bill makes a small increase in that program, but unfortunately, it is not enough to address the challenges so many families in New Hampshire and in the cold parts of this country are facing as we continue through this very cold winter.

Small businesses in New Hampshire have not forgotten that during the shutdown they faced uncertainty and declining revenues. Federal employees in New Hampshire struggled to make ends meet while being furloughed, and that shutdown--a completely manufactured and unnecessary crisis--cost this economy $24 billion.

I think--in talking to business people around New Hampshire and around the country--one of the most important things that this bill does is it takes the prospect of another manufactured crisis off the table. It puts in place a responsible plan to grow this economy, create jobs, and it takes away the uncertainty that has so plagued families and businesses across this country.

I had the opportunity this week to meet with the head of the business roundtable. One of the things he pointed out to me is that right now we are seeing the lowest percentage of private investment in our economy that we have seen in a very long time--in decades. It is most important that we in Washington provide the business community some certainty so they will make those investments because that is how we create jobs.

We need to put people back to work, and I think this legislation goes a long way to create that certainty and say to the business community and to those people who are unemployed: We are going to keep working on your behalf. We are going to try to make those investments and make sure we create the jobs to put you back to work, to keep this economy strong and growing, and to keep this country competitive.

In closing, I just want to say to my colleagues that now is the time for us to build on this bipartisan success we have seen and that the chairwoman has been able to accomplish with all of her other negotiators. We have this opportunity to build on that and to further promote job creation and economic growth.

Our country needs us to work together on behalf of small businesses, on behalf of the middle class, and on behalf of families. We need to pass this bill. We need to keep working together and address the challenges this country faces.

I urge all of my colleagues in the Senate to support this bill.

I yield the floor, and again I thank the chairwoman for her efforts.

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