Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016
Floor Speech
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Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Thank you.
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Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I wish to begin by extending my congratulations to our chairman.
You are a distinguished chairman, and it really has been a great pleasure for me to work with you. I think we have accomplished a task which hopefully sets an example for other bills that will be shortly forthcoming. But, more importantly than anything, it is really the integrity, sincerity, and earnestness with which you go about this job of chairing this subcommittee. I am very pleased to be Tonto to your Lone Ranger. So thank you very much for that.
The chairman has been very distinct in his remarks about pointing out some of the major features, but we have one major infrastructure program in our bill, and that, of course, is the Army Corps of Engineers--other than, I should say, the highway bill.
That is $1.4 billion over the budget request. I think that is a very good number that should enable more projects that are vital all across this great land to move forward.
The second is the Bureau of Reclamation, and that is $163 million over the budget request. It includes $100 million for western drought.
We have 17 States within the Bureau of Reclamation's jurisdiction. What is happening with dryness in the western part of the United States is really a very serious threat to the economic and social well-being of our country. I am very pleased at that mark.
All applied energy accounts are funded at levels equal to current- year levels. We have increased funding for cleaning up nuclear sites, including the WIPP site in New Mexico and the Hanford site in the State of Washington. We matched the budget request for nuclear nonproliferation. Actually, this includes MOX funding of $270 million.
The chairman spent some time on the floor, and I did as well, in terms of making the point that what appropriations bills really concern is but 15 percent for what is called domestic discretionary and 15 percent for military discretionary. Together, they are but 30 percent of what the Federal Government expends and outlays each year. The fact of the matter is that 63 percent of the money that is spent in a given fiscal year--2016--goes for entitlements and mandates: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans' benefits, and all the other mandatory programs. They are not actually in the budget.
This is the huge spending, and interest on the debt is 6.3 percent. That brings the mandatory spending up to nearly 70 percent of what we spend in fiscal year 2016. In fiscal year 2017, it will go up slightly from there so that the relative amount of spending that these bills contain is very small in comparison to the amount the Federal Government actually spends.
There are a lot of people who think we should do more with entitlements and increase that 63 percent of total spending to even more. That is a question that remains to be seen, but how you pay for all of that is a totally different and more difficult story.
I extend my congratulations to the distinguished Senator from Tennessee on passing this bill. We have not passed a free-standing Energy and Water bill on this floor for 7 years, since 2009, when Senators Dorgan and Bob Bennett were chair and ranking member. Not only are we passing the bill, but we are passing a good bill.
I thank the subcommittee staff for their work. Interestingly enough, the staff had only 12 days from receiving a notional allocation, which is how much we can spend, to help us produce a bill and report it for subcommittee consideration.
So let me thank Tyler Owens, Meyer Seligman, Adam DeMella, Jennifer Armstrong, and on our minority side, Doug Clapp, Chris Hanson, Samantha Nelson, and Tim Dykstra for their hard work.
I would also like to recognize the work done by Senator Alexander's personal office and my own in helping get this bill passed.
Frankly, I want to thank the floor staff on both sides of the aisle. They were really helpful and, in addition to that, they were patient and willing to provide some guidance. So I thank them as well.
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