Cloture Motion - THUD Appropriations Bill

Floor Speech

Ms. COLLINS. Thank you, Madam President.

Madam President, the Senate will shortly decide whether to invoke cloture on the fiscal year 2014 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill. We have spent nearly 2 weeks debating this bill and working through approximately 85 amendments.

We were making progress. We even had a vote on a nongermane amendment, which clearly would have fallen to a point of order had one been raised. So no one has been shut out of this process.

Chairman Murray and I have repeatedly encouraged Senators to come to the floor, file, and debate their amendments to improve the bill we reported.

It has been an open and transparent debate thus far, a return to regular order--something I have heard virtually everyone here urge us to do.

Nevertheless, some Senators are intent on preventing this legislation from moving forward, despite the fact that this bill is not the final version of the transportation and housing appropriations bill. It is only one step in the process but an essential step--one that will allow the Senate to move forward and eventually negotiate with the House of Representatives to decide on a top line and to further improve the bill.

A considerable number of my colleagues have advocated for the House funding level of $44 billion and have opposed the Senate bill. But I would like to point out that not one of my colleagues has offered a specific amendment, account by account, to reduce the funding levels, program by program, in this bill to meet the $44 billion level in the House bill.

I personally offered an amendment that said that in October, if we find we have breached the top line of the Budget Control Act, we would go back to the appropriations process and redo the bill to meet that top line.

I would also point out that yesterday the House leadership was forced to pull its THUD bill from the floor due to lack of support. Some Republican Members thought the spending levels were too high. But it is surely significant that a substantial number of Republicans felt the bill, as written, was far too low and would hurt our homeless veterans, would delay repair of our crumbling infrastructure, and would slash the Community Development Block Grant Program to the lowest level in history, to below the 1975 level when it was first created by President Ford.

Let me point out that the numbers in the House bill were not realistic. That is one of the reasons it failed. The numbers in our bill are not unrealistic. They are too high. They would come down in conference. The President's request was artificially low due to several budget gimmicks and scoring differences. We took care of those gimmicks. We have an honest bill that is before our Members. Let me give you just one example of a gimmick that was in the President's budget. His request for the section 8 project-based rental assistance is insufficient to fully fund the 12-month renewal contracts with private owners.

We are not going to be throwing people out of those subsidized apartments after 10 months in the year. So Senator Murray and I added funding to more accurately reflect what was needed. That was over $1 billion of the difference. There was the difference in the scoring by CBO and OMB. We have to go by CBO. That accounted for $1.8 billion.

It is disappointing to me that we have not gone to conference on the budget because we would not be in this dilemma. We would have agreed-upon allocations that would guide the appropriations process. But in the absence of that, what is wrong with proceeding with this bill with cutting spending in it? If Members have amendments they wish to offer to cut spending--and there are a few that have been offered, but as I said, none that bring it down to the House's level in an account-by-account manner.

I am still hopeful we will be able to pass this bill and start bringing other appropriations bills to the floor before the end of the fiscal year because forcing the government to operate under continuing resolutions is irresponsible. It ends up costing more money in the long run. It is wasteful because we continue to fund programs that are no longer needed because we are just continuing current law.

So I urge my colleagues to think very carefully about this vote. It would be so unfortunate if we go home to our constituents in August and are forced to tell them we are unable to do our job. We should continue working on this bill. We should invoke cloture. This bill undoubtedly would have been reduced in conference had we been allowed to go forward.

I do wish to thank many of my colleagues for working with us as we tried so hard to advance this important legislation. I am particularly grateful to Chairman Murray for her bipartisan approach and collaboration and for working so closely with me throughout the process.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not thank our staffs on both sides of the aisle for their hard work. They have worked night and day on this bill. I will put all of their names in the Record. I know my time is expiring.

Let's do the right thing. Let's proceed to end the debate on this bill, take care of the rest of the germane amendments and proceed to final passage and ultimately to conference with the House. Let's show that we mean it when we say we are committed to full and open debate and returning to the process that used to serve us well.

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