Ranking Member DeLauro Floor Remarks on 2026 Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Bill

Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03), Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Committee, delivered the following remarks on the House Floor in opposition to the fiscal year 2026 Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies bill:

I thank the Ranking Member for yielding.

I want to thank all of the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Subcommittee staff on both sides of the aisle for their work, in particular, Farouk Ophaso and Tyler Coe.

I am opposed to this bill, which will transfer billions of taxpayer dollars to private hospitals and clinics, leading to longer wait times, poor communication and coordination, a diminished quality of care for our veterans, and higher costs for taxpayers. This is a step toward privatization of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Because if you hollow out the VA, if you make it impossible for people to be able to access their benefits, then they will say, ‘well we cannot trust the VA.’ And they will move in the direction of privatization, and that is where this Administration wants to go. 

This bill would worsen quality of life for servicemembers and their families while putting veterans’ safety at risk. 

While our military faces massive recruitment challenges, the bill underfunds military construction by nearly $1 billion, hurting our recruitment and retention, and undermining our military readiness. By making it harder to keep guns out of the hands of those legally barred from holding them, this bill endangers veterans’ safety.

The bill leaves military installations, servicemembers, and their families vulnerable to climate change and worsening natural disasters by failing to include dedicated funding to strengthen our military installations against these threats, or to help them recover from past disasters. 

Defense leaders, including during President Trump’s first term, have warned of the danger that climate change poses to our military, and the tens of billions of dollars in damage to military installations from recent severe weather reinforces their point. Former Secretary Mattis warned that climate change threatened American interests and our defense assets around the world, and said climate change is, quote, ‘a challenge that requires a broader, whole-of government response.’

The bill attacks women veterans, who are the fastest growing group served by the Department of Veterans Affairs, with a policy rider that limits abortion access and prohibits abortion counseling. 

The women who volunteered to serve and defend our nation – to protect Americans’ sacred rights and our freedoms – should not come home to find their medical care and family planning decisions being made by anyone other than themselves, their families, and their doctors. 

These riders do nothing but put us on a path of partisan division that will make it more difficult to come to an agreement on full-year bills that can actually become law. Ending fiscal year 2025 with an unprecedented full-year continuing resolution was a missed opportunity to invest in our veterans and in our servicemembers. We should be working towards a bipartisan bill that can actually pass this year.

And finally, the bill undercuts our commitments to our military partners. The Trump Administration has already done a masterful job at alienating America on the world stage and turning our back on our closest allies. This bill goes even further, it underfunds NATO infrastructure by almost $200 million and undermines infrastructure projects our own troops in Europe rely on. Our credibility as a national security partner has been trashed by this Administration – now is not the time to retreat from our alliances even further.

The majority may suggest that they are supporting our veterans’ needs with this bill alone, but we all know that it does not contain all the programs the most vulnerable veterans depend on. 

Programs and services from food assistance to education to health research, which this Administration has illegally frozen and dismantled, and which their budget decimates funding for, support veterans around the country. Losing that support means abandoning our responsibilities and our promises to our nation’s veterans.

While I am glad that Democrats on the Appropriations Committee were successful in shaming our colleagues across the aisle into amending their original bill to include advance funding for the PACT Act, this bill still fails too many veterans in too many ways, so I cannot support it, and I urge my colleagues to vote NO.

Thank you, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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