Ranking Member DeLauro Floor Remarks on 2025 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 2025 Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies bill:

***WATCH: DeLauro, "I hope Republicans will abandon their partisan strategy, and join Democrats at the table to support veterans, servicemembers, and military families."***

I thank the Ranking Member for yielding.

I rise in opposition to this bill that shortchanges our servicemembers and endangers military families.

Before I begin, I want to thank the majority and minority subcommittee staff, particularly Farouk Ophaso and Tyler Coe. And after nearly ten years on the committee, Jenny Neuscheler departed at the end of May, and in her place, Farouk is now minority clerk for the Military Construction-Veterans Affairs subcommittee. Congratulations, Farouk, and welcome to your first House Floor debate as subcommittee clerk.

Now, onto the bill.

This bill would hurt our veterans and military readiness, and worsen quality of life for servicemembers and their families. It leaves military installations, servicemembers, veterans, and their families vulnerable to natural disasters. And it harms women and moves us closer to a national abortion ban.

This bill disarms our military in the face of the climate crisis by failing to include dedicated funding for resilience projects to help protect our bases and installations from rising sea levels and extreme weather. The bill walks back investments in natural disaster recovery that help our military rebuild after disaster strikes, and it includes harmful policy riders preventing the implementation of executive orders on climate change and clean energy. Impeding our military's efforts to confront climate change puts servicemembers in harm's way, and hurts America's readiness and national security.

Military leaders, including under former President Trump, have cautioned of the dangers climate change poses to our military. Former Secretary Mattis warned climate change threatens American interests and our military's assets around the world, and said climate change is "a challenge that requires a broader, whole-of government response."

This bill endangers veterans by recklessly undermining the ability to keep guns out of the hands of those prohibited under Federal law from purchasing or possessing firearms – who could be a harm to themselves or others.

And this bill attacks the rights of women veterans by limiting abortion access and prohibiting abortion counseling.

The women who volunteered to serve and defend our nation should not come home to find their medical and family planning decisions being made by anyone other than themselves, their families, and their doctors.

We will defeat all of the majority's anti-choice riders, as we did last year. But I am dismayed this body is being forced to waste time with this charade yet again.

House Republicans are taking us down an already well-trodden path towards chaos, division, and shutdown threats. Like last year, we are beginning this process with topline funding levels that fall short of the American people's needs, and short of what both parties just agreed to in March, when 80 percent of the Appropriations Committee voted to pass the final 2024 appropriations Acts. And the majority is pursuing harmful policies that needlessly divide the country, divide the Congress, and harm Americans.

Like last year, the final 2025 spending bills will be the product of negotiations between Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate. We can begin that process now, or we can squander yet another summer on bills that will never become law.

Our starting point for 2025 must provide, at minimum, a one percent increase in defense and nondefense funding, consistent with the framework set in the Fiscal Responsibility Act that House Republicans demanded as the price for averting a catastrophic default last year.

Let me reiterate: Democrats will accept nothing less than a one percent increase over 2024 in nondefense and defense funding.

Last month we received a letter from dozens of stakeholder organizations already frustrated by the House majority's stance. It reads:

"We ask that you take the opportunity in fiscal year 25 to restore some normalcy by rejecting these extreme and polarizing provisions and cuts, which are as damaging as they are unrealistic."

The majority may want to suggest they are supporting veterans, but this bill does not contain all the programs the most vulnerable veterans depend on.

At least 1.2 million veterans rely on food stamps. Tens of thousands of veterans rely on housing vouchers. Thousands of veterans utilize job training programs to reenter civilian life. All of these programs and many others face severe cuts under the majority's funding levels across all appropriations bills.

I cannot support this bill. I hope Republicans will abandon their partisan strategy, and join Democrats at the table to support veterans, servicemembers, and military families. It is time to govern.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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