Ranking Member DeLauro Floor Remarks on Final 2024 Government Funding Package

WASHINGTON — House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03) delivered the following remarks on the House Floor in support of the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024:

Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, for yielding.

Madam Speaker, I am delighted and relieved to be finally closing out fiscal year 2024, and for that, I want to thank Chairwoman Kay Granger, Chair Patty Murray, and Vice Chair Susan Collins.

I am proud to have made history with such experienced appropriators—2024 marks the first time negotiations on government funding have been led on all four corners by women. I have many others to thank—Subcommittee Ranking Members and Chairs, staff on both sides of the aisle—I will be submitting these names to the record.

I strongly support the bipartisan bill which funds the majority of the U.S. government.

This bill sides with the hardworking majority of Americans and helps lower the cost of living, protects women's rights and access to reproductive health care, reinforces America's global leadership, and helps our communities be safe and secure.

I am pleased that Democrats and Republicans again united to make government work for the people. Like the funding bill we passed earlier this month, this legislation does not have everything either side may have wanted, but I am satisfied that many of the extreme cuts and policies proposed by House Republicans were rejected.

I am enormously proud that we are providing an increase of $1 billion for Child Care and Head Start, expanding access to quality and affordable childcare for hardworking families. We increase Title I education funding, protecting 224,000 teachers' jobs House Republicans tried to eliminate. I am also pleased that we successfully defeated each and every one of Republicans' extreme policy riders in the Labor-H bill.

In this package, we prioritize the men and women in our armed services and their families by securing pay and allowance increases of over five percent, the highest increase in decades. We invest in global health and support 12,000 Special Immigrant Visas for Afghans that assisted the U.S., and critically, we strengthen our border security.

I urge swift passage of this package, and I look forward to moving on to how we can best serve the American people in fiscal year 2025.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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