Ranking Member DeLauro Floor Remarks on Republicans’ Abandonment of Bipartisan Compromise Funding Bill

WASHINGTON — Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03), Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Committee, delivered the following remarks on the House floor:

I rise in strong opposition to this continuing resolution.

We had a strong bipartisan and bicameral agreement among the leadership of both parties at both ends of the Capitol to avert a disastrous and pointless government shutdown, to provide desperately needed disaster aid and emergency assistance, and to provide Congress with the time required to enact full year funding bills for fiscal year 2025.

That bill was the result of a compromise. There were things in it Democrats liked and Republicans did not, and there were things in it Republicans liked that Democrats would have preferred to leave out – but that is the nature of government funding bills. They require compromise, and the support of Democrats and Republicans in the House and in the Senate in order to become law. 

That was true throughout the 118th Congress, despite Republicans’ repeated and failed efforts to write extreme and partisan funding bills, and that will be true in the 119th Congress as well. 

We were on the cusp of an agreement to move this country forward. 

Yesterday, a multibillionaire with apparently no working knowledge of government, or of appropriations, a self-appointed President of the United States, Elon Musk, issued a marching order for House Republicans to go against their own elected leadership and shut down the government. Soon after, Congress was on the fast track to a government shutdown. House Republicans are responsible for any harm and uncertainty brought upon the American people, and should some get their wish for a monthlong government shutdown, they will be responsible for cleaning up their mess come Inauguration Day. We are in completely unprecedented times.

The world’s richest man, an unelected contractor reaping billions in government contracts, is calling the shots in the Republican Party. Who is in charge? 

At the behest of the world’s richest man, who no one voted for, the United States Congress has been thrown into pandemonium. 

We had a bill on Tuesday that was the result of a year and a half of work, and which had the input of Republicans and Democrats. Their interests, their concerns, the needs of their constituents. This bill had no such bipartisan input. We are considering it mere minutes after it was released. 

It removes key provisions to limit the power of pharmaceutical companies, and abandons our bipartisan efforts to ensure American dollars and intellectual property are reinvested in American businesses and workers, instead of fueling the Chinese Communist Party’s technology and capabilities. It includes a two year raise of the debt limit serves to allow Republicans to cut taxes on the ultrawealthy like Elon Musk and raise deficits on the backs of the American people.

We must immediately return to considering the bipartisan, bicameral compromise legislation that Speaker Johnson, Leader Schumer, Leader Jeffries, Leader McConnell, and the four corners of the Appropriations Committee reached earlier this week. We must unequivocally reject the illegitimate oligarchy that seeks to usurp the authority of the United States Congress and of the American people. 

I reserve the balance of my time.

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