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"Preventing default is an obligation that Congress has. My Republican colleagues are holding our economy hostage, linking it to the annual process of funding the critical programs that serve American families and veterans. The price of averting a catastrophic default is drastic cuts to these programs now and severe caps for the next 10 years."

"When thinking of the progress made over these last few years, it concerns me that there are powerful and loud forces in the House majority are poised to drastically cut discretionary spending. That is something that would greatly harm the critical efforts funded by these programs that you all are involved with. Are we really interested in rolling back efforts that make our communities safer and protect the public from crime? To protect the public from evolving threats? Which public safety efforts should be scaled back--preventing gun violence, helping our veterans, supporting victims of crime, fighting the scourge of opioids in our communities? Which of these efforts can we signal to America that we no longer find them important for us to invest in?"

This Subcommittee has increased funding for the FAA over the past several years, and in a year where we hope to see a FAA reauthorization passed through Congress, it is critical we continue to provide critical investments. It is our duty to continue to help the FAA modernize its air traffic control system, improve efficiency, transition legacy equipment into modern platforms, and develop a highly skilled workforce.

Given the need to address these and other enduring shortages made much worse by the pandemic, this Committee made significant investments through the 2022 and 2023 appropriations bills to strengthen HRSA’s health workforce programs. This included a nearly $100 million increase in the 2023 package passed and enacted in December. We increased funding for nursing and midwife programs, mental and behavioral health workforce education and training, and Children’s Hospital Graduate Medical Education programs to train resident doctors. But more must be done.

These cuts would be devastating. The safety of our communities and our transportation infrastructure depends on strong investments which, in a bipartisan way, we have been able to do in the last two years—in 2022 and 2023. They should continue to move in that direction.

What the annual spending bill can do is provide the steady investment our nation needs to move beyond a state of good repair for our transit networks and ensure these networks are as safe, resilient, and as efficient as possible. In essence, it gets us closer to closing the funding gap, leverages other public and private resources, and helps put shovels in the ground.