Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The Senate Locking In An Agreement To Move Forward Three Bipartisan Appropriations Bills

Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor on the Senate moving forward on three appropriations bills: Agriculture, MilConVA, and T-HUD. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks:

We are now moving forward, after many weeks delay, on three appropriations bills: Agriculture, MilConVA, and T-HUD, as one package, as one minibus.

We have pledged, as Democrats, to try and go through regular order. It's been a long and arduous process. As you can see, there are 40 amendments here. And, in fact, even though there was a pledge that there be no poison pills, there were many poison pills that were offered by the other side. However, instead of just saying, well, we didn't have an agreement, let the bill go down the drain, we want to get this bill done. It's important to move the appropriations bills, so we worked long and hard. It took a while to work through the vagaries and the negotiations on many poison-pill amendments that in my judgment shouldn't have been offered to begin with – but here we are.

We're moving forward. I want to thank Appropriations Chair Murray. She's done an amazing, amazing job here. I want to thank Vice Chair Collins, I want to thank all of our colleagues for working this out.

Under the old days, regular order would be a lot different than it is today. But we're still moving forward and I'm glad for it.

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