As we begin our first full committee markup for Fiscal Year 2024, I want to take a moment to remind everyone what happened with government spending the last two years and explain the challenges this Committee now has ahead of us.

During the previous congress, three trillion dollars were spent outside of the normal appropriations process. 

As spending sky-rocketed, so did inflation.

There was damage done to the economy, and the work of this Committee changed significantly over those two years.

That is why earlier this year I asked subcommittee chairs to evaluate all of the funding in the pipeline.

When the President’s Budget finally arrived, I directed them to review each agency’s budget line-by-line.

They did excellent work identifying savings in many areas.

These savings will allow us to reduce overall spending without short-changing what is most important: national defense, homeland security, and veterans.

We are demonstrating our commitment to these priorities by starting our markups today with this important piece of legislation – the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs bill. 

As I have said before, we can and we will reduce spending on lower-priority programs while honoring our commitment to our veterans.

This bill makes good on that promise by fully funding veterans’ health care.

It will ensure our veterans get the medical treatment and benefits they deserve.

Specifically, the bill prioritizes our nation’s heroes by:

• Providing critical funding for military bases and facilities;
• Improving the quality of life for our service members and their families;
• And ensuring our veterans are appropriately honored in our cemeteries and battle monuments.

I thank Chairman Carter and all of the members and staff on both sides of the aisle for their hard work.

This is a strong bill, and everyone should be able to support it.

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