‘Makes Some Truly Crucial Investments For Our Nation’: Patty Murray Promotes Energy & Water Bill

4 months ago

During a Senate Appropriations Committee markup on Thursday, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) gave opening remarks about the FY25 Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act.

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Transcript

00:00We will now turn to consideration of the FY25 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill.

00:05First of all, I want to start by thanking Senator Kennedy for his work on the bill and his focused

00:10leadership to help get this bill to this point. I also want to thank his staff, including Lindsay

00:15Garcia, Kathleen Williams, Rachel Littleton, and Anna Newton, and my staff, Doug Clapp,

00:21Erin Goldner, Laura Powell, Maria Calderon, and Amanda Wyma Bradley for their incredible

00:27work to produce this bipartisan bill. It really does take a tremendous effort to put these bills

00:33together, and I really do appreciate everyone's hard work to get us to this point. This bill

00:39makes some truly crucial investments for our nation. Our ports, our harbors, our waterways

00:44are the beating heart of trade, agriculture, and commerce throughout our nation, and of course,

00:49they're also a cornerstone of invaluable, irreplaceable ecosystems. That is especially

00:55true in my state of Washington, which is why I worked really hard to strengthen investments

00:59throughout this bill that will help us protect and maintain these crucial resources, from funding

01:05for the Army Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Reclamation, to a robust funding level for the

01:10Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund, and I pushed hard to make sure that ports in states like mine and

01:15many others get their fair share of those funds. Ecosystem restoration projects funded in this bill,

01:21like the Howard Hansen Dam Fish Passage Facility, will help us protect keystone species like salmon,

01:27which are truly a way of life in my home state. Other investments in this bill will help prepare

01:32our communities and support infrastructure to help keep people safe during extreme weather events

01:38and flooding that, as we all know, has become more frequent. This bill provides significant

01:43new resources for scientific discovery at our national labs, like PNNL, that are working on

01:49breakthrough technologies that will define the future, clean energy, AI, advanced computing,

01:55and more. These resources are so important to making sure America remains the world leader

02:00in innovation. This bill also includes important funding to protect our energy grid and improve

02:07cybersecurity and grid resilience so we can keep the lights on when disaster and emergency strike,

02:14and funding for climate research and renewable energy, including to strengthen our grid and build

02:20more transmission as we transition to clean energy. It invests in nuclear non-proliferation programs

02:27and provides record funding to live up to our obligations to our communities when it comes to

02:32environmental cleanup. On that last point, I fought especially hard to increase environmental

02:37cleanup investments in this bill and secure a significant increase in funding for Hanford

02:42site in Washington state. Some of my colleagues have been hearing me talk about Hanford for years,

02:48and I believe very strongly that the federal government has a moral and legal obligation

02:53to clean this up seriously. I will never let us forget about it. Overall, this bill includes many

02:59investments that are crucial to our nation's strength, economy, and security. I again want

03:04to thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for working through all of these important issues

03:08in this bill.

‘Makes Some Truly Crucial Investments For Our Nation’: Patty Murray Promotes Energy & Water Bill

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