01.22.04

Senator Cantwell's Statement on the Passage of the Omnibus Appropriations Conference Report

WASHINGTON, D.C . - "Today I voted to pass the conference report on the omnibus appropriations bill. This legislation groups together seven separate funding bills – the Veterans Affairs/Housing and Urban Development, Labor/Health and Human Services, Commerce/Justice/State, Transportation/Treasury, District of Columbia, Foreign Operations, and Agriculture – that are typically voted on individually. I supported the bill because it includes funding for a number of programs and projects that are of great importance to the country and to Washington state.

The bills included in the omnibus package fund two of my top priorities in the Senate: my amendment to increase funds for Workforce Investment Act programs by $25 million and funding for the Federal Aviation Administration Center of Excellence I worked to create last year. In addition, the legislation provides the money I have fought to secure for a number of projects that will benefit all of Washington state, such as $236 million for transportation projects in our state – including $75 million for Sound Transit that my colleague Sen. Patty Murray secured, veterans' health care, orca recovery, and Pacific salmon recovery.

A number of projects that will help our economy and individual communities are also financed by the omnibus package, including the Seattle Art Museum, the Washington Nanotechnology Roadmap, the City of Bremerton waterfront redevelopment, an Environmental Protection Administration grant to the City of Lakewood for a water project, and land acquisition on Bainbridge Island.

This bill is the chief source of federal funding for a number of important programs, including worker retraining, health research, veterans’ health care, education, agriculture, housing, AIDS funding, and environmental protection. If this bill had not passed, critical programs in these and other areas would have been funded at lower levels.

Unfortunately, the bill did not include several important provisions my colleagues and I voted for in the Senate version. I joined many of my colleagues in voting to continue debate on the bill to argue for their inclusion.

For example, the bill failed to implement country-of-origin labeling for beef products, did not safeguard overtime pay protections for about eight million workers, eliminated my amendment to ban market manipulation by energy companies, and omitted important media ownership provisions.

Although we were unable to fully protect workers and consumers, I will work to find other ways to address these important issues."