Tom Cole

“I want the House to pass this bill. Long ago, the government gave away 2.6 million acres of land in Illinois that belonged to the Miami Tribe. This bill lets the tribe take their claim to court to settle the issue, and it protects current landowners by ending all other claims to the land.”

“Mr. Speaker, I thank my very good friend, Chairman Westerman, for yielding me the time and for bringing this important piece of legislation to the floor. I also thank Congresswoman Betty McCollum of Minnesota for her collaboration, and Secretary Markwayne Mullin for his work on this legislation during his time in the Senate. I rise today, Mr. Speaker, in strong support of S. 550, the companion legislation to my bill, H.R. 2827. The Miami Tribe of Oklahoma have been waiting more than 10 years for this legislation to pass, and today is finally that day. Mr. Speaker, that would not be possible without Chairman Westerman’s help and support, and I am very appreciative. Resolving this land claim will remedy a mistake made by the Federal Government roughly two centuries ago. In 1805, the Miami Tribe, Eel River Band, and Wea, signed the Treaty of Grouseland, which, under Article IV, reserved all lands within the Wabash River watershed and land located west of the Wabash River, which is in present-day Illinois. From 1805 to 1840, the United States transferred 2.6 million acres of this land to non-Native settlers without having acquired title from the Tribes. As a result, title to that land is still held by the Miami Tribe’s superior claim to title, and the Tribe never consented to that land being purchased. S. 550 will allow the Miami Tribe to have their rightful day in court and extinguish all claims to this land in Illinois. This straightforward, bipartisan piece of legislation will not only provide finality for the Miami Tribe, but also certainty to the landowners and farmers in Illinois who have been living on this land for generations. As a Tribal member myself, it is an honor to help a fellow Tribal nation and be a voice here in Washington. Today is a testament of Congress upholding its trust and treaty responsibility, and I would like to thank Chairman Westerman again for his support. Chairman Hurd, Ranking Member Huffman, and Ranking Member Leger Fernandez were also instrumental, and I appreciate the efforts of their staff and their support and efforts on this important piece of legislation. Mr. Speaker, I urge the passage of S. 550.”

“I want the House to pass this temporary spending bill. It buys us time to get past the election and negotiate a full budget with the Senate. The Senate needs to pass its own spending bills so we can work together on a final deal.”

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, as always, for working with us in this matter cooperatively. Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased, honestly, with the progress of the House Appropriations Committee this year. Again, all 12 bills were reported out of committee in the fastest time since fiscal year 2020. I know those bills aren’t in their final form, and so does my friend. We still need to sit down and bargain together and bargain with the Senate. Out of that, I believe we will emerge with a bipartisan compromise that both sides can be proud of and that we can send to the President for his approval. For that to occur, the United States Senate has to begin to act. They have to produce bills. For us to go an entire fiscal year almost--we are about 30 days short of it--without a single Senate bill is just unprecedented. I do not blame that on my Republican colleagues. Frankly, they have the filibuster over there. They have to get to 60. They have not been able to do that, and that is going to mean that we are going to have an extraordinarily short time. I am pleased, however, that the Senate acted. When we passed our continuing resolution over here, we knew it would change when it got to the Senate. Some of those changes, I actually agree with. Some of them, I don’t. They don’t really change the substance or the fact that we bought the time that we need to get through the election cycle and, hopefully, the time that we need to get down to serious bargaining on the other side of it. For that to work, again, every person has to be at the table. Every point of view has to be represented, and we have to find common ground. We were able to do that last year by working together on almost everything--not quite, but almost--and I think we can do that again this year. It is important for the country that we do. Mr. Speaker, again, I thank my good friend, the ranking member of the full committee, for always being an honest and direct negotiating partner. I know that is going to continue. I know we have the same goal of trying to get all of these bills done by the end of the calendar year, if not the fiscal year. Mr. Speaker, I invite the United States Senate, as a body, to join us in that and produce some product, post some numbers, do something so that we have some idea of what they are thinking about in terms of long-term appropriations. Then, we will sit down, appropriately, and we will bargain with them and hopefully come to a common conclusion. The last thing this country needs is a full-year continuing resolution. We need negotiated, bipartisan bills that achieve the common objectives that, despite the partisan rhetoric of an election year, I know we have together. We have worked together before to defend the country, to advance biomedical research, to take care of early childhood, to help first-time college students, to do all of the things that the United States Government ought to be engaged in and do it in a bipartisan way. I think we can do that again. This bill is a step in that direction. Again, I thank my friend for supporting the legislation. I hope our Senate colleagues recognize that we are trying to move along. We didn’t want to fight over things, even the couple of things that we disagreed with. We wanted to bring this to the floor and begin a bipartisan process. Again, I think that is what we will accomplish today if we pass these bills. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.”

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“I want the House to pass this bill. It keeps the government open until December 4 so we do not have a shutdown right before the election. House Democrats have worked with us in good faith, but Senate Democrats have caused shutdowns before by making extra demands. This bill adds nothing new. It just buys us time to negotiate after the election.”

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. I want to begin by complimenting my good friend, the ranking member of the full Appropriations Committee. She has bargained with us throughout this process in good faith, and it has been a pleasure to work with her. I have often been quoted, and I will say it here on the House floor, you can trust Rosa DeLauro. When she gives you her word, she keeps her word. We have no complaint at all with our friends on the other side of the aisle in the House and certainly not with our distinguished ranking member. I will tell you, we have not seen that same sort of good faith from the Senate of the United States, particularly the Senate Democrats. Quite frankly, they came to a bill agreement last year when we were trying to get the first three bills out--which we succeeded working together in doing--that, gosh, let’s just keep working. What we want is a clean continuing resolution and a short date. We gave them both those things. Instead, they then added new demands unrelated to the subject at hand, demands that, frankly, we did not agree with, did not accept. What did we get? We got a 79-day full shutdown, as my friend pointed out. We don’t think that is acceptable. We want to continue the process. Second, we negotiated again earlier this year. Again, we thought we had an agreement. We made concessions to our friends on the other side, concessions which we thought really weren’t concessions. They were helpful suggestions from the Democrats. Let’s add more training for our men and women in ICE, you know, Department of Homeland Security. Let’s have some additional training. Let’s have some additional funding. Those were all things we agreed to, and then once again we got another shutdown. Frankly, we just want to make assurance. I have no doubt we can negotiate differences, including some of the concerns my friend raised today, in the time we have between now and September 30. What we don’t want is a government shutdown used and perverted for political purposes 5 weeks before an election. We think that is a risk that we are running in dealing with the Senate. While we have worked productively, we have gotten bills out on both a partisan and a bipartisan basis, we haven’t seen that in the Senate. Honestly, they haven’t passed a single appropriations bill yet. They have refused to sit down and negotiate in good faith in the Senate. I would say our friends in the House have negotiated in good faith. We actually did backflips last year to give our friends in the House the measures that needed to get passed in the form that they asked to pass them. They kept their word. We passed all those bills. In the Senate, frankly, we did not get that kind of response. We gave them those things. Instead, we got a shutdown; a shutdown that, frankly, was inexplicable. We want to avoid that. We have presented here today a bill that should be noncontroversial. It simply extends funding through December 4. It does not have any poison pills in it. There is nothing in the bill that my friends object to. If they want to put additional things in the bill, fine, we can talk about that, but let’s just assure that funding is going to go on no matter what. That is all this clean continuing resolution does. Look, I have been around here long enough to know that tensions rise as you move toward an election. I have been around here long enough to see Members on both sides of the aisle try to leverage a shutdown to extract additional concessions. We want to avoid that. We want to continue to both move bills across this floor. Obviously, we have moved ours out of committee. We want to give the Senate time to do the same thing. Count me as skeptical that they are going to do much before the election. We want to make sure between when we leave here on September 30 and that election, and sometime beyond that, December 4, that the government continues to function, and we are available to negotiate at any time. We, as my friends on the House side have done, have kept our word in those negotiations. They have been in good faith. All this does is make sure that we do not have a shutdown come September 30, nor do we have a wild effort by either individual Members or either party to demand things in exchange for keeping the government open. The government will be open until the election is over. I actually think that is a concession and a favor to everybody. It is a favor to the American people to make sure that they are not inconvenienced and endangered by a government shutdown. If we have to wait until after the election until our friends in the Senate want to sit down and work, then we will wait until after the election. We don’t have to wait through a shutdown. We don’t have to create the temptation for individual Members to exploit an artificial deadline of the end of the fiscal year. We just need to keep working, as we have, productively. That is all this bill does. There are no poison pills in it. There is no increase in funding. There is no other extraneous legislation attached to it. It is a clean, simple CR to avoid a shutdown before a scheduled election and to give us enough time after that election to sit down, either resolve our differences--which is what I hope we can do--or if we need additional time, we will look at that then. If there are other matters along the way, we are happy to sit down and talk about those. We just want to take the possibility of a government shutdown off the table. Some people may think that is being cautious. Those people would probably not be aware that we went through the longest full government shutdown in American history triggered by our friends in the United States Senate, the Democrats in the United States Senate. Some people might think that, you know, again, we run the risk of our borders. We had to resort to extraordinary measures to continue to fund the Border Patrol. Why anybody is mad at the Border Patrol, I will never know. All they have done is their job. We have had no known illegal entries in the United States in over a year. That is something to be proud of. Why the Border Patrol is mixed up in this, I will never know, but I am happy to talk to my friends about it on the other side. Let’s do the prudent thing, as my friend, Mr. Womack, said. Let’s take out an insurance policy. Let’s remove the option of a government shutdown, and let’s continue to work in good faith. We have done that in this House. That is why all 12 bills are out of committee. I commend my friends on the other side. They made their points. They made their arguments. They supported a couple of those bills, others they might not. The point is, they worked in good faith. That has not happened in the United States Senate. We have had two shutdowns triggered by people that historically condemn any shutdown. Their argument has always in the past been: Let’s keep the government open while we negotiate. That is all this CR does. It ensures no artificial deadline, and it ensures we will get the election in the rearview mirror without shutting down the government as we move into an election. We think this is a prudent thing to do. I hope some of my friends on the other side will accept that view and vote accordingly. If not, we will try to do this on our own, but we would prefer to do it in cooperation with our friends. Again, that is all we are trying to do. I would urge, Mr. Speaker, that my colleagues support this bill, that we make sure there is no government shutdown come the end of the fiscal year, and that we make sure we can conduct our elections in November without the threat of a shutdown leading into those elections. Then we would prudently try to resolve our differences on the other side of the election. It is pretty simple stuff. Again, we are willing to talk about other matters that our friends want to bring up. We just want to take the option of a shutdown off the table. It is that simple. I urge my colleagues to support this bill. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time. The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Moran). All time for debate has expired. Pursuant to House Resolution 1438, the previous question is ordered on the bill. The question is on the engrossment and third reading of the bill. The bill was ordered to be engrossed and read a third time, and was read the third time.”

“I want the House to pass this bill. It funds our foreign policy and national security while cutting wasteful spending. It supports allies like Israel and Taiwan, counters China, fights drug trafficking, and focuses on basic services like passport offices and embassy security.”

“Mr. Chair, I thank my distinguished friend and vice chair of the full committee, Chairman Diaz-Balart, for yielding the time and for his work on this bill. The fiscal year 2027 National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs bill makes a clear statement about American leadership: We will engage where it matters. We will invest where it counts. We will demand accountability for every dollar spent. The legislation before us today, Mr. Chairman, implements a clear- eyed and unapologetic approach to our security and democracy efforts. It leaves no doubt about our Nation’s posture. America will not be passive or simply write blank checks. Every investment we make must advance U.S. interests, strengthen our strategic position, and deliver measurable results for the American people. We are putting our values into action by upholding freedom, promoting economic opportunity, supporting religious liberty, and safeguarding protections that uphold life. This approach marks a necessary course correction. Unlike previous administrations that prioritized symbolism over outcomes, President Trump and Chairman Diaz-Balart have returned U.S. engagement to a foundation of strength, accountability, and strategic purpose. On every level, this bill reiterates that it won’t be optics but real results that drive our work. The measure stands firmly with our friends while drawing a clear line against our adversaries. It reinforces support for key allies, like Israel and Taiwan, and directly counters threats from Communist China and other regimes that challenge our interests and principles. It also demands greater accountability and raises expectations for our partners, recognizing that enduring alliances are strongest when responsibilities are shared. Further, it implements strategic investments that enhance U.S. leverage abroad and combat fentanyl trafficking and criminal organizations. It refocuses our diplomacy on core missions like embassy security, passport services, and promoting American businesses overseas. The bottom line is simple: This legislation recognizes that freedom and democracy are not mere ideals. They are principles that we will actively champion and advance. Chairman Diaz-Balart’s bill directs resources to the highest impact priorities that strengthen America’s position while cutting billions in unnecessary spending. This bill delivers security, strategic focus, and results. Mr. Chair, I thank my friend from Florida and Ranking Member Frankel for their leadership, and I thank the staff on both sides of the aisle for their hard work. I urge my colleagues to support this bill.”

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