Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On Key Senate Business Before The End Of The Year

Washington, D.C. - Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor about the critical work the Senate must complete during December's packed schedule, including confirming President Biden's nominations, bipartisan government funding legislation, the NDAA, and a disaster aid package. Below are Senator Schumer's remarks, which can also be viewed here:

We are at the beginning of what will be a very busy December. There's a lot the Senate has to do, both on the nominations and legislative side, and not a lot of time to do them.

Let me begin with the nominations. We're picking up where we left off before Thanksgiving, confirming more of the president's nominees to the bench and to federal agencies of great importance to the American people.

Later this afternoon, the Senate will vote to confirm the nomination of Anne Hwang to be District Judge for the Central District of California.

As the week progresses, members should be advised that we will aim to hold additional confirmation votes on the nominees that we invoked cloture on before the Thanksgiving break. We hope to move to them as soon as we can.

On the legislative side, the Senate also has a handful of priorities we must deal with before the year is out: the annual defense authorization bill - the NDAA - and legislation to prevent a shutdown right before Christmas.

On government funding, both sides are making progress negotiating on a bill that can pass both the House and Senate with bipartisan support.

We need to keep divisive and unnecessary provisions out of any government funding extension, or else it will get harder to pass a CR in time.

For now, I am pleased negotiations are on the right track and I thank the appropriators in both chambers for their good work.

On the NDAA, I am hopeful that we are close to beginning the process of moving a bipartisan bill through both chambers.

The NDAA has been passed without fail for decades with the cooperation from both sides, and I hope this year there is no exception. Few priorities matter more than providing for our national defense and taking care of our troops in uniform and their families.

Finally, Senate Democrats will keep pushing to finish work on a disaster aid package, to replenish the many relief programs that are dangerously low on resources. The president sent us his request last month and spelled out in very clear detail the disastrous consequences should Congress fail to act.

I remain hopeful we can get a disaster package done soon. National disasters affect red states and blue states and purple states and everything in between. We have a long tradition in this chamber of coming together when it comes to disaster aid, with very few exceptions.

We should come together again at the end of the year to get disaster aid done, or we may not be ready to respond the next time Mother Nature wreaks havoc on our communities.

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