Members of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee are scheduled to meet later this week to review and most likely vote on the massive fiscal year 2025 appropriations for the Department of Defense, Department of Labor, Health and Human Services, and several other agencies.
The committee work comes in the wake of the passage of the equally massive $98.7 billion in funding officially called the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development and Related Agencies Bill.
That measure, addressing a range of not-always related departmental initiatives, will “help to make homes more affordable, reduce homelessness, improve air safety traffic, and reduce flight delays,” remarked Hawaii Democrat Senator Brian Schatz of the measure.
The measure also, continued Schatz, “makes record investments in Native housing, which will help Native people in Indian Country, Hawaii, and Alaska, buy and keep their homes.”
Also approving increased funding for transportation infrastructure at the local level across the country, noted Democrat Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the many-purposed legislation “makes critical new investments to help people keep a roof over their heads and safely get to where they need to be.”
The funding, Murray continued, will especially provide “new funding to hire more air traffic controllers and air and rail safety inspectors, boost our housing supply, [and] sustain rental assistance.”
Some $401 million is going to go directly to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration for ongoing pipeline construction and replacement efforts, while $64 million is targeting capital improvement projects under the auspices of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy.
The legislation has thus far secured bipartisan support, with Mississippi Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith calling the measure, a “fiscally responsible and thoughtfully-crafted bill that remains responsive to critical transportation, housing, and community development needs of the country.”
By Garry Boulard