{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=C17B7453-A649-4B09-A6CD-461908E82EA7", "Thune: Back to Regular Order", "2025-11-19", "2025", "2025-11", "Republican", "Senate", "SD", "John Thune", "T000250", "www.thune.senate.gov", "thune", "https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases", "scraper", "Clickhereto watch the video.\n\nWASHINGTON \u2014 U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) today delivered the following remarks on the Senate floor:\n\nThune\u2019s remarks below (as delivered):\n\n\u201cMr. President, I\u2019ve spoken a lot over the years about the need for a strong military.\n\n\u201cI believe that keeping America at the cutting edge of military capabilities is one of the most important responsibilities we have in Congress.\n\n\u201cAnd I often say that, if we don\u2019t get national security right, the rest is conversation.\n\n\u201cMr. President, the need for a strong national defense has been put into stark relief over the last few years as the world has grown more dangerous \u2013 and as we\u2019ve seen serious gaps in our own preparedness.\n\n\u201cAnd after four years of underinvestment during the Biden administration, Republicans made it clear that we would work to put our military back on the right track by investing in modernization to ensure our military is ready for today\u2019s threats \u2013 and tomorrow\u2019s.\n\n\u201cAnd we\u2019ve followed through on that promise since taking office at the beginning of this year.\n\n\u201cThat began with a major investment in our military capabilities in the One Big Beautiful Bill.\n\n\u201cWe also prioritized passing the Senate\u2019s National Defense Authorization Act, which includes significant reforms to weapons-buying as well as more than 100 amendments adopted through regular order on the Senate floor.\n\n\u201cAnd this week, we continue those efforts with the defense appropriations bill, which will provide the resources to continue our mission of rebuilding our military capabilities.\n\n\u201cMr. President, that starts with the men and women serving in uniform.\n\n\u201cThis bill funds a 3.8 percent pay raise for our troops, and it supports military members and their families with investments in housing, child care, and education for military families.\n\n\u201cIt also funds bonuses that will hopefully help to ensure that we can sustain the record-setting recruitment success we\u2019ve had this year \u2013 a complete turnaround, I might add, from the recruitment challenges of the not-so-distant past.\n\n\u201cMr. President, the defense funding bill makes critical investments that will help ensure our service members have the military capabilities that they need to meet the challenges of the 21st century.\n\n\u201cAnd that includes funding shipbuilding efforts and expanding our Air Force fleet.\n\n\u201cAccelerating delivery of the Golden Dome for America.\n\n\u201cAnd investing in munitions, drones, and emerging technologies.\n\n\u201cI do want to emphasize though that while this bill \u2013 and the One Big Beautiful Bill \u2013 make important investments in rebuilding our military, this can\u2019t be a one-time exercise.\n\n\u201cThese are the types of investments that we will need to sustain in the coming years if we want our enemies to think twice before attacking us.\n\n\u201cMr. President, I appreciate the work that our colleagues have done to produce a robust funding bill.\n\n\u201cThis bill reflects the priorities and input of a lot of senators, and it\u2019s garnered significant bipartisan support \u2013 coming out of the Appropriations Committee by a vote of 26 to 3.\n\n\u201cAnd, Mr. President, it\u2019s not the only one.\n\n\u201cThe Appropriations Committee \u2013 under the leadership of Chair Collins \u2013 has advanced a number of bipartisan full-year funding bills.\n\n\u201cWe\u2019ve already brought three of those bills to the floor under an open process.\n\n\u201cWe passed them in August \u2013 the earliest the Senate has passed appropriations bills since 2018.\n\n\u201cAnd that package was signed into law last week.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s how, Mr. President, the appropriations process is supposed to work.\n\n\u201cUnfortunately, that\u2019s not how it was working the last few years under the Democrat majority.\n\n\u201cSo, when I became majority leader, I made it clear that I wanted to get back to regular order.\n\n\u201cAnd, as I said, we were making progress on that this year.\n\n\u201cThat is, until Democrats needlessly chose to shut down the government.\n\n\u201cBefore the shutdown, we were getting ready to bring the defense funding bill to the floor.\n\n\u201cWe just needed a few more weeks under a continuing resolution so we could finish our work.\n\n\u201cBut Democrats took advantage of the situation for leverage, and they kept the government shut down \u2013 and appropriations work halted \u2013 for 43 days.\n\n\u201cMr. President, despite their recent actions, I know that a number of my Democrat colleagues do share Republicans\u2019 interest in seeing regular order restored.\n\n\u201cWell, now it\u2019s time to act like it.\n\n\u201cAs I said before, during, and now after the shutdown, this is our chance for regular order.\n\n\u201cWe don\u2019t have time to waste.\n\n\u201cWe\u2019ve already wasted a lot of time on a completely avoidable government shutdown.\n\n\u201cSo, Mr. President, let\u2019s get to work.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T19:52:45Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=C17B7453-A649-4B09-A6CD-461908E82EA7"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.084464067593217, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}