Thursday, May 24th, Congresswoman Cheri Bustos voted for the bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019.
This bill authorizes over $600 billion in discretionary base budget authority for the Department of Defense, Overseas Contingency Operations and continues a prohibition on conducting an additional round of Base Alignment and Closure in fiscal year 2019. The National Defense Authorization Act also included three amendments advanced by Representatives Bustos, Dave Loebsack and Mark Meadows. One of Bustos’ amendments would require the Army to create a Center of Excellence for Advanced and Additive Manufacturing at an arsenal. It will help position Army arsenals to be at the forefront of developing new advanced manufacturing techniques, 3D printing and technologies to better serve our troops. The amendment helps position the Quad-Cities to be the focal point in this work. Bustos also helped to include an amendment that directs the Secretary of Defense to perform an assessment of the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math as well as Maintenance and Manufacturing workforce within the Department of Defense and identify a plan of action to address the STEM jobs gap. Bustos said she’s “pleased that this legislation provides funding to support our defense industry in Rockford and the Air National Guard base in Peoria.”
Also on May 24th, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee completed its markup of the Water Resources Development Act of 2018. During the markup, Congresswoman Bustos successfully added an amendment to include the Navigation Workers Protection Act in the bill. Congresswoman Bustos introduced the Navigation Workers Protection Act to ensure that the operations, maintenance and repair of locks and dams owned and operated by the Army Corps of Engineers is considered inherently governmental. It also requires skilled workers who can operate, maintain and repair our locks and dams. Bustos said: “Our inland waterways system moves more than 600 million tons of cargo each year, and that system depends on more than just physical infrastructure.Civilian employees of the Army Corps of Engineers perform these functions and are critical to ensuring that traffic on inland waterways moves fairly and as efficiently as possible. She added: “I’m proud to have worked across the aisle to include this language in this year’s Water Resources Development Act to help ensure that our river system runs fairly and efficiently.”
