Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act--Motion

Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I reserve the right to object. There is no question that I want to see legislative solutions here, and I am actually glad to stand with my colleague from Arizona to talk about how we get a solution on this issue.

As we have seen from Congress, especially over the last 20 years, the challenge has been, if Congress does a temporary patch once, it will do it 20 times again. My concern is for the 7,500 DACA kids who are in my State of Oklahoma. They are looking for an actual solution. They want a sense of permanence. Their status has been in limbo since 2012. The question is, Can we actually resolve this for them?

I have put forward a presentation--Senator Flake has been passionate about this as well--for those individuals to actually end up toward naturalization, not to have a temporary patch of just being in limbo status again. It would be to work them through a process to get them in a line in which they actually end up in naturalization at the end of it. At the same time, there would be border security and some other things that we think would be connected to it. I would like to see us work through this process to actually get to a resolution. A couple of Federal courts have pushed back on the administration and have bought Congress a little more time to be able to resolve this issue. I would like for us to use the better wisdom of that to actually get to a solution during this time period.

The goal is: How do we get this resolved?

I am pleased to say the President has moved a long way on this issue. The President has laid out naturalization for 1.8 million people, has dealt with border security, and has engaged in a conversation to actually get it resolved. We had a completely failed effort a couple of weeks ago with four different proposals coming up, with all four of them getting bipartisan support, but with all four of them failing. I would love to see us get on any one of them and start amending it.

The Senator from Arizona and I have already had conversations about changes that I would like to see even in some of the bills that I supported, but the way to resolve that is get on one of them. Let's actually start amending one, and at the end of it, let's let this body work its will. The frustration I have had with this body in these 3 short years that I have been here is, most of the time, we fail to even debate an issue. When it requires 60 votes to even open debate on something, we just, simply, start the process, never get 60, never debate it, never resolve it. Then this body just moves on to another topic.

I commend my colleague from Arizona for reminding this body again that we have an unanswered issue still sitting out there that needs to be resolved. I agree with him completely on that one. Let's get on it. Let's resolve it long term, and let's provide a sense of permanency to this solution, not another temporary patch that will end up being the same temporary patch we will do 3 years from now, 3 years after that, and 3 years after that.

May I remind our body that we are on our fourth continuing resolution just this year. We need to resolve this and take the moment to be able to do that. Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 2579. I further ask that the pending amendments be withdrawn with the exception of the Grassley amendment No. 1959. Finally, I ask that the Grassley amendment be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

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Mr. LANKFORD. I do object.

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