Strengthening America's Security in the Middle East Act of 2019--Motion

Floor Speech

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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Madam President, after the longest shutdown in government history, Federal employees across the country are finally returning to work. National parks are reopening, grant programs are up and running again, and those who depend on essential government services are now being helped by our Nation's public servants.

One of the things that impressed me the most during the shutdown was, as I met with our Federal employees who were affected, their dedication to their jobs and to the services they were providing to the American people. Like the rest of the Members of Congress and people in this country, I was thrilled when we were able to end that shutdown last week, and I was especially pleased to work with my colleagues to make sure government operations would return to normal. This shutdown should never have happened.

For 35 days, partisan gamesmanship forced government Agencies to close their doors, and more than 380,000 Federal workers were furloughed and another 450,000 employees worked without pay.

These Federal workers, some of whom live paycheck to paycheck, were forced to have very difficult conversations with their families on what bills will not be paid this month and how to make ends meet. I remember I was at the Coast Guard station in New Hampshire last week meeting with members of our Coast Guard who were talking about the Coast Guard cutter that is stationed there--the Reliance--heading out that morning and the families of those Coast Guard members who were on the Reliance not having any idea when they would again be paid.

Thankfully, these 800,000 employees and thousands more Federal contractors are returning to work. Unfortunately, the prolonged economic effect of the shutdown and the morale of the Federal workforce is going to last much longer.

A report released today by the Congressional Budget Office found that during the shutdown, the economy took an $11 billion hit, including $3 billion that is gone forever, which we are never going to be able to recover. When people aren't paid, they don't shop. They don't travel. They miss payments. They default on loans. They can't participate in our economy if they have nothing in the bank.

Although the shutdown has ended, some Federal employees who have gone without a paycheck for over a month still may not get paid until the end of this week. I know everybody is trying to make sure those paychecks go out as soon as possible. They can't go out soon enough for those workers who have missed their paychecks.

As the President continues to threaten another shutdown in the coming weeks, Congress needs to take additional action to protect Federal workers. I am cosponsoring three bills that would provide some financial security to those employees. These bills would eliminate penalties for Federal workers who make early withdrawals from their savings plans, require the government to pay back all Federal employees with interest, just as the private sector does, and they would ensure that excepted Federal employees are eligible for unemployment insurance compensation.

What we know happened during the shutdown is that those people who were working couldn't collect unemployment because they were working, even though they weren't getting paid. That is something we would never allow the private sector to do.

I was very disappointed to hear the President and White House officials say over the weekend that if the President doesn't get what he wants, he is going to shut down the government again. The American people, our economy, can't afford another partisan shutdown that jeopardizes our Federal workforce and does nothing to increase border security. Our focus now needs to be on working together to pass bipartisan legislation that secures our borders and funds our government.

Protecting our borders shouldn't be an exercise in partisanship. In the past, in the Senate, we have been able to garner support from across the ideological spectrum to fund commonsense proposals that provide effective security.

If we look at this chart that traces appropriations for Customs and Border Protection from 2014 to 2018, we can see that Congress has consistently increased funding for Customs and Border Protection each of the past 5 fiscal years, providing nearly $60 billion for the Agency. In 2014, we provided $10.6 billion; 2015, $10.7 billion; 2016, $11.2 billion; 2017, $12.1 billion; and 2018, $14 billion. It is consistently increasing the dollars that are available.

Just last year, Congress provided $1.3 billion for border fencing on our southern border--$1.3 billion last year. I am not sure everyone in the administration knows that is how much money we have provided. The money has yet to be spent on the actual construction of proposed fencing projects.

As we are thinking about how we spend our money on border security, we need to be spending it in a way that is smart. We should not be putting aside money we can't spend yet when there are other needs we have for those dollars.

We need to build on these proposals moving forward. We need to focus on technology, on infrastructure, and we need to focus on the personnel who are needed at the southern and northern borders to provide actual security that works. We need to make targeted investments and innovative technologies that provide comprehensive surveillance at our borders and ports of entry, along with increasing personnel and physical infrastructure where necessary.

As a member of the Appropriations subcommittee that funds Homeland Security, I have supported these investments in the past and so has the majority of the members of the committee. We have worked in a bipartisan manner to secure our borders.

I have supported funding for targeted fencing in vulnerable areas, funding for more Border Patrol agents, for better surveillance, for screening technologies, and for increased security at ports of entry. I intend to continue to support commonsense efforts such as these.

Unfortunately, providing billions of dollars to fulfill a campaign promise to build a wall that has no plan that has been presented for how to do that is really not a serious proposal. It is unlikely to solve the problems it seeks to address.

Our efforts to secure the border should focus on solutions that will stem the flow of opioids, fentanyl, and other drugs that have decimated our communities. Last year, New Hampshire had the second highest rate of overdose deaths due to opioids, primarily fentanyl.

Physical infrastructure and some fencing in high-risk areas can help to disrupt drug trafficking across our borders, but it should be done in conjunction with and not at the expense of other technologies that allow law enforcement to identify and disrupt criminal activity.

Several years ago, Senator Hoeven and I--when he was chair and I was ranking member of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee-- visited the southern border. We had a chance to talk to Customs and Border Protection officials, to immigration officials at the border. They talked about the drugs that come across at the ports of entry. In Laredo, we saw dogs and CBP agents looking in a pickup truck for an area in front of the gas tank where they thought drugs were being secreted.

We are not going to intercept those drugs that are affecting our States and communities by building a wall. We have to have new screening technologies at our ports of entry, new technologies that utilize artificial intelligence and advanced imaging so they can assist in identifying contraband and weapons that are hidden in commercial cargo.

Sensor technologies and other surveillance techniques, such as unmanned aerial systems, or drones, allow our border agents to expand their region and respond immediately to illegal activity at our borders. When resourced and deployed appropriately, these types of smart investments are far more likely to interrupt the flow of narcotics than a costly and ineffective border wall.

It is also important to remember that the United States and Canada share the longest international border in the world, and the northern border may not face the same threats as those posed at the southern border, but transnational criminal organizations and other bad actors still attempt to exploit vulnerabilities and enter the country illegally through our northern border.

Coming from a State that shares a small portion of our border with Canada, I have heard from law enforcement authorities in New Hampshire. Our law enforcement officials face unique challenges with enforcement and security. These challenges include a lack of broadband in highly rural areas that impedes law enforcement activities. If we see somebody coming across the border in northern New Hampshire from Canada, we can't pick up a cellphone and call law enforcement because we don't have cell service in northern New Hampshire along our border.

Truly comprehensive border security must recognize the threat at our northern border and invest in technologies to address the unique challenges that law enforcement faces there. We need broadband access in northern New Hampshire and all along our northern border.

We also need to improve the functioning of our immigration port system. We really need comprehensive immigration reform, but we are not going to get there, I don't think, by the February 15 deadline. We can look at what is slowing down our immigration court system and help support those efforts to adjudicate immigration cases fairly and expeditiously and reduce the enormous immigration court case backlog.

Again, as a ranking member of the Appropriations subcommittee that funds the Department of Justice, I have supported strong funding to increase the number of immigration judges, including an increase of $59 million for fiscal year 2019. This increased amount is, in fact, the President's request that would support new immigration judge teams. We already put that money into the 2019 budget, if we are allowed to go forward with what the Appropriations Committee in the Senate agreed to.

Our immigration courts currently have a backlog of more than 800,000 cases waiting to be heard, and the shutdown exacerbated this problem by forcing more than 80,000--80,000--court hearings to be canceled. The average wait time to hear an immigration case is already longer than 2 years, and these unnecessarily canceled hearings will be rescheduled into 2020 and beyond.

This shutdown-caused delay means years longer that people who should be deported, who may pose a threat in this country, will be able to stay here and years longer that the people who may deserve relief, who should be allowed to stay in the United States, will have to wait in limbo.

Now that the shutdown has ended, now that cooler heads can prevail, and we can look at what makes sense to secure our borders, look at what we have already done, how we can build on that and how we can address legitimate concerns about what is going on at our borders, it is time for all of us--Republicans and Democrats--to put aside gamesmanship and to support commonsense proposals.

It is my hope that the conference committee that has already been appointed to negotiate funding for the Department of Homeland Security will focus on the solutions that work rather than proposals that score political points. This shutdown took an enormous economic and emotional toll not only on our Federal workforce but on everyone who accesses government services.

As we craft a bipartisan proposal to fund the government and secure our borders, let's not forget the impact that has had on the people we serve and on the potential impact if we don't get this resolved by February 15.

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