Relating to A National Emergency Declared By the President on February 2019

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mrs. SHAHEEN. Madam President, I am here this afternoon to support the resolution that would terminate the President's unconstitutional emergency declaration. It is a declaration that would take money away from critical military construction projects to fund a costly and ineffective border wall.

Congress did not provide these funds for a border wall that President Trump promised Mexico would pay for; rather, we specifically allocated these resources that are being talked about to be used by the President for the wall to ensure that our military is ready and capable and that our servicemembers receive the support they deserve.

The President's attempt to circumvent Congress by making the military pay for his border wall jeopardizes our national security and does a disservice to our men and women in uniform. That is why the House passed the legislation on the Senate floor today and why I introduced legislation with my colleagues in the Senate to terminate the emergency declaration.

The resources Congress has provided support military construction projects in New Hampshire and across the country. Those projects often provide necessary infrastructure improvements that enable our servicemembers to accomplish their mission.

Several of those projects that, I think, are potentially being reviewed for being added to the list of projects to have money taken from are at the Portsmouth Naval shipyard. It is one of the many installations that faces potential cuts in funding if this emergency declaration is executed. Congress has already approved funding for several projects at the shipyard and at our public shipyards around the country that support critical submarine maintenance, and any disruption to funding of those projects could lead to costly delays and to a reduction in military readiness because they would derail carefully laid plans to upgrade aging infrastructure. Delays in projects that support the shipyard's mission threaten to exacerbate the Navy's already high demand for submarine maintenance and the projected submarine shortfall in the coming years.

I recently sent a letter to President Trump and spoke with the leaders at DOD urging them to protect these important projects at the shipyard, but the only way to ensure that these projects move forward is to terminate the emergency declaration.

In addition to projects at the shipyard, the emergency declaration could also impact New Hampshire's National Guard readiness centers, which are in desperate need of modernization. A 2014 report from the Army National Guard ranked the condition of New Hampshire's National Guard facilities 51 out of 54 States and territories.

Our National Guard has been forced to shoulder an enormous burden since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Servicemembers have often faced multiple deployments, and they still had to respond to national disasters at home and to other personal crises. The New Hampshire National Guard can't afford further delays to the readiness center improvements because of President Trump's emergency declaration.

These military construction projects in New Hampshire are at risk because President Trump wants to score political points by building a wall rather than focusing on the border security proposals that actually work. I was disappointed to hear my colleague from Texas accusing Democrats of not supporting border security because, in fact, virtually everyone here has supported significant border security proposals in the past, including targeted fencing in vulnerable areas where we know fencing or barriers can make a difference. We have supported more Border Patrol agents, better surveillance and screening technologies, and increased security at the ports of entry.

Coming from a State where we have a huge challenge with the opioid epidemic, where we understand the impact of having cocaine and fentanyl and other drugs come across our border, I also know the best way to interdict those drugs is through the ports of entry. That is where most of them are coming from.

In a recent bipartisan budget agreement Congress provided, I supported, along with the majority of this Senate, nearly $15 billion for Customs and Border Protection, including $1.3 billion for physical infrastructure in vulnerable areas along the southern border. The reality at our borders is, the vast majority of drugs and contraband come through the ports of entry. They don't come through the areas between the ports of entry.

In the past 2 months alone, law enforcement officials have made the largest cocaine seizure in the past 25 years at Newark, NJ, and the largest fentanyl seizure ever at any port of entry in the U.S. in Arizona. Despite this reality, President Trump insists on having our military bear the burden to fulfill his campaign promise.

His insistence that the situation at the border requires the military to pay for his wall runs counter to what I have heard in the Senate Armed Services Committee from our military leaders. In a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, General O'Shaughnessy, Commander of U.S. Northern Command, testified that the threats to our Nation on our southern border are not military in nature, and he has never advised the President that a border wall is necessary to support his mission. Just this morning, we heard testimony at our SASC hearing with Secretary Shanahan and Joint Chiefs Chairman Dunford that we have more troops on our southern border with Mexico than we have in all of Europe, on Europe's eastern border with Russia, and we have almost as many on our southern border, and one-quarter as many as we have on the DMZ on the border with North Korea. By any measure, North Korea and Russia pose a greater threat to our national security than Mexico. It is a policy that does not make sense. Yet we have more troops on the southern border now than we do in Eastern Europe and in Syria.

The fact is, the men and women at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and at the New Hampshire National Guard and men and women serving in our military across this country should not be forced to sacrifice readiness for an unnecessary border wall that takes funding away from projects that this Congress has already approved that are going forward.

I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to protect Congress's constitutional authority and defend our national security by supporting the resolution to terminate President Trump's emergency declaration.

Thank you.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source