Dhs Cyber Incident Response Teams Act of 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. CUELLAR. Madam Speaker, I want to thank my chairwoman, Mrs. Nita Lowey, for all the work that she has been doing, along with the staff-- fantastic work--and, of course, my colleague from Texas, also, Ms. Granger, for her and her staff working together as a team.

Madam Speaker, I am speaking on this bill. As you know, anytime you develop a consensus, there are things that we might disagree on, but I just have to say that there are so many good things that I agree with: the work that they did for trade, commerce, education, healthcare, transportation, infrastructure, border security, the military, and our veterans.

Just to highlight a couple of things:

$673 million to hire more immigration judges and support staff;

$7.5 billion increase for the Census Bureau;

$8 million for the fever ticks, which is so important for south Texas;

$50 million-plus for the Department of Defense Impact Aid and $20 million for the Department of Defense Impact Aid for Children with Disabilities for our military bases in Texas and across the Nation;

$32 million for carbon emissions capture research, technologies, and storage. We are number one in Texas in energy, but we want to make sure that we do it in a safe environmental way;

$135 million for Small Business Development Centers to make sure that we emphasize our small businesses; and

Title I Grants to our local schools, which got $16.3 billion.

The Pell grant, we increased that to make sure that students have the money to go to college, and I want to say thank you for that increase.

On trade, there is money to hire 1,200 CBP officers and ag specialists; and, I guess, once we pass NAFTA 2.0 later on this week, we need to have those inspectors at the bridges, so I want to thank the committee for adding that money.

We also added $13 million to hire what we call Border Patrol coordinating officers, and those are entry-level positions so we don't take Border Patrol or CBP officers away from their work; and we can have these new officers do the humanitarian care.

Now, unfortunately, there is a little bit of money for the wall, which I don't agree with. But I do want to say thank you for the language that I have asked for, that is, to make sure that we don't construct any fencing in certain areas of my district: the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge; the Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park; La Lomita Historical Park; the National Butterfly Center; the Vista Del Mar Ranch, which is SpaceX in Brownsville; and now we added the historical cemeteries. No fence will be built in those areas.

I also want to thank them for adding my language on making sure that they sit down with the local jurisdictions, if they have to work on the design or the alignment, so as to mitigate community and environmental impact. I want to thank the committee for adding that language itself.

So, again, this is a good bill where both sides got together. I want to thank Ms. Granger and Mrs. Nita Lowey and the committee.

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