Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2024

Floor Speech

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Mr. MEUSER. Mr. Chair, I thank Chairman Joyce, my good friend and colleague from Ohio, very much.

Mr. Chair, I do rise in support of the Homeland appropriations bill. We all know that our country, our citizens, are in dire need of stronger Homeland Security.

We know that we have an unmitigated disaster at our borders. Three years ago, Mr. Chair, we also all know that our borders were, in fact, secure. Today, almost 10,000 illegals in despair are crossing our border--not including the so-called got-aways.

Human trafficking and deadly drugs are killing Americans, primarily our young people, by the tens of thousands.

This bill adds to our Customs and Border Patrol, Mr. Chair, and provides for border barriers which work and for fentanyl detection. This bill strengthens our asylum laws and forces Secretary Mayorkas to do his job. This bill also, Mr. Chair, ceases the ability for HHS through the DHS funding to send ghost flights into my district in the middle of the night. That can't happen anymore under this bill.

This bill also provides for our Coast Guard and eliminates over $500 million in go-green initiatives that have absolutely nothing to do with Homeland Security.

This bill is a vote for our Nation's Homeland Security. A ``no'' vote is a vote for the status quo.

Mr. Chair, by the way, if we want to keep our government open, we have a plan. We have a plan to keep our government open, and it includes border security and reasonable fiscal sanity with some moderate spending reductions within our discretionary spending.

We, unfortunately, have a handful of Republicans on our side not supporting it, but every single Democrat does not support securing our border and moderate reductions to our outrageous spending that is taking place.

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