Government Funding

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, now on another matter, last week, the Senate voted to prevent a domestic budget dispute from shutting down the Federal Government. Now, with straightforward, short-term funding in place, it is time for Congress to redouble our efforts on a number of unfinished priorities.

In the coming weeks, the Senate needs to continue making progress on full-year appropriations. And we will begin by funding important resources for military construction, veterans services, agriculture, housing, and transportation infrastructure.

But our work does not stop there. The Senate also needs to address urgent supplemental funding needs and continue our work to bring the Biden administration's reckless spending and radical regulations to heel.

Many of our colleagues are particularly keen to deliver additional relief to communities rebuilding after devastating national disasters-- from hurricanes on the gulf coast to wildfires in Hawaii, to flooding in Kentucky.

Bipartisan majorities in both Chambers continue to recognize that providing additional lethal assistance to Ukraine's defense against Russian aggression is in the United States' direct interest.

Across the country, as historic inflation continues to wreck household budgets, millions of working families are ready to turn the page on Bidenomics.

After three record-setting years of functionally open borders, folks in every State are eager for Congress to force the Biden administration to start cleaning up the southern border crisis. The fiscal year that just ended saw apprehensions at the southern border exceed 2 million for only the second time in history. The first time was just last year. Some reports expect that the last month's total could clock in as the highest on record. On President Biden's watch, illegal border crossings and asylum claims have stretched Border Patrol and ICE personnel to their breaking point.

Authorities are seizing hundreds of millions of lethal doses of fentanyl, although they also estimate that they are apprehending just a fraction--roughly a quarter--of all the fentanyl that is smuggled at the border.

Frankly, this is less about providing border personnel with new resources than it is about giving them the authority and direction to actually enforce the law. It is certainly not about bailing out blue State sanctuary cities while the tsunami of illegal immigration continues unabated. It is about the administration finally taking commonsense steps to end their wrongheaded policies that have encouraged illegal immigrants to cross our borders in the first place.

Every State is now a border State. Major cities like New York and Chicago are being overwhelmed by arrivals from the southern border. Finally, even blue State mayors and Governors are joining the chorus calling out the administration for its utter failure on border security.

Of course, across the country, liberal local governments and innocent residents are also facing the consequences of years of soft-on-crime policies, and once again our Nation's Capital leads the headlines.

Just last night, for example, Congressman Henry Cuellar was the victim of a violent carjacking a few blocks from the Capitol Building. Armed assailants threatened him at gunpoint and stole his car. Thankfully, our House colleague was not injured, and his car has been recovered.

It is not even the first time this year that a Member of Congress has been assaulted while in town for work. But this is what private American citizens are facing every single day, like the 22,000 people who had their car stolen in Chicago this year or the 20,000 victims of felony assault in New York City. This sort of brazen violence against anyone should be a wake-up call for local officials.

Last year, a 54-year-old man was murdered at a gas station in Washington by a group of teenagers attempting to steal his car. The city is now averaging two carjackings every day, and these crimes are increasingly being committed by young people.

At a certain point, the American people who visit our Nation's Capital by the millions every year might expect the city's liberal government to finally start getting serious about securing the streets, but even as senseless violence increases, local leaders are bent-- bent--on undermining public safety.

One member of the DC Council--the same soft-on-crime panel that tried to weaken sentencing for repeat offenders earlier this year--proposed recently that local courts be required to provide a written explanation before releasing violent criminals before trial. The courts' response? Such a requirement was ``not feasible'' because it would ``significantly increase'' their workload. All this in a city where prosecutors declined to even prosecute two-thirds of the arrests last year.

American families deserve to feel safe in their homes and in their neighborhoods and certainly in the Nation's Capital. It shouldn't take another assault or carjacking or homicide to convince leftwing local leaders to start actually doing their jobs.

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