Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2008

Floor Speech

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (House of Representatives - June 13, 2007)

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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, today I rise to commend my colleague from North Carolina for his leadership on the Homeland Security Appropriations bill, and I applaud him and members of the subcommittee who helped craft this bill.

The Homeland Security Appropriations bill is a top priority for the country, and it should be a top priority for every Member of this body.

Now, let's be clear. This bill protects the American people on Wall Street and on Main Street, on your street and on my street. We owe it to the American people to provide the highest levels of safety and security possible, and this bill does just that. The legislation will help protect our homes, families and communities from those who would do us harm.

This bill protects our borders. It fully funds the Customs and Border Protection Agency and adds 3,000 new Border Patrol agents to secure our borders.

This bill funds our first responders and provides them with the critical equipment that they need. It ensures that our own local police departments have access to the information and intelligence they need to perform a meaningful role in counter terrorism.

This bill restores the President's cuts to firefighters to ensure that those who protect our homes, our small businesses, our schools and our communities have the resources that they now lack to keep us safe.

The bill restores critical interoperability funding that will allow local police, firefighters and emergency responders to communicate during a crisis.

This bill protects our airports and our airplanes with baggage screening funding, and it protects our ships and seaports with funding for maritime security.

Mr. Chairman, I have my 8-year-old daughter with me this week, and as we observe the antics from my friends across the aisle, I'm reminded of a game that my daughter often plays with her friends called Consequences. Probably each of us has played that game at one time or another, but not when the stakes are as high as they are in this Chamber.

Basically what happens is, each child writes down on cards an event and a consequence of that event. The cards are shuffled and read out loud in a muddled sequence, with one event leading to consequences that then make no sense at all. This is not child's play, and Members of the people's House play the game of Consequences at their peril.

By obstructing this critical bill, they have elevated the politics of pork over the security of the American people.

Mr. Chairman, Republicans should stop playing the political game of consequences and join Democrats in focusing on getting things done and protecting our homeland, because the real consequences of holding up this bill are serious. That is what the election on November 7, 2006, was about.

I was elected in the 109th Congress, and I didn't see any of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle leaping to their feet to demand that their name be published next to the appropriations request that they submitted. I didn't see anybody leaping to their feet on the other side of the aisle insisting on reform. Where were the reformers on the other side of the aisle in the 109th, in the 108th, in the 107th, in the 106th? Where were they?

Now, suddenly, they're leaping to their feet, saying to the American people that they know what the election on November 7 was about. Why didn't they do any of this or insist on any of this before now? Because they didn't believe in it.

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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Reclaiming my time, if you had one, it was not evident. It was absent because one of the main reasons that the people insisted upon putting Democrats in the majority and moving this country in a new direction is because there was an absence of reform here, an absence of oversight, an abdication of the Congress' responsibilities.

And that's why Democrats are in charge. That's why we are making sure that we actually reform the process, put transparency into the appropriations process, own up to the earmarks that we sponsor and make sure that people know what we're asking for when we want to bring home funding to our districts, not do it in the shadows as was the practice up until the 110th Congress.

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