Providing for Consideration of H.R. 5230, Secure the Border Act of 2014; Providing For Consideration of H.R. 5272, Prohibitions Relating to Deffered Action For Aliens; and Providing for Consideration of the Senate Amendment to H.R. 5021, Highway and Transportation Funding Act of 2014; and For Other Purposes

Floor Speech

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Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, on Wednesday, the Rules Committee met and reported a rule for consideration of three measures: H.R. 5230, the supplemental appropriations bill to deal with the influx of unaccompanied minors across the southern border; H.R. 5272, a bill that would prevent the administration from expanding the use of deferred action for individuals who are not legally present in the United States; and the Senate amendment to H.R. 5021, the Highway and Transportation Funding Act of 2014.

The resolution provides a closed rule for consideration of H.R. 5230, the supplemental appropriations bill. This is consistent with the way all seven supplemental appropriations acts considered in the 110th and 111th Congresses were treated when my colleagues on the other side of the aisle were in the majority. The rule provides for 1 hour of debate, equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations, and provides for one motion to recommit.

In addition, the resolution also provides that after the passage of H.R. 5230, that it be in order to consider H.R. 5272, a bill that would prevent the administration from expanding the use of deferred action for individuals who are not legally present in the United States. The resolution provides a closed rule for consideration of H.R. 5272, provides for 60 minutes of debate, equally divided by the chairman and ranking member of the Committee on the Judiciary, and provides for a motion to recommit.

In addition, the rule also provides for consideration of a motion to disagree to the Senate's amendment to H.R. 5021, so we can send the bill that easily passed the House on an overwhelming bipartisan vote back to the Senate.

Finally, the rule provides for same-day and suspension authority today to resolve any outstanding issues before the August recess.

Mr. Speaker, this rule demonstrates this House's careful consideration of the President's supplemental request. Earlier this month, the President submitted to Congress a $3.7 billion request to deal with both the urgent crisis of unaccompanied juveniles crossing the border and with wildfires.

Since then, Chairman Rogers, Chairman Granger, Speaker Boehner, and the Republican Conference have thoughtfully considered what resources the President needs to address this crisis through the end of the fiscal year.

The result, Mr. Speaker, is a significantly pared-down piece of legislation. It provides $659 million to meet the immediate border security and humanitarian needs. This supplemental sends the message that this administration has been unwilling to send, that if you come here illegally, you will be deported. And it provides the resources to effect just that.

It provides $334 million for Immigration and Customs Enforcement for boosted enforcement efforts, accelerates judicial proceedings by providing $22 million to hire temporary immigration judges and provide courts with video teleconferencing equipment, and makes smart policy reforms, like changing the 2008 sex trafficking law to require that all unaccompanied minors are treated the same, among others.

These important policy reforms, which the President initially asked for, are a reasonable, thoughtful response to the tenfold increase of unaccompanied alien children since 2011.

Mr. Speaker, the President's advisers warned him this crisis was coming back in 2012 and 2013, but he ignored that advice. In fact, Mr. Speaker, the administration has mismanaged this entire issue from the beginning.

If the President's FY 2015 budget had become law, we would have seen a reduction of nearly 3,500 detention beds, a 2 percent reduction in ICE's investigative capacity, and a 12 percent reduction to CBP air and marine operations, all vital tools to deal with this problem.

In addition, the President's budget request for the Central American Regional Security Initiative, which confronts narcotics and arms trafficking, gangs, and organized crime in that region and addresses border security deficiencies and disrupts criminal infrastructure, was actually proposed to be cut in the President's FY 2015 budget. The House FY15 foreign operations bill reverses those cuts and actually increases the resources to deal with these related problems.

Mr. Speaker, at every turn, the administration has failed to address the border crisis adequately, and now the President wants a blank check to proceed. His aim is not to stop and reverse the flow of unaccompanied minors into this country. He merely aims to manage that influx more efficiently. The House cannot accept that.

This legislation, H.R. 5230, adequately funds the shortfalls caused by this administration's policy by using existing resources. And Republicans are willing to provide additional resources should they be needed in FY 2015 appropriations, within the bipartisan budget cap set by the Ryan-Murray budget agreement. But we believe that this bill provides the appropriate resources at this time.

In addition, Mr. Speaker, the bill provides for consideration of H.R. 5272, which would prevent the administration from expanding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the so-called DACA program. I, like many of my colleagues, believe that DACA has incentivized juveniles to attempt the long and dangerous journey from Central America, with the hope of staying in this country permanently. Executive orders, like DACA, only serve to keep that hope alive. I believe it is important to send a strong signal that this program should not be expanded. H.R. 5272 does just that.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, the rule would send back the original House-passed highway bill to the Senate. While I appreciate what my friends in the other body have been able to do, I believe it is important to provide Members the maximum amount of flexibility to craft a long-term highway bill. By accepting the Senate amendment, which would only provide adequate funding of the highway trust fund through mid-December, we would be effectively creating a new crisis in the middle of a lame duck session of Congress. Given the limited number of session days before the election, this does not seem like a prudent course to take. Instead, the House should return to the Senate its bipartisan legislation, which passed this Chamber by a vote of 367-55.

In closing, Mr. Speaker, I believe it is important to move forward on these three important pieces of legislation before the August district work period. I urge support for the rule and the underlying legislation.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I want to disagree with my friend on a couple of points that he made. First, I would suggest the President actually hasn't taken action or suggested action. A month ago, he told us that the 2008 sex trafficking law was responsible for his inability to return people to their country of origin, unaccompanied minors.

We have been waiting for his corrective for 30 days; instead, Mr. Speaker, we get an open-ended supplemental that goes through from this fiscal year to the end of the next fiscal year with a lot of measures--some of which, by the way, we agree with--to manage the flow, but absolutely nothing to stop and reverse the flow.

So we think, in that absence of leadership from the executive branch, we have acted. We have actually done what a month ago at least he was suggesting ought to be done, giving some discretion and giving some ability to try to deal with the loophole in the law.

In the meantime, Mr. Speaker, we have looked at what he put in front of us, and we have decided, look, we can actually offset this money. We don't have to spend extra money. This is a higher priority. We will take money from lower priority areas.

We will get us through the end of this fiscal year and through the end of this calendar year, and in that interim time, we will have an opportunity to work with the administration to continue to address the problem within the limits of the Ryan-Murray budget agreement that we agreed to on a bipartisan, bicameral basis not that long ago.

Now, Mr. Speaker, this issue of the DACA controversy that we have here, I would like to make the following points: first, nothing in this legislation changes the current state of affairs at all. In other words, what the President has done up to this point is left undisturbed.

However, we do believe the abuse of prosecutorial discretion is actually one of the things that contributed to the current crisis that we have--not deliberately, but, frankly, I think the President unwittingly or unknowingly sent a signal that if you get here and you get across our border, you are going to be able to stay. So we want to be very careful that doesn't happen again.

In addition, Mr. Speaker, the President has said if Congress doesn't do certain things by such and such a date or by the August work period, then I intend during that time to use my pen and my phone to effect some changes that I want.

What is interesting to us, by the way, less than 2 years ago, he said these kinds of things were unconstitutional and couldn't be done by the executive branch. Now, he has changed his view on that.

So we are going to finally put in place something that will prevent him in our absence from once again abusing prosecutorial discretion to achieve other aims.

With that, I would like to reserve the balance of my time, Mr. Speaker.

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