Making Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for the Fiscal Year Ending September 30, 2014 -- Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, this is what we are facing: The President has come to us facing a crisis at the border. He has asked us for the resources for the Border Patrol that has to process these children coming in and for Health and Human Services so that once these children--some of whom are toddlers and infants--are in our country, they can be treated humanely. He has asked us for the resources for that purpose.

He has also asked us initially for some resources to get to the heart of the problem, which Senator Cornyn of Texas has acknowledged. The heart of the problem is not in the United States; the problem is in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. There is clearly a crisis situation there.

What Senator Mikulski, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, has done is reduced the President's budget request by $1 billion, if I am not mistaken, and said: We will respond to this emergency request with these resources and realize that more is going to be done.

On the other side of the aisle, the senior Senator from Texas has come in and talked about changing immigration law. He was kind enough to acknowledge that we made an effort to change the immigration law right here on the floor of the Senate over a year ago with 68 votes. Fourteen Republicans joined the Democrats in a comprehensive immigration bill. The Senator from Texas acknowledged he did not vote for it. Had he voted for it, he would have voted for the most dramatic increase in border security in American history. But he voted against it. That is his choice. I respect his judgment. But to come to us today and say: Now we have to vote again on border security--we had a chance. The Senate passed it. What happened to the comprehensive immigration reform bill? It made it over to the House of Representatives and disappeared into vapor. It was never called for consideration.

So it is not as if we have ignored the problems of immigration. We addressed them forthrightly in a bipartisan fashion, in a comprehensive fashion, and the House of Representatives refused to even call the bill.

Let's go to this particular issue. The heart of the problem is clearly in three Central American countries that are so lawless that people are desperately sending their children to the United States of America. We have to deal with that issue. We are. The President has dealt with it. The Vice President has visited those countries. Last week the Presidents of all three countries came here. So to say the President is doing nothing about the cause of the crisis is not accurate. The President is addressing it directly to discourage any more children from making this dangerous, deadly journey, No. 1.

No. 2, I hope we all agree: No mercy for these smugglers. No mercy for those coyotes who are exploiting these families and sadly abusing many of these children.

No. 3--and the President has made this point--we have an obligation. When a child is entrusted to you, people stand in judgment of how you treat that child. We have many children now entrusted to us on a temporary basis. The President has asked for money so that they can be treated humanely on a

temporary basis. Not an unreasonable request.

Time and again America has responded to crises around the world--families and children who are victims of war, earthquakes, tsunamis. For virtually every natural disaster, we have been there. America has a reputation for being there. Now that children are at our border, will we do anything less?

What we are doing with the bill before us, the supplemental bill, is providing enough money for humanitarian care and still working on the root causes of the problem. I think that is responsible.

I hope we do not leave here this week having failed to come up with this money. I hope we provide the resources to this administration. I hope my colleagues on a bipartisan basis will do two things: Vote for this emergency appropriation and, secondly, let's join in a thoughtful discussion about how to pass a comprehensive immigration bill which includes this aspect--asylees and refugees.

I yield the floor.

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