Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2015 - Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, yesterday President Obama, as part of the rollout of his blueprint budget that calls for more than $2 trillion in new taxes and adds more than $8 trillion to our national debt over the next 10 years, visited the Department of Homeland Security to urge the House of Representatives to pass a funding bill for that Department.

It struck me as somewhat odd that the President would go to the Department of Homeland Security and ask the House to pass a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security since they have already done it. They passed a $40 billion funding bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security. It seems to me the President--rather than giving a speech at the Department of Homeland Security--needs to be talking to Members of his own political party. If the President wants Congress to pass a Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill, then he needs to talk to our friends in the minority in the Senate who just blocked consideration of a $40 billion Department of Homeland Security funding bill.

I know what they will say. They will say: We don't like parts of the bill. But the only way to finish a bill is to start a bill, and today they voted to refuse to start that process.

Why in the world is it that the Senate Democrats will not even allow this particular legislation to be debated and amended? One of the reasons is that they probably don't want to revisit the President's own repeated assertions--22 different times--when he said he didn't believe he had the legal authority to issue the Executive action he issued in November of 2014. Twenty-two times he said: I don't have the authority.

In 2013, when the President was speaking at an immigration event, he was interrupted by a heckler who urged him to stop deportations by Executive fiat. In response, the President said:

If in fact I could solve all these problems without passing laws in Congress, then I would do so. But we're also a nation of laws--that's part of our tradition.

Thus spoke the President of the United States on 1 of those 22 different occasions.

Maybe our colleagues in the minority don't want to debate this bill because they don't want to have to answer questions from their constituents about those 22 different occasions when the President said, ``I don't have the authority,'' and explain how they now agree with him and that somehow he miraculously got that authority absent an act of Congress.

I can think of another reason our friends on the Democratic side are reluctant to allow us to even begin debate on this legislation. I have had the honor of participating in naturalization ceremonies all across my State. I have witnessed men and women who were born in other countries, came to the United States of America, raised their right hand and swore allegiance to the U.S. Constitution. They may have come from Mexico, India, Vietnam or from any one of a number of other countries, but they decided, notwithstanding from where they came, they wanted to be an American.

Those naturalization ceremonies are almost like birthdays--a celebration of one's birth--because in a way it is a birthday. It is a day when they become proud Americans.

As Americans we believe in the benefits of legal immigration because in many cases it was our parents, grandparents or great-grandparents who came here from another country in search of the American dream--a better place to live, work, and raise a family.

Sadly, the President of the United States has made it clear his administration is willing to take the people who played by the rules and applied for immigration and legal status to become an American citizen and kick them to the back of the line. This President has kicked the people who played by the rules to the back of the line, and he has moved people who did not play by the rules to the front of the line.

That is fundamentally unfair. It also sends a terrible message that we are going to reward people who break the law and we are going to punish people who follow and comply with the law.

So maybe our colleagues across the aisle don't really want to talk about that, and that is the reason they voted not to proceed to even begin to debate this important Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill--again, a bill that was passed by the House that would fund, to the tune of roughly $40 billion, the functions of the Department of Homeland Security. Yet our friends in the minority have said: We don't even want to talk about it. I can tell my colleagues what they don't want to talk about. They don't want to talk about the President's unconstitutional Executive action which he issued or announced last November.

Here are some interesting quotes from some of our colleagues in the minority. The senior Senator from West Virginia said: I wish he wouldn't do it. He was talking about the President's stated intention to issue his Executive action.

The senior Senator from Missouri, a member of the minority party, said: I have to be honest. How this is coming about makes me uncomfortable.

Then there is the junior Senator from Indiana who said: I am as frustrated as anyone in Congress that it is not doing its job, but the President shouldn't make such significant policy changes on his own.

Then there is the junior Senator from North Dakota, a member of the minority party, who said: It could poison any hope of compromise or bipartisanship in the new Senate before it has even started. That is what a Democrat from North Dakota said about the President's stated intention to issue his Executive action.

The senior Senator from Minnesota said: I have concerns.

Then there is Senator King from Maine who said: And I also frankly am concerned about the constitutional separation of powers.

The Senator from Maine isn't the only one because 26 different States have filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of Texas challenging the constitutionality of the President's Executive action, and the Federal district judge could rule at any time on that.

Then there is the Senator from Montana.

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, will my colleague from Texas yield for a question?

Mr. CORNYN. I will not yield at this time, Mr. President. I will be glad to yield at the conclusion of my remarks if the Senator still has a question.

Then there is the Senator from Montana who said: I would prefer that the Congress act, yes.

Then there is the Senator from Delaware who said: What I would say to Congress, I am going to give you a little bit of time in the new Congress, and I expect you to do something.

So that is eight Members of the minority party who said they are more than a little uncomfortable about what the President has done. Yet today the Members of the minority party have voted in lockstep to deny a debate, any opportunity to discuss how to fund the Department of Homeland Security, how to rein in a reckless President who has overreached his constitutional authority.

Here are some other provisions that are actually in the House bill that perhaps some of the Members of the minority are a little bit nervous to talk about, much less vote on.

The House has offered as part of their bill a rider which defunds Executive actions treating domestic violence, sexual abuse, and child exploitation offenders as secondary priorities for removal. In other words, the President's Executive action took people who have actually committed crimes--not just entered the country illegally but committed other crimes--and made them nonpriority in terms of removal.

Then, of course, there is the provision of the House bill that says we don't want to disadvantage legal immigrants and people who played by the rules because the House recognized that is exactly what the President's Executive action did. It kicked the people who played by the rules to the back of the line and the people who did not to the front of the line. But our friends in the minority obviously don't want to talk about that either.

Millions of foreign-born immigrants have become successful, patriotic American citizens. We are richer as a country because of the contributions they have made to our great land.

The fundamental choice we have is, are we going to have controlled immigration or uncontrolled immigration? The President and apparently his political party have embraced uncontrolled, illegal immigration as their cause.

We, on the other hand, have said we believe in the benefits to our great country of legal immigration and assimilation because that is who we are. All of us have a family story somewhere back in our history. Mine goes back to the 19th century following a potato crop famine in Ireland that caused my forebears to immigrate to Canada and then to the United States. Everybody has a story like that.

But it is a sad and important realization that the President, through his Executive action, is disrespecting the very individuals who have played by the rules and whom we celebrate as great, patriotic Americans. But apparently our friends in the minority don't even want to talk about it, so that is why they stopped this funding bill--$40 billion to fund the Department of Homeland Security--and refused to even talk about it, much less debate it. They are going to come out here on the floor, I trust, and click through the days and say: Well, we only have 3 weeks until the Department runs out of money. It is like the old story about the teenager who murders his own parents, and then he goes to court and pleads for mercy because--he says: Judge, I am an orphan. That is what our friends in the minority have done.

This is a crisis of their own making. In fact, we don't want a crisis. We want to eliminate government by crises. That is why the House has passed the responsible piece of legislation they have. That is why we ought to take it up today. If they don't like it--I know there are Members on our side who disagree with certain portions of it--then we ought to debate it and we ought to vote. Any way we look at it, the Senate ought to at least have the debate on this legislation.

Last week our colleague from Illinois, the assistant minority leader, came to the floor and praised the new majority leader, Senator McConnell, for his leadership during the first few weeks of the new Republican majority here in the Senate. He said:

I hope that in our role in the minority, we can work with you to achieve at least debate on the floor if not some significant legislation.

That was a nice moment. But then the very next day, on a call with reporters, my colleague from Illinois pledged to filibuster the House-passed Department of Homeland Security funding bill and refused to even allow a debate--a threat they made good on today.

So my request to our colleagues on the Democratic side is simple: Honor the promise the senior Senator from Illinois made last week to have an open and fair debate and not just shut it down and create government by crisis and add to the very dysfunction the voters repudiated on November 4.

I am glad to yield to the Senator from New York.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source