Department of Homeland Security Funding

Floor Speech

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, for the second time in 2 days our friends across the aisle have killed important funding for the Department of Homeland Security, a bill worth about $40 billion that was passed by the House of Representatives and sent over for the Senate to consider.

I continue to be amazed, watching Member after Member across the aisle come down here and vote to block this important piece of legislation, and then, in the same breath, accuse the majority of threatening to shut down the government. It strikes me as surreal. They are the ones filibustering the funding for the Department of Homeland Security, and they are claiming we are trying to shut down the government.

I know it is sometimes hard to explain what happens in the Halls of Congress and Washington, DC, but my folks back home can't understand how they can block something and then claim they are for it--and then the people who are actually advocating for the passage of this funding, claiming somehow we are going to shut down the government. It just doesn't make any sense, and it is the kind of double talk I think people have come to despise and associate with Washington, DC, and Congress.

That is one reason voters so overwhelmingly repudiated the status quo on November 4 and said: We want new management, and we don't want business as usual in Washington, DC.

Speaking of saying one thing and doing another, on this side of the aisle we pointed out some of the tough talk from some of our friends on the other side of the aisle, Senate Democrats, last fall when the President made clear he intended to follow through on a series of unilateral immigration actions that he, himself, on 22 different occasions had said he did not have the authority to take.

Indeed, it is my view this is unconstitutional. He can't pass or make a new law without following the constitutional pathway, which requires Congress to consider it, vote on it--both Houses--and then send it to the President for signature. For the President just simply to make it up out of whole cloth is dangerous, to say the least.

I guess if the President doesn't like any other aspect of our laws, this President--or any future President--might claim the sole authority to change it without following the procedures laid out in the U.S. Constitution.

I know what the President did last fall in this Executive action on immigration makes a number of our colleagues across the aisle uncomfortable because they are quoted in the newspaper as saying so. But now somehow in this mind meld going on, on the minority side, they now are walking in lockstep, voting against proceeding to consider this Homeland Security appropriations bill, even though, by my count, at least seven Democrats expressed deep concern with the President's unconstitutional action.

Here is what the Senator from West Virginia said, talking about the President:

I wish he wouldn't do it.

The junior Senator from Minnesota said:

I have concerns about executive action.

The same kind of concerns I have just expressed.

The senior Senator from Missouri felt the same way, saying about the President's unilateral action:

How this is coming about makes me uncomfortable, [and] I think it probably makes most Missourians uncomfortable.

It made the President of the United States uncomfortable, so uncomfortable on 22 occasions he said he couldn't do it--and then he did it.

It makes me extremely uncomfortable, too, and it certainly makes the vast majority of the people I represent back in Texas uncomfortable as well.

We are a nation of laws. I know we say that all the time, but it is one of the things that distinguishes us from so much of the rest of the world where, no matter who you are--whether you are the President of the United States or the most humble person in the country--the rules apply to you equally. That is what it says over the top of the Supreme Court Building. Look at the front of the building. It says, ``Equal Justice Under Law.''

The idea that the President can--after 22 times saying he didn't have the authority--become a law unto himself and try to get away with it is just unprecedented and it is dangerous.

Despite the fact that many of our colleagues on the Democratic side have said what the President did made them feel uncomfortable, they apparently lost their sense of discomfort when they voted in lockstep to block this funding bill.

In order to justify their filibuster, a number of Senate Democrats have said: I don't like the bill the House sent over because it has some things in it that I don't like. I like the funding, but I don't like the spending restrictions.

I know the Presiding Officer understands as well that we can't change a piece of legislation in the Senate unless we vote to get on the bill. It is the same thing as saying you can't finish a journey until you start it, and our friends across the aisle are unwilling to even start that journey.

To state the obvious, if our friends in the minority would like to change the Department of Homeland Security funding bill, they ought to stop blocking it from being debated and amend it. If they have ideas, let's bring them to the floor.

One of the things that has distinguished this 114th Congress from the way things ran last year is we have actually had an open amendment process. Indeed, we found out in the first month of this year and this new Congress that we had more votes than all of last year combined.

So there is going to be an opportunity for anybody with a better idea to come down and get a vote. But this whole idea of saying, I am not even going to participate in the process and--worse than that--I am going to block a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security because I don't like what is in it is just--well, it is just impossible to explain.

We know some of our colleagues on the other side are using this to play games because they basically have admitted it.

Just yesterday in the Huffington Post, the senior Senator from New York, a member of the leadership of his own party, said that ``it is really fun to be in the minority.'' That strikes me as extraordinarily cynical because we were not sent to play games, particularly with matters as important as homeland security. That is not what the American people sent us to do, and that is certainly not what they ratified or what they voted for on November 4.

They rejected business as usual in Washington, DC, and they said: Let's do something different, and we may not necessarily endorse everything that Republicans stand for, but, boy, we are sure going to give them a chance to show that they can do better than the management in the 113th Congress.

I think we began to make some positive steps in the right direction, particularly with passing important legislation.

We passed three important pieces of legislation in the 114th Congress: the veterans suicide bill that we voted on earlier this week, we have passed the terrorism risk insurance bill, and we passed, as the Presiding Officer knows, a very important piece of legislation to our economy and job creation and energy security known as the Keystone XL Pipeline. That is not bad. That is not bad.

We would like to do what I think falls in the category of governance 101, something that is pretty basic. We have to pay to keep the government functioning and particularly the Department of Homeland Security.

I know our friends on the other side of the aisle say: We don't like the bill the way it is, and we don't like the tools that are being used by the majority party to rein in the President's Executive action. Well, I am not going to make any apology for that because what the President did was unconstitutional. It was illegal. He has no authority to do that on his own. Again, it is not just me saying that. It is not just my opinion. It is his opinion. How cynical. How cynical.

I guess he figures he is going to get away with it, and our friends on the other side of the aisle are going to be the enablers, to enable the President to get away with something he said he didn't have the authority to do on 22 times.

I sure wouldn't want the folks back home to see me in that same light. I would have a hard time explaining to my constituents back home, saying, yes, I am helping the President do something that he said was illegal and he didn't have the authority to do, and we are going to play games by blocking important funding for the Department of Homeland Security in order to facilitate him getting away with it.

That is a cynical game and it is dangerous, particularly in the threat environment we are living in.

So I come to the floor for the third time this week to ask our colleagues on the other side of the aisle--especially those who have boldly stood up to their own President, a member of their own party, the leader of their own party, a few short months ago--to ask them to stand up again and to tell the President and to tell their own leadership that we want to have a Senate that actually works, where the minority and the majority get to participate through an open amendment process. But we are going to respect the Constitution, we are going to respect this institution and, yes, we are going to respect the role of the Presidency under our Constitution enough to rein in this President's overreach, and we are not going to jeopardize funding for the Department of Homeland Security and allow that to be held hostage to the President's unconstitutional act.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCSRIPT

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