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

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, yesterday President Obama took the extreme step of vetoing good American jobs. He sided with partisan extremists and powerful special interests over the middle class.

It says a lot about the priorities of this administration. But if the White House thinks this is the end of the new Congress's push for American jobs, it is wrong. I will soon have more to say about this and what the Senate plans to do.

For the moment, the Senate is focused on overcoming another extreme idea: the Democrats' Homeland Security filibuster to defend Executive overreach.

Many Senate Democrats led their constituents to believe they would do something about the kind of Executive overreach President Obama referred to as ``unwise and unfair'' and ignoring the law. Those are the words of the President of the United States. We have since heard excuses from Democrats to cover for their refusal to do so. But the time for excuses has now passed. Democrats will soon have another chance to prove they were serious.

Later this week, the Senate will consider a bill from the senior Senator from Maine that is about as reasonable as you can get. Obviously, President Obama was right to refer to the kind of overreach he took in November as ignoring the law. Senator Collins' sensible bill focuses simply on preventing the most egregious example of Executive overreach from taking effect. It is as simple as that.

The Collins bill is not tied to funding of DHS, either. So there are no excuses left. Democrats should join us in voting for this commonsense legislation.

In the meantime, we have offered Democrats a chance to prove they were serious about something else, and that is funding the Department of Homeland Security.

It is really something to watch Democrats vote and block funding for this Department one day and then hold a hypocritical press conference the next. Democrats need to end their weeks-long filibuster of Homeland Security funding and end it right now.

We have continually offered them sensible opportunities to do so. Yesterday, we offered them yet another. But it will require their cooperation to achieve.

The dual-pronged approach I have outlined--allowing the Senate to stop unwise and unfair overreach on the one hand and to fund DHS through the fiscal year on the other--is a sensible way forward, but it can't be achieved without cross-partisan cooperation.

The onus continues to be on the Democratic Party to keep the Department of Homeland Security funded. Democrats can fund DHS now--not by holding more hypocritical press conferences but by ending their senseless filibuster and cooperating across the aisle.

That is what Americans expect. That is what Democrats can finally work together with us on to get done now.

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