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

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I don't understand why the Republicans in the House and the Senate have decided to hold up one appropriations bill of our Federal Government, the appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security, the one agency that is supposed to protect us against terrorism.

Last December, the House Republicans said: We are just not going to give regular funding to this Department--$48 billion this Department spends on the Coast Guard, border security, and a myriad of different things to keep America safe--but the Republicans said this is one agency we are not going to fully fund. We will put them on temporary funding, called a continuing resolution, and we will get back to you on February 27.

Then what they did is to lash the budget of this Department to the thorny, difficult issue of immigration and insist that we can't fund the Department of Homeland Security unless we take up what I consider to be some rather outrageous riders put on by the House of Representatives on the issue of immigration.

The good news is we have come up with a solution on this side. I am going to make it in the manner of a unanimous consent request, and it is very straightforward.

First, because Senator Jeanne Shaheen from New Hampshire has stepped forward and offered, with Senator Mikulski, S. 272, we have a clean appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security.

If the Senator would like me to yield for a question, I will yield at this point.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.

Mrs. SHAHEEN. If I could ask my colleague a question, isn't it true, I say to Senator Durbin, that the bill you are talking about, the clean bill Senator Mikulski and I have introduced, is the legislation that was agreed to last December by Senator Mikulski, when she was chair of the Appropriations Committee, and Hal Rogers, chair of the House Appropriations Committee? It was a bipartisan agreement, a bicameral agreement, and each side gave some.

What is at issue here is not that underlying bill. What is at issue are the five riders, the amendments the House put on, that have nothing to do with funding the Department of Homeland Security.

Mr. DURBIN. I would answer in the affirmative. That is why the unanimous consent request I am going to make is the easiest, quickest solution to our problem--a clean, bipartisan appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security.

But we are not running away from the immigration issue. Because Senator McConnell is now the majority leader and controls the business of the Senate and Speaker Boehner controls the business of the House, they can take up the immigration issue immediately after we have funded this Department.

So what I am going to suggest in my unanimous consent request is that they use their power in the majority to take us to this important debate on immigration after we have given a clean appropriation to the one Federal agency empowered with keeping America safe from terrorism.

Let's not play politics with terrorism. Let's not play politics with the budget of the Department of Homeland Security.

Therefore, I ask unanimous consent that following the enactment of the text of S. 272, the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2015, at a time to be determined by the majority leader, after consultation with the Democratic leader but no later than Monday, March 16, the Senate proceed to the consideration of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, as passed by the Senate by a vote of 68 to 32 on June 27, 2013, the text of which is at the desk.

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