Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2015 -- Motion to Proceed
Floor Speech
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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I applaud Senator Klobuchar for her
comments and for pointing out there are real threats that we heard this
weekend from al-Shabaab against the Mall of America. I heard a news
report this morning about that, and one of the things they have talked
about are the very good relations the State of Minnesota and Senator
Klobuchar have built with the Somali community.
But her remarks, just as those news reports, underscore the fact that
we have to address funding for the Department of Homeland Security. We
are just days away from a shutdown, a shutdown of the Department whose
mission it is to protect the citizens of this country while we are
under threat of attack by terrorist groups. That is reckless and it is
dangerous. What kind of message does it send to ISIS, to cyber
criminals, to drug cartels if Congress can't keep the Department of
Homeland Security open?
Because of the real and dangerous threats we face, we need to have
our counterterrorism, our intelligence, and our law enforcement
officials functioning at their highest level.
I met this morning with a group of law enforcement officials and
firefighters from the sea coast of New Hampshire, and they were talking
about how important the funding from the Department of Homeland
Security is to them as they do their jobs. They said two things that I
think are very important. First, they said they have been able to be
proactive about planning to address threats because of the Department
of Homeland Security, and second is they can share those resources. New
Hampshire, similar to Indiana, is a State with a lot of very small
communities, and we need to be able to share those resources if we are
going to be prepared for the threats.
It is time for us to put politics aside. We can debate immigration.
We can debate the President's Executive orders. I am pleased to do
that, but we should do it in another place. We should not be doing it
on the bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security.
I hope my colleagues will come together and support a clean funding
bill so we can make sure the resources are there to fight the threats
that we face.
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Mrs. SHAHEEN. My colleague makes a very important point. I visited
the Coast Guard station in Portsmouth, NH, on Friday and heard about
their drug interdiction efforts and their search and rescue efforts. As
the Senator points out, they--similar to so many other Homeland
Security employees--will not be paid. We should not let that happen.
That is not conducive to making sure we protect this country.
I thank my colleague from Florida.
I yield the floor.
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