Department of Homeland Security Funding

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am very pleased to be here today to
speak to my colleagues about funding for the Department of Homeland
Security and to be followed by one of my most valued colleagues,
Senator Menendez, whose leadership on this issue has been
extraordinarily important. I am also pleased to work with him on a
letter he sent yesterday to the President concerning Iran sanctions,
where his statesmanship-like path to a reasonable solution on this very
complex and crucial issue will be enormously important to the future.

The Department of Homeland Security is one of the most significant
departments in the U.S. Government. It has a mandate that is as complex
and crucial as any in keeping American citizens and communities and
capabilities safe and secure in a dangerous, complex, and threatening
world.

In my family, when I was growing up, we had a saying: Don't cut off
your nose to spite your face. Unfortunately, that path is exactly what
some of my colleagues are choosing to follow in threatening to stop
funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

We are reminded of the importance of this Department not only as
terrorism raises its ugly head repeatedly abroad but also as perhaps
more benign threats exist at home--the most recent of them, the
snowstorm that hit the Northeast within the past couple of days. The
Department of Homeland Security is not only engaged in a fight against
terrorism, not only engaged in keeping America safe from threats abroad
but is engaged in a wide variety of other tasks that have to do with
the Nation's security. That is the key word in its title--``security.''

Americans fear more deeply than ever before that their security is
threatened--economic security by stagnating incomes, foreign security
as the world becomes more volatile and unpredictable and more
threatening, and domestic security as threats abroad metastasize within
our own borders.

Many people equate the concept of security at home or homeland
security with protection against extreme violence from abroad, violent
extremism spawning from abroad and in fact stopping those threats.
Finding the wrongdoers and stopping them is one of the major tasks the
Department of Homeland Security has, but it has a myriad of additional
responsibilities that include aiding the victims of natural disasters
and extreme weather, citizenship and immigration, routinely handling
matters that involve legitimate applications for visas for entry into
the United States, and it fights the scourge of human trafficking. I am
privileged to have a Caucus on Human Trafficking with my colleague
Senator Rob Portman. So I know it forms a diverse collection of
responsibilities that are crucial to security.

In fact, the Department of Homeland Security's responsibilities are
comprehensive--so much so that it is simply unacceptable to play
politics with its crucial mission. It is irresponsible to hold its
funding hostage in a dangerous game of fiscal chicken and threaten
daily activities that are vital to America's present and future
security.

That is why we are here, because some of my friends across the aisle
believe stopping the President from exercising discretion on certain
immigration issues affecting specific individuals in this country is
worth hamstringing and undercutting the entire Department of Homeland
Security and forcing an enormous amount of its vital work to grind to a
halt. That is the game of chicken we have. The President is expected to
relent if the Department of Homeland Security is stopped from
functioning, but it is a game that has no place in this Chamber or in
this government.

We can agree or disagree with the President, and I disagree with the
Department of Homeland Security on certain of its policies; for
example, on detaining children which it has done routinely on a
grandiose scale. I have included an amendment in the measure for
immigration reform that passed the Senate. It would stop it from
detaining children--a practice I consider shameful and unacceptable--
and I have a long list of other changes I would like to see made in DHS
policies. But the way to effectuate those changes in my view is not to
withhold funding to stop DHS in its tracks of providing security for
the American people, it is to amend the laws to persuade our colleagues
to undertake the legislative process and to appeal ultimately to the
court of public opinion which can render a verdict far more powerful
than the tactics involved here. Chipping away at the President's
authority by not only undercutting him but stopping one of his
departments is reprehensible. So I urge my colleagues to cease this
tactic.

The President needs discretion. In fact, I know as a prosecutor, as a
former attorney general, and as a one-time U.S. attorney for
Connecticut that discretion is essential. There is no way any authority
can prosecute every crime. So prosecutors need to select cases based on
severity of offense and most important the danger to the public because
ultimately protecting the public is what security requires. That is
true as well for the Department of Homeland Security.

The President has exercised his discretion in a way I find laudable.
The exigencies of the present immigration system require the exercise
of discretion. The President has done it in a way that is responsible
and upholds his duties as Commander in Chief. But even if I disagree
with the President on that exercise of discretion with respect to
immigration, I would never use this tactic of withholding funding for
an entire department, affecting all of its activities and implicating
and undercutting security in so dangerous a way.

My hope is we will debate immigration policy, that we will approve an
immigration reform bill, that it will be on a bipartisan basis just as
it was during the last session, that there will be a lot of good-faith
disagreement on the floor of this Chamber about those policies and
about the President's actions but that we will keep the lights on at
the Department of Homeland Security, that we will shine the light on
threats to our security that need to be exposed and pursued, that we
will further the security of this Nation and protect the public by
making sure the DHS funding as a clean bill is approved right away and
that we move forward to make sure DHS continues its vital service to
the American people.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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