Department of Homeland Security Funding

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I have come to the floor this evening to
speak about the impending shutdown this week of the Federal Department
of Homeland Security. At a time when the folks I hear from in Delaware,
and I suspect what all of the Members in this Chamber are hearing, as
we return from a week spent in our home States, are concerns about our
national security.

Whether it is the heinous acts of ISIS abroad, or the real threats of
the weather and recent weather-related events here at home, a central
concern all of us should share in the Senate here tonight is about
keeping our country and our constituents safe. Yet shutting down the
whole Department of Homeland Security later this week would show a
reckless disregard for our national security by the Republican leader
and some of the hard-line conservatives who are, sadly, setting this
agenda.

In my view, we do not need to be here. The Democrats and Republicans
working together on the Appropriations Committee negotiated a strong
bipartisan Homeland Security funding bill months ago. It is a bill that
if it got a vote before the full Senate would absolutely pass. It makes
wide, needed, broad investments in strengthening all sorts of different
organs of our government at the Federal, State, and local level that
strengthen our homeland security.

Instead, the other party has insisted on attaching political
provisions to the bill that would overturn the President's Executive
action on immigration. I know I do not need to remind the Presiding
Officer or any of our colleagues that we have already debated and
passed comprehensive immigration reform in this Chamber which, if taken
up by the House, would have made the President's action completely
unnecessary.

I think we all agree that congressional action is the preferred path
toward fixing our broken immigration system. If that is what my
colleagues on the other side of the aisle are really concerned about,
then I am eager to discuss how we can fix our badly broken immigration
system in a bipartisan manner by the preferred path of congressional
action rather than Executive action.

But I think we should separate that debate over immigration and what
is the right path toward a resolution of our broken system from a
discussion about responsibly and sustainably funding our Department of
Homeland Security. If we fail to fund Homeland Security, it would have damaging consequences to our economy, to the security of our communities, and to our reputation around the world. At this time of heightened concern about our cohesion, about our unity, and about our security as a country, failing to fund the Federal
Department of Homeland Security I think sends the worst possible
message to our allies around the world about our capacity as a mature
democracy of reaching responsible resolutions on difficult and divisive
issues.

If the Department of Homeland Security shuts down this week, tens of
thousands of its staff would be furloughed without pay. They include
the FEMA disaster and preparedness staff, the very personnel who check
the immigration status of new employees through E-Verify, critical
security intelligence analysts, and the folks who run the domestic
nuclear detection offices, just to name a few.

The list of these tens of thousands of Homeland Security employees
and the vital functions they perform would take longer than the evening
could take.

My own State of Delaware has the lowest mean elevation in the
country. That means we are a really low-lying State. We are incredibly
vulnerable to storms and to flooding, and we simply can't afford to
have FEMA's staff suspended, furloughed, laid off.

Whether we shut down or just have a short-term funding bill, funding
for Homeland Security grants can't go out. Some of the folks who watch
this debate in the week ahead will have difficulty discerning between
folks on my side who will advocate for a so-called clean bill and
others who will advocate for a CR. This is where the difference really
is: in the areas of grants for State and local emergency preparedness--
the difference between actually moving forward the bipartisan bill that
was worked through the Appropriations Committee in the last Congress
and simply continuing by continuing resolution the previous year's
authorization. That difference is $1.5 billion for State and local
emergency management all over this country.

In my community, which is part of the Greater Philadelphia area, we
are about to welcome the Pope. Something like 2 million people are
expected in the Greater Philadelphia area as we welcome His Holiness to
Philadelphia for the first time in a long time.

I have heard from State and local law enforcement, first responders,
emergency managers, and planners that they are counting on some of the
grants from FEMA that are currently on hold, while they wait to
discover the outcome of this week's debates, to prepare for that
important, very large event. In my own home community, there are
volunteer fire companies which even now are working on submitting
grants. The SAFER Act and the fire grants act have become an important
part of making sure that our local volunteer fire companies have the
equipment they need, the training they need to keep our communities
safe.

In Delaware the overwhelming majority of the crash response, the fire
education, and the fire suppression are done by volunteer fire
companies, which often have badly outdated equipment and insufficient
funding. To sustain their training and their personnel, they need the
grants that have been made available through FEMA and through the
Department of Homeland Security over the last decade to upgrade and
update their equipment, their materials, and their training. They have
been vitally important. They have made a big difference in the fire
service in my home State. There are grants to police departments that
help ensure they have the tools, the training, and the equipment to be
part of emergency preparedness and to keep our communities safe.

If we shut down the Department of Homeland Security, 130,000 other
DHS workers will be compelled to remain at work but without pay. I
think the idea that there are Americans who work to keep us safe at the
border, at our airports, on our coasts and that we don't value them
enough to ensure they will receive their pay for a hard day's work just
goes against the grain of what we stand for as a country.

So are my colleagues really willing to send a message to everyone at
Homeland Security that their work isn't important enough to our Nation
to ensure that they can provide for their family? That is the message
if the Department of Homeland Security shuts down. It hurts families,
it hurts morale, it hurts our preparedness, and it hurts our safety.

I wish to say, as someone who is privileged to serve on the Foreign
Relations Committee and regularly gets the chance to meet with and talk
with leaders from around the world, it sends the message that our
democracy isn't up to the task.

I know this isn't what my Republican friends want to do, and I urge
us to come together and work in a way that will end this era of
politics by crisis once and for all--no more shutdowns, no more
manufactured crises, and no more demonstrating that we are better at
stopping progress than at enacting progress.

Democrats are ready to work together with Republicans to pass a
bipartisan, bicameral bill that we all know we can pass and that will
fund the Department of Homeland Security and keep our country safe. I
hope that after we--this afternoon--voted down for the fourth time a
bill that seeks to repeal the President's actions on immigration, we
can put aside that partisan issue and come together to find a
bipartisan solution to fund the Department of Homeland Security.

We already know what that solution looks like. We just need to come
together and give it a vote. In my view, this is too important to
trivialize as part of the ongoing posturing and partisan games that for
so long have dominated this Chamber.

I urge my colleagues to work with us. Fund Homeland Security and then
let's talk meaningfully in this Congress about how we can fix our
broken immigration system together.

I know we are all eager to continue that conversation. First, we need
to solve this challenge and make sure that our communities, our States,
and our country are safe.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source