Further Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present H.J. Res. 35, a short-term continuing resolution to keep the Department of Homeland Security open and operating until March 19, 2015.

This type of bandaid, stopgap funding fix is not the way we should be running things around here. It is the constitutional duty of this body to provide funding for the Federal Government, all of the Federal Government, and this should be done through regular order, without the threat of shutdowns or the lurching uncertainty of continuing resolutions.

Mr. Speaker, we face an immediate deadline that makes this continuing resolution a necessity. Without it, the Department of Homeland Security will shutter its doors at the stroke of midnight tonight.

This would put thousands of Federal employees on furlough, waste taxpayer dollars, and create instability at the Department tasked with one of the most important functions of government, potentially risking our national security.

The House must pass this bill in short order to keep the lights on at the Department of Homeland Security in the near term. Hopefully, this will buy us the additional time necessary.

I would prefer and I hope that we pass the full-year, regular DHS funding bill that we negotiated on a bipartisan, bicameral basis last fall. Until both Chambers of Congress agree on how to do that, we must continue to fund the essential daily operations of our homeland security.

At the same time, Congress must continue to fight the President's executive actions on immigration, a massive overreach of his constitutional authority and a substantial shift in our immigration policy that I do not support and the American people do not support.

I believe we can and should continue the fight on the President's intrusion into our Constitution, but we must also maintain the functions of government that protect the rights and safety given to us by this hallowed document.

We have no time to waste, Mr. Speaker. I ask that my colleagues in the House today keep in mind that, as elected Members of the House of Representatives, it is our constitutional duty to fund the government, to protect the people who elected us, and to defend this great Nation.

I urge an ``aye'' on the bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, let's review something. Let's just review briefly where we are and why we are here.

The House passed a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security maybe 3 weeks ago in order to give the Senate enough time to consider it and take appropriate action. So the House acted 3 weeks ago and sent the bill to the Senate.

The Democrats in the Senate have refused to allow that bill to be brought before the Senate four different times over 3 weeks. Now who is to blame for not funding the Department of Homeland Security? The House has tried. The Senate refused to act, until finally this morning, the Senate took up a clean funding bill for Homeland and passed it.

So here is where we are. The House has passed a bill. The Senate now has passed a bill, finally. So what do you normally do? What is the procedure of the Congress when both bodies pass a bill that is different from each other? You go to conference. We have done that from time immemorial. That is the recommended way. That is what is in the Constitution.

The conference is necessary, but that is going to take some time. So we need some time to allow the conference to go to work and conclude this problem and work out the differences. Thus, we need this temporary funding bill for the Department, to keep the security of the Nation intact through the Department of Homeland Security while we work out the permanent funding for the Department for the balance of the year.

That is where we are. It is fairly simple. I don't know any other way to do it. Perhaps our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have a better idea about how to reconcile the differences between the House and Senate, other than a regular conference committee.

A lot of Members of this body are so new to the process that they have never seen or know what a conference with the Senate is. And I think there is some confusion in that regard because people in this body, new to the process over the last 4 or 5 years, have never seen one, and that is sad.

So I hope Members will quickly pass this temporary funding bill for the Department and allow the conference committee to go to work.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

There it is. That is the bill the Senate finally passed. It has been 6 weeks--I said 3 weeks, earlier. I am corrected.

It is 6 weeks that the House passed a funding bill for the Homeland Security Department, 6 weeks ago, sent it to the Senate, purposefully early, to give them plenty of time to consider and bring forward a funding bill of their own.

I have to say the majority over there tried. The Democrats in the Senate stopped consideration of that spending bill four different times over 6 weeks. In the meantime, the House had to sit here waiting for the Senate, and we have been waiting 6 weeks, until just now.

Finally, this morning, the Senate has passed a bill funding the Department for the balance of the year, which differs from the House-passed version of that bill, so we have got to go to conference.

That is the way the framers set things up. When the House does something and the Senate does something different on the same subject, you have got to bring them together into a conference to work out the differences and come up with a bill for the President to sign. That is where we are.

Finally, now, we can go to conference. We could not have earlier because the Senate had not passed the bill. Now, we can go to conference, and we will be asking the Speaker for that designation today.

In the meantime, we can't let the Department stop working. Consequently, we are putting before you a bill to temporarily finance them while we go to conference on the main year-end financing of the Department. That is what this is all about.

Now, I am glad that the Senate brought the Senate bill and laid it on our desk. Now, it is finally up to us to give the Department a chance to survive and for us to stop the President's amnesty program.

By the way, Madam Speaker, there is not one penny in the bill before us, the temporary bill, the CR, there is not a penny in there to fund Obama's amnesty program. We are opposed to it, and there is no money in this bill for that purpose.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

I will be brief. There is no money in this bill to fund the President's amnesty program. There is money in this bill to keep the Department of Homeland Security's doors open and in protection of the American people. This will give us time for the bill the Senate just has sent over to us funding the Department; this will give us time to reconcile the differences between the House version and the Senate version, and we will be prepared then to send a bill to that conference committee and, hopefully, then a bill to the President to sign.

Madam Speaker, I urge an ``aye'' vote.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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