[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 24 (Thursday, February 12, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S973-S975]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY FUNDING
Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I stand before this body this afternoon to
encourage my colleagues--particularly my colleagues on the other side
of the aisle--to take into account the need to fund the Department of
Homeland Security.
The House of Representatives acted responsibly in passing legislation
to keep the Department of Homeland Security funded, and they did so
acting more than 1 month in advance of the scheduled expiration of the
existing funding stream for the Department of Homeland Security. This
was a good move. It was likewise a good move of
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the majority leader to bring up this bill for consideration nearly 1
month before the expiration of the existing funding. I applauded this
effort and still do.
One of the reasons it was so important is it would help us avoid the
cliff effect. What I mean by that is the dynamic that occurs every time
we have a scheduled expiration of funding and the House and the Senate
wait until the last minute, sometimes with only 1 or 2 days, sometimes
with only 1 or 2 hours to spare before we act.
What this does is effectively shuts out the voices of most Members of
the House and most Members of the Senate. It strips us of our right to
offer improvements, amendments, to legislation before that legislation
has a chance to become law.
Ultimately this enures to the advantage of just a few people, and it
results in the effective disenfranchisement of so many people
throughout America whose voices don't have an opportunity to be
considered through their duly-elected Senators and Representatives.
That is why this time it was going to be different. That is why this
time it was so great the House and the Senate acted early in bringing
up this legislation.
Nevertheless, it has been 2 weeks since we brought up this bill, the
bill passed by the House to keep the Department of Homeland Security
funded. Two weeks, and we have cast vote after vote trying to get on
the bill--just trying to consider the bill--and we have seen those
efforts to get on the bill blocked by my colleagues on the other side
of the aisle.
Earlier today I heard colleagues on the other side of the aisle
trying to explain their reasons for continuing to block consideration
of this bill. I heard arguments that suggested that although they want
to keep the Department of Homeland Security funded, they don't want to
consider this bill because, as some of them have put it, they don't
like everything the House of Representatives put into the bill. They
don't like the provisions in the bill restricting the administration's
ability to use those funds to carry out--to implement--the President's
Executive orders issued in November of this last year, Executive orders
that would have the effect of granting amnesty to millions of people
currently inside the United States illegally.
Look, people are entitled to their opinions about how best we should
proceed, how best we should deal with those who are currently inside
the country illegally. There are a lot of opinions about this, and
everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But Americans are
overwhelmingly united behind the uncontroversial proposition that when
Congress has established a law in a particular area, as it has with our
immigration code, in order for that law to be changed, it needs to be
changed by congressional action. The House needs to pass it, the Senate
needs to pass it, and the President needs to sign it into law.
As the President has acknowledged repeatedly, he lacks the authority
to make those changes on his own. He lacks the authority to act
unilaterally. He lacks the authority under our system to behave as if
he were a government of one. Ours is not a government of one. In fact,
our Founding Fathers, while they disagreed on a number of issues, they
were united behind one core principle behind our 227-year-old governing
document that has fostered the development of the greatest civilization
the world has ever known. They were united behind the proposition that
bad things happen when too much power gets consolidated into the hands
of the few or, even worse, into the hands of one person.
That is why they put in place this system that would split the powers
of government into three coequal branches, and within the legislative
branch--which many of them tended to view as wielding potentially the
most dangerous power--they split up that power into two bodies and then
split up the power within each of those bodies so no one person and no
one group of people could accumulate too much power.
They certainly never intended a system in which we would have a
virtual monarch, albeit a monarch serving for a term of years who could
by the stroke of a pen change the law according to his own will, change
the law in order to suit his own political interests, change the law
without going through Congress. Yet that is what has happened, which
brings me back to arguments made today and over the last few days by my
colleagues across the aisle. They say we are fine with funding the
Department of Homeland Security, but we don't like all the provisions
put in there by the House of Representatives. We don't like those
provisions that would restrict the President's authority to spend money
implementing the President's Executive amnesty program.
Again, Americans, regardless of how they feel about amnesty, as a
matter of policy, are overwhelmingly of the opinion--and correctly so--
that this is a decision that needs to be made by Congress and not the
President of the United States.
Secondly, this is the kind of issue we deal with, with some
regularity, within Congress.
Within the system as it has evolved, within the system as dictated by
operation of the rules of the House of Representatives, typically--and
for more than a century exclusively--it has been the role of the House
of Representatives to initiate appropriations bills when we are trying
to fund a government program that starts in the House, and that has
been the case for well over a century. So they have the prerogative of
starting a bill to fund the government, and that is what they did.
When it comes over here, if you don't like it, that is fine. This is
a great place to be if you don't like a bill as it starts out. The U.S.
Senate has been called the world's greatest deliberative legislative
body with good reason--because our rules, when properly followed,
protect the right of every Member to make sure his or her views are
adequately aired and protect and preserve the right of each and every
Member to offer improvements to bills and offer amendments to make
changes to legislation before it is put into law. Our rules are very
clear on this.
It is unfortunate that in the last few years under the previous
leadership those rights were trampled. Those rights were suppressed. We
often didn't have those rights. We often had legislation that came up
without a fair, open opportunity for each Member to offer amendments.
But we have moved on. We have a new majority leader, a majority
leader who has, to his great credit, stood behind his commitment to
protect the right of each Member to offer amendments to legislation. I
thank him for that and encourage him to continue following this because
it is good for this body. But because it is good for us and because our
rules already provide for it and because we are following those rules
now, as evidenced by the fact that we have now voted on more amendments
on the floor in the form of a rollcall vote to pending legislation just
in the last few weeks than we did in the entire last Congress, as
evidenced by that, we don't need to fear the old order anymore. We
don't need to fear the possibility of legislation coming into this
body, and if we proceed to it, that that legislation will be without
the opportunity to offer amendments.
So if Members don't like something in this bill, vote at least to
proceed to it, vote at least to allow the debate to begin, but that,
alas, is not what my colleagues across the aisle have chosen to do.
What they have chosen to do is to say: No. No, no, no. They are
obstructing. They are obstructing the process as it was designed by the
Constitution and as contemplated by the rules of the Senate and the
rules of the House of Representatives.
They are saying, no, we will not consider this because we don't like
some provisions of this bill. Yet they are also saying at the same time
we want to keep the Department of Homeland Security funded.
I agree with exactly half of that statement. I agree with them I
think when they say they want to keep the Department of Homeland
Security funded. At least I will take that at face value. But if they
truly do, then why on Earth would they not proceed to it? And if they
don't like some of the other provisions, let them offer amendments. Let
them change that.
At the end of the day, we have to come to terms with the fact that
not all of us are going to like every part of every bill that comes
over from the
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House of Representatives. In fact, I dare say it hardly ever happens
that any one Member of this body immediately, automatically feels great
about every jot and title, about every section, every syllable, every
paragraph of a bill that comes over from the House of Representatives.
That is exactly why we have the rules we do. That is exactly why
parliamentary procedures, as they have evolved over the centuries,
generally have as their central feature the protection of Members of
any body such as this of the right to offer amendments, to offer
helpful suggestions. But under our rules in the Senate, that cannot
operate, it will not operate, it is not available, it doesn't exist
unless we first vote to proceed to the bill.
So I invite my colleagues across the aisle--I challenge them--if they
want to keep the Department of Homeland Security funded, vote to get on
this bill. If they care about America's national security, there is a
way to prove it. There is a way to prove they mean what they say when
they say they want to keep it funded. Vote to get on this bill. It
doesn't mean they have to agree with me, but it was not only acceptable
but entirely appropriate and even necessary for the House to act to
protect the constitutional order and to do so by restricting the
President's ability to spend money to implement his Executive amnesty
program.
People don't have to agree with me on that, but if Members want to
keep the Department of Homeland Security funded, they can and they must
and they will vote to proceed to this bill. Now we may disagree on what
amendments you offer, but the Senate majority leader has repeated his
offer, to make sure that we have an open amendment process, and we
will.
In light of that, there is no excuse--there can be no excuse for my
Democratic colleagues to continue to insist on the one hand that they
care about our Nation's security and funding the Department of Homeland
Security, while voting on the other hand against proceeding to this
funding bill to keep the Department of Homeland Security funded. There
is no excuse and there can be none.
It is most unfortunate that we have gone now 2 weeks without being
able to proceed to this bill--2 weeks in which we could have offered
amendments, 2 weeks in which my Democratic colleagues may well have
succeeded in getting rid of some or perhaps all of the provisions they
don't like added by the House of Representatives. They may have ended
up with a piece of legislation that is exactly what they would have
written had they started it over here, but they didn't do that.
Meanwhile, they have the audacity to accuse Republicans of causing
this problem. This is something I don't understand. There are those
among them who insist that Republicans did this very thing in the last
Congress. Well, there were times when Republicans voted in the last
Congress not to proceed to something, but overwhelmingly--and if I
recall correctly, perhaps entirely--when Republicans stopped their
motion to proceed, when Republicans blocked cloture on a motion to
proceed to the legislation, it was on the basis of a well-founded
complaint that there would be no open amendment process. But there is
no such argument to be made here. That argument has thankfully been
taken off the table by our majority leader, who has thankfully opened
up the Senate once again and made an amendment process possible.
Perhaps my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are still
fearing the shadow cast by the previous leadership exercised in the
previous Congress in the Senate that blocked out the amendment process,
that made amendments impossible. If that is what they are afraid of,
they have no need to fear. The Sun is now shining. The opportunity to
offer up amendments and have those amendments considered has been
restored to the Senate. There is no reason to be afraid. No reason to
be afraid, of course, unless we somehow do the unthinkable--unless we
continue to kick this can down the road farther and farther until we
have no options left on the table.
We have just a few legislative days remaining between now and the
time the existing funding for the Department of Homeland Security will
expire. Our next vote has been scheduled on this, as I understand it, a
week from Monday. I would implore each of my colleagues to reconsider
their current strategy. Whether you like it or not, the way our system
is set up is that the House of Representatives starts our spending
bills. They have to pass spending bills first. If you don't like
everything in the Homeland Security bill that the House passed--fine,
vote to proceed to it and then change it. Change it back however you
want. Propose amendments. I might not vote for all of them, I might not
agree to all of them, but propose them. Have them aired out, have them
considered by this body, by the American people, and let's have the
debate, because our clock is ticking and our Nation's homeland security
is too important for us to continue to put this off. But that is what
we have been doing. That is what my colleagues who have been voting
against cloture on the motion to proceed have been doing every time
they voted no on this important issue.
The time has come for this body to accept the fact that a new day has
dawned and we now have the ability once again to offer amendments, and
because that opportunity now exists again, there is no reason to be
afraid to move to legislation that has been passed by the House of
Representatives to keep one of our government's important departments
operating--no reason to fear whatsoever. In fact, if you are worried
about what you should be fearful of, you should be fearful of not
proceeding to this bill.
The next time we cast a vote on this, I encourage each of my
colleagues to vote yes. Let's get on the bill and have an open, robust
debate and whatever the outcome of that debate, we will get something
passed. We will get it to the President, and we will make sure we keep
this Department funded.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Barrasso). The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cassidy). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
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