[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 202 (Friday, December 21, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Page S8006]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   RECOGNITION OF THE MAJORITY LEADER

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, yesterday the House passed an amended 
version of the continuing resolution to sustain government funding and 
sent it here for our consideration. In addition to giving the entire 
Federal Government the necessary resources to operate into the new 
year, this legislation also provides much needed investments in 
disaster relief for hard-hit communities and in our national security, 
particularly the integrity of our borders.
  In my view, this legislation would be quite uncontroversial in a more 
normal political moment--in a moment when both parties put the obvious 
national interest ahead of any personal spite for the President.
  I support the additional border security and disaster aid that the 
House added to the bill, and I am proud to vote for it. It is not a 
radical concept that the American people's government should be able to 
control the people and the goods that flow into our country. It is not 
a radical concept that physical barriers play an important role in 
achieving security--unless there is a caucus of lawmakers who go to bed 
at night with their front doors wide open that I am not aware of. What 
is radical, what is way out of the mainstream, is this absurd premise 
of the open-borders far left that achieving basic stability and law 
enforcement on our southern border is somehow in itself without 
compassion or discriminatory or immoral.
  Fairness and compassion don't mean enforcing only some of our laws 
halfheartedly; fairness and compassion mean that we fulfill our 
governing duties for the American people. If we continue to throw up 
our hands and tolerate a status quo that is allowing too many drugs and 
dangerous criminals to travel freely into our land, then this Federal 
Government is not doing its duty.
  The facts are clear on this. The need for greater security on our 
southern border is not some partisan invention; it is an empirical 
fact, and the need is only growing. Apprehensions along the border have 
nearly doubled in the past year. The men and women of the Border Patrol 
are encountering greater numbers of gang members and individuals with 
criminal histories, more family units, more seizures of cocaine and 
fentanyl.
  This is a real crisis. The implications for American communities, for 
vulnerable children, and for Border Patrol units that are already 
stretched thin are very real.
  There is no bright line of principle that sets this request for 
border funding apart from similar requests that many Democrats have 
supported in the past. A lot of them have supported this in the past. 
There is no sharp distinction between the proposal my friends across 
the aisle have decided to oppose today and proposals they have been 
happy to endorse in the past. All that has really changed are the 
political winds way over on the far left. That is what has changed.
  So let's not end this year the way we began it--with another shutdown 
over the issue of illegal immigration. Remember this back in January? 
It was all because the Democrats were unwilling to support commonsense 
measures to address it. Let's advance this legislation. Let's pass it. 
Let's finish our work for this year. Let's secure our country.

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