[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 2570-2575]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            THE FUTURE FORUM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Allen). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 2015, the gentleman from California (Mr. Swalwell) 
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. SWALWELL of California. Mr. Speaker, tonight is the inaugural 
Special Order hour of the Future Forum. Today young people across 
America are asking themselves how they are going to afford their 
education. And if they are even lucky enough to get an education, how 
they are going to be able to afford to pay off that education, how they 
are going to find a well-paying job that can help them pay off that 
education, buy their first home, start a family, and send their own 
kids to school. That is the issue that the Future Forum is going to 
address. We
are going to address this issue, the American Dream of homeownership, 
and something very important to millennials, diversity and equality.
  Millennials make up about 75 million people of the American 
population. It is the most diverse generation in America's history. We 
believe in the Future Forum that we are uniquely suited for this 
because we are a part of the future too, and it is time that the party 
of the future starts talking to the future. We will be taking time on 
the House floor and at events around the country to meet with and 
listen to younger Americans about how we in government can better 
ensure that younger Americans have the opportunities that will allow 
them not only to dream but to achieve. This is a two-way conversation. 
We will use technology and a collaborative approach in our 
communications and in our outreach.
  Our policy priorities are very simple: college access and 
affordability, job
security and entrepreneurship, and equality and diversity. Many of the 
members of the Future Forum were called to public service because of 
what happened on September 11. A recent Center for American Progress 
survey found that the defining issue for millennials is September 11.
  As I stand in this well, we are just 3 days from the Department of 
Homeland Security being shut down. I have invited members of the Future 
Forum to share their own personal story about how they were called to 
service and what homeland security means to them and their 
constituents.
  I would first like to invite down a freshman Member. I yield time to 
the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Brendan F. Boyle).
  Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I would like to 
thank the previous speaker for exercising tremendous leadership in 
helping to forge this, the Future Forum. I am proud to join him in 
being a founding member of this important caucus, one that I hope will 
go out and touch the lives of many young people throughout the country.
  In having a conversation with the previous speaker about what brought 
him to public service and what brought me to public service, I was 
relaying my personal story, and that happened to involve September 11. 
I was not one of the heroes by any means, just one of the ordinary 
Americans working in the private sector straight out of college, 
attempting to pay off a ton of student loans, and right here in the 
Washington, D.C., area, just a couple miles from the Pentagon, that 
bright blue-skied beautiful morning when the world suddenly changed.
  Mark Twain had said a long time ago that America's two best friends 
in the world are Miss Atlantic and Mr. Pacific. September 11, 2001, 
proved that that was no longer the case, that we were not a separate 
fortress unto ourselves and completely removed from the problems around 
the world. That was, as the previous speaker mentioned, such an 
important event in my life and in the lives of so many people in their 
thirties and younger.
  As a member of this September 11 generation, I decided right then 
that I would devote my life to public service. The very next year, 
actually, on September 11, 2002, I began my graduate program in public 
policy and embarked on a path that about 14 years later has led here to 
serving in the Halls of the House of Representatives, attempting to 
make a difference, solve problems, and do so on a bipartisan basis.
  I know there are many people on the other side of the aisle, good 
Republicans, who feel the same way I do; that we can have our 
legitimate debates, that we can have our debates on public policy, but 
that when it comes, of all things, to the security of the American 
people, we need to put the nonsense aside and actually focus on 
protecting our people.
  So, Mr. Speaker, when we had come down here and planned to speak 
about the Future Forum, I had expected that my speech would be about 
the student loan debt crisis, something that is deeply affecting our 
generation, a generation that is more indebted than any other in our 
Nation's history. But, instead, we are here to talk about the fact we 
are just 3 days away from seeing the Department of Homeland Security 
completely shut down, seeing the furloughing of 35,000 employees of the 
Department of Homeland Security.
  On the very same day that information was released, three American 
citizens attempted to join ISIS, which should be called Daesh, the so-
called Islamic State, who truly are evil and would do whatever they 
could to harm any one of the 310 million of us living in this country.
  Mr. SWALWELL of California. Mr. Speaker, I would ask the gentleman 
from Pennsylvania, you talk about your call to service and after 
September 11, and you think back to that day, and I don't know if you 
remember, but I remember Members of Congress, Republicans and 
Democrats, standing on the stairs of the Capitol, on the steps of the 
Capitol and singing ``God Bless America'' and ``America the 
Beautiful.'' It was such a moment of collaboration. Every day since 
that day, up until now, homeland security and our Nation's security has 
always been about collaboration and bipartisanship. I just wonder, to 
hear that the Department of Homeland Security could be shutting down, 
hearkening back to what you thought about collaboration back then, does 
that gel, is that the collaboration that you had in mind and you always 
thought of around our Nation's security?
  Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. The gentleman asks a great 
question. Actually it is the exact opposite of the sort of spirit that 
was invoked on September 11. I remember seeing the pictures of--I 
believe it was a spontaneous gathering of both Democratic and 
Republican Members serving in Congress at that time who came together 
on the Capitol steps to sing ``God Bless America.''
  I think it is a sad commentary that just a decade and a half later 
that we are here at an incredibly dangerous time, mind you, in some 
ways actually more dangerous than the days immediately following 
September 11, and instead of talking about how we can come together in 
an overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion, pass this what should be 
noncontroversial bill to fund our Department of Homeland Security, the 
fact that we are right here caught up in a partisan fight over this is 
deeply disappointing and does not at all jibe with the spirit of 
September 11, and I think the spirit of a generation

[[Page 2571]]

that was called to serve in the wake of those events.
  Mr. SWALWELL of California. I yield to the gentleman from California 
(Mr. Ted Lieu), someone who has served our country not just in 
California's Legislature and not just in the Congress but also in our 
armed services, and is currently serving in the Air Force Reserves.
  Mr. TED LIEU of California. Mr. Speaker, let me start off by saying 
elections have consequences. I respect the American voter. I respect 
what the voters in our Nation did last November when they gave 
Republicans control of the United States Senate and control of the U.S. 
House of Representatives. My sincere plea and request to my Republican 
colleagues across the aisle who control Congress is: Please do not shut 
down the Department of Homeland Security.
  The Republican leader in the U.S. Senate is now poised to delink the 
issue of funding for security for our homeland from immigration reform. 
I hope my colleagues across the aisle will do the same. That is because 
immigration reform has very little to nothing to do with protecting our 
homeland. I would love to have a debate on immigration reform. I think 
we need to do that. I would love to vote for bills on immigration 
reform. But they are not linked to funding for Homeland Security.
  Let me just give you an example. Let's talk about DREAMers who came 
as children to our Nation and who can serve in the United States 
military. I served in Active Duty in the Air Force, and I am still in 
the Reserves. So DREAMers can serve in the U.S. military. To say that 
we are going to deport them because they are a homeland security risk 
and we are not going to fund Homeland Security because of that is 
ridiculous. There is no reason to link those two issues. If you don't 
like DREAMers, if you want to deport DREAMers, fine. Let's have a 
debate on that. But they are not a homeland security risk. To link 
these two issues doesn't make any sense. The Republican leader in the 
United States Senate has figured that out. I hope that this House does 
it as well.
  There are some grave consequences to this. In my State of California 
alone, nearly 27,000 employees of Homeland Security will either be 
furloughed or will get no pay and cannot come to work.

                              {time}  1800

  These folks are folks that protect our homeland. It is unacceptable 
that this is going to happen.
  The other way Homeland Security works is they provide grants to local 
first responders across the Nation to law enforcement, to firefighters. 
On Friday, if Homeland Security shuts down, those grants stop, and 
these local responders stop.
  This is a very real issue, and we, in Congress, our first priority is 
to protect the American public. Shutting down Homeland Security will be 
the exact opposite of that. I really hope that the Republicans who 
control both Houses do not shut down Homeland Security.
  Mr. SWALWELL of California. I also wonder, Mr. Speaker, what the 
gentleman from California thinks, as somebody who is serving in the 
Reserves right now and serving shoulder to shoulder with some young 
DREAMers, what would it do to the morale of the ranks if DREAMers who 
are putting themselves on the front lines, willing to go serve the 
country they call their own, the United States, in battle, if the House 
GOP had their way and those DREAMers were removed and deported from our 
country?
  What would that do to the morale of our troops?
  Mr. TED LIEU of California. That is a great question. Let me just 
explain a little bit what are some of the professions that the DREAMers 
do in the military.
  Because of their language skills, the U.S. military needs some of 
these language skills, so that the U.S. military knows what these 
terrorists are doing in other parts of the world.
  To have the language skills that DREAMers possess, that is one reason 
that we have them serve in the U.S. military. They have a direct effect 
on trying to prevent terrorist attacks into our homeland. To say that 
``we are not going to fund Homeland Security because we want to deport 
you'' is ridiculous.
  Mr. POLIS. Will the gentleman yield for another question?
  There are a few categories that the DREAMers are able to serve in the 
military. You mention their language talent.
  As somebody who, himself, is in the military, don't you think we are 
missing out on a lot of potential among kids that have already gone 
through the DACA program, but we are still not admitting as regular 
enlistees or no less given the chance to become officers?
  I know a kid in my district, his whole life, he wanted to be in the 
military. He didn't even find out that he wasn't American until he was 
15. He went through DACA, he did everything right, and they are still 
not letting him join the military.
  What kind of talent are we missing out on by not letting these DACA 
kids enlist in the regular manner?
  Mr. TED LIEU of California. That is a fantastic question. Having now 
been in the military for 19 years, it is very clear that their main 
criteria for military service is: Can you complete the mission?
  How good you are at completing the mission has nothing to do with 
whether or not you have a piece of paper that says if you are 
documented or not. The U.S. military is losing out on a significant 
amount of talent, people who otherwise would do great things for our 
military to protect our homeland and so on.
  Again, it makes very little to no sense to link these two issues, 
which really shouldn't be linked; really, that is what this is all 
about. Let's just have separate debates on both issues. The U.S. Senate 
is about to do that.
  I hope the House can do that as well.
  Mr. SWALWELL of California. I thank the gentleman from California.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to invite to join our conversation another 
freshman Member from Massachusetts, somebody who has also served our 
country very honorably in the Marines, Seth Moulton.
  Mr. MOULTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Swalwell.
  I think our Republican colleagues have a point, which is that we need 
to have a debate about immigration. This is an issue facing our 
country, it is a serious issue, and in many respects, it has reached 
crisis proportions. We need to talk about it, we need to have that 
debate, but it cannot be at the expense of our Nation's security.
  I just returned from a weeklong trip to the Middle East--to Iraq, to 
Afghanistan, to the UAE, to Kuwait, and to Jordan--to try to understand 
the situation on the ground and especially the threat that ISIL or 
Daesh poses to the United States of America.
  I can tell you that that threat is serious and severe. There are 
those who think that this will just be a Middle Eastern problem, that 
it won't ever come to infect our homeland. I don't share that view. I 
think it is a serious threat. ISIL has brutally killed Americans abroad 
and made clear their intentions to kill Americans here at home.
  That is the kind of protection from threats like that that the 
Department of Homeland Security provides. We cannot put our Nation's 
security at risk for a debate that is critical, that needs to happen, 
but that is separate from keeping Americans safe.
  Our most sacred responsibility as Members of Congress is to protect 
our homeland. Right now, the partisan brinksmanship around funding the 
Department of Homeland Security is putting that safety at risk.
  I served my country for four tours in Iraq. I was proud to serve, I 
was proud to go every time, but I don't want to see Americans have to 
keep going back to that part of the world because we can't provide for 
our security here at home.
  We have a lot of work to do in this Congress, and a lot of it 
requires bipartisan cooperation. Immigration is one of those issues. It 
is an issue that we need to debate on the floor of the House.

[[Page 2572]]

  We need to take up the Senate bill for comprehensive immigration 
reform, debate its merits, and decide whether it does enough to ensure 
the safety of our borders and the future of those who aspire to be 
Americans, but none of that should happen at the expense of our 
Nation's security.
  The crisis that we are facing today is the result of partisan 
politics that places the safety and the lives of the American people at 
risk.
  Last week I returned from a trip to the Middle East, and I learned 
that the threat of a terrorist attack on the United States is real. 
Terrorist organizations including ISIL pose a serious national security 
threat and have made clear their intentions to commit acts of terrorism 
both abroad and here at home.
  Our number one responsibility as members of Congress is to prevent 
that from happening and keep Americans safe.
  Holding hostage the funding for the Department of Homeland Security 
over the President's executive action on immigration is a disservice to 
the men and women who put their lives on the line everyday both at home 
and abroad to protect us all.
  There is no doubt that Congress needs to address immigration reform. 
It is an issue that is deserving of a debate and I look forward to 
participating in that discussion with both Democrats and Republicans. 
However, attaching immigration policy to this appropriations 
legislation is simply irresponsible and hijacks the intellectual debate 
that should take place on this Floor.
  If you disagree with the President's actions, then let's have that 
debate.
  However, with such threats to the security of the American people, 
now is not the time to play political games with an agency that is 
charged with protecting the homeland from acts of terrorism.
  If Congress fails to fund the Department of Homeland Security, 
agencies and grant programs critical to the safety of Americans will no 
longer be able to carry out the responsibilities that they were created 
to uphold, including the TSA, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and 
the United States Coast Guard. 85% of all enlisted Coast Guard 
personnel do not live on base--they cannot afford to miss a rent or 
mortgage payment on their homes. Many Americans don't realize this, but 
not only are Coast Guardsmen important to the safety of fishermen in my 
home state of Massachusetts and to all coastal states, but they are 
also deployed globally alongside our military in support of critical 
national security missions.
  When I was in Iraq, I needed to focus on the mission. For Coast Guard 
personnel performing high-risk drug cartel interdictions or patrolling 
the Persian Gulf, we needed their 100% focus on the mission at hand. So 
last summer when an Iranian boat aimed a 50 caliber machine gun at 
American Coast Guardsmen deployed in international waters in the 
Persian Gulf, those are the American men and women in harm's way who 
would still be required to put their lives on the line despite not 
receiving a paycheck so that their families at home can put food on the 
table and pay rent.
  In my home state of Massachusetts, we recently experienced a series 
of historic snow storms that resulted in record-breaking snow 
accumulation and caused millions of dollars in damages to homes, 
business and roadways. Without the support of funding from FEMA, 
Massachusetts will have to bear the brunt of the clean-up and repair 
costs in spite of the likelihood that Massachusetts will be eligible 
for federal disaster aid relief.
  Further, failure to pass an appropriations bill for DHS would 
furlough or deny payment to the 4,735 law enforcement officials, 
disaster response officials and many other homeland security personnel 
in Massachusetts.
  Republicans know that the right thing to do is to fund the 
department. This is why, earlier today, the Senate passed a clean bill 
to fund the department.
  This is not a partisan issue. This is an American issue. I implore 
the Republicans to have the debate on immigration, and have it soon. 
Talk about our differences there, but let's not put our citizens, our 
country, and our allies at risk by holding funding for the Department 
of Homeland Security hostage.
  I'd like to thank my friend from California again for the opportunity 
to speak this evening.
  Mr. SWALWELL of California. Actually, I have a question for the 
gentleman from Massachusetts. I know you are active on social media, I 
follow you, and I see you are very in touch with your constituents, 
particularly those on social media.
  I am wondering: What are you hearing from young people about the 
House GOP's inability to fund the Department of Homeland Security? What 
do young people think about the inability to separate an important 
immigration issue, as you talked about, and something so critical and 
as important as homeland security?
  Mr. MOULTON. What I hear from young people is they want the Congress 
to get things done for the American people. Our job is to come here and 
debate the important issues of the day, but, ultimately, it is to get 
things accomplished, it is to pass bills, it is to make laws, it is to 
fund important institutions of our government.
  What people say is they want us to get it done. They want us to have 
that debate on immigration reform, they want us to do that, too, but 
they need funding for the Department of Homeland Security.
  My generation has grown up under the threat that we came to face on 
September 11. Many of my friends were in New York on that perilous day 
and watched the planes crash into the World Trade Center towers. It is 
a remarkable testament to the success of the Department of Homeland 
Security that, over the past decade, we have not had another attack. It 
is a remarkable achievement. We should not put that achievement at 
risk.
  Mr. SWALWELL of California. I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts, 
and I invite to join the conversation a leader in our party, someone 
who serves on the House Rules Committee and also the House 
Appropriations Committee, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Polis).
  Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for 
getting this time for this important message and to just talk with 
people. That is really what this body, at its very best, does: we talk 
amongst ourselves, we solve problems.
  What you are hearing about today, namely, that we are 3 days away 
from shutting down our own national security, is an example of this 
body not solving a problem--in fact, causing a problem.
  You think: Who is causing this? Why is our security going to shut 
down in 3 days? Who is doing this? Who is shutting down the Department 
of Homeland Security?
  The sad answer is that we are doing it to ourselves. There is no 
reason for this manufactured crisis.
  I want to share my story from 9/11.
9/11 is something that, in our generation, we all remember where we 
were. It is like the Kennedy assassination to our grandparents' 
generation or like the Moon landing. Everybody knows exactly where they 
were and what they were doing when we heard about the Twin Towers.
  I was at a conference near Washington, D.C., here. Like anybody who 
was near one of the sites, it was scary because we didn't know what was 
going on. The rumor was: all planes are flying into buildings, we are 
under attack.
  They thought there were bombs at one point. It was a madhouse to try 
to escape the area and get out of the city. We drove all the way back 
to Colorado, and I never got to see what was happening to the towers in 
realtime or the immediate aftermath because, for the next 25 hours, I 
was just listening to it on the radio in the car, and my friend and I 
took turns driving.
  That was a unique moment when people came together. It didn't matter 
if you were Democrat or Republican. Our petty differences melted by the 
wayside as we came together around a national response.
  In many ways, it is sad to see our Nation go back to those same kind 
of partisan divisions which, unfortunately, reduce our national 
security. When we are talking about the Department of Homeland 
Security--which I would point out was set up after 9/11. That was set 
up to ensure that something like 9/11 doesn't happen again.
  It coordinated agencies in a new way that didn't occur before, 
encouraged intelligence sharing among the agencies about domestic 
threats, and now, a lot of that work is just 3 days away from being 
defunded over a totally different issue, one that we are happy to talk 
about, by the way.
  I mean, we talk about DREAMers and what a pathway to citizenship 
could look like and immigration reform and what the President can do

[[Page 2573]]

and can't do, and those are all important discussions, and there are 
many diverse opinions in this body about them.
  I would hope nobody with any opinion, no matter how extreme, would 
hold our national security hostage over this. I am reminded of what one 
of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle said, disappointed in 
his own party over this particular strategy.
  He said: ``Unfortunately, we have taken a hostage that we don't want 
to shoot.'' I think that is very much the case. Yes, they are taking 
our own security of our Nation and the Department of Homeland Security 
hostage. Do they actually want to shoot that hostage?
  Our friends and colleagues on the other side of the aisle, they are 
not bad people. They believe in protecting our country. I hope they 
don't go through with it, but they have gotten themselves into this 
predicament over rhetoric that threatens to jeopardize our national 
security.
  Mr. SWALWELL of California. I would ask my colleague, knowing that, 
as we speak--and the gentleman from Pennsylvania pointed this out, Mr. 
Boyle--three Americans are in custody right now because of their intent 
and the steps they took to want to join ISIL. As we speak, our enemies 
are plotting against us.
  Although my colleagues across the aisle, the House Republican 
leadership, wish to shut down the Department of Homeland Security, our 
enemies do not intend on shutting down their efforts to attack America.
  What do you think, knowing that Colorado is home to a large airport, 
Denver International Airport, what is going to happen to the TSA 
officers who are charged with detecting these hidden bombs that al 
Qaeda has put out there that they would like to put on our airliners, 
detecting people who are trying to come back to the United States after 
fighting alongside with ISIL, what is this going to mean in places like 
Denver and across Colorado?
  Mr. POLIS. We had a young lady from our district--you mentioned 
people--we had a young lady from our district, 19, from Lafayette, 
Colorado, who tried to get over to Turkey and then to Syria to join 
ISIS.
  Fortunately, for her parents, for her family, frankly, for her own 
life, thanks to the efforts of the Department of Homeland Security, it 
was interdicted. Her travel plans were detected, and she was detained 
at the airport and not allowed to join ISIS.
  Thank goodness we had the Department of Homeland Security connecting 
those difficult-to-connect dots. I don't even know how they did it to 
this day because, obviously, people go to Turkey on tourism all the 
time, but they used several points of information to figure out that 
this young lady was trying to join ISIS, and, thankfully, they were 
able to return her to her family.
  That is the kind of thing that, unfortunately, happens every day 
across our country. If in 3 days this Congress doesn't take action, we 
are tying our own hands behind our back in our fight against terrorism, 
which makes absolutely no sense.
  Look, you and I, Mr. Swalwell, I am sure, were equally passionate 
about our views on immigration. We would love to see DACA expanded, and 
I would love to see a pathway to citizenship, but it would never cross 
my mind, no matter how I want to see those things, that I would shut 
down the security of the country just to get it.
  I think most Americans don't think that way. I mean, here we are as 
some of the young Members, I think that perhaps some colleagues on the 
other side are acting even younger, like preschoolers and 
kindergartners here, where they either get all the toys or they are not 
letting anybody else play with them.
  Mr. SWALWELL of California. We haven't named that generation yet.
  Mr. POLIS. We haven't named them yet.
  That is the approach here. If they don't get their exact way, well, 
fine, we are not going to keep the Nation safe. I mean, that just 
doesn't make sense in any deliberative body, like we all grew up 
thinking that Congress was the lofty deliberative body.
  That just doesn't make sense, that kind of reasoning.

                              {time}  1815

  Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Thank you, Mr. Polis.
  Mr. Swalwell, I would just take issue. My wife, as you may know, is a 
kindergarten teacher and is teaching that generation, and I think she 
would take issue with you comparing Members of Congress to the kids she 
teaches. I think she would say the kids she teaches are much better 
behaved than many of us here in Congress.
  But, you know, I do want to just circle back to a point that Mr. 
Polis made, Mr. Swalwell made, a number of the speakers here tonight 
have made. This is a false choice. We can have the necessary debate on 
immigration and immigration reform. There has been a great American 
tradition going back to the very beginning of, on the one hand, 
praising the immigrants of yesteryear while simultaneously expressing 
concern about the immigrants of the present day. That was the case in 
the 1840s and in the 1880s and in the 1920s, and so it is today.
  That debate will always be a part of who we are as a nation of 
immigrants and as a nation of laws. I think that debate needs to 
happen, and we need to have that here on the floor of the House, the 
same way they did in the Senate where they passed the bill with 70 
votes on a bipartisan basis.
  So let's get to that debate. Let's not allow this sideshow over 
holding up a Homeland Security bill that I think all of us agree here, 
all 435 of us agree that we need. These are real, dangerous threats we 
face, people who actually thought that al Qaeda was not extreme enough 
so they wanted to go, instead, join an even more murderous, more 
barbaric group. As the sign that Mr. Swalwell had up was showing, our 
enemies are certainly not shutting down their efforts, nor should we.
  I do want to ask Mr. Swalwell a question--and I think this is 
important whether you are near the Denver Airport or the Philadelphia 
Airport or the bay area--and that is: What message do you think it 
sends to ordinary citizens who are looking to their Congress to just 
get things done and protect them, the people who aren't necessarily 
strongly ideological one way or the other, who just want to believe 
that their government can work, what kind of message do you think we 
are sending to them this week with this sort of behavior?
  Mr. SWALWELL of California. It is a message of dysfunction.
  And I know Mr. Polis, just like Mr. Moulton, is also very much in 
touch with the doers and DREAMers who are defining the innovation 
economy, whether it is in the bay area or Colorado or Philadelphia or 
Boston and Cambridge. These folks, they see the shortest distance 
between two points as a straight line. They don't see it as a partisan 
line. They are problem solving by nature, and they can't understand why 
politics would get in the way of something so simple as funding the 
Department of Homeland Security.
  My own personal September 11 story, as Mr. Polis was saying, is: I 
was headed to Capitol Hill that morning. I was an intern for 
Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher. I remember the gray suit that I was 
wearing was the one I wore every day at that time as I was wracking up 
my own student debt. As I got to the Capitol, I was turned around 
because the building had been evacuated. What I do remember, though, in 
addition to the color of the suit I wore and the phone call that I got 
from the staff assistant telling me to go home, I remember those 
Members of Congress singing ``God Bless America.''
  I remember in the weeks and the months and the years afterwards the 
bipartisan 9/11 Commission Report. I remember the creation of the 
Department of Homeland Security, and I felt so honored when I was 
elected to come to Congress to be asked to serve on the Committee on 
Homeland Security. I felt so honored in my second term to be asked to 
serve on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
  I cannot believe that just 14 years later, after all this 
bipartisanship and

[[Page 2574]]

collaboration, while every other issue around us seems to be mired in 
gridlock, we have always agreed that we fund the Department of Homeland 
Security that was created out of September 11. Today, to think that we 
are so close to shutting down that Department, it really does defy the 
collaboration that came out of September 11.
  I would ask my colleague from Colorado, who is in the Future Forum, 
but he is one of the more senior Members of Congress in the Future 
Forum--I think he is now serving his fourth term--what do you think 
about the collaboration that we have seen around Homeland Security up 
until now?
  Mr. POLIS. As I like to remind my friend from California, there is 
not really a strict age limit, per se, of the Future Forum, but I am 
very proud to still be under the 40 number, at least for another half 
year.
  Mr. SWALWELL of California. We are all in our thirties here.
  Mr. POLIS. Good. Good. We are all still in our thirties.
  But look, I think that what is happening is that when people of all 
ages, but particularly young people look at Congress and they look at 
this kind of thing with, ``Well, you, yourselves, are shutting down 
security?'' when they look at that, when they look at when the whole 
government shut down, again, do we remember why? Not really. I don't 
remember why the Republicans shut down government. There wasn't really 
a reason. They gave up, and they reopened it. It didn't make sense. 
When people see that, they lose faith in this institution; they lose 
faith in democracy; they lose faith in themselves. We can't allow that 
to happen.
  The only way for this body to change, for the quality of government 
to change, is for people to be invested in that change, to have that 
same sense of solidarity that came after 9/11, not just around 
disasters, but every day; when it is election day, to make sure to 
vote; when it is time to write and call your Congressperson, if you 
have a Congressperson who thinks it is okay to shut down the Department 
of Homeland Security, call that Congressperson, show up at their town 
hall meeting. Guess what. It is not okay to play games with our 
national security.
  As my colleague from Pennsylvania pointed out, many kindergartners 
are more mature than somebody who either wants to have it their way or 
not at all and to send all the toys home. That is really what we face 
here in this scenario. I think we have really hit upon one of the 
reasons that people of all ages, but particularly younger people, are 
losing faith not just in this institution, but as a part of the 
democracy it represents and how it really is our role to try and 
reinfuse that hope in not just, again, the competency of this 
institution, but the institution of representative government and the 
vision that our Founding Fathers put in place through the Constitution.
  Mr. SWALWELL of California. Thank you, Mr. Polis.
  Something we haven't really talked too much about yet, and we have 
alluded to the fact that we are charging these transportation safety 
officers with detecting these hidden bombs that al Qaeda is determined 
to put on our airplanes, we are charging the Border Patrol agents to 
protect our border and make sure that is secure, but if this shutdown 
happens, they still have to do that job. The threats continue to 
elevate and escalate, but those employees will not get paid.
  I wonder what my colleague from Massachusetts, Mr. Moulton, someone 
who flies home, logs a lot of miles going back and forth between 
Washington and his district, flying into Logan, you look those 
transportation safety officers in the eye every week when you are 
coming to Washington and getting off the plane in Boston, what is the 
morale going to be among our TSA workforce, among our Border Patrol 
workforce if they still have to do the job as the threats escalate but 
we are not going to pay them?
  Mr. MOULTON. Thank you, Mr. Swalwell.
  There is no question that their morale and their mission 
effectiveness will be hurt. In fact, it will hurt my own morale because 
I am very proud to serve in the United States Congress, but I am not 
going to be proud to walk through that security gate and have to look 
them in the eye when they recognize that I am partly responsible, as a 
Member of this body, for not giving them the basic pay that they need 
for their families.
  You know, another element of the Department of Homeland Security is 
the U.S. Coast Guard, and many of us know that the U.S. Coast Guard 
protects our shores. I represent the fishing community of Gloucester 
north of Boston, and Gloucester has gone through some hard times and 
has often had to rely on the Coast Guard to save its fishermen in the 
worst storms. Those Coast Guardsmen not only protect fishermen in 
Gloucester. They also work with our military and Department of Defense 
overseas. There are Coast Guardsmen and -women stationed in the Middle 
East today.
  Can you imagine having to do such a difficult mission, to be in the 
Persian Gulf defending American ships against the threat of an Iranian 
attack and yet not knowing whether your rent will be paid back at home? 
That is an unacceptable risk for us to take, and it is an unacceptable 
burden for us to ask them to bear. You are absolutely right, sir, this 
is going to severely impact their morale. When morale is impacted, it 
hurts their ability to do this incredibly important job.
  Mr. SWALWELL of California. While the workers are going to still have 
to do the job and not get paid, much of the Department will shut down, 
and an important part that will shut down will be Department of 
Homeland Security grants.
  I have had the opportunity in just the last few weeks to go and visit 
about a half dozen firehouses. I call them firehouse chats. I just pop 
in and meet with the brave men and women who are serving as 
firefighters in our community. If this shutdown happens, for example, 
we will see all of the assistance to firefighters' grants stopped. So 
the men and women who are responding to car accidents, building fires, 
God forbid, if a terrorist attack occurred, the people who are going to 
run into the burning buildings, who rely upon these grants to hire 
firefighters, to give them the equipment they need, that is all going 
to be stopped.
  So I am wondering if you have heard in your district or if you have 
talked to your law enforcement and public safety officials about the 
grants they depend upon and what it would mean if that funding just 
went cold.
  Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. It would be, in a word, 
devastating.
  I am proud of the fact that a part of the district I represent is the 
city of Philadelphia, Philadelphia Fire Department, one of the largest 
and oldest in our Nation, also a number of volunteer fire departments 
in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. There are so many of them around 
the country. To put them in this position is just deeply unfair.
  I am also thinking, as I am looking to my friend to the right, fellow 
freshman, Mr. Moulton, he happens to be from Massachusetts. They right 
now are devastated with mountains of snow that fortunately most of us 
in the rest of the country, while we have had snow, not nearly the way 
they have had it in New England. It is important to note that a number 
of those who work in FEMA are the officials who receive those grant 
applications, those emergency applications that so many in 
Massachusetts and Vermont and other parts of New England and other 
parts of the country are applying for right now because they have been 
so overstretched, given this incredible winter that we have had and 
record breaking in terms of snow. So they can keep on doing the 
applications and applying for assistance. The only problem is, come 
Saturday, we shut down the Department of Homeland Security, there will 
be no one on the other end to receive them.
  I want to make one final point, and I think that this really strikes 
at the heart of why we are here and why the Future Forum was created.
  This is my first year in the House. I might end up serving one term, 
might

[[Page 2575]]

end up serving 10, who knows? For anyone who serves here, they all talk 
about the fact that it goes by extremely quickly. We, right now, are 
Members of a body with an approval rating of approximately 9 percent. I 
don't want to dedicate my life to public service in an area that is so 
poorly regarded by the American people. That is not something I want to 
do. I don't think that is something that other Members on the other 
side want to do.
  It is important to our American democracy that whatever your ideology 
may be, whatever political positions you may have, we have to show the 
American people that their institutions of government can work. The 
American people, the overwhelming majority of Democrats and 
Republicans, have lost confidence in us, in all of us. I don't think 
this kind of a political fight, frankly, benefits either side. I think 
it is only a race to who loses less. We can end this now. Let's do the 
responsible thing, the mature thing, the right thing. Fund Homeland 
Security, and then get on to the important debates that we must be 
having.
  Mr. SWALWELL of California. That is right, Mr. Boyle. Mr. Moulton 
talked about this. We are taking an issue--immigration--that there are 
two sharply different sides on in this House, and that is fine. That 
debate needs to happen. Most people on our side, almost everyone on our 
side wants a pathway to citizenship. But that debate must happen.
  Because of that debate, what we are seeing is the one issue that we 
have always agreed on since the Department of Homeland Security was 
created is now as divisive as the immigration issue, meaning that the 
Republicans would like to politicize an issue that has always had 
bipartisan support and make that just as divisive as they have made the 
immigration issue. I think that is, frankly, unfortunate.
  Mr. Moulton, I would invite you to close here on just your overall 
perspective on why we should or should not tie immigration to 
Department of Homeland Security funding.
  Mr. MOULTON. Thank you, Mr. Swalwell.
  You are absolutely right, because immigration is a debate that we 
need to have. It is a national security debate in and of itself. We 
cannot hold the Department of Homeland Security hostage to that debate. 
It needs to occur. We ought to have that debate. We ought to have it 
here on the floor of the House. But our most sacred responsibility and 
the present threat here is to make sure that our people are safe.

                              {time}  1830

  I want to thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania, my friend and 
colleague, Mr. Boyle, for bringing up the issue of FEMA grants. We have 
been faced with unprecedented snowfall in Massachusetts, and it has put 
our first responders to the test. They are providing for the security 
of the people of Massachusetts right now, and we are all banding 
together to make sure that we get the FEMA grants that we need and 
deserve. In fact, it is a great example of a crisis that is bringing 
Republicans and Democrats together. The Democratic delegation of 
Massachusetts is working hand in hand with our Republican Governor to 
make sure that we get these applications in so that we can get this 
funding that we desperately need. Yet that is all going to grind to a 
halt if the Department of Homeland Security is not funded.
  Right here, today, we can see the effects that failing to fund the 
Department, shutting it down, will have. Even worse would be if we had 
to see the effects of another attack on our homeland. Having been to 
the Middle East in the past week, having seen the unprecedented 
challenges that our first responders face at home, we cannot afford to 
put our Nation's security at risk. All of the young people out there--
those who are our age in the Future Forum--want a government that 
works. They want a government they can believe in, and they want a 
government that will make them safe.
  Let's pass a clean funding bill. Let's fund the Department of 
Homeland Security. And let's show the American people that our Congress 
can do its job.
  Mr. SWALWELL of California. I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts. 
I thank my colleagues from California, Colorado, and from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. Speaker, I will close by saying, as Mr. Moulton alluded to, our 
principal responsibility can be found in, literally, the first sentence 
of the Constitution, which is: We the people of the United States, in 
order to form a more perfect Union . . . to provide for the common 
defense of the United States.
  There is no agency that has a harder job or a job that is more 
important in protecting our homeland than the Department of Homeland 
Security. We should be here today, on our first evening of the Future 
Forum, talking about the rising amount of student debt that millennials 
carry. We should be here today talking about how hard it is to get a 
job if you are a young person and if you have just finished college. We 
should be here today talking about how hard it is to buy a home if you 
are carrying all of this student debt. We should be talking about the 
need for diversity and about having a pathway to citizenship for 
immigration.
  Instead, bizarrely, we are here talking about the real possibility 
that the Department of Homeland Security, created out of a bipartisan 
coalition in the early 2000s, could shut down and leave us more 
vulnerable.
  I hope that our better angels will guide us. I hope that the spirit 
that those House Members had when they stood on the steps of the 
Capitol after September 11 prevails, that we work more collaboratively, 
and that we remember, at the end of the day, we are charged with 
protecting the people.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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