[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 2600-2602]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




  DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2015--MOTION TO 
                           PROCEED--Continued


                           Order of Procedure

  Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
Republicans control the next hour and that the Democrats control the 
following hour.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Under the previous order, the majority will control the next hour, 
and the Democrats will control the following hour.
  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, on July 14 of last year, I wrote a 
letter to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle warning that the 
President was planning to issue an Executive amnesty for 5 million 
illegal aliens--people unlawfully in America. Congress was at the time 
considering a supplemental funding measure for the Department of 
Homeland Security.
  I wrote:

       Congress must not acquiesce to spending more taxpayer 
     dollars until the President unequivocally rescinds his threat 
     of more illegal executive action... If Congress simply passes 
     a supplemental spending bill without these preconditions, it 
     is not a question of if the President will suspend more 
     immigration laws, but only how many he will suspend.

  Executive amnesty became a major issue in the election last November.

[[Page 2601]]

Many Members of the Senate and House who had supported these 
immigration policies of the President didn't come back. They were sent 
home, and many returning on both sides of the aisle said during their 
campaigns that they opposed these policies.
  Still, on November 20, after a historic midterm election defeat, 
President Obama defied the will of the American people and Congress and 
issued his Executive amnesty for 5 million persons. This amnesty 
included not just the right to stay in America but an explicit photo 
ID, work authorization, work permits, Social Security numbers and 
Social Security benefits, Medicare benefits, cash tax credits, and the 
right to basically take any job in America--at a time of high 
unemployment and falling wages, as economists have told us is 
happening.
  Each of these measures had been considered and explicitly rejected by 
Congress. It wasn't as if this was something the President just 
conceived. It had been considered and rejected. Congress acted 
decisively to oppose the President's legislation and to maintain in 
effect the current laws of the United States as codified in the 
Immigration and Nationality Act. President Obama's Executive action 
nullified the immigration laws we do have and replaced them with the 
very measures Congress and the American people have time and time again 
rejected.
  Not even King George III had the power to act without Parliament. 
President Obama himself described such an action as being something 
only an emperor could do. Those were his words. Twenty-two times the 
President declared such an action would be illegal. President Obama 
ignored his own warnings and issued an edict that defies the Congress, 
the Constitution, and centuries of legal heritage that gave birth to 
our present Republic.
  The Founders, in their wisdom, gave the Congress the tools it would 
need to stop a President who overreaches. First, it gave the power to 
pass laws to the Congress, as every child in school knows. Congress 
passes the laws, not the President. This is a matter of great 
fundamental importance. Then it gave the Congress the tools it would 
need to stop a President because they anticipated Presidents may 
overreach in the future. Chief among those powers is the power of the 
purse, and that is what we are talking about today: Should Congress 
fund the President's actions that are contrary to law, contrary to 
congressional wishes, and contrary to the American people's wishes? 
That is the question.
  Let me now read from the Federalist Papers, Federalist 58, authored 
by the great Father of the Constitution, James Madison. He is talking 
about the House of Representatives, and the House of Representatives 
now has funded Homeland Security fully. Everything that needs to be 
passed to fund the Homeland Security operations they passed. They 
simply said: You cannot spend money to provide amnesty and these 
benefits and these Social Security and ID cards. You can't spend money 
on that. We don't approve spending money on that.
  So what has happened in the Senate? Our Democratic colleagues have 
filibustered the bill. They will not even let it come up on the floor, 
not even to vote on amendments. Senator McConnell told them they would 
have amendments. It has put the Congress and the country in a very 
difficult position.
  This is what Madison said:

       The House of Representatives cannot only refuse, but they 
     alone can propose, the supplies requisite for the support of 
     government. They, in a word, hold the purse, that powerful 
     instrument, by which we behold, in the history of the British 
     Constitution, an infant and humble representation of the 
     people gradually enlarging the sphere of its activity and 
     importance, and finally reducing, as far as it seems to have 
     wished, all the overgrown prerogatives of the other branches 
     of government. This power over the purse may, in fact, be 
     regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which 
     any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the 
     people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for 
     carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.

  It is a complete power of the elected representatives by the people 
of America. First of all, the American people through their elected 
representatives rejected the President's policies on immigration. They 
chose to keep current law, but this did not satisfy the President. He 
asked Congress to change it, and Congress refused. They refused in 
2006, 2007, 2010, 2013, 2014. It has been rejected by Congress 
repeatedly. So that is where we are.
  Congress has no duty to do this. Congress has no obligation to fund 
those actions which it believes simply are unwise. It has an absolute 
duty, it seems to me, not to fund actions which are unlawful and 
unconstitutional. Congress cannot fund an action which dissolves its 
own powers.
  Congress shouldn't fund Presidential actions that are against the 
law, and Congress certainly cannot fund an action which dissolves its 
own powers. Congress cannot become a museum piece, a marble building 
that tourists visit to hear about great debates from long ago, but 
which now exists merely to approve that which the President demands. It 
doesn't have to approve one thing the President asks for if it is not a 
correct thing.
  So consider the precedent being established here: Congress passes a 
law, just as Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act. A 
President proposes a new law to replace the current one. Hearing vast 
public opposition, Congress rejects the new law the President has 
proposed. Frustrated, the President then issues an edict eliminating 
the current law and replacing it with measures he has proposed but 
which the people's representatives had rejected. The President then 
demands Congress provide him with the money to execute his unlawful 
program. The Congress says no. The President then accuses Congress of 
shutting down the government for not funding his unlawful program. 
Congress surrenders, quits, gives up, and the President gets what he 
wants.
  Have the people of the United States been served in that fashion? Has 
the Constitution of the United States been served? Has the Congress of 
the United States not acquiesced in its own diminishment, violating its 
duty to ensure that every dollar spent by the Government of the United 
States is spent on policies that are appropriate?
  Well, is this to be the new normal? Congress must provide the 
President with the funds he wants for any project he dreams up, no 
matter how illegal or unconstitutional? Is the power of the purse now a 
historic concept never to be used again when it is needed most? There 
is no more basic application of congressional power than to establish 
where funds may or may not be spent. Indeed, that is the very 
definition of an appropriations bill. There could never be a more 
important time to exercise such a power than when free government, our 
republican heritage itself, is at stake.
  We cannot let this Congress go down in the history books as the 
Congress that established a new precedent that we will fund any 
imperial decree that violates established American law.
  And this is not a minor constitutional violation; it is an explosive 
violation. It threatens our very sovereignty, the extent of which 
exceeds anything I have ever seen in my time in the Senate. I cannot 
imagine and cannot recall one in the past--so blatant a violation. 
Essential to any sovereign nation is the enforcement of its borders, 
the application of uniform rules for exit and entry, and the delivery 
of consequences for any who violate those rules.
  But the President has suspended those borders, erased those rules, 
and replaced consequences with rewards. People who have entered 
unlawfully, stayed here unlawfully, are being rewarded with work 
permits, Social Security benefits and Medicare benefits, ID cards, 
legal status. He has arrogated for himself the sole and absolute power 
to decide who comes to the United States. That is, in effect, what it 
is. He gets to decide unilaterally who can stay and live in the United 
States and who works in the United States.
  At this very moment, he continues--despite a court order--to allow 
new illegal immigrants by the thousands to stream across the border, to 
violate their visas, and to wait for their amnesty too, which they 
expect will occur

[[Page 2602]]

sometime in the future. Why not? Every officer and expert in the Border 
Patrol and USCIS has told us if this stands, it will encourage more 
illegal immigration in the future.
  I cannot vote for any legislation that funds this illegal amnesty. 
There must be a line in the sand and a moment where people say: This is 
where it stops. That is why I will oppose the legislation if these 
amnesty restrictions are removed from the House bill. I will support 
the House bill, but I cannot support the bill if the restrictions are 
removed. I will urge my colleagues to do the same.
  Look, the American people are right and just and good and decent 
people. They have asked of Congress, begged of Congress, pleaded with 
Congress for years for our laws to be enforced. They want us to have a 
lawful system of immigration that serves the national interests, one 
they can be proud of, one that people can rely on when they apply to 
come to the United States.
  They have demanded--and Congress responded and has passed laws over 
the years to protect the jobs and the wages of the American people. 
They have elected lawmaker after lawmaker, however, who has pledged to 
do this and make this system work, and to end the lawlessness.
  But each time their will has been nullified. Each time their laws 
that have been passed have been ignored. Each time the special 
interests, the open-border billionaires, the global elites, get their 
way.
  In the simplest of terms, here is where we stand now, truly: Six of 
our Democratic colleagues need to switch their votes and end the 
filibuster of the House bill. Six Senate Democrats are standing in the 
way of the interests of 300 million Americans. Six Senate Democrats are 
keeping from protecting American workers and American borders.
  They are uniform, in lockstep, blocking the consideration of the 
House bill that funds Homeland Security but does not fund the unlawful 
actions of the President. So we will have to take this case to the 
American people and see whether it is indeed possible these Democrats 
are able to defy the hopes, dreams, and sacred rights of every law-
abiding American citizen.

                          ____________________