[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 2]
[House]
[Page 2659]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              DHS SHUTDOWN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
North Carolina (Mr. Price) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I rise today, yet again, in 
support of a clean Homeland Security funding bill.
  First, Mr. Speaker, however, I want to thank my colleague, Patrick 
McHenry, for the tribute he gave a few moments ago to his predecessor 
in the 10th Congressional District of North Carolina, Cass Ballenger, 
who passed away last week. Cass Ballenger was a treasured colleague of 
mine. He and I came to the House together in the class of 1986. We 
worked together on a number of matters, including teacher recruitment 
and disaster relief. Cass used his time here and the work of his 
foundation to reach out to some of the neediest people in the 
hemisphere, in Latin America, in addressing their health care needs.
  He came here after a successful business career. He was a man of 
great goodwill, good humor. He was someone who was a great favorite on 
both sides of the aisle. So I am happy to join Patrick McHenry and 
other colleagues in remembering Cass Ballenger fondly and paying 
tribute to his years of good citizenship and service.
  Now, at this moment, Mr. Speaker, we are 38 hours away from a 
Department of Homeland Security shutdown which will undermine many of 
the agency's critical missions and force its essential employees to go 
without pay until the politics of all this are worked out.
  Front-line personnel at Customs and Border Protection, Immigration 
and Customs Enforcement, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, the 
Transportation Security Administration, and other critical agencies are 
going to be left wondering how to pay their mortgages and how to feed 
their families instead of focusing on their critical missions.
  In North Carolina alone, Mr. Speaker, over 4,000 Homeland Security 
employees are going to be furloughed or go without pay.
  House Republicans forced this unnecessary stalemate by including 
poison pill riders in the bill that our Homeland Security Subcommittee 
negotiated late last year. It was a bipartisan, bicameral negotiated 
bill. It is ready to be passed right this minute. It should have been 
passed in December along with the rest of the appropriations bills. 
Instead, Republicans held back Homeland Security, and they added riders 
designed to poke the President in the eye and to impose radical anti-
immigration policies on our country.
  Now, thankfully, Senate Republican leaders understand the potential 
consequences of a shutdown. They have resisted this Tea Party bait, and 
they have decided to take up a clean Homeland Security funding bill. So 
the Senate must quickly pass that bill, and Speaker Boehner must let us 
vote on that bill.
  Mr. Speaker, the American people didn't send us to Washington to shut 
down critical functions of the United States Government on which all of 
our citizens depend. Pass a clean Homeland Security funding bill.

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