[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Page 2873]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY FUNDING

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, this morning the Senate will complete 
work on a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, and then we 
will turn to Senator Collins' bill--commonsense legislation that will 
protect our democracy from the egregious example of Executive overreach 
we saw in November. In my view, this deserves broad support. Remember, 
President Obama said more than 20 times that he couldn't take those 
kinds of actions. He even referred to overreach such as that as 
``ignoring the law.'' So Senator Collins' measure simply takes the 
President at his word and helps him follow the law instead of ignoring 
it.
  The Collins' bill also provides Democrats who led their constituents 
to believe they would address Executive overreach with a chance to show 
they were at least a little bit serious when they said that. Democrats 
won't achieve that by filibustering Homeland Security, and Democrats 
won't achieve it by holding hypocritical press conferences just hours 
after voting to block funding for DHS. But they can help us pass a 
sensible bill from Senator Collins that will hold the executive branch 
to account. After so many weeks of senseless filibustering, that is the 
least these Democrats owe their constituents.

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