Speech #1090139501

Madam Speaker. we have a bill here with which I cannot argue in terms of the allocation of resources within the total dollar amount assigned to the subcommittee. but I can argue with the overall total because I think. despite the fact that the chairman and ranking member have tried as hard as possible to put money where you will get the biggest bang for a buck. the fact is. we do not have enough bucks in here to get enough of a bang to really protect the country. We tried to do something about that in committee. and I would like to describe what some of the provisions were that we wanted to change. We essentially tried to add $3.5 billion in committee for key Homeland Security actions. border protection. harbor protection. port protection and all the rest. and we did it in a fiscally responsible way. because what we suggested was that we simply reduce the amount of the tax cut for persons making over $1 million a year by about $10.000. which would mean that those persons making $1 million. instead of getting on average a $114.000 tax cut this year. would only get a $104.000 tax cut. The poor devils just would have to scrape along on that amount. I think the country needs added homeland security. much more than millionaires need a supersized tax cut. Let me tell you what some of the items were that we would fund with that money. We wanted to add 1.800 additional Border Patrol agents. and we wanted to add 9.000 additional detention beds. We wanted to provide increased funding to meet all of the Intelligence Reform Act mandates for increased Border Patrol agents. increased immigration investigators and increased detention bed spaces. We also wanted to increase our border detention capabilities. and we wanted to provide for additional air patrol and operating hours and cut in half the number of unfunded radiation portal monitors. We also wanted to replace older Border Patrol vehicles and expand border facilities. We wanted to provide additional funding for Customs and Border Protection and the Coast Guard to expand the number of overseas ports that are monitored. We wanted to provide for an updating of flood maps in critical highrisk areas. and so on and so on. I know there are those in this House on the majority side who say. you should not try to link taxes with spending. those are two separate issues. The fact is that every dollar of tax cuts provided. in tax cuts that the Congress passed just 2 weeks ago. comes at the expense of programs like this. programs to strengthen border security. whether it is on the Mexican or the Canadian border. programs to strengthen our ability of local law enforcement officials to have interoperable equipment so that they are speaking to each other on the same frequency. I think while a good many Members of this chamber do not like the fact that we keep dredging this up. the fact is. this is the most important priority choice the Congress will make. I really do not believe that the average taxpayer thinks that we should accept less effective immigration enforcement. less effective border control in order to provide another supersized tax cut for people who are already the most welloff people in this society. I think the country as a whole would be far more strengthened by some of the items that we have talked about here than they would be by such tax cuts. and that is why I will be voting against the previous question on the rule and the rule itself in order to protest the fact that we are not able to actually vote on these specific tradeoffs. The Budget Act was meant to force Congress to make tradeoffs between spending and revenues.