Speech #1140006665

Our DHS employees have gone the extra mile to keep us safe. This is the kind of mission that we call upon our DHS employees to carry out for our security. It has nothing to do with congressional debates about immigration policy. but it has everything to do with doing the stated mission of keeping us safe. To limit DHSs access to resources by shutting down the agency or passing another continuing resolution that would keep them running on auto pilotsort of driving by looking in the rearview mirror rather than looking through the windshield of the challenges to comewould damage the ability of DHS to deal with growing threats. I understand the message from the House. We have agreed on the right funding level for DHS. They are saying. however. that we will only fund DHS. we will only fund the guys who are protecting us from ISIL. or protecting us from Ebola. or protecting our ports from nuclear material being shippedwe will only fund it if we can get an agreement to change policies enacted by the President with immigration. They are threatening to stop funding DHS actions unless we reverse the Presidents actions on immigrationactions that. in my view. are already helping the economy by bringing families out of the shadows to become productive. taxpaying members of our communities. While I strongly support the Presidents immigration actionsand most of them I voted for as part of the Senates comprehensive immigration reform bill that we passed in June of 2013I can understand there might be Members of the House who may not like those actions. They may want to do something different. And the great thing is they have an ability to do something different. The House. with a significant Republican majority. can pass their own immigration reform bill. They can retract the Presidents actions. They can express what they want to do about immigration reform. They can pass that bill just as they passed the DHS funding bill. and send it over to the Senate. and we can have a debate about immigration reform. But we can have that debate without holding hostage the funding of the third largest agency in government. without holding hostage the work that agency does every day to keep us safe. I think the good news in all of this is in both the House and Senate there are people who think the immigration system is broken. the immigration system needs to be fixed. and we ought to have a dialogue to do it. Certainly. when the Senate passed an immigration reform bill in June of 2013nearly 2 years agoand we sent it to the House. we knew the House was not going to adopt what the Senate passed without changing anything. We were trying to start a dialogue where the House could pass their own bill and then we could sit down in conference and work out a solution to an immigration system that we all think is broken. That is what we should be doing as responsible legislatorsfixing an immigration system. and even those of us who have different views. getting those views on the table and finding a compromise. It is the wrong thing to do to try to hold up funding for the third largest agency in governmentthis agency that is keeping us safe in so many ways all over this country every dayto try to reverse actions the President took that are well within his legal authority. So I am going to continue to support the Presidents Executive actions. I am going to continue to encourage the House and others. if they have different ideas about immigration reform. to pass a bill. put their ideas on the table and we will talk about them. But it is wrong to try to hold up protecting our Nations security as a punishment to the President for using Executive action that was within his legal power to make. Since we have the complete ability to have a discussion about immigration. lets do it. I will conclude and say this. although I wish I didnt have toand particularly looking at these young pages who are sitting in front of meit is a dangerous world out there. For the sake of these youngsters and my own kids.