Speech #1140009984

I was very hopeful the House would take up and pass the Senate bill. If the House had allowed a vote on the Senate bill. it would have passed the House and been enacted into law. That would have meant real and lasting reform to our broken immigration system. Unfortunately. over the course of the next year and a half the Republican leadership in the House failed to act on the bipartisan immigration reform bill passed in the Senateagain. with 68 votes. The President took a step forward that will help a lot of people and will help to address fixing our broken immigration system. While I still believe Congress needs to act. I think we need to keep the Executive actions in place until we do. I will not support any legislative effort to undo President Obamas Executive actions. We are presented with a choice. Once we pass a bill into law to fund the Department of Homeland Security. we can take a step forward and help a lot more people by passing comprehensive immigration reform or we can take a step backward and harm a lot of people without getting any closer to the comprehensive immigration reform we need. I will vote to move forward. not backward. We need a fully funded Department of Homeland Security. and we need a comprehensively overhauled immigration system. I suggest the absence of a quorum.