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Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, nearly every day, Republicans come to this floor to tell us how much they care about the border and how much they believe in border security. Yet--and yet--when they have an opportunity to do something about it, they don't just balk; they run for the hills.

If you care about securing the border, then you actually have to pass legislation that secures the border. It doesn't secure itself by itself. Our statutes are outdated. Our Border Patrol doesn't have enough resources. You have to change the law. You have to put more resources on the border. That is what the bipartisan border security bill did. I regret the fact that all but four Republicans voted against it after they requested that we engage in a bipartisan process to develop that border security bill, after they demanded that we pass bipartisan border security legislation.

But because we believe that this issue is so important--because the American people believe that securing our border and compassionately treating those who arrive at our border is such an important issue--we are going to bring this bill back for another vote tomorrow. We are going to give Republicans a second chance to do what they say they want to do: work across the aisle in a bipartisan way to provide more resources to control our southwest border.

So I am glad to be on the floor today with a number of my colleagues who believe as I do; that this is the time to pass significant bipartisan legislation to secure our border, to reform our broken immigration system. It is what the American people want.

We should stop playing political games. Republicans should choose the security of this country ahead of their Presidential candidate's political prospects, and we have the opportunity to do that this week. So I am grateful to have so many of my colleagues on the floor.

I believe starting our remarks will be Senator Kaine.

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Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, tomorrow, we are going to have a chance to come together, Republicans and Democrats, to be able to secure our border, make better sense of our immigration system. This is what the American people want us to do. They don't elect us to hold press conferences. They don't elect us to post on social media. They don't elect us to argue. They elect us to solve problems.

To my great gladness, there are Republicans who are willing to solve these problems. Senator Lankford is one of them. Senator Sinema, an Independent, Senator Lankford, and I sat in a room for 4 months, and we negotiated a bipartisan compromise--a compromise--that would allow us to get tougher on our southern border, to make sure that only the right people are coming into the United States, those that have a legitimate claim of asylum, those that are legitimately fleeing terror and torture. That would create a more compassionate, more effective, more efficient system of immigration.

We were engaged in this process because Republicans demanded it. Republicans said: We want you to pass bipartisan immigration reform. We want you to get to a result. We will vote for it if you achieve that result.

They selected Senator Lankford as the chosen negotiator.

We achieved that result. Senator McConnell was in the room for those negotiations. It was endorsed by some of the most conservative outlets and organizations in the country, including the Chamber of Commerce, the Wall Street Journal, and the very conservative Border Patrol union. But it only got four Republican votes.

So I want to talk for just a minute about why that happened, what the bill does, and why it is important that we have another vote this week.

First, let's just talk briefly about what this bill does.

Probably first and most importantly, it fixes the broken immigration system, the asylum system in particular. Right now, you come to this country and apply for asylum, it takes sometimes as long as 10 years before you get your claim heard. That is not fair. That is not fair for the individual who is applying, but that is not fair for others who are waiting outside of the country to try to come to the United States. It is not fair for communities that ultimately have to house and provide services for all of those individuals who are waiting to apply for asylum. So this bill fixes that broken system. It takes that 5- or 10- year wait down to weeks or months.

This bill gives the President emergency authorities to close down portions of the border when crossings get too high. You can't handle 10,000 people a day at the border. We all know that, Republicans and Democrats. The American public knows that. They saw that chaos at the end of last year. This bill says the President, whether you are Republican or Democrat, has the emergency authority to close down the border during times of high crossings.

This bill makes significant investments in combating fentanyl. My colleagues have talked about the scourge of fentanyl, hundreds and hundreds of people dying in my State, thousands across this country. This bill invests significant new resources in stopping the flow of drugs across our border. It is a $20 billion investment overall. Much of that money is targeted toward fentanyl.

Then it just takes a bunch of commonsense steps to treat those who are coming to the United States in a more humane way. It says that if you are coming here and you have a legitimate claim of asylum, you should be able to work while your claim is being processed, that you should have a right to a lawyer during that process, that we should provide a little bit of money for young kids, for 8-year-olds to have representation. It provides a pathway to citizenship for certain really critical populations, including Afghans, including the children of H-2B holders.

Inside this bill are a number of really important reforms, and the system just makes more sense, it is more effective, it is more humane. But at the foundation of this bill is border security--making sure we have a border that is manageable, that is not chaotic.

I agree with my colleagues--this bill does not do everything we need to do to reform our broken immigration system. Of course I want a pathway to citizenship for people that are living in the shadows. I want to make sure that those kids who know nothing except for being Americans have a chance to stay here permanently. But this bill is a really important downpayment--a really important bipartisan downpayment on border security and immigration reform.

The question is, Why did it fail? Why did a bill that had the support of Senator Lankford, the appointed negotiator, and had the support of Senator McConnell fail? And the answer is simple: Donald Trump told Republicans to kill the bill. Donald Trump told Republicans that their party would be better off if the border was a mess, if nothing passed, because more Republicans would get elected this November if there were scenes of chaos at the border. So even though you have a bipartisan border bill, kill it because politically it is better for Republicans if the border is a mess.

That is not my analysis; that is literally what Republicans have said on the record repeatedly. Senator McConnell said it himself, said: Donald Trump told us to do nothing. Senator McConnell didn't say: Donald Trump told us to write a better bill; he said: Donald Trump told Senate Republicans to do nothing.

So that is why we are here today, because the American public wants us to pass bipartisan border security legislation, Democrats want to pass bipartisan border security legislation, but as far as I can tell, Republicans do not because they want the border to be a mess.

We will see tomorrow. We will have another chance. If this is an emergency like Republicans say, then let's give it one more shot.

Let me end with this because I do think it is important to just explore for a minute why keeping this issue of immigration unsolved, keeping the border chaotic, is so important to Republicans and in particular to Donald Trump. The reason is that making Americans afraid of each other, turning us against each other, is the centerpiece of Donald Trump's message and thus, for this election at least, the centerpiece of the Republican platform.

The idea is to keep the border broken, to keep the immigration system broken because it helps breed and maintain resentment towards immigrants, towards people that are different from you.

Just last month, Trump said this. He said: Immigrants are not human; they are animals.

I mean, if a major political figure said that 20 years ago, there would be, I think, Republicans and Democrats both standing up and condemning that kind of language. Donald Trump calls immigrants animals, says they are not human--he says it on a regular basis--and he is celebrated by Republicans.

I wish this weren't true. I wish it weren't a foundational aspect of modern republicanism to try to turn us against each other, to try to make us afraid of people who are coming to this country just to save their families' lives, but that is where we are. That is where we are. But that doesn't obviate us from the responsibility to govern.

So Republicans can complain that we are asking them to vote on a negotiated, bipartisan compromise, because it is inconvenient for them to vote against a bill that was endorsed by high-profile Senate Republicans and by high-profile conservative groups. It is inconvenient for them to vote against a bill that actually brings security to the border, that fixes the problem that they want to be fixed, but that is our job.

Our job is to come here and not just do press conferences, not just search for clicks online. Our job is to fix problems, and the broken border and our broken immigration system is a problem. This bill doesn't fix all of those problems, but it is the biggest fix we have had a chance to vote on in a generation.

So, yes, we need to vote on this again to give Republicans the chance to do the right thing, to choose the security of this country, to choose fixing a problem that they identify instead of choosing to try to gain some political advantage in this election, instead of choosing to continue to double down on this strategy of dividing Americans from each other. That is why we are voting tomorrow.

I am hopeful that Republicans and Democrats will come together to support this important, bipartisan border security legislation.

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