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Floor Speech
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Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I wanted to come down and make a few remarks on a couple of important topics, but I wanted to begin by just letting the American people know--and my constituents back home in Alaska--what just happened here, just a couple of minutes ago, on the Senate floor. We voted again to fund the Department of Homeland Security, and I am down here, like a lot of Senators. By the way, it was a bipartisan Senate vote to fund Homeland Security, but it didn't pass.
And, you know, I have kind of moved through my anger phase more to my sadness phase with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. This is the fourth time that we have come down to the Senate floor to vote on a bipartisan, bicameral agreement. The House and the Senate got together several weeks ago--Democrats and Republicans--and agreed to fund the Department of Homeland Security. The House passed the bill-- bipartisan, by the way. The agreed-to bill was going to come over here. It did come over here.
And, all of a sudden, my Democratic colleagues on the other side of the aisle--not all of them, Senator Fetterman has been voting with us-- said: You know what; we are not going to keep that promise. We are going to not fund Homeland Security.
Now, it is really frustrating because they are saying, well, they don't want to do it now because they want to reform ICE. Now, I am a little skeptical of that claim because the White House and Republicans in the Senate have been waiting for weeks for any proposal from the Democrats on their reforming ICE.
The White House and others have put forward: Hey, here is our proposal.
They haven't responded once.
So if they want to reform ICE, they should at least give people in the administration or in the Congress, here on the Republican side, their ideas for reforming ICE. They haven't. It has been weeks.
By the way, the press is not reporting that. I wish they would because it is very bad faith when you are not negotiating at all.
It is one thing to be far apart on ``hey, I have this proposal; you have this proposal.'' They haven't put forward one proposal.
So in the meantime, when we have a very dangerous world out there--we have been briefed in classified hearings that we should anticipate that the Iranian Quds Force, the lead terrorist organization in Iran, is looking for attacks in our homeland. And they won't fund Homeland Security.
Now, one of the things that I am a little concerned about is that this is kind of from the old Biden-Majority Leader Schumer playbook to defund the police and have open borders.
Now, what do I mean? We know that, during the Biden administration, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle--many of them--and certainly the Biden administration, they had as policies: We are going to defund law enforcement, and we are going to have open borders.
That is what they did. Eleven million people illegally came into our country during the 4 years of Joe Biden.
And they also knew that the American people did not like those policies. I think that was clear in the 2024 election.
But here is the thing: The far left of the Democratic Party is still committed to these policies.
So, essentially, when you look at what is going on right now, it is back to the future. It is defund the police and open borders 2.0.
What am I talking about? Right now, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are saying they will not fund ICE. That is a law enforcement Agency that helps protect us. And they are also saying they will not fund Customs and Border Protection. That is the Agency that controls the border.
It is defund the police, defund law enforcement, and open borders. Once again, they are trying to do it kind of in a backdoor way, but the American people are noticing, and it is a frustration.
You know, the Democratic leader used to oppose shutdowns. As a matter of fact, when we were in the minority here, President Biden was in office, and Senator Schumer was the majority leader, we never had one shutdown. Now, the reason was, when we were negotiating things and we got close, but we weren't there yet, and we ran into the deadline of the government shutting down, we would pass what are called short-term continuing resolutions to keep the government open and keep negotiating.
Senator Schumer said, in 2019, that defunding DHS, which is what they are doing now, would: hurt TSA, hurt Border Patrol, hurt FBI agents, air traffic controllers, food safety inspectors, Coast Guard members. They deal with our security right now--right now--so if you believe in the security of America, vote yes to fund Homeland Security.
I am quoting Senator Schumer. Well, I would agree with his 2019 quote wholeheartedly. Vote yes to fund Homeland Security, keeping our country safe by all those Agencies that he just mentioned.
But now, again, given the far-leftwing tactics and energy in the Democratic Party, anytime--and we saw this in the fall, and we are seeing it right now--that if they don't get their way on an issue, they don't do what we have traditionally done, which is: All right, we are not there yet. Let's compromise. Let's put forward a short-term CR. Let's keep the government open.
They just say: Let's shut down the government.
So that is what we are dealing with. It is a real travesty. It is particularly a travesty for the TSA agents who aren't getting paid, for the Coast Guard agents who aren't getting paid and their families, and for FEMA.
We all have States, including especially mine, where disasters happen. We are still recovering from a big typhoon last fall. The payments going to our State for disaster relief--FEMA is shut down.
And it just doesn't have to happen. It just doesn't have to happen.
We just voted again, in a bipartisan way, to do what the bipartisan agreement with the House and Senate was. Let's fund Homeland Security.
By the way, the reforms for FEMA are in that bill.
There is $2 million of deescalation training that is really important. There is $20 million for body cams for ICE. And yet, for whatever reason, they don't want to fund the government during this dangerous time.
I hope that there is a compromise coming forward. The rumor is that after, I think, 5 weeks, our Democrat colleagues are going to finally respond to the White House and Republicans with their ideas. But, again, it is hard to say you want compromise, you want reform on ICE when you haven't put forward anything in almost 2 months. That is not negotiating in good faith.
But I am hopeful. This is too darn important for the safety of our citizens during a dangerous time, for the men and women of the Coast Guard who do such heroic work and who are now not getting a paycheck.
My Democratic colleagues need to quit listening to the far left, come to the middle, and do what we have always done: compromise and vote to fund the government.
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