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Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. He and I are both on airplanes a lot.

The comment that has been made here on the floor, though, is: Before we leave here this week, this should be resolved. I could not agree more on that principle.

In fact, last Thursday, I came and said we should not leave at all this weekend; we should commit to stay. In fact, Senator Hassan and I, my Democratic colleague from New Hampshire, she and I have a bill that says when we get to a moment like this and we have an impasse, we stay; we don't leave.

I brought that to the floor last Thursday and said: Let's stay.

And everybody left, went right past TSA officials who are not being paid and went wherever people went over the weekend.

I am saying the same thing again. We should stay here and work out our differences. The easiest way to actually resolve this long term is to say, when we get to an impasse on funding, those workers are still paid. There is an automatic continuing resolution that kicks in to make sure they are paid, but we stay in session 7 days a week until we resolve the issues.

We shouldn't have weekends when there is a problem somewhere in funding around the country. The pressure should be on us to be able to get things resolved, to debate it out.

We are the grownups that are supposed to be talking about all these things and working out all of our differences, but that is not happening. And that has been frustrating.

Last Thursday, I brought up that the White House had sent over a counterproposal. There was a proposal that was sent over at the very beginning of this closedown of DHS, and the White House said: Here are some ideas we want to have.

The Democrats then said: No, we want this instead.

They sent it back over to the White House.

The White House then said: OK, we will take some of your ideas, and we will send this back to you.

And then they waited 18 days for Senate Democrats to respond to the White House. For 18 days, the White House just had to wait for a counteroffer. As my Senate colleagues were just saying, we are thinking about it.

Well, that response did finally come on Monday, but it was a response back to the White House of the same thing they had said before.

The White House is trying to get this resolved, not just for TSA. But how about for the Coast Guard? My Democratic colleagues came and said: Well, OK, we will fund the Coast Guard, as well, and TSA, and the Secret Service.

Do you know who has not been funded? There is no offer to fund Customs officials that actually work at all of our ports of entry. Their pay is going to be blocked. For Homeland Security individuals, there has been no offer to be able to pay those folks at all. For the Homeland Security investigators that actually handle child trafficking, human smuggling, and all of our investigations along the border dealing with drug smuggling, there has been no offer to fund them at all.

This is silly to try to break this up into different aspects of who is going to get funding and who is not going to get funding. TSA is going to get funding, but the Customs officials aren't going to get funding. Coast Guard is going to get funding, but the people investigating human smuggling are not going to get funding.

Let's sit down and figure this out. Let's not have 18 days between an offer and a counteroffer. Let's actually figure this out. Senator Warnock and I could probably sit down this afternoon and solve this.

All that everyone is looking for is: How do we actually get people in the room, willing to make the decision and making the decisions on this, so we can get this all worked out and done?

I was incredibly humbled because, when I walked through TSA this week, I walked through with grief as I walked through, because all I can think is, these folks are busting it. When I get there early in the morning, they have been there for hours already, and they are not getting paid.

The folks in Oklahoma are still showing up. We are not seeing the long lines and sick calls and all that, because that is not happening in my State. People are still showing up. And I walk past them embarrassed, saying: I am so sorry we have not been able to get everybody together to be able to get this solved.

But when I came through this week, as I walked through, the first TSA agent that I encountered said to me: We have something for you. And the second person, as I came through the line, said: Don't walk away. We have something for you.

And then, when I got to my gate, the head of the TSA group in my city walked out and handed me their challenge coin from my local TSA group. And he handed it to me, and he said: We see what you are doing. You are trying to get us paid. You are trying to get everybody paid. And we are really grateful that you are actually trying to get this solved. And we just want to say thanks because it has been a really hard year of sometimes funding happening and sometimes not.

In fact, one of the agents in Oklahoma City, last month, told me they feel like their check is bipolar because they never know where it is going to be at any moment. That just shouldn't be so. That just shouldn't be.

So my challenge, this week, is the same as it is every week. Let's stay here until this actually gets done. Let's not walk away. Let's sit down. Let's figure out how we actually solve this. Let's not take 2\1/ 2\ weeks to do a counteroffer to a legitimate offer from the White House.

And can I just remind my colleagues, the White House's counteroffer expanded the use of body-worn cameras dramatically. It required ID on every single officer. These were all requests that my Democratic colleagues have made to be able to put in. They said that they won't do enforcement activities in sensitive locations and make sure that all Members of Congress can do oversight and get access to detention facilities.

I mean, the list goes on and on and on. This is the list of what my Democratic colleagues all asked for. But it never seems to be enough, and my fear is that it is because the politics are better than the resolution.

Well, it is not if you are a TSA officer. It is not if you are in the Coast Guard. It is not if you are a Customs official. It is not if you are a Homeland Security investigator. Your family is not getting fed. It is not getting better for them. So the politics may be helpful for some, but it is not helpful for all.

So let's do it, at least while we are in the debate, where we started this debate. We didn't start with a shutdown. We started with, OK, let's at least agree we will keep the government open in all these areas while we are debating.

We started with just 2 weeks here, and said: For 2 weeks, let's do a continuing resolution. Let's keep our argument going but pay everybody.

That is where we began on this, but it seems like the easiest thing that we could literally do today and keep our argument going, because, hopefully, we are close, at least, on all this agreement, if we can ever get everybody to sit down in one room and to solve them.

So I am just going to ask--to repeat--what we did at the start of this.

I ask the Senator if he would modify his request so that the Senate can proceed immediately to the consideration of Calendar No. 156, H.R. 4553, which is a 2-week continuing resolution for Homeland Security. I ask that Senator Warnock would substitute his amendment No. 4353 to be considered and agreed to, that the bill be amended and be considered read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

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Mr. LANKFORD. Painfully so, I do object.

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Mr. LANKFORD. I appreciate my friend Raphael Warnock coming to the floor, the Senator from Georgia, and being able to talk about these issues.

The challenge of this is that the request has been made to say: Let's reform ICE.

You referred to law enforcement families who get up every day and put their lives on the line to be able to protect the country as paramilitary officers jumping out on people. I don't refer to them that way.

But I would only say, the White House has said: We agree with you; let's reform them.

They put in writing: new deescalation training, requirements for badges, requirements for individuals that step out of the vehicle to then identify themselves on it, changes in the way they handle uniforms, body-worn cameras, changes in processing.

My colleague is saying: I can't agree to move and just ignore this didn't happen.

No one is asking for that--no one. What we are saying is we agree with you. Let's make changes in this. I don't like what I have seen. You don't like what you have seen. So let's change it. Let's require body-worn cameras. Let's require badges. Let's require a change in uniforms. Let's require differences in how we actually identify officers and uniforms and vehicles. And those are all reasonable things.

So the offer has been made. Then let's make that change. The problem has been there has been no answer back. We are OK to make those changes. We have literally put in writing, in legislative language, that this could go into appropriations today to say: Let's actually do these changes and things that you are recommending on it.

But, at the end of the day, that isn't what moves.

What moves is back and forth, on different things like this, to try to identify TSA and divide TSA folks from Customs folks and say: Customs folks are bad, but TSA agents are good.

I think both of them are good families, because CBP is included in this as well. Those are the folks working on our docks at Long Beach right now. Those are the folks working in our international Customs, trying to be able to bring stuff off a ship and get inspections on it. They are not being paid. In fact, they are not even going to offer to pay them because they are looped into Border Patrol folks.

That is the problem. Once you slice it all up and say, ``This person gets this; this person doesn't,'' it doesn't work. So because that doesn't work, the offer has been made: Let's fix the way we are handling ICE and the way we are handling patrols. But we have got to have somebody say yes. In the meantime, offers keep getting sent over, and we are waiting on a yes to be able to actually move to resolve the issues.

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