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Floor Speech
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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, you know, it is so interesting that we are finding ourselves here on a Thursday, and one of the pressing issues is DHS funding for Homeland Security. And I find it so interesting that my colleagues across the aisle continue to be given to this concept that they have grown over the last few years.
And it is that we need to defund Federal law enforcement, and we need to abolish ICE. And, of course, we know they have made this commitment to their leftist base that what they are going to do is find a way to go through defunding Federal law enforcement and abolishing ICE. And to them that is the holy grail.
So let's look at what this actually would do. I think it is important to note that the Department of Homeland Security--that ICE is already funded, fully funded, and will be fully funded through 2029.
Now, they can rant and rave all day long, but nothing is going to change that. That is already there. We did that this summer, and it was in the Big Beautiful Bill, working family tax cuts, but, of course, they all voted no. No one on the Democrat side voted for that, even though it was the largest tax cut in our Nation's history.
So they obviously never read the bill to find out what was in the bill, but one would think that with this much time having passed, that they would be aware that ICE is fully funded.
Now, what they are doing is prohibiting funding from FEMA, Secret Service, the Coast Guard, and other components of Homeland Security. And FEMA makes up 35 percent of the DHS budget.
And I just think it is so important to note TSA is not being paid, and this is now day 35 that the Democrats have said to TSA and to the American people: We are going to use you as our pawns because we want to make certain that we are defunding Federal law enforcement and we are abolishing ICE.
So our TSA workers are out there working without a paycheck because of this singular focus of our friends across the aisle. I encourage them to set this aside. We need to make certain that Homeland Security investigations, that TSA, that FEMA, that the Coast Guard, and that the Secret Service are all receiving appropriate funding and that we make certain DHS--Homeland Security--has the funds to keep this Nation safe.
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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, I had spoken a little bit earlier about what was happening with Homeland Security funding. One of the things that we are hearing from so many school groups and church groups and people and families who are coming up for spring break is their disappointment with these long lines at the airports and the difficulty in making those travel arrangements.
Again, I think it is so important to encourage our colleagues across the aisle to accept some of the concessions and the offers that have been made to them in order to fully fund DHS and focus on our Nation's security, but, as I mentioned earlier, they choose not to do that because they want to abolish ICE. That is their North Star right now. That is their guiding principle.
They are all about abolishing ICE, so let's look at what that would mean. One of the things that we learned from the American people is they wanted to see our Nation's borders closed. They wanted to make certain that we--the American people--know who is coming into our country and why they are coming into our country. We know that we want to be certain that people are not coming here with ill intent.
We have seen this play out. We know for a fact that there are about 18,000 known terrorists who came in during the 4 years of the Joe Biden administration. Many of these people came in with criminal records. We know they are on these Terrorist Watchlists. We know that they have moved across our country and that the Department of Homeland Security has been locating these individuals, moving to apprehend these individuals in order to detain them and prosecute them and to get them out of our country.
Interestingly enough, the vast majority of the American people agree with that process. They agree that these are individuals who should be removed from the country.
It is really quite amazing to me. In Tennessee, I have not talked to one single person--not one--who says ``Marsha, do you know what? I hope we get more terrorist moving into our neighborhood'' or ``Marsha, I hope we have more gangs, more drug dealers, more drug traffickers, more human traffickers, more sex traffickers, more pedophiles'' in their communities. They don't want that, and there is a good reason for that. The people in this country value public safety. They value that. They want our Nation to be safe. They want our communities to be safe. They want to make certain that we are going to have a safe environment in which to live.
Public safety and defending our country--that is kind of at the top of the to-do list when you talk with people about their expectations of the activities we are going to take up. S. 1383
Mr. President, there is another thing that is at the top of their to- do list, and that has to do with the SAVE America Act that is before us right now.
This legislation holds two provisions that the majority of the American people agree with. Democrats give it a 71-percent thumbs-up approval rating, Independents approve it by about 85 percent, and over 90 percent of Republicans approve of this. It is really quite simple. It really is common sense--common sense, obviously, to Democrats all across the country, to Independents all across the country, and to Republicans all across the country, but to the Democrats in this Chamber, they say: Oh, no, no, no. No, you don't.
The two provisions are these:
No. 1, if you are going to register to vote in a U.S. election, you have to prove that you are, indeed, a U.S. citizen--very common sense. We don't allow people who are not citizens to register to vote because they are not a citizen.
Now, if you were to follow the illogic that is on display from many of my colleagues across the aisle, you would hear them say: Well, we need to allow these individuals to be a part of the community.
Do you know what? They are illegally in the country. They do not have a right to vote, and they should not register to vote.
But we have 19 States--19 in this country--19 States--that will allow people who are illegally in the country to get a driver's license. Well, what does that have to do with voter registration? It is because of the motor voter law. What they will do is get that driver's license, and then they will check that little box that says they can register to vote or that they want to register to vote. Then the responsibility of getting them off that registration goes to your State registrar of elections because they are going to have to match up their voter rolls against the list of individuals who are in the country illegally and make certain they are not there.
States also can clean up these rolls by making certain that what they are doing is checking it against the IRS-Social Security death rolls. This is how you make certain that your rolls are accurate. That, indeed, is what needs to be done to ensure that people who are eligible to register to vote are the only ones who are registering to vote.
Now, there is another thing that can be done to help with making certain we are respecting citizens, respecting ``one person, one vote,'' and making certain we are respecting that right to cast that ballot, and that is having individuals who are going to the polls to vote actually show their ID.
Now, in Tennessee, we do this. This is standard process for us in Tennessee. And, by the way, we clean up and verify our rolls. We make certain that we are doing that. We check them against the Social Security and the DHS rolls, and we are certain that people are a citizen.
Makes sense, doesn't it? If you are going to vote, you have got to be a citizen. And when people go to the poll, they take that photo ID, and they show that ID before they cast that ballot. This is an action that shows respect. It shows respect for ``one person, one vote.'' It shows respect for the process. It shows respect for our citizens.
The SAVE America Act and what it embodies is making certain that people prove they are who they are when they go to that poll, that people prove they are indeed a citizen of this great Nation--the greatest Nation on the face of the Earth--and that they are thereby entitled to register to vote. These are actions that certainly are there to help protect that process, and we want to make certain that the SAVE America Act is passed, that it makes it to President Trump's desk, and that it is, indeed, signed into law.
And I think that all of our colleagues across the aisle, when you look at the fact that 71 percent--71 percent--of the Democrats support this, 85 percent of the Independents support this, 90-something percent of the Republicans support this, so it leads you to ask the question: What are they afraid of?
Well, one of the things that we continue to look at is, as we talk about elections, we should make it easier to vote and harder to cheat. And verification, clean rolls, respecting that process--yes, indeed, that is going to make it easier to vote. It is going to make it harder to cheat. That is something that the SAVE America Act would accomplish. But our colleagues across the aisle are fearful of that.
I would encourage my friends to think long and hard: What are they afraid of with the SAVE America Act? Are they concerned that it would eliminate fraud? Are they concerned that it would clean up elections? Are they concerned that our counties and States might verify and clean up those voter rolls? Why would they not want to do this?
I was doing a telephone townhall with Tennesseans the other night. We had several thousand on the phone, and a gentleman asked this question, he said: I don't get this. What are the Democrats afraid of with the SAVE America Act?
And I told him, I said: You know what? I don't get it either because if we want to preserve ``one person, one vote,'' if we want to make certain we are protecting your right to make certain your vote counts, then these two steps would go a long way to giving individuals the confidence that they want to know that their elections are going to be fair.
And, in Tennessee, we have been ranked as having--we are ranked as No. 1 in election integrity. We go through all of these steps, and it would be a wise move for other States to begin through this process.
I would encourage these 19 States that don't require you to show identification or either don't require you to show citizenship or don't require documentation to register as they are going to vote, I would require them to look very closely at this to respect the voter and to make certain their rolls are cleared.
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