-9999

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, with me today is Mr. John Lowery, one of my colleagues from my office.

As the Presiding Officer knows, Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress have a dispute over funding the Department of Homeland Security. And it is such a serious dispute that that Department is shut down.

Now, every now and then, there is a dispute in Washington, DC, that says something prophetic--something prophetic about the future of western civilization. This is not it. This dispute is silly.

Every single Member of this body knows how important the Department of Homeland Security is. Most people recently think that Homeland Security is border security, and ICE, interior security of our immigration system.

But Homeland Security is responsible for so much more. FEMA is part of Homeland Security. It is shut down. The Coast Guard is part of our Department of Homeland Security. It is shut down.

The CISA dealing with cyber security is part of Department of Homeland Security. It is shut down. The TSA is part of Homeland Security. They are working without pay, and not all of our colleagues in the TSA are working. This is the result, and it is going to get worse.

Now, for reasons that I don't--well, let me put this a different way. Some would argue and the party line is that we are making progress in terms of resolving this dispute. That is not true.

I mean, I know that is the party line and conventional wisdom, and every now and then you will see a reporter report that, but it is not true. For reasons I don't completely understand, for a while my Democratic friends said: We are only going to negotiate with the White House. And they have been negotiating with the White House for some time, but they are nowhere near agreement.

Recently, some of my Democratic colleagues have met with two of my Republican colleagues and Mr. Tom Homan--it happened yesterday--to see if we could make progress. Again, the conventional wisdom, the party line that we are supposed to tell everybody is that we are making progress, but I have spoken directly with the people who were at that meeting yesterday here among just Senators and Mr. Homan. On a scale of 1 to 10--I will describe it as they described it to me--about a minus 17. We made no progress, and I regret that, but I understand it.

Let me see if I can state--I don't say this disrespectfully. I try to--what I am about to say, I want people to know I am serene in saying this, and I don't mean to offend anyone, but we all know what is going on.

Our Democratic friends will agree to open up TSA, thank you. To open up FEMA, to open up the Coast Guard, to open up the CISA, thank you, thank you, thank you. But they haven't agreed, despite concessions on our side, to open up ICE. And they are not going to. It is not going to happen in your or my natural lifetime.

And if you have been following this debate and you understand the politics, you don't need to be able to explain the theory of special relativity to know what is going on. It is not complicated.

Parties have wings, factions within their parties. I am a Republican; we have factions. Democrats also have factions. And a specific faction of the Democratic Party right now is in control. That is just a fact.

You could call it the progressive wing; some call it that. The more cynical call it the loon wing of the Democratic Party. I on occasion have referred to it as the Karen wing of the Democratic Party. The Karen wing wants to defund ICE, and they will accept nothing less.

Now, this is the same wing of their party that also wanted to defund the police. How did that work out for us? This is the same wing of their party that has a very novel way to reduce the crime rate in America: Just don't prosecute anyone, and our crime rate goes to zero.

Now, I don't mean to paint with too broad a brush. Not all my Democratic friends agree with the loon, the Karen wing of their party-- they don't--just like not all Republicans are part of the factions in my party. But it is a fact that the Karen wing of the Democratic Party is in ascendancy, and it is firmly in control.

And any Democrat--we all know this--that agrees to any kind of compromise with respect to ICE is going to be punished to the rest of their natural lives. They can't do it, and they are not going to.

Now, we can keep having meetings and discussing it; we have been doing it for weeks. Most of these meetings could easily be accomplished with an email. I have been part of the discussions in our conference. I am convinced that listening to the same thing over and over and over again is lowering my IQ, when we know that nothing is going to resolve this because my Democratic friends politically can't agree to a compromise about ICE.

So here is what I think we ought to do: I think that we should accept the Democrats' offer to open up TSA and to open up FEMA and to open up Coast Guard and to open up and fund CISA. Let's get that done. Let's shorten these lines, and then the day after we do that, Republicans need to file a reconciliation bill, which is the same way we passed the One Big Beautiful Bill, and on our own, we need to come up with a budget for ICE. It is the only way to solve this problem.

Now, as the Presiding Officer knows, under the Budget Control Act, we can pass legislation. There are parameters on us, but that only requires 51 votes. That is how we passed the One Big Beautiful Bill. Under the rules, we are allowed to do two more reconciliations, so we have two bullets left. For reasons that I don't completely understand-- well, strike that. I think I do understand. I just don't agree with them--some on my side are reluctant to do any more reconciliations. And they are hard, OK? I know they are hard. They are hard for my Democratic friends when they do it, and they are hard for us when we do it. You know, that is what we were sent here for, is to do hard things. I mean, med school was hard, but we still have a lot of great doctors. We ought to do our job. That is the only way I can see that we are going to be able to break the stalemate.

So let me say again what I would do if I were King for a day. I am not, and I don't aspire to be. I would accept my Democratic friends' offer to immediately open up the TSA, FEMA, the Coast Guard, the CISA-- every part of the Department of Homeland Security except ICE. I would stop looking reality in the eye and denying it and accept the fact that my Democratic colleagues, because of their internal politics, will never be able to reach an agreement with respect to ICE. It is not going to happen. In the meantime, these lines get longer.

So, once we can get that agreement with our Democratic colleagues, the very next day, we start a resolution in the Budget Committee, and we do a second reconciliation bill. We fund ICE and border security-- what is still shut down in Homeland Security--like we want to. I would welcome my Democrats to work with us on a bill, but they will not. We only need 51 votes to do it. Then the government--all of government--is back open.

Now, there are other things that we could do in that reconciliation bill. I have talked about them, and I am not going to repeat what I said yesterday. My side feels very strongly about the SAVE Act. We believe that only Americans--citizens of our country--should be able to vote, and we believe that you shouldn't be able to vote unless you can prove you are who you say you are.

My Democratic colleagues, in my trying to be as serene and objective as I can, come back and say: Yes, but there is another side of this argument. It is already against the law to not be a citizen and try to register.

And I understand that.

Then they come back and make the point: Well, you cannot show me where we have had a lot of instances of illegal immigrants actually voting.

And I understand that--those are fair points--but that is not what we are fighting about.

What we are fighting about is that President Biden, for whatever reason, admitted between--I don't know how many--8 million, 12 million, 15 million, 20 million people illegally into our country. He did--we all watched him do it--and we don't even know where these people are. We don't. Some of them were children. We don't know where all the children are. We don't.

I am not saying all of those folks were bad people. I am not saying that. A lot of them were economic migrants. They just wanted better lives, and so they wanted to come to America. They chose not to do it through legal immigration. If they would do it legally, we could consider admitting them--we admit a million people a year of our world's neighbors to become American citizens--but they came illegally because, frankly, President Biden said to do it, and they did it.

Not everybody was Cinderella who came in. Some people who came in were criminals. They were murderers. They were rapists. They were drug dealers. They were sex traffickers. We all know that. That is what our ICE, right now, is trying to do. It is trying to find these people who shouldn't be in any country--their own, ours, anywhere. They ought to be jailed and fined.

But here is my point: As a result--and we all saw it happen, and the American people saw it happen. They get it. The American people may not read Aristotle every day--they are too busy earning a living--but they get it. And a whole bunch of Americans believe, whether it is true or not--and I am not saying it is true. I am not saying it isn't true because I think some of my Democratic colleagues believe this--but many Americans--millions of Americans--have concluded that this was all by design; that these 8, 10, 15, 20 million people who were admitted illegally into America was a way to try to bolster the Democratic Party. So these folks will be beholden to the Democratic Party and will try to vote and/or, once they become citizens, if they become citizens, will vote for Democrats.

Again, some of the commentators who go catatonic and foam at the mouth when I talk about this--but we all know it is true--call this the replacement theory. I am not saying all Democrats believe that, and I am not here to say it is true or not, though I think there are some of my Democratic friends who believe that. But that is not the point. The point is the American people believe it, so they no longer trust our electoral system, and our elections are not worth a damn if people don't accept the result. If they don't trust the system, they are not going to accept the result.

That is why we are moving the SAVE Act. I support it unconditionally. We are going to have difficulty passing it. That much is clear. So, as part of a reconciliation bill for us to get ICE back up and running, I would include the SAVE Act as part of that reconciliation bill as well. We wouldn't need 60 votes. We wouldn't need 55 votes. We would only need 51 votes. We passed the One Big Beautiful Bill with 50 votes, with the Vice President breaking the tie.

Again, I feel like I am repeating some of what I said yesterday.

Some of my colleagues are going to say: Kennedy, you know, you need to back away from the crank. You can't do this through reconciliation. You can't do the SAVE Act through reconciliation.

And I tell them: I have been here 10 years, and we can do what the Parliamentarian says we can do. I have seen measures get approved under the Budget Control Act--we call it a Byrd bath--that I thought didn't have a chance, and I have seen others not get approved that were slam dunks.

As I said, I am in the minority on this even among my Republican colleagues. I don't mean this to sound bad, but sometimes the majority just means all the fools are on the same side. I am not calling my colleagues fools, but I am saying this is worth a try. I would go get a really smart lawyer and ask him to help us craft a SAVE Act that can survive a Byrd bath. I would do those two things in reconciliation or at least open up ICE through reconciliation. We don't need to do it with Democratic support.

I have been thinking about this for a while. Senator Cruz talked about this much more eloquently than I did at our luncheon yesterday. I hope Ted will come down and share with you, at some point, his thoughts on it. I see Senator Cornyn here. They are two pretty smart lawyers who could help us craft something.

I just wanted to come spend a few minutes and offer my point of view on that.

I thank the Presiding Officer for hearing me out and for being serene and patient and all that other good stuff.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source