Reconciliation
Floor Speech
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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, in a moment here, I am going to move to proceed to a budget resolution, but let me just say before I do that that we are in this spot because we tried to appropriate. We tried to fund the DHS Agencies ICE and CBP through the regular order, normal appropriations process--a process which had concluded in a bipartisan deal with Democrats and Republicans both having agreed to fund DHS, an outcome that was walked away from by the Senate Democrats.
Then, because they wanted reforms, we sat down for 45 days, I think it was, and went through a process where Democrats kept coming up with new ideas. The White House kept meeting them. There were a number of reforms that were made by the White House.
Then, subsequent to that, in the negotiation with the Democrats, Republicans here in the Senate and in the House and the White House worked together to try to accommodate more requests for reforms--all of which were met with a resounding no from the Democrats, so much so at one point that there was one offer made by the White House, and the Democrats didn't even respond for 18 days. Eighteen days suggests a lack of seriousness about this issue.
Ultimately, I think what has happened here is the far-left Democrat base in this country has insisted that their leadership not fund the Agencies that are responsible for law enforcement in this country, whether that is the Border Patrol, which has responsibility for ensuring that our border is secure, or ICE, which is responsible for ensuring that illegals who commit criminal acts in this country are deported. Enforcing the laws of this land--that is the job these two Agencies have been charged with, and the Democrats have determined they are not going to fund them.
So essentially, when the Democrat leader talks about Republicans owning something, I will tell you what the Democrats own. The Democrats own the position which they have tried before and failed, and that is open borders, wide-open borders, millions of people coming into this country illegally over the past four years, and defunding the police.
Open borders and defunding the police--that is what the Democrats own. Because of that and their unwillingness to work with us on an appropriations process that provides reforms and funding for those two Agencies, Republicans have been forced to use the budget reconciliation process to ensure that those two Agencies are funded not only for today but in the future because I don't see a universe in which the far-left Democrat base is ever going to let their leaders fund these Agencies that are responsible for law enforcement in this country.
This is defund-the-police. That is simply what it is. So we are going to move to budget reconciliation to ensure that those two Agencies are funded not only for today but for the balance of this administration's term in office.
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