Madam President, a number of things have been happening today with regard to the funding for the Department of Homeland Security. There has been a lot of spin that somehow the Republicans are blocking the funding of the Department of…
Madam President, a number of things have been happening today with regard to the funding for the Department of Homeland Security. There has been a lot of spin that somehow the Republicans are blocking the funding of the Department of Homeland Security. This gives new meaning to the word obfuscation, I suppose, or disingenuousness.
The truth is the House of Representatives has fully funded the Department of Homeland Security. It has provided the level of funding the President asked for. It has kept all accounts in Homeland Security as approved through the congressional process. It simply says: Mr. President, we considered your bill--this amnesty bill--that would provide work permits, photo IDs, Social Security numbers, Medicare benefits, and Social Security benefits, and you can't do that. We consider that and reject it. So we are not going to fund that.
Now, the President has already told us and the staff they have across the river in Crystal City where they are leasing a new building, and this building is going to house 1,000 workers paid for by the taxpayers of the United States as part of Homeland Security. Are those 1,000 workers going to be utilized to enforce the laws of the United States? Are they going to process applications for citizenship or visas? No, those 1,000 people--costing several hundred million dollars, in truth-- are going to be processing and providing these benefits to people unlawfully in America.
So Congress said: Wait a minute. We didn't authorize money for that. You can't spend money to fund exactly the opposite of what we have enacted. So we are just going to put some language in the bill--the normal bill that funds Homeland Security--and say you can't spend the money to violate the law. You can only spend the money to enforce the law, as it was created to do.
The bill then comes to the Senate; and what spectacle do we have? We have Democratic Members in lockstep unity blocking even proceeding to this bill, contending we are not funding Homeland Security. Can you imagine that?
Now, my colleague, the senior Senator from Illinois, Mr. Durbin, the Democratic whip, came down a couple of weeks ago and said: I am trying to figure out what is blocking this bill. So I took the floor and I said: Senator Durbin, you and your filibusterers are filibustering the bill. That is why it is not being passed.
Does anybody want to dispute that? The Republican Senate has repeatedly brought up this bill and filed cloture to move to the bill so we can fund Homeland Security, and the Democrats are relentlessly and unanimously filibustering it, blocking even moving to the bill. Although Senator McConnell said if we did move to the bill, he would allow them to have amendments. So this is the situation we are in.
Colleagues, this goes to the core of our constitutional principles about who controls the money in America. Congress is a coequal branch. It is not subordinate to the President. If anything, the legislative branch, through the Constitution, provides maybe even more power to Congress than it does to the Executive and more than it provides the courts. And the most powerful power of Congress is the power of the purse.
Congress is not obligated to pay for anything it believes is unwise, and it has an absolute duty not to fund anything that is unconstitutional or illegal, which is what we are dealing with here. So Congress--the House of Representatives--acted wisely and properly in funding Homeland Security and not allowing activities to be carried out that are unlawful and that Congress has rejected.
This is so fundamental, so basic. How my colleagues have the gall to come to the floor and have a press conference this afternoon and blame Republicans for shutting down Homeland Security is beyond me. I don't believe the American people are buying it.
Now, there are some, even on the Republican side, who say: Oh gosh, the President will blame us even if it is not our fault. So we might as well cave in and give him what he wants. But what he wants is something he can't be given. What he wants is for Congress to capitulate and erode its powers and responsibility. He wants Congress to violate its duty to fund something that is illegal and contrary to Congress's wishes. He can't demand that. He has no right to demand that.
Congress cannot fund--cannot and must not fund--an illegal action in hopes that another branch of government will intervene. Now, I say that because some have said: Well, a court in Texas has ruled that a part of this action by the President is unlawful. The court was narrow in its decision. It fundamentally said something similar to: It looks like a regulation to me, and if you are going to pass a regulation, you need to go through a process. And the President didn't go through a process. It is not lawful. It is not legal. You can't enforce it. The judge issued an injunction barring the President from carrying out these plans, he announced, which is plain law, it seems to me. They didn't even go into some of the other ideas of the constitutionality and separation of powers. He just blocked it on that basis.
So we are hearing it said that we can fully fund Homeland Security without any restrictions, allowing the President to do this, because the courts stopped it. I think that is unwise for a number of reasons. The first one is we don't know what the courts are going to do. This Congress has a duty to fund only things it believes are appropriate and lawful. So Congress shouldn't fund it on that basis, period. We should stand up for Congresses in years to come--for our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren--and defend the power of the purse and defend the integrity of this Congress.
We know how this country was founded. It was founded on an understanding of the British Parliament, and the British Parliament wrested from the king the power of taxes and money. That was a huge historical development, and it has been part of our tradition since, that Congress has the power of the purse. The Executive can't do it. So we replaced the king with the President, and we adhered in our Constitution to that great tradition of restraint on the Executive by the legislative branch--by the Congress, by the Senate.
In the Texas court's injunction, let me go further and note the reasons why I think it is unwise for Congress to say that we, the Senate, have no duty to speak on this issue. The House has already spoken and said we are not going to fund this. But the Senate needs to ask what its position will be.
I would point out that the Texas court's injunction addresses only a part of Obama's lawless actions and could be lifted at any time. So the injunction could be lifted at any time. It only covers a part of his actions. If Congress relinquishes the power of the purse, then nothing will be able to prevent the lawlessness or amnesty from going forward.
As the Texas court noted in issuing its injunction, ``This genie would be impossible to put back in the bottle.''
That is absolutely true. He is evaluating whether to issue an injunction.
Sometimes you don't have to issue an injunction because there is not anything much happening right then. But he says, correctly, that: If this goes forward and millions of people are given amnesty, you can't put that genie back in the bottle in any practical sense. It would be a nightmare to try to do that.
Let me point this out:
One, the Texas court's injunction only addresses a small part of the President's recent Executive actions in November.
The Texas lawsuit challenges only the President's November 20 unconstitutional Executive action. And of that, the injunction prevents the administration from implementing only deferred action for parents of Americans and lawful permanent residents.
The Texas court injunction does not address the problematic enforcement priorities encompassed in the President's Executive actions.
He set all kinds of priorities that Congress disapproves of and that are bad--unless you don't want the laws enforced, in which case it is good. And we have some who believe in open borders in this country. They deny it when challenged, but they vote that way every time.
On November 20, 2014, the memo revised the administration's enforcement priorities which do not encompass certain criminal aliens nor do they encompass all aliens deemed to be subject to mandatory custody under the Immigration and Nationality Act. In fact, these new priorities effectively gut the enforcement of our immigration laws for all but a few select criminal aliens.
Congress passed the law that requires the deportation of persons involved in criminal activities and convicted of those activities. The President eviscerated large portions of that in this order, and he should not be allowed to do so. The judge did not address it.
Indeed, in response to the ruling, Secretary Johnson stated that the Texas court's order does not ``affect this Department's ability to set and implement enforcement priorities.''
Well, that is a big deal. They set priorities that violate statutory law, and they should not be allowed to do that. We can't effectively eviscerate law by prosecutorial guidelines.
According to a February 18, 2015 email from Customs and Border Protection Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske regarding the injunction, he said:
Officers and agents should continue to process individuals
consistent with the enforcement priorities announced by the
Secretary in his memorandum of November 20, 2014, titled
Policies for the Apprehension, Detention and Removal of
Undocumented Immigrants.
It deals in large part with criminal activities, people convicted of crimes who are supposed to be deported.
The funding bill the House passed would do much more to stop President Obama's unlawful Executive actions on immigration, so the administration does not intend to change its course as it is still actively preparing for its rollout of Executive amnesty.
On February 17, just a few days ago, the President told reporters that the administration is still ``doing the preparatory work because this is a big piece of business.'' He said:
The Department of Homeland Security will continue in the
planning because we want to make sure as soon as these legal
issues get resolved, which I anticipate they will in our
favor, that we are ready to go.
So he is telling the Department of Homeland Security to spend money now to be ready to move forward and immediately process his Executive amnesty--providing Social Security numbers, photo IDs, Medicare and Social Security benefits for people here unlawfully. He says go ahead and do it.
The Texas court injunction is only temporary and could be set aside at any time. The administration has already filed for a stay of the injunction in the district court and has announced its intention to appeal.
Indeed, as I just read, the President said he expects to win. I don't think he will, but it is a technical part of the ruling. The judge still has many more that he could deal with that could overrule the President's action. He just chose one of them, and that one is rather technical. So who knows for sure what a court might rule.
In addition, the ruling does not address the substance of the case. It will take many months to resolve this litigation, and during that time there is a reasonable chance that some court will lift the stay and allow the President to begin implementing the amnesty pending a final ruling on the merits of the case. But Congress can stop it and has a duty to stop it in its appropriations bill.
In addition, Democrats refused to fund the lawful functions of the Department of Homeland Security. And this is important: The House- passed Department of Homeland Security funding bill funds all of the lawful, statutorily authorized functions of the Department, including the immigration law enforcement component of the agencies that, under the Obama administration, has been prevented from enforcing the laws.
Colleagues, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers--now, I guess, 2 years ago--filed a lawsuit against their own supervisors declaring that they were being forced to violate their oath to enforce the laws of the United States.
I have never seen that. It is so bad that the ICE officers have filed a lawsuit to stop the administration from ordering them to violate plain law.
Let me note that the President has already shut down the Department by ordering immigration officers and agents to violate the laws and sabotaging enforcement in a number of ways. These are direct orders of this administration, dismantling systemic enforcement of our laws.
So I think the Senate Democrats and the President must answer why they believe funding Executive amnesty and unlawful immigration policies would make this country safer.
They say: Well, you won't pass a Homeland Security bill like we want it. You are not making America safe.
I say their policies eviscerating law enforcement are making America less safe, as the Immigration and Customs agents do, the ones who process the applicants.
Ken Palinkas, the President of the National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council, has written that: This amnesty executed by the President will make us less safe.
His amnesty makes us less safe. Passing a bill that stops his amnesty will make us more safe. As a matter of fact, he said that more than one time--a number of times. He is very concerned, as his officers are, that if they carry out these policies, the American people are going to be less safe. In fact, they have said explicitly there is no way they can carry out in any effective manner the unlawful orders of the President of the United States.
Is anybody listening to the people who do the work every day? Does anybody care what they think? Apparently not.
So they are going to come to the floor and accuse Republicans in the House and on this side of the aisle of not making America safe when their own officers say the President's policies are making America less safe.
They say there is no way they can effectively process the individuals they are asked to process. They can't process the numbers today, much less what will happen under this bill when they have to process another 5 million. It is just a very unwise thing.
So what did the courts say? I think this is an important quote from the Texas court. A Federal court found that the President had overstepped his bounds. That is what the court fundamentally declared, stating:
It is Congress, and Congress alone, who has the power under
the Constitution to legislate in the field of immigration.
That is absolutely true. It is in the Constitution. As he said:
It is Congress, and Congress alone, who has the power under
the Constitution to legislate in the field of immigration.
So after the President issued his order and his Department issued orders of amnesty on November 20, 2014, the President, amazingly, said this: ``I just took an action to change the law.'' Don't we know from elementary school that Congress passes the law? The President doesn't pass the law. He said 22 times that he didn't have the power to do this, but now he has moved forward and admitted he is changing the law.
Well, some of our colleagues think: Oh, if we resist this, the President is going to accuse us of not funding Homeland Security, not protecting the Republic.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.
But I don't think that is so.
They say: Well, the press is unfair.
Well, not always. I think sometimes we Republicans are right to complain but not always.
This is what the headlines are today. The headlines aren't saying Republicans are blocking the bill.
Politico: ``Democrats filibuster Department of Homeland Security bill.''
The Hill: ``Shutdown looms as Dems block DHS bill.''
McClatchy: ``Filibuster continues as Senate Dems block DHS funding bill.''
CNN: ``Senate Dems block Homeland Security funding bill again.''
Washington Post: ``Senate Democrats block DHS spending bill targeting Obama's immigration actions.''
Associated Press: ``Dems Block Action on DHS-Immigration Bill.''
New York Times: ``Senate Democrats Block Vote on Homeland Security Bill.''
Politico: ``Dems filibuster DHS bill.''
Well, that is absolutely true. We are bringing the bill to the floor. We are not blocking it. We want to fully fund Homeland Security. We want the laws enforced. We don't want to spend money from Homeland Security to eviscerate the law of the United States and undermine immigration law in America, and we don't want to fund an unlawful action by the President.
I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
Mr. President, one of the measures that took place in this Executive amnesty that has been too little commented upon since the President signed these orders in November is another program which has not been authorized by law which would add several hundred thousand new workers to our country.
This is the headline from an article today: ``DHS Extends Eligibility for Employment Authorization to Certain H-4 Dependent Spouses of H-1B Nonimmigrants Seeking Employment-Based Lawful Permanent Residence.''
The H-1B program was set up for certain individuals to come and work for 3 years and then extend maybe another 3 years only, to take a job in those industries and fields where there is a shortage of workers, and it does allow the spouses to come. But since its beginning it has barred spouses from working; otherwise we would be doubling the number of workers. So this bill now just up and approves spouses of H-1B workers to work.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, USCIS, estimates that ``the number of individuals eligible to apply for employment authorization under this rule could be as high as 179,600 in the first year and 55,000 annually in subsequent years.'' This is a very large addition to the workforce.
One might say: Well, it is good that spouses can work.
Well, what if your child wants a job? What if you want a job? What if your spouse wants a job and is looking for a job? Now we will have another 250,000 job applicants, contrary to law.
There are many other aspects of the President's Executive order that have not been given attention. I think this one is worth commenting about.
There has been no sense at all by President Obama, the Department of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, the Democratic Members of this Congress--no concern about the employment prospects of lawful immigrants, green card holders, and native-born Americans. We have high unemployment and the lowest percentage of Americans in the working age group actually holding jobs in America that we have had since 1970. Wages are down. Professor Borjas at Harvard documents that excessive immigration pulls down wages. Since 2007 wages of median-income families are down $4,000.
I would say to colleagues that the first thing we should do is focus on getting jobs for Americans who are unemployed. Are we going to keep Americans on welfare and benefits while we bring in more and more foreigners to take jobs when we have Americans ready and willing to take those jobs?
They like to suggest these guest workers are doing farm work. They are not. The overwhelming majority of guest workers admitted to the U.S. are not farm workers, but are taking jobs throughout the economy. A farm worker program, with temporary labor, if properly managed, is a good program. I do not oppose that. People come and work for a period of time, and if they return home and come back the next season and make enough money to take care of their families maybe for the whole year, that can work if properly managed. But look at this. The H-1Bs are people with high-tech degrees, high-tech skills. They are competing against college graduates who have computer skills and other skills.
This is what we get. This is how it is working in this country. A bunch of companies got together and they signed a letter to Speaker Boehner and Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House, asking for immigration reform back in September 2013. They said they needed more H-1B workers, and they pushed for that.
I would just note this: Byron York from the Washington Examiner has written about this, and this is what the facts are. They are not hiring people. They don't have a shortage of workers. They are laying off workers in very large numbers. Hewlett-Packard had 29,000 job cuts in 2012--29,000. They signed the letter. Cisco Systems eliminated 4,000 jobs in August 2013 in addition to 8,000 cut in the last 2 years. They signed the letter asking for more H-1B workers. United Technologies cut 3,000 jobs in 2013; American Express, 5,400 jobs in 2013; Procter & Gamble, 5,700 jobs in 2012; and T-Mobile, 2,250 layoffs in 2012. These are companies that are asking for more foreign workers.
This is another report that was in the Los Angeles Times just a few days ago: ``A loophole in immigration law is costing thousands of American jobs.''
Since last summer, [Southern California] Edison--
The biggest utility company in California--
which serves nearly 14 million customers, has been firing its
domestic IT workers and replacing them with outsourced
employees from India. . . . The pay for Edison's domestic IT
specialists is about $80,000 to $160,000 not including
benefits.
Good pay.
The two Indian outsourcing firms providing workers to
Edison, Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys, pay their
recruits an average of about $65,000 to $71,000, according to
federal filings.
They are laying off hundreds and requiring the California Edison employees to train the H-1B workers who shouldn't be coming into America unless there is a job need that is unfilled. How can you say we don't have qualified people? They are doing the job, and they are expected to train them. This is the kind of thing that is out of control. Somebody needs to defend the legitimate interests of middle America.
We need to ask ourselves: Does this make sense? Should the President be doubling up on it with his Executive amnesty that would add 179,600 new workers in the first year of his order and 55,000 more annually on top of the H-1B flow? We have legislation that has moved in this Senate that would more than double the number of H-1B workers coming into the country when the evidence indicates they are not needed. It might make businesses happy; they can pay half the salary of what they would otherwise be paying. But it would not be good for Americans who invested in education, trained themselves, worked themselves into a good job, and have it pulled out from under them.
I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
