Hoyer: We Need a DHS Funding Bill for the Entire Year so the Agency Tasked to Keep Us Safe Will Operate on a Full Basis

WASHINGTON, DC - House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer (MD) spoke on the House Floor earlier today against the Rule for House Republicans’ short-term CR to urge them to put a bill on the Floor that funds the Department of Homeland Security for the entire fiscal year instead of a three-week extension that continues the uncertainty. Below is a transcript of his remarks and a link to the video.

Click here to watch the video.

“Mr. Speaker, what we ought to have the courage to do is to tell all our Homeland Security personnel:  ‘We're going to fund you through the end of this year’ – as we have told every other employee in the federal government that is protecting us and serving us on a day-to-day basis. Mr. Speaker, the Majority party said to the American people in a Pledge to America this: ‘We will end the practice of packaging unpopular bills with must-pass legislation’ – the funding of the Department of Homeland Security is a must-pass piece of legislation – ‘legislation to circumvent the will of the American people. Instead, we will advance major legislation one issue at a time.’

“Mr. Speaker, they are breaking that Pledge today. [Rep.] Peter King, the former Republican Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, said this: ‘If a clean bill comes here’ – as we expect to happen in just a few hours – ‘we have to accept a vote on it,’ said Rep. Peter King. He then said, in reference to this cul-de-sac strategy that the Majority party is following of continuing to go into a dead end, he said this: ‘I think up to this point we’ve engaged in an exercise of tactical malpractice. Self-delusion is self-destructive.’ There is not a Republican in this House who believes this strategy will do anything but run them back into that cul-de-sac that they went into in December, at the expense of the confidence of Americans that their Department of Homeland Security tasked to make them safe, tasked to provide for the security of this nation, will in fact be operating on a full basis.

“Lastly, Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record a letter dated yesterday from [Homeland Security] Secretary Jeh Johnson and read this key excerpt from it: ‘Finally,’ Secretary Johnson said, ‘as I have noted many times, mere extension of a continuing resolution has many of the same negative impacts,’ outlined in this letter. ‘A short-term continuing resolution exacerbates the uncertainty for my workforce and puts us back in the same position, on the brink of a shutdown...’

“For those Republicans who believe that we ought to do the responsible thing, as [Rep.] Peter King has said, vote against the previous question, vote for a rule that provides for the consideration of the Senate-passed [full-year] bill, which they 98-2 decided to put on the Floor because they thought it was good policy.”