Homeland Security

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to the Senate Amendment to H.R. 6833, a short-term continuing resolution extending government funding through December 16th.

I oppose this CR for several reasons.

First, we should be here addressing the border crisis, the energy crisis, and the inflation crisis. This bill does nothing to fix any of these issues.

In fact, this bill actually bails out the Biden Administration for their failures and provides additional appropriations to put a band-aid on some of these problems for a few more months.

Madam Chair, thank you for yielding.

The revised allocations presented today do not change the spending levels that were adopted on a party-line vote last week. Because there are no substantive changes, I must once again oppose them.

It is unacceptable to Members on my side of the aisle to underfund our national defense while giving significant increases to the same social programs that received trillions of dollars over the last year. I hope we can find common ground as these bills move to the floor.

We will need to restore important language from prior bills, agree to remove controversial policy riders, and set responsible funding levels so that bills can get to the president's desk and be signed into law. I urge a no vote and yield back my time.

Before I get into my formal remarks, I would like to thank the distinguished chair, Ms. Roybal-Allard for her tremendous service to this body. I know her father was a valued Member of this House before she came here.

Madam Chair, you articulated the highlights and the differences of this bill. I think very well for our respected members, but personally thanks to you. There are bona fide differences, very strong differences of opinion, not only in this great committee but in our nation right now.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Before I start, I want to pause and thank the subcommittee chair, Ms. Roybal-Allard. Unfortunately, she has decided to retire at the end of this Congress. Lucille has been a tireless advocate for her constituents for more than three decades. I know I speak for all of us when I say that she will be missed. She always handled this extremely difficult Homeland Security Bill in a very fair way. I wish her the best in her next chapter.