On the recordFebruary 27, 2015
I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, let's review something. Let's just review briefly where we are and why we are here. The House passed a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security maybe 3 weeks ago in order to give the Senate enough time to consider it and take appropriate action. So the House acted 3 weeks ago and sent the bill to the Senate. The Democrats in the Senate have refused to allow that bill to be brought before the Senate four different times over 3 weeks. Now who is to blame for not funding the Department of Homeland Security? The House has tried. The Senate refused to act, until finally this morning, the Senate took up a clean funding bill for Homeland and passed it. So here is where we are. The House has passed a bill. The Senate now has passed a bill, finally. So what do you normally do? What is the procedure of the Congress when both bodies pass a bill that is different from each other? You go to conference. We have done that from time immemorial. That is the recommended way. That is what is in the Constitution. The conference is necessary, but that is going to take some time. So we need some time to allow the conference to go to work and conclude this problem and work out the differences. Thus, we need this temporary funding bill for the Department, to keep the security of the Nation intact through the Department of Homeland Security while we work out the permanent funding for the Department for the balance of the year.…
