James Lankford: “it is the end of February, but it sure feels like the beginning because it feels like Groundhog Day. We are in yet…”

“it is the end of February, but it sure feels like the beginning because it feels like Groundhog Day. We are in yet another partial government shutdown. We are in it right now. What is interesting is we just had our last vote of the week, and this is still not resolved, and Members are all heading back home as if everything is normal, but it is not. Next week, we will have people who work for the Department of Homeland Security not get a paycheck because it is not funded because this body has not resolved this. Now, I understand my Democratic colleagues want to defund ICE. I get that. I hear from them over and over again: Let's defund ICE. And their way of defunding ICE is to be able to cut off funding to this particular part of our Federal budget. But I think some of my colleagues have lost track of what this means to be able to cut off DHS funding. It is not just cutting off ICE. In fact, ICE is a very small portion of the Department of Homeland Security. There are about 250,000 total employees across all entities in the Department of Homeland Security. ICE has 21,000 of that 250,000-plus. It is a very small group. But they are determined they are going to defund ICE. What they are actually defunding is not just ICE. They have also defunded U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. They have defunded the U.S. Coast Guard.”