Jeanne Shaheen

Mrs. SHAHEEN

Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, in a few minutes the Senate is going to have yet another procedural vote on the Department of Homeland Security funding bill. The bill before us, the House-passed version of the funding bill, can't become law. We have already heard the President reaffirm yesterday that he is going to veto the House-passed bill before us. That means we could face a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. At this point, given the threats from terrorism, given the work that is done by the Department of Homeland Security, that is not a tenable position to begin. Let me say, I very much appreciate the efforts of my colleague from my neighboring State of Maine, the senior Senator from Maine, Senator Collins. But the amendment she has put forward still raises some serious concerns about the impact on our security, because it includes language that would defund all of the Department of Homeland Security directives from November 20, 2014. So it would defund those provisions that direct law enforcement officers to place top priority on national security threats, convicted felons, gang members, illegal entrants apprehended at the border. It also defunds the southern border and approaches campaign which establishes three joint task forces to reduce the terrorism risk to the Nation. And, as she has indicated, it defunds the deferred action programs. While she suggested that it would allow the 2012 Executive action that refers to the DREAMers to stay in place, it raises serious questions about whether USCIS could effectively process renewables of those DREAMers--such as the young man whom Senator Durbin spoke so eloquently about--so who knows what the court action could be on that. While I appreciate the effort, I don't think it adequately addresses the concerns we have in the Democratic caucus, that we need to pass a clean bill. We need to have a separate debate about immigration. The Presiding Officer worked very hard 2 years ago to help us get a comprehensive immigration reform bill that most of us didn't agree with everything in it, but most of us supported. We are happy to have that debate, but what we need now is a clean bill--one that allows the funding for the Department of Homeland Security to go forward. I noticed on the news this morning, one of the issues that is at risk in this debate over whether we are going to support funding for the Department and the security of this Nation versus an ideological objection to the President--this morning one of the lead items on the news had to do with the cyber security breach at Anthem, the second largest health insurance company in the country. I happen to have my health insurance through Anthem, so I paid particular attention to this. But one of the things that is in this clean bill that was agreed to last December by Senator Mikulski and Congressman Rogers was funding for the cyber security center within the Department of Homeland Security to address the next-generation threat to our cyber networks. That is critical funding we need if we are going to intercept the kinds of breaches we saw with Anthem and heard about this morning. Yet that funding is at risk because there is not agreement to get a clean bill done to fund the Department of Homeland Security. What we have heard from almost everybody who has spoken is: We agree we should fund the Department of Homeland Security; we agree to the dollar levels that are in that bill; we agree to making sure the safety and security of this country should be paramount. We have heard a number of our colleagues from the other side of the aisle and from the House who have said ultimately this is about getting a clean bill. So we should do that now. We should provide certainty, we should get this done, and we should stop having an ideological debate about whether we are going to support immigration and the President, or whether we are going to support the safety and security of this Nation. I think we should all be able to agree that the safety and security of America comes first. We should get this clean bill done, and then we can go on and debate immigration reform. Mr. President, how much time do I have left?

Mrs. SHAHEEN

Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I point out to my colleague that Senator Mikulski and I have introduced a clean bill that addresses funding for the Department of Homeland Security. The fact is we find ourselves in this situation on the appropriations bill because of the riders that were attached by the House of Representatives. Those riders defund immigration directives that were issued by the President last year. Yesterday, the senior Senator from Texas suggested that Senate Democrats don't want to debate immigration. In fact, we are happy to debate immigration. In fact, this body, in 2013, passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill with a very strong bipartisan vote. The debate we are having today is about whether we are going to fund the Department of Homeland Security. The bill that is before us raises concerns about what is in the original clean bill that funds the Department of Homeland Security. As the Senator from North Dakota and I were just discussing, Senate Republicans control the Senate. If they want to vote on immigration measures, they can bring a bill that would do that to the floor by the end of this week because they control what we consider in the Senate. But the issue that is before us today is whether we are going to fund the Department of Homeland Security. This is an issue that is critical because right now our Nation faces serious national security and terrorism threats. This bill is not about the President's Executive action; it is about whether we are going to fund the Department of Homeland Security. Since we have heard from so many of our Republican colleagues that they want to discuss immigration and border security, I spent some time yesterday speaking about all of the important investments that a clean, full-year funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security would make in our border security. If we don't pass a clean funding bill, we will fail to make significant upgrades to technology on the border. We will fail to fund expanded enforcement activities for immigration officers. If we are serious about border security, we should support a clean full-year bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security.

Mrs. SHAHEEN. I appreciate the work my colleague has done on this funding bill, and I think we certainly agree on the funding that is in the bill. That is not what the debate we are having is about. I ask the Senator from North Dakota if he has heard the comments of Chairman John Carter of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, a Republican from Texas, who said: ``Ultimately, there may be a clean bill.'' If the House is acknowledging that ultimately we may have a clean bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, doesn't it make sense that we would move forward to get this funding done, and we would make sure there is certainty to address the risks facing this country? We can debate immigration. I don't think there is anybody on the Democratic side who doesn't want to have an immigration debate. We are happy to have it. But we should have that as a separate debate. As the Republican majority knows, they control the debate in the Senate. So they can decide to bring up an immigration bill as soon as we pass funding for the Department of Homeland Security. So I hope, as the House suggests, ultimately there is going to be a clean bill and that we would pass it as soon as possible to provide certainty and then move on to debate the other issues facing this country. I ask my colleague from North Dakota if he has spoken to the chairman of the House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee, and does he share his view that ultimately there may be a clean bill?

Mrs. SHAHEEN. I ask unanimous consent to speak for 3 more minutes.

Mrs. SHAHEEN. Thank you, Madam President. I was very pleased to hear the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Mikulski, who has done such great work on the committee in putting together the bipartisan agreement that was negotiated last December with the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Congressman Rogers. That was a bill which, as the Senator pointed out, funded the efforts of the Department of Homeland Security to keep people safe, to address emergencies, to try to protect us from cyber security threats--a whole range of efforts at the Department. I want Senator Mikulski to hear a comment that I understand was made by the House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee chairman John Carter, who is a Republican from Texas. When he was asked about what the outcome of this debate would be on funding the Department of Homeland Security, his comment was, ``Ultimately, there may be a clean bill.'' Well, I say to Senator Mikulski, if the House Republicans and the chair of the subcommittee in the House are acknowledging that ultimately there may be a clean bill to fund the Department to do what was negotiated by you and Congressman Rogers last December, doesn't it make sense that we should get a clean bill done as soon as possible so there is certainty for the Department of Homeland Security so they can continue the planning efforts and they can continue to address the threats to our national security? Shouldn't we just get this done now and stop this ideological fighting and putting at risk people of this country because somebody has an ideological concern about this bill?

Mrs. SHAHEEN. I thank the Chair. I also think it is instructive at this time to note for the Record that included in the Executive actions that Republicans are trying to defund are provisions that increase border security, prioritize enforcement resources, and ensure accountability in our immigration system. The House bill that is before us today defunds--takes away the money--for the new policy of prioritizing criminals and national security threats for removal from the United States. So one of the orders that have been issued by DHS that Republicans want to defund directs law enforcement officers to place top priority on removing national security threats, convicted felons, gang members, and illegal entrants apprehended at the border. The House bill also defunds increased and strategic border security. Another one of the memos issued by DHS is on the Southern Border and Approaches Campaign, which establishes three joint task forces to reduce the terrorism risks to the Nation, combat transnational criminal organizations, and prevent the illegal flow of people and goods along our border. So that is another part of this legislation our colleagues want to defund. It doesn't make sense, if we are concerned about border security, that we would want to pass a bill that includes measures to defund these efforts. I understand my time has expired. I certainly hope everybody understands what the bill before us, which includes those five House riders, would actually do. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, will my colleague from North Dakota, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Homeland Security, yield for a question?

Mrs. SHAHEEN. Madam President, I certainly agree with the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee. I will just point out that in the last 2 days, we have heard from the Conference of Mayors, which has urged us to pass a clean bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security. We have heard from the emergency managers across this country who are concerned about the risks of assistance for disaster relief and for FEMA, and today we got a letter from the National Association of Counties urging the passage of a clean bill to ensure that the safety of our communities can be maintained. As the Senator said, we should not put these communities at risk, the efforts that are going on across this country to keep the Nation safe, because there are those people who are angry at the President about an Executive action. We can have that debate, but we should have that debate separately. We need to fund the Department of Homeland Security now to ensure that there are no risks to our citizens. I thank Senator Mikulski and the Presiding Officer. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mrs. SHAHEEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mrs. SHAHEEN

Mrs. SHAHEEN. There are any number of reasons why we need to pass a clean funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security. We should be working to do that now. We should stop the ideological debate and focus on the risk to this country if we fail to act, the potential risk we would face by passing a continuing resolution, and the risk to this country if we shut down the Department of Homeland Security. None of those options are acceptable. We need to work together and get this done. I urge my colleagues to do that. I thank the Presiding Officer.

Mrs. SHAHEEN. This is from emergency managers, and it says: The nation's local emergency managers urge you to include full-year funding for programs at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that support state and local emergency management programs. These programs are critical to preparing our nation for all hazards including terrorist attacks. Again, they go on at length, and I ask unanimous consent to have this letter printed in the Record.

Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 3 more minutes.

Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I will also point out a letter we received, which again, was addressed to Senator Cochran and Senator Mikulski.

Mrs. SHAHEEN. Cloture was not invoked on the House bill. We saw that yesterday in our vote. It is a bill that cannot become law. There are only 24 days left before funding for the Homeland Security Department expires. The House bill cannot move forward. So I urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to work with us to pass a clean full-year budget, without controversial riders, to fund Homeland Security. As the ranking member of the Homeland Security Subcommittee, I am ready to work with my colleague Senator Hoeven, who chairs the Subcommittee on Homeland Security, and the chair and ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Cochran and Senator Mikulski, and the entire committee to pass a bill to keep our Nation safe and to avoid disrupting the work of the Department of Homeland Security and to keep this critical agency operating at full strength. In fact, Senator Mikulski and I introduced a bill last week, S. 272, which would do exactly that. We live in dangerous times. Every day new threats emerge that threaten our citizens at home and our allies abroad. The Department of Homeland Security's role in protecting our country from these threats cannot be overstated, and its funding should not be controversial. Right now the U.S. law enforcement community is on high alert for terror threats after attacks in Sydney, Australia, and Ottawa, Canada, and, of course, the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris. Just 2 weeks ago, an Ohio man was arrested when authorities discovered he was plotting to blow up the U.S. Capitol in an ISIS- inspired plan. ISIS has thousands of foreign fighters, including Americans among their ranks, who can return to their home countries to do harm and who say they intend to do that. We were all horrified yesterday by the news of the courageous Jordanian pilot who was killed in such a barbaric and disgusting way by the Islamic State. We have recently learned that ISIS plans to take advantage of the Syrian refugee crisis and to move their fighters into Turkey and Europe. These are real threats. They are a clear and present danger to this country, and because they are so real, we need our counterterrorism intelligence community operating at full strength. An essential part of our Nation's counterterrorism and intelligence infrastructure is within the Department of Homeland Security. As Michael Chertoff, George W. Bush's Secretary of Homeland Security said, ``intelligence is not only about spies and satellites.'' Intelligence is also about the disciplined daily tasks of collecting and analyzing thousands of reports and investigations that are ongoing all across our country--from our local and State police, our Border Patrol agents, our port security personnel, and our Coast Guard patrolling our shores. The Department of Homeland Security takes these thousands of bits of information, sifts out the critical details, coordinates with our foreign intelligence agencies, and gets critical information to our first responders on the ground as quickly as possible. This work is critical to keeping our Nation safe from terrorism. One of the chief criticisms of the 9/11 report was that we need to improve intelligence information sharing between the intelligence community and our first responders on the ground. I was Governor on September 11. I know some of the challenges that we had in New Hampshire with that information sharing. Well, that is one of the missions the Department of Homeland Security was created to carry out. If you talk to Governors and mayors, police chiefs and sheriffs, and the folks on the ground who are responsible for keeping our citizens safe every day, ask them about their fusion centers. Ask them whether they want their law enforcement to go back to the days when all of our intelligence was bottled up in Washington, DC, and our towns and cities were on their own. Of course they don't want to go back to being kept in the dark. There is too much at stake, but that is what could happen if the Department of Homeland Security is not fully functioning. I wish to point out that we received a letter from the U.S. Conference of Mayors. It is signed by Tom Cochran, CEO and executive director. He sent it to Senators Cochran, Mikulski, Hoeven, and Shaheen. I will not read the whole letter, but they point out a number of issues which I believe are important in laying out the challenge and why we need to pass a clean funding bill. Mr. Cochran says: I write on behalf of the nation's mayors to urge you to expeditiously report out a ``clean'' bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security for the remainder of the current fiscal year. A fully functioning Department of Homeland Security is critical to the security of our nation, our cities, and our citizens. A Department operating on a short-term continuing resolution, despite its best efforts, faces uncertainty and delays and simply cannot be fully functioning. He goes on to elaborate a number of the important programs and important work that the Department of Homeland Security does, and I will not read all of that. I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in the Record.

Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, as we continue this debate on funding for the Department of Homeland Security, we face some fundamental questions. Are we going to prioritize the safety and security of the American people or are we going to put the country at risk because of an ideological disagreement? That is the choice we face with this bill. We can debate immigration. I think Members of the Democratic caucus would be happy to do that. The Senate did that 2 years ago when we passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill with 68 bipartisan votes. But this is not the time for us to have this debate. We need to fund the Department of Homeland Security now so they can continue to do their work. We can either pass a clean bill that makes critical investments in our Nation's security or we can put our Nation at risk by playing politics with funding for the Department of Homeland Security. I appreciate what the Appropriations Committee chairman, Senator Cochran from Mississippi, did earlier today by coming down and laying out what is in the funding for the Department of Homeland Security and laying out the important work of the Department of Homeland Security. I believe most of us appreciate the work they do and why it is so important to the safety and security of the country. That is why we need to pass a clean bill to ensure that they are funded for the rest of this year. For those who are in the Senate Chamber and for those watching at home who have not been following what has gone on here in Washington with this bill, I will provide a little history on how we got to where we are today. In the closing weeks of the 113th Congress, Senator Mikulski, then chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Congressman Rogers, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, negotiated spending for the entire government, including the Department of Homeland Security. This was a compromise measure. Not everyone got what they wanted, but the bill funded Homeland Security priorities at levels that would ensure that the Department could fulfill its mission. Then, sadly, politics came into play. Some Members of the House Republican caucus demanded that the Homeland Security bill be removed from the larger budget because of immigration issues. They didn't like the President's Executive action on immigration. Now the entire Department is funded on a short-term basis through February 27, which is just 23 days from now. Last month the House of Representatives narrowly passed a bill to fund Homeland Security, but they added politically divisive language that rolls back protections for immigrant children, among other anti- immigrant measures. It also would roll back some of the efforts for surveillance and efforts to address illegal immigrants who are committing crimes when they come into this country. Because of these controversial immigration riders, President Obama immediately announced that he would veto the House-passed bill. Last week, the entire Democratic caucus of the Senate signed a letter to Majority Leader McConnell urging him to put the security of our Nation first, to put politics aside, and to work with us to pass a clean Homeland Security funding bill without controversial immigration riders attached--to pass a bill the President can sign. I ask unanimous consent to have the letter from the Senate Democratic caucus printed in the Record.

Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mrs. SHAHEEN

Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Eric Bader, a detailee from the Coast Guard, be granted floor privileges for the duration of debate to consider the fiscal year 2015 Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill.

Mrs. SHAHEEN

Mrs. SHAHEEN. I certainly appreciate Senator Hoeven, who chairs the Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, for laying out the case for the importance of the funding for critical security agencies in this bill--for the Coast Guard, for Customs and Border Patrol, for efforts to address security at our border, for cyber security. As the Senator pointed out, there is a lot of very important funding in this bill to address homeland security. I wonder if the Senator agrees with me that we should support the funding of this bill and that if we are going to have a debate about the President's Executive actions, it should be a separate debate on immigration rather than putting at risk the funding in this bill to protect our Nation.

Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, will my colleague yield for a question?

Mrs. SHAHEEN. Thank you very much, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

Mrs. SHAHEEN. And does a budget point of order lie against the bill pursuant to section 306 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974?

Mrs. SHAHEEN. Does a budget point of order lie against the bill pursuant to section 311(a)(3) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974?

Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, as we begin this debate on funding for the Department of Homeland Security, we face some fundamental questions: Are we going to prioritize the safety and security of the American people? Or are we going to put the country at risk because of an ideological disagreement? That is the choice I believe we face with this bill. We can either pass a clean bill that makes critical investments in our Nation's security or we can put this country at risk by playing politics with the funding for the Department of Homeland Security. We all know these are dangerous times that we live in. Every day, new threats emerge that endanger our citizens at home and our allies abroad. The Department of Homeland Security's role in protecting our country from these threats cannot be overstated, and its funding should not be controversial. Right now, the U.S. law enforcement community is on high alert for terror threats after attacks in Sydney, Australia, and Ottawa, Canada, and in Paris. Just 2 weeks ago, an Ohio man was arrested when authorities discovered he was plotting to blow up the U.S. Capitol in an ISIS-inspired plan. I believe, as the Presiding Officer understands, the man was from Ohio. ISIS has thousands of foreign fighters, including Americans, among their ranks who seek to return to their home countries to do harm--not to mention the barbarity of ISIS today in killing the Jordanian pilot whom they had in their custody. These are very real threats--a clear and present danger to the homeland--and because they are so real, we need our counterterrorism intelligence community operating at full strength. We need the entire Department of Homeland Security fully engaged in keeping our Nation safe. Last week, President Bush's two Homeland Security Secretaries, Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, joined former DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano in a letter to Congress. The three of them wrote: The national security role that the Department of Homeland Security plays . . . is critical to ensuring that our nation is safe from harm. . . . It is imperative that we ensure that DHS is ready, willing, and able to protect the American people . . . we urge you not to risk funding for the operations that protect every American and pass a clean DHS funding bill. All three former Secretaries--two of whom served under a Republican President and one under a Democratic President--are warning us that the safety and security of our Nation are at risk if we hold up funding for Homeland Security operations. Anything short of passing a clean funding bill will endanger important security operations and could very well put our citizens at risk. But because of the anti-immigration riders that have been attached by House Republicans, the bill we are about to vote on cannot become law. Senate Democrats are not going to support it. The President has already said he will veto it. And, furthermore, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the bill also adds $7.5 billion to the deficit. Last week, Senator Mikulski and I introduced a clean bill that is modeled after the bicameral, bipartisan agreement that was negotiated last December by Senator Mikulski, who was then chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Congressman Hal Rogers, then chair of the House Appropriations Committee. The bipartisan bill negotiated by Senator Mikulski and Congressman Rogers is a good bill. It is in line with the Murray-Ryan budget deal. It will help keep our Nation safe and secure, funding key counterterrorism, intelligence, and law enforcement activities, and will also strengthen the protections on our borders. So our position on this issue is clear: Congress needs to pass a clean, full-year funding bill without any controversial immigration riders that are not going to be able to gain support, that the President has already said he is going to veto. It is that simple. There is too much at stake for the security of our Nation to play politics with this bill. Before I conclude, I would note again that the House-passed Department of Homeland Security funding bill includes several immigration-related provisions that draw budget points of order against the bill. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the immigration-related provisions would increase the deficit by $7.5 billion over 10 years. In addition, the bill includes language relating to the budgetary treatment of these provisions. The result is multiple points of order that would not apply to the bill if the immigration provisions had not been added. Mr. President, I have a parliamentary inquiry: Does a budget point of order lie against H.R. 240 pursuant to section 311(a)(2)(B) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974?

Mrs. SHAHEEN

Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I appreciate the remarks from the Senators from Missouri and New York because I think they reflect my sentiments as well. The senior Senator from Texas suggested that we don't want to debate immigration. We are happy to debate immigration. In fact, I would love to debate immigration reform with our colleagues. But the bill before us is not about immigration reform. It is about whether we are going to fund the Department of Homeland Security. The fact is many of the issues the senior Senator from Texas raised about immigration were addressed in the comprehensive immigration reform bill this body passed in 2013. I am happy to go back to that debate, but that debate should not come in place of our willingness to fund national security and the Department of Homeland Security. That is the issue that is before us today, and we should not hold up our willingness to fund the Department because there are certain Members of the Republican Party in the House and Senate who want to talk about the President's Executive action. This bill is not about that. It is about whether we are going to fund the Department of Homeland Security. I thought it might be instructive to point out some of the changes Congress has made which are included in this bill and which actually strengthen border security, since that is one of the concerns that has been raised. Over the past 10 years, Congress has gone to extraordinary lengths to secure our borders against the threat of smugglers, of human traffickers, and of illegal immigrants. Since 2005 the combined budgets for Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have grown by an astounding 97 percent--97 percent--from about $8.5 billion in 2005 to more than $16.7 billion today. In fact, the combined budgets for these two border security agencies now account for more than 42 percent of the entire discretionary appropriations of the Department of Homeland Security. But Congress just hasn't thrown money at the problem. We have made wise investments to ensure our borders are more secure than they have ever been. Since 2011 Congress has steadily maintained 21,370 Border Patrol agents. That more than doubles the size of this force since 2001. Over the past 2 years Congress has added 2,000 Customs officers to help stop the flow of illegal drugs and prevent human trafficking while still facilitating legitimate trade. I have been to the San Ysidro border crossing in San Diego. I have seen the advanced technologies that have been implemented to make sure that legitimate trade can get across the border yet stop those people who are coming illegally. Congress has deployed enhanced border security technology, including integrated fixed towers, remote and mobile video surveillance systems, tethered aerostats, and other technology to secure our southern border. We have also funded the construction of 652 miles of vehicle and pedestrian fencing at critical locations determined by the Border Patrol agents on the ground. The Department's ability to detect illegal border traffic has grown substantially due to simultaneous investments in airborne assets, including Blackhawk helicopters, multirole enforcement aircraft, and surveillance planes critical in the war against drugs, as well as nine unmanned, unarmed Predator aerial systems. Since 2011 Congress has provided more than $721 million above the President's request for these important airborne assets that strengthen our border security. In the bipartisan full-year budget that Senator Mikulski and Congressman Rogers negotiated last December--the same bill that Senator Mikulski and I have introduced in this session of the Senate--we included those critical investments made to continue those efforts to secure the border. These investments will not occur or they are going to be delayed if we have a short-term budget, if we continue with a continuing resolution and, heaven forbid, if we shut down the Department of Homeland Security, which some of the Members of this body and the House have suggested is not a problem for us to do. The clean bill includes a $119 million increase for Customs and Border Protection. This is the funding level that supports the largest operational force levels in history--21,370 Border Patrol agents and 23,775 CBP officers. The agreement restores funding cuts to CBP's Office of Air and Marine proposed by the administration. That enables them to fly more patrols along the border and to continue purchasing critical assets. The clean bill also increases funding for the border security, fencing, infrastructure, and technology account by $20 million to provide additional video surveillance systems and adapt surplus Defense Department equipment for border security purposes. For Customs and Border Protection, a short-term budget also means that pending contracts for border security upgrades are going to be put on hold. When I met last week with CBP Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske, he told me that $90 million in contracts for mobile and remote video surveillance technology--the very technology that is going to help us keep illegal aliens from coming across the border--is going to be put on hold due to funding uncertainty. A clean, full-year budget bill provides an increase of $700 million for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency responsible for apprehending and detaining undocumented immigrants in this country. If we don't pass on full-year bill, ICE will have insufficient resources to maintain a statutorily mandated level of 34,000 detention beds for detaining illegal immigrants, the vast majority of which are criminals. They are going to fall over 4,000 beds short of that mandated level under a continuing resolution. Furthermore, they will have no funding to complete construction and continue operating new family detention facilities in Texas. Now, 3,000 family detention beds are supposed to be completed in Texas to deal with the surge of unaccompanied children and families to the southwest border. The very people who are complaining about border security, who are complaining about illegal immigrants coming into this country are opposing the funding that would address that border security. It makes no sense. The bill also increases ICE's capability to engage in domestic and international investigations with a $67 million increase for antihuman smuggling and traffic activities, to combat cyber crime, to combat drug smuggling, and to expand visa vetting capabilities. With a short-term budget, a continuing resolution, these additional investments will not be made. We should not be holding up this funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security with critical border protections in it because we have a few Members of the House and Senate who want to make this an ideological battle about the President's Executive action. Let's have that immigration debate, but this is not the place to do it.

Mrs. SHAHEEN

Mrs. SHAHEEN. Madam President, I wish to pay tribute to Bayard Winslow ``Chip'' Kennett II, a native of Conway, N.H., who passed away on January 17 at the age of 34. Growing up in the Mount Washington Valley, Chip was a fantastic student-athlete and natural leader. At A. Crosby Kennett High School, one of two schools in Conway which bears his family name, Chip quarterbacked the Kennett High School football team and was honored with the Jack Burns Memorial Award for leadership, dedication and loyalty to his teammates on the Kennett High baseball team. His parents, Bayard and Theresa, instilled in Chip a love for the region and its people, and Chip spent his summers volunteering and working at Conway's community recreation center. Chip would later go on to a career in public service that spanned close to a decade, rising from a college internship with then-New Hampshire Representative John Sununu to a position in Senator Judd Gregg's office, after which he returned to work for John Sununu upon his election to the Senate. Before leaving Capitol Hill to join Raytheon's government affairs practice, Chip most recently worked for Maine Senator Susan Collins as her military legislative assistant and director of appropriations. During his time in Washington, Chip was active in the New Hampshire State Society, helping to raise funds for New Hampshire students hoping to intern in the Nation's capital as he had during college. All those who knew him in the Senate recall his upbeat and caring nature, both qualities that buoyed him and his family through the difficulties of the past 2 years. In October 2012, Chip's wife Sheila was 35 weeks pregnant when he was diagnosed with stage IV advanced lung cancer. As he learned more about his diagnosis, Chip, who was not a smoker, was struck by the lack of progress in improving the survival rate for this deadly cancer which, contrary to popular perception, annually affects more non-smokers than smokers. During his own treatment, Chip became an advocate for lung cancer and worked exceptionally hard to increase awareness of the disease and to end the negative stigma of a lung cancer diagnosis. He gave his time and legislative expertise to LUNGevity, a lung cancer- focused nonprofit, to help fight for much-needed lung cancer research, education and support. His efforts culminated in an invitation to testify on Capitol Hill regarding the need to expedite trials for breakthrough drugs to treat life-threatening diseases like lung cancer. Throughout his own battle with the disease, Chip held out hope that one day we could all celebrate a cure for cancer. Chip truly embodied the spirit of public service, especially in his remaining days when he served as a voice for others. I know I speak for all in the Senate when I say thank you, Chip, for providing an example of what it means to be a great father, son, husband, friend and American. Chip is survived by his 5-year-old son Bayard ``Joe'' Kennett II, his 2-year-old daughter Crosby Reynolds and his wife Sheila whom he met while they were both serving as staff members in the Senate; his mother and father, Bayard and Theresa Kennett of Conway, N.H., as well as his brother and sister-in-law Tanner and Sarah Kennett of North Conway, N.H. On behalf of the people of New Hampshire, I ask my colleagues and all Americans to join me in honoring the life and service of Chip Kennett.