Ranking Member DeLauro Opposes House Republican Continuing Resolution in Current Form
WASHINGTON –House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (CT-03) delivered the following remarks before the House Rules Committee regarding the House Republican Continuing Resolution released on Friday.
Thank you Chairwoman Foxx, and Ranking Member McGovern, members of the Committee, good afternoon all of you. It is great to be here alongside my friend Chairman Cole to discuss the stopgap funding measure released on Friday afternoon.
I want to begin by stating clearly and plainly: Democrats do not want a government shutdown. In a perfect world, the months remaining between now and September 30 would be ample time to fund the government on a bipartisan basis through the appropriations process – one bill at a time.
However, given Republicans’ refusal to write bipartisan bills in either the House or Senate, a continuing resolution is necessary.
If I am going to support a continuing resolution, it needs to continue government operations, exclude any poison pills, and it must maintain Congress’s constitutional authority over spending decisions.
At this time, the continuing resolution released on Friday does not meet that standard.
The final Homeland Security bill passed unopposed – by a voice vote – in April by including a provision to remove all funding for the Border Patrol. Chair Cole’s bill does not continue that agreement, giving the Trump administration permission to use billions provided by this bill to fund the Border Patrol without any substantial reforms to how that agency operates – a clear line in the sand that Democrats have drawn for months.
In recent weeks, immigration agents have shot and killed residents in Maine and Texas – neither of whom were the target of enforcement operations – highlighting the urgent need for dramatic reforms to protect our communities from further violence.
We have also been presented this measure, hastily put together with little more than a couple days of thought. That is not the way to govern.
The majority has not made time to gather information from our colleagues in the Executive Branch to identify any potentially critical anticipated needs, let alone anything that may come to light over the next couple of months, especially as we head into the heart of wildfire season and approach hurricane season. We are putting the cart before the horse by considering this legislation without understanding the full scope of what is needed to continue operations through December 4.
As a matter of fact, we have just received a lengthy proposed list of anomalies from the White House, but the process has made no time for us to evaluate these proposals, and this bill does not account for anything that is in these proposals.
The chairman and I both know, we go through these with a fine-tooth comb to see what is flexible and what is not flexible; what are the needs that have to be met.
Border patrol problems aside, Chairman Cole has put forward a plain bill, absent controversial riders, and containing most of the standard authorities we enact in these stopgap measures. That is a welcome change from most of the regular bills that have come to the floor this summer. But we still do not have all the information we need.
We still have two months before the end of the fiscal year and should not rush through an incomplete funding extension. We ought to wait for the information we need to get it right the first time.
This resolution was dropped on us on a Friday afternoon without any bipartisan negotiation. Had we been consulted, there are several provisions we would have pushed for to strengthen the measure and protect Congressional prerogatives, including the reversal of a proposed federal rule from the Office of Management and Budget that allows political appointees in the Trump administration to unilaterally block or terminate grant funding if they deem it not sufficiently in line with the president’s policy priorities.
If we had been brought in before the bill was released, we could be here touting a bipartisan agreement with a plan to fully fund the government for the next fiscal year before the end of this Congress. Instead, we are scrambling to jam through a one-sided stopgap measure three days before everyone leaves for the August recess.
I am deeply concerned about what may be attached to this funding measure through the Rule that is passed out of this Committee. There are some Republicans who have decided they will not allow any legislation to be considered under a Rule unless it includes an extremely partisan measure to restrict voting access for millions of American citizens.
Under no circumstances will Democrats support that measure. If the position of my friends across the aisle is that they will shut down the government unless we severely restrict American citizens’ voting access, I invite them to make that case to the public and see how the public responds in November.
At minimum, I cannot support this bill without the inclusion of the technical language regarding the Border Patrol that was agreed on – it was agreed on, it was a bipartisan, overwhelming voice vote in April, and until we are certain that Republicans will not use this legislation to advance their voter suppression measure.
Beyond that, the decision to pursue this path without any bipartisan negotiation gives me serious reservations in moving forward.
I am happy to answer the Committee’s questions. Thank you and I yield back.
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