DeLauro Remarks on Homeland Security Discharge Petition

During a press conference at the House steps on Wednesday, March 18, 2026, House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro gave the following remarks, regarding her bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, and the discharge petition to force a vote on her measure: 

Thank you so much, Mr. Leader, and good day to everyone. I want to say thank you to my colleagues who are here. 

Today marks the thirty-second day that the Department of Homeland security has been shutdown. Last Friday, TSA agents, and other employees across DHS, missed their first full paycheck. This is wrong. 

This shutdown has persisted because Republicans will not vote for any funding bill, unless ICE a lawless and a reckless agency gets another $28 billion, on top of the $140 billion they are already sitting on from the One Big Beautiful Bill. And that is, they want to do this without any of the protections that the American people have demanded, and which our leader recounted. 

I am so tired of the crocodile tears being shed by my Republican colleagues, and their concern about workers who are not getting paid. They have the power, the power to end this right now. They choose not to. They are blocking the funding of paychecks for hard working Americans. 

Republicans are actively blocking my bill to fund TSA – my bill which would end airport lines, stop the delays, and pay the hard-working public servants who follow the law and the people who keep us safe. The bill would fully fund FEMA – including the Disaster Relief Fund. It would fully fund the Coast Guard, and the Secret Service, and yes, our cybersecurity efforts. Yet Republicans continue to block it. Republicans support the agencies that have harassed, beaten, detained, and killed American citizens. 

So today, amid this continuing failure of Republican leadership, House Democrats are taking matters into our own hands. 

I call on my Republican colleagues in the rank-and-file, who know that what their leadership is doing, and they know it is wrong, please join us in this effort. Have the courage, have the moral character, in understand your moral responsibility to sign this discharge petition and to end this shutdown. 

I would now like to turn things over to my colleague from Virginia, Congressman James Walkinshaw.