Termination of National Emergency Declared By the President on February 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. SPANO. Mr. Speaker, for the third time, we will vote to terminate President Trump's national emergency declaration related to the crisis on our southern border.

When are we going to get serious about solving the issue?

For the first half of the year, Democrats wouldn't even acknowledge that there was a crisis. They ignored the reports from Border Patrol showing record levels of illegal crossings month after month.

Mr. Speaker, I thought we had progress in June, at least in terms of Democrats acknowledging that we have a crisis. You see, 305 Members of the House and 84 Members of the Senate voted to provide emergency funding in response to the humanitarian crisis. Unfortunately, we are back to the same partisan votes we started the year with.

Today is the last day the House will meet in session in fiscal year 2019. I wish I could tell my constituents, yes, we are going to terminate the emergency declaration because the fiscal year 2020 appropriations bill provides the money needed to secure the border, but that could not be further from the truth.

Not a single full-year appropriations bill has been signed into law. In fact, the House hasn't even voted on next year's Homeland Security appropriations bill.

This brings me back to my question of when. When are Democrats going to get serious about securing our border? It is certainly not in the appropriations bills they have drafted.

Section 227 of their Homeland Security bill reads: ``No Federal funds may be used for the construction of physical barriers along the southern land border of the United States during the fiscal year 2020.''

Their Defense appropriations bill went even further. That bill prohibits any funds from being used ``to construct a wall, fence, border barriers, or border security infrastructure along the southern land border of the United States.''

It is unbelievable. Not only is there no funding for physical barriers, they specifically prohibit it.

My constituents did not elect me to stand by silently as we transition to open borders in this country, and I will not. I call on my colleagues across the aisle: Let's put this partisan vote behind us; let's get serious; and let's work together to secure our border. It is what the American people want and expect us to do.

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