End the Shutdown

Floor Speech

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Mr. BROWN of Maryland. Mr. Speaker, there is a crisis in our country, but it is not at our southern border. There is a crisis mounting at every airport, every national park, in the homes of furloughed Federal employees and stop-work Federal contractors across this country, from Los Angeles through Kansas City to Baltimore. It is a crisis that is hurting the lives of countless Americans whose food won't be inspected, whose water may not be clean, whose flight may not be safe, and whose bills may not be paid. It is a crisis of the President's own making.

Right now, we are on the verge of the longest government shutdown in our Nation's history, a shameful display of what happens when the President governs solely to appeal to his political base, rather than on behalf of all Americans.

Why are we here, Mr. Speaker? Because the President has committed himself to a wall that many experts say is ineffective. It is ineffective; it is expensive; and it is downright absurd. It has become a vanity project that began as an applause line in a campaign speech in which then-candidate Trump deemed the entire migration of people from the south rapists and criminals.

It is clear, the wall is the only policy objective that matters to the President, and he is willing to say or do anything to get it. He will push hundreds of thousands of American families into suffering for his wall, and he has gone so far as to threaten us with a declaration of national emergency if he doesn't get his way, a declaration of national emergency not because we are in the middle of one, but, rather, as the President put it, because he can't make a deal.

What is this national emergency on the border that the President is so concerned and afraid of? The past 2 years have seen border crossings drop to a historic low. Most undocumented immigrants in this country are visa overstays.

Mr. Speaker, 0.1 percent of all Border Patrol arrests in 2018 were members of MS-13. Yes, that is a problem that we are sadly and tragically familiar with in Maryland, but that doesn't make it a national emergency.

Most drugs smuggled through the southern border come through official ports of entry, not between them. And despite the President's false claims, there aren't thousands of terrorists coming across the border.

Customs and Border Protection, an agency in which the President has considerable confidence, said they encountered six people with names that are like those on the terrorist watch list. Last year, more suspected foreign terrorists were apprehended at the northern border than at our southern border.

Sure, we need strong border security, and not just at our southern border. But the President knows this isn't a national emergency but, perhaps, an alarm to his own political future.

What will hurt our security and create a real crisis is if he takes money away from the Armed Forces to fund the wall. If the President used funding from the military construction budget, facilities used by our men and women in uniform--like shipyards and aircraft hangars, ammunition supply points and training ranges, and childcare centers and family housing--those would continue to slide into disrepair. This would impact military readiness and the quality of life for our military families.

Or the President could decide to use money from infrastructure projects from the Army Corps of Engineers, projects meant to protect cities like Houston or Ellicott City in Maryland from flooding and would threaten tens of thousands of Americans who may find themselves in a real emergency during the next hurricane season.

The use of these authorities, like the deployment of our troops to the border, is irresponsible, unnecessary, and misguided.

Mr. Speaker, we don't have a crisis on the border. We have a crisis in the Oval Office. To President Trump, the wall, his symbol of division, matters more than substantial improvements to border security and true comprehensive immigration reform.

If President Trump wants to address the real crisis in our country, let's end this shutdown and pay the people who work for the people. Let's reduce our silent backlog, protect Dreamers, and fix our dysfunctional immigration system. We need real action and a bipartisan solution.

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