Texas Border Business
WASHINGTON – Today U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) discussed his opposition to diverting Hurricane Harvey recovery funds and the Democrats’ refusal to compromise on government funding on the Senate floor. Excerpts of Sen. Cornyn’s floor remarks are below, and video can be found here.
“Democrats refuse to come to the negotiating table with a legitimate offer that would end this partial government shutdown and provide vital funding for border security measures. Their negligence has harmed 800,000 federal workers who are not being paid while this standoff continues. And it has completely stalled the work here in the Senate, because the minority leader, the senator from New York, has gotten his colleagues to fall in line to block the legislation that’s currently on the floor.”
“What I find so cynical is the fact that Democrats have drawn a line in the sand over something that they have largely supported in the past.”
“Their opposition to President Trump and anything and everything that he wants has somehow become an article of faith for the radical Left.”
“We’re talking about the same thing we talked about back in 2006 and in 2014.”
“Their continued intransigence and refusal to get serious about negotiating shows one of two things. Either their party has completely flipped their position on commonsense border security measures, or they simply refuse to work with the president because they loathe him. Either way they should be ashamed. They should be embarrassed. But they’re not.”
“I support the president’s effort to secure our borders, period, full stop. But I also believe taking a step like declaring a national emergency and diverting disaster relief to border security would seriously hurt those who are still recovering from the impact of natural disasters like Hurricane Harvey.”
“Hurricane Harvey isn’t the first hurricane we’ve sustained and it won’t be the last, and we need to get ready for the next one. Diverting those funds away to support border security would be a major step backwards and could further harm the victims of Hurricane Harvey.”
“So it’s time for our Democratic friends to come back to the negotiating table so we can finally end this unnecessary and harmful shutdown, and hopefully in the process the 800,000 federal workers that missed their first paycheck last Friday can get paid during this next pay period. And we can reopen the federal government so we can serve the interests of the American people as we should have done 24 days ago.”
