Today on the House floor, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) called on Democrats to join with House Republicans and fully fund the Department of Homeland Security, arguing that anything less than full funding is reckless and puts American lives in danger.
  
Highlights from Leader Scalise's remarks:

“I rise in strong support of this important bill to fund fully the Department of Homeland Security. You know, we've done this time and time again, at least in the House. This will mark tonight the 4th time that the House has voted to fully fund the Department of Homeland Security... Mr. Speaker, we've got a job to do. Our job is to protect the American people, to do our job to keep them safe, and that's why we created this department. Not some of the department, not just pieces of the department, but the entire Department of Homeland Security.

...

“Some members want to get in a time machine and they want to go back to another day where maybe America didn't have any attacks. Well, how about we go back in a time machine and listen to the Democrat leader, Hakeem Jeffries? I'll read a quote from Hakeem Jeffries, 'We are here today to do a single job, and that should be to fund fully the Department of Homeland Security. Anything else is an abdication of our responsibility. Anything else is an act of legislative malpractice. We're playing political games at a time when the safety and the security of the American people is being threatened.' That was in 2015. Hakeem Jeffries. Now, what's happened between now and then? Well, let me tell you, Mr. Speaker, this is not your father's Democrat Party anymore.

... 

“Just because it happened in the Senate at three in the morning doesn't mean nobody heard it. We did. We didn't just hear it. We read the bill and we said no. Mr. Speaker, that is not the responsible thing to do for this country. This country is counting on us. And by the way, it's at a time when we're at a heightened level of threat. If you're wondering what that heightened level is, I know there's some people that just want to go after police all the time. Why don't we just read a couple of the names that the other side doesn't want to read?

“Richard Williams, Mr. Speaker, 83-year-old U.S. Air Force veteran who was randomly shoved into subway tracks by an illegal alien from Honduras, just died this week... We've all heard of Sheridan Gorman. Maybe not enough people, Mr. Speaker, have heard of Sheridan Gorman, but we're going to say her name again. A beautiful 18-year-old young girl from Loyola University in Chicago, a student who had the world before her, shot to death by, yes, an illegal alien from Venezuela who came over here under President Biden's open borders... Stephanie Minter, a 41-year-old mother from Virginia, randomly stabbed to death by an illegal. Yes, with a lengthy rap sheet with more than 30 prior charges. How many more of these do we have to have before some people will say, okay, maybe we need to fund this department?

...

“Could you imagine if you had a terrorist outside of your house and somebody said, well, we'll let you lock the front door, but we don't have time to lock the back door? You'd think that was crazy... But yet [Democrats] want to defund this agency and make our country vulnerable, make Americans less safe.

“I'm not going to have anything to do with that, Mr. Speaker. I want to fund the whole department. That's what this bill does. It pays everybody, pays the TSA agents as they should be. As Democrats have voted time and time again to not pay, we pay them... These are big differences, but these are dangerous times in America. This is not the time to defund the police, to defund the Department of Homeland Security, at any level. So, Mr. Speaker, I would urge everybody to vote for this bill. Let's do our job. We are here doing the right thing to keep America safe.”

###