Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On House And Senate Republican Infighting Prolonging The DHS Shutdown

Washington, D.C. - Today, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) spoke on the Senate floor slamming Republicans for their inability to end the DHS shutdown. Leader Schumer called on Republicans to simply pass the twice-Senate-approved bipartisan bill to fund vital parts of the agency, instead of taking the Senate hostage through a long reconciliation process that will achieve no meaningful reforms to ICE and CBP. Below are Senator Schumer's remarks, which can also be viewed here:

All this week, the Republican Leader has tried to pin his party's failure to fund the Department of Homeland Security on Democrats. He did it again today. He said that we, Democrats, "shut down the appropriations process" - that "Republicans have been forced to do this the hard way."

Let's be very clear about something: DHS has been shut down now for over sixty days for one reason and one reason only: Republicans have been so paralyzed by their own dysfunction that they cannot govern. Republican leaders in the House and the Senate are busy fighting with each other and that has caused this paralysis.

Remember: it was Thune's bill, not a Democratic bill, that we passed in the Senate at the end of the last work period. Thune put a bill on the floor to fund every single agency within DHS except for ICE and Border Patrol, and it passed unanimously. It was Thune's bill. Democrats agreed and voted yes.

In fact, Democrats agreed twice. And it was Speaker Johnson, cowed by radical right-wing Republicans in the House, who stood in the way. Not Democrats. If Johnson would have put the bill on the floor, which he was afraid to do, it would have passed.

So, if the Majority Leader wants to put an end to this Department of Homeland Security shutdown, he should start talking to Speaker Johnson in the House instead of pointing the finger at us.

That's why DHS remains shut down, even though every single Democrat stands ready to fund agencies like TSA, FEMA, Coast Guard, and CISA at a moment's notice.

But that is not the path that Republicans want to take. They do not seem interested in reaching a compromise to rein in ICE with exceedingly simple guardrails. We were clear from the start about what kind of reforms the American people want, and Republicans have never budged.

Republicans seem so sickened by the idea of basic reforms to ICE that they would rather take up weeks of the Senate's time ramming through a party-line reconciliation package without a shred of the reforms Americans demand. Commonsense reforms that police departments in every part of the country obey: no masks, warrants when you break into someone's home, cooperating with local authorities.

That's right: instead of passing legislation to lower gas prices, or lower grocery prices, or energy costs Republicans want to hijack the Senate and spend weeks on reconciliation to ram through billions more for ICE with zero reforms.

So, while I have great respect for the Republican Leader, the plain facts are these: Democrats are not the ones dragging this shutdown on. Republicans are.

And, again, I say to Leader Thune, Republicans could reopen DHS today. All they have to do is start listening to the American people and stop obeying Donald Trump and the MAGA radical right.

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