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Congressional Daily Record
This section captures a floor statement or debate entry. It mentions members such as Marsha Blackburn.
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April 29, 2026
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Download official Senate Record PDFReturn to issue contextMrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, now, on a separate but related topic, we go to this issue of Department of Homeland Security funding. It is important that we remember that the Agency that is responsible for protecting our President, his family, our Vice President, his family, our Cabinet members—they all have a security detail—but the Agency is the Secret Service, and the Secret Service is in the Department of Homeland Security, as is Homeland Security Investigations, ICE, Border Patrol, TSA. See, it all comes out of that DHS budget.
Department of Homeland Security. It is the third time this Congress that they have chosen to shut down Homeland Security.
President Trump has resorted to using funds from the Working Families Tax Cut—Big Beautiful Bill—that we passed last year, and thank goodness that we did. And I will remind the Chamber: Every single Democrat voted against that bill. Every single Democrat voted against your pocketbook. They voted to increase your taxes by voting no on the Big Beautiful Bill.
President has been able to go and move some money around and pay people that are working without a paycheck.
continue to work and not receive a paycheck? But that is what our Democrat colleagues continue to do.
grandmother who lives in Middle Tennessee. Her question to me was very pointed. She said: Senator Blackburn, my grandson is in the Coast Guard. Have you-all figured out how to pay the Coast Guard?
The Coast Guard. They are funded by DHS. So our colleagues across the aisle have chosen to say to the Coast Guard: Forget it. We are not for paying you.
So think about this. When you talk about going after human traffickers and drug runners, the Democrats don't want to fund that activity.
find missing children, that locks up pedophiles and predators, that locks up groomers—they don't want to go after them. They are choosing to not fund that Agency.
Well, I had another caller on the townhall last night, and they said: I don't get this. Why don't they want to pay TSA? Why don't they want to pay ICE agents who were picking up people that broke the law to come into the country and have committed crimes and need to be deported? These are people that, by and large, most have orders of deportation already issued against them. They are ready to be deported.
tell you. Their goal is to abolish ICE, to open the border back up, and just say: You-all come. Anybody can come. We are going to vacate immigration law.
And their third goal is to defund the police. You know, during Joe Biden's era, they loved the fact—loved it—the border was wide open. And we had illegal aliens entering the country by the thousands and the millions. They liked it that way. They didn't know who was in the country, but they were glad they were here. They wanted more sanctuary cities.
aliens before citizens. They are not funding—will not fund Federal law enforcement, don't want to fund immigration, don't want to fund the Coast Guard, don't want to fund the TSA. I guess they just think that there should be no scanning and no review.
want a deal on this. They want to continue to have a fight. They want this issue. Their goal is to abolish ICE, to defund Federal law enforcement. That is where they are headed, so they like having a shutdown.