Providing for Consideration of H.R. American Dream and Promise Act of 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Arizona (Mrs. Lesko), my colleague on the Rules Committee, for yielding.

Madam Speaker, you heard my colleague's passion from this microphone just seconds ago.

Lest anyone thinks this is about money, this rule today combines two bills: one, CBO estimates to cost $8 billion, not a penny for border security; another, the CBO estimates to cost $26 billion, not a penny for border security.

Lest anyone thinks this conversation today is about helping those young people here under DACA protections, remember, the Republican majority brought two bills to the floor last year that would do exactly that, got not one Democratic vote on either one of them.

If anyone thinks this bill is about protecting folks who are trying to strive for the American Dream, Madam Speaker, I would encourage you to read from page 3 of the bill. It says:

This bill applies to an alien who is inadmissible or deportable from the United States, and those aliens only.

I tell you that, Madam Speaker, because I represent a constituency that is 25 percent first-generation Americans. I represent a constituency that has played by the rules, done everything right, come to this country legally. Their children are unprotected today, and this bill does not one thing to protect those children. In order to qualify for the protections in this bill, Madam Speaker, people had to have come to America the wrong way.

If people came to America the right way and have been waiting in line for 5 years or 10 years or, in the case of my constituents--and you know this well, Madam Speaker--15 years, 20 years for a green card while their children are aging out of the system, this bill does not one thing to protect them. Only if people came the wrong way are there protections in this system.

To be in the DACA program, people had to get here before 2007. President Obama's crisis on the border came in 2014. This bill today not only grandfathers all the DACA kids, it grandfathers all of those kids. In the meantime, we have spent not one penny on border security.

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Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I am grateful to my colleague for yielding the time.

Madam Speaker, we could be doing something together today. My friend, the chairwoman of the Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary, has a bill that has been cosponsored by more than half of the Democrats and by more than half of the Republicans that would go directly to this issue of folks who have been standing in line for decades and cannot get a green card. We could be bringing that bill today. It has not even gotten a hearing in the committee or the subcommittee so far.

This is not beyond our control. The rabbi who prayed for us this morning, Madam Speaker, said we can achieve the unachievable. We absolutely can come together and do that. This is not a serious effort to do that today, Madam Speaker, but it doesn't have to be the last word.

If we defeat this rule, we can come back together with bills that have been cosponsored by a majority of the Republicans, a majority of the Democrats, and move forward on this issue together. I know that is what the Speaker wants to do. I know that is what the chairwoman of the Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee wants to do. I know that is what most of us in this Chamber want to do, and we can.

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