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Floor Speech

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Ms. SINEMA. Mr. President, I stand here today, yet again, as the border crisis continues to devastate my State.

On February 7, I stood here, angry that rank partisanship tanked the single most important piece of border security and immigration legislation produced in decades.

As we all remember, last October, I joined with Senators James Lankford of Oklahoma and Chris Murphy of Connecticut to craft this legislation. We worked every single day for over 4 months, navigating difficult policy positions, working carefully to get it right.

After months of tireless negotiations, we delivered a strong product. We produced a bill many thought impossible. We ended catch-and-release. We added more detention beds. We increased deportation flights. We quickly decided asylum claims, and we put Border Patrol back in the field where they belong--securing the border, not stuck inside processing paperwork.

Yet, less than 24 hours after we released the bill, my Republican colleagues blocked it, despite the fact that this is the most restrictive migrant legislation in decades.

My Democratic colleagues blamed Republican political theater for blocking action. So did I. They were right.

I spoke here on the Senate floor twice in defense of our legislation. It turns out that my Republican colleagues were all talk and no action.

Today, though, my Democratic colleagues have chosen more political theater instead of real efforts to solve this crisis.

All talk and no actions goes both ways. Today, the Senate will hold a show vote whose sole purpose is to point the finger back at the other party--yet another cynical political game.

These games demonstrate exactly why Americans have lost faith in their elected leaders: a Congress bickering and fighting for power instead of solving problems and making progress--any kind of progress-- for regular people. Today's vote is not an attempt to solve the problem or provide relief to Arizona border communities. Today's vote is to send a message.

But Arizona doesn't need your message. Arizona needs your help. Arizona needs action.

These games of tit for tat, caving to the political messaging game, force both parties further to the fringes and further away from real solutions. Today, the Senate is proving what many Americans already think about Congress: that Senators come here for political games, not to deliver results.

Today's vote won't deliver lasting results for Americans, but the impact of today's vote is actually worse than simply being a useless message, because this vote does send an important message, but it is a message to us as lawmakers.

I have often asked my colleagues in the interest of our Nation to step out of partisan boxes and work with me to find real solutions to real problems. We have done it time and time again. This time it didn't work.

Nearly 4 months later, I am still deeply disappointed that we didn't solve the border crisis for my State and for our country. But to use this failure as a political punching bag only punishes those who were courageous enough to do the hard work of finding compromise in the first place.

So who will be courageous next time? Who will stand up and do the hard work? Who will take the risks? Who will say: Yes, I will help solve this big challenge our country faces. Why would anyone?

We don't leave today with a political victory. No one wins. No one gets the higher grounds. Instead, we are saying to each other: Don't step out. Don't try to solve big problems. Stay in your partisan corner. Yell some more. Blame the other side.

Today, yet again, the Senate has chosen politics, but my State is still suffering. As I said on the floor back on February 7, if you want to spin the border crisis for your own political agendas, go right ahead. If you want to continue to use the southern border as a backdrop for your political campaign, that is fine; good luck to you. But I have a very clear message for anyone using the southern border for staged political events: Don't come to Arizona for your political theater. Do not bring it to my State.

In Arizona, we are serious. We don't have time for your political games. There are big challenges facing the Senate and our country, and evidently this is not a Senate interested in solving those challenges. Americans deserve better.

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