{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=480079CC-8DC0-4045-B9E9-555050D3591D", "McConnell: After Catastrophic Failure At Border, VP Harris Wants A Promotion", "2024-07-31", "2024", "2024-07", "Republican", "Senate", "KY", "Mitch McConnell", "M000355", "www.mcconnell.senate.gov", "mcconnell", "https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding the Biden-Harris border crisis:\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s been less than two weeks since President Biden\u2019s name was removed from the Democratic Party\u2019s ticket.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve already spoken about how the effort to sideline Democrats\u2019 de-facto nominee robbed primary voters of their role in the electoral process. Now, as the dust settles, more and more Americans are realizing that this wasn\u2019t just a process foul \u2013 it was also a massive promotion for someone with a failing record in her current job.\n\n\u201cRemember, just two months into their term, the president tasked the vice president with getting to the bottom of the surging illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border. He called her \u2018the most qualified person\u2019 to lead on this issue.\n\n\u201cSo, why don\u2019t we take a look at how she did? In the past three and a half years, the crisis at our southern border has made history.\n\n\u201cBorder Patrol agents have recorded over 9.9 million illegal encounters. We know that nearly 2 million more have gotten away. And the Administration\u2019s catch-and-release policies have let in over 3 million without any credible means of enforcing immigration law.\n\n\u201cWhat rapidly became a humanitarian crisis on Vice President Harris\u2019 watch is also a national security vulnerability of alarming proportions. Since October 2021, CBP have encountered 539 individuals on the terror watchlist along the southern border.\n\n\u201cThe failure is vast. The facts are shocking. The numbers are staggering.\n\n\u201cBut for too many American families, there\u2019s only one number that matters: the one empty chair at the dinner table. For some families, that chair is empty because an illegal immigrant killed their loved one. For many more, it\u2019s empty because Chinese manufacturers and Mexican cartels have exploited the chaos at the border and made fentanyl the leading cause of death for American adults.\n\n\u201cAnd yet, in the face of pain and suffering, the Administration\u2019s point person on the border has approached this crisis with profound unseriousness.\n\n\u201cIt took the Vice President months to get around to visiting the border. When asked why she hadn\u2019t made time to see the effects of the Administration\u2019s open-borders policies firsthand, she quipped that she hadn\u2019t been to Europe, either.\n\n\u201cSometimes, instead of deflection, she\u2019s employed outright denial.\n\n\u201cFor example, she said \u2018we have a secure border.\u2019\n\n\u201cAnother example, \u2018everything\u2026is going rather smoothly.\u2019\n\n\u201cOf course, years earlier, under an Administration that took border security seriously, then-Senator Harris found plenty of time to elaborate on her aversion to commonsense policy.\n\n\u201cIn 2017, when a federal judge blocked the previous administration\u2019s efforts to deny federal funding to sanctuary cities, she reacted with \u2018It\u2019s fantastic, I\u2019m jumping up and down. Put five exclamation points after what I said.\u2019\n\n\u201cDemocrats are poised to nominate someone with a long record of being dead-wrong on securing America\u2019s borders. So perhaps it\u2019s not surprising that their media allies are working overtime to absolve the Vice President of responsibility for the undeniable crisis that\u2019s unfolded on her watch.\n\n\u201cLast week, we read headlines like \u2018No, Kamala Harris is Not the \u2018Border Czar\u2019, and claims that \u2018the vice president\u2019s role was more limited.\u2019\n\n\u201cAfter the short hiatus of asking tough questions about President Biden\u2019s fitness for office, the legacy media are back in the business of papering over Democrats\u2019 vulnerabilities. Even if, in this case, it means blatantly gaslighting the public.\n\n\u201cBut at the end of the day, the American people know what neglect looks like. Families missing loved ones know what this sort of catastrophic failure feels like.\n\n\u201cAnd in November, I expect they\u2019ll have plenty to say about it.\u201d\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T18:32:29Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=480079CC-8DC0-4045-B9E9-555050D3591D"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.7201610133051872, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}