{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=A9E1434F-10A1-4592-A7A2-6346B42A5957", "National Security, Step One: Secure The Border", "2023-12-04", "2023", "2023-12", "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 national security priorities:\n\n\u201cThe Senate has less than two weeks to pass supplemental legislation on urgent national security priorities.\n\n\u201cAs I\u2019ve said for months, that means addressing both grave threats to America\u2019s interests overseas and a glaring border security crisis here at home.\n\n\u201cSenate Republicans know that national security begins with border security.\n\n\u201cAnd we\u2019ve made it crystal clear that in order to pass the Senate, any measure we take up in the coming days must include serious policy changes designed to get the Biden Administration\u2019s border crisis under control.\n\n\u201cApparently, some of our colleagues aren\u2019t ready to take that reality seriously.\n\n\u201cSenator Lankford, Senator Graham, and their fellow Republican negotiators are still at the table, working diligently on solutions. But from the White House to the Capitol, Washington Democrats are wasting time with bizarre public scoldings.\n\n\u201cInstead of engaging actively in the border security discussions required to complete a viable national security supplemental, the Biden Administration has chosen to lecture Congress with a brag reel of its supposed leadership in countering Putin in Europe.\n\n\u201cThe Administration\u2019s account glossed over its record of self-deterrence toward Russia, insisting that, \u2018the time to help a democratic Ukraine fight against Russian aggression is right now.\u2019\n\n\u201cIf only President Biden felt that sort of urgency in late 2021 and early 2022, as I and other Republicans urged his Administration to give Ukraine the lethal assistance it needed to resist Putin\u2019s escalation. If only this lethal assistance \u2013 and critical investments in cutting-edge capabilities for U.S. forces \u2013 hadn\u2019t required so much prodding.\n\n\u201cLast week, at the Reagan National Defense Forum, the previous Administration\u2019s former National Security Advisor, Robert O\u2019Brien, made the case for supporting Ukraine.\n\n\u201cHe pointed out, rightly, that helping degrade the military power of a major U.S. adversary is in America\u2019s national security interests, and that we shouldn\u2019t hesitate to give Ukraine the weapons it needs to do the job.\n\n\u201cAnd he observed that the Biden Administration\u2019s \u2018self-congratulatory talk\u2019 doesn\u2019t square with its \u2018parsimonious\u2019 approach to actually getting decisive weapons to the battlefield. As he put it, President Biden\u2019s team ought to \u2018stop patting [itself] on the back\u2019.\n\n\u201cFor their part, it\u2019s time for Senate Democrats to start demonstrating they\u2019re more interested in reaching a productive outcome in border security discussions than in wringing their hands in the press.\n\n\u201cThe junior Senator for Connecticut has concluded that beginning to stem the humanitarian and national security crisis on our southern border amounts to, \u2018closing the border indiscriminately.\u2019\n\n\u201cApparently, restoring a functional asylum and parole system, orderly points of entry, and meaningful enforcement of our immigration laws is a bridge too far for Senate Democrats.\n\n\u201cLet\u2019s be absolutely clear what we\u2019re dealing with here. Let\u2019s establish exactly what it is that the Democratic Leader has called \u2018extraneous\u2019 to America\u2019s national security:\n\n\u201cOn President Biden\u2019s watch, CBP has recorded 6.5 million encounters at the southern border and 1.7 million known gotaways. And last fiscal year\u2019s all-time record apprehensions at the southern border included 169 individuals on the terrorist watch list \u2013 a massive increase.\n\n\u201cThe Biden Administration tried to convince the American people that they were serious about this historic crisis by having asylum seekers download a smartphone app. Instead, week after week, all we see are numbers that somehow keep getting worse.\n\n\u201cMeanwhile, liberal state and local officials told us that the increasing chaos of their \u2018sanctuary cities\u2019 could be mitigated if only we raced to give work permits to their ever-growing populations of illegal aliens.\n\n\u201cNow, setting aside the fact that this creates the exact wrong incentives, the Biden Administration has already tried this approach and failed. In New York City alone, just 2% of recent arrivals have even applied.\n\n\u201cPresident Biden\u2019s officials have even admitted that they expected this unserious approach to produce a further surge in arrivals.\n\n\u201cAs recently as two weeks ago, the White House was trying to sell its flawed, insufficient supplemental proposal as a solution to the crisis.\n\n\u201cAs the junior Senator for Tennessee has pointed out, the President\u2019s answer to the border crisis wasn\u2019t to enforce immigration law \u2013 it was to turn ICE into a concierge service for illegal aliens.\n\n\u201cWashington Democrats appear to be hell-bent on exhausting every half-baked idea before they get serious about actually fixing our broken enforcement system and securing our southern border.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s the job the American people expect them to do. That\u2019s the foundation of America\u2019s national security. And time is running out.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T18:56:20Z"]], "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=A9E1434F-10A1-4592-A7A2-6346B42A5957"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.8683811649680138, "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"}