Border Security: Montana Senator Confronts ND’s Senators Cramer and Hoeven

WASHINGTON D.C. (trfnews.i234.me) Democratic Senator Jon Tester of Montana took Republican Senators like Kevin Cramer and John Hoeven, next door in North Dakota to the woodshed on Friday. Both Cramer and Hoeven had made numerous comments on how important border security is, but when it came up for a vote, they voted no on moving the legislation forward.
Democratic senator John tester of Montana took Republican Senators to the Woodshed on the floor of the Senate Friday that includes next door North Dakota Republican Senators Kevin Kramer and John hovind who both voted no on moving border security legislation forward both Kramer and hovind sent out news releases and in a couple of lines said they voted no because of this or that in the bill but instead of moving it Forward making Amendment ments negotiate and change it they both killed it to keep it a political issue instead of fixing a major national problem Montana Senator John tester does a good job of explaining how the bill got to where it is what it is and why Republicans have now killed a bill they’ve all said is so important the senator from Montana is recognized Mr President I asked that the quum call be eviscerated we are not in a quorum call okay well that’s good then I’ll just go I want to uh thank you for the recognition Mr President I don’t need to tell the people in this body or the other side of the capital that the public view of Washington DC is not very good our numbers and public opinion numbers often times are in the single digits and they’re there for good reason they’re there because often times people only see politics here all the time they see bodies and individuals that work for the parties they don’t work for the good of America and what we saw earlier this week just confirms that where we had a bill that came out to address border security particularly on the southern border but it does good things for the northern border too but IT addresses border security in this country well we’re seeing people come coming across the border the southern Border in particular we don’t know who they are and it’s just flat a national security issue when I go home to Montana I hear it from everybody I hear it from families from business owners from policemen to Mayors you name it in Montana and I don’t think is different from any other state this is a big issue people understand the southern border is broken and they want us the folks that serve in Washington DC their representatives to the government to do something about it now over the last many years multiple administrations we’ve seen people go to the border and talk about how things are really bad down there they’re bad because we’ve got undocumented folks coming across the border in record numbers they’re bad because we’ve got fentanyl coming into this country that’s killing people and ruining families and then they come back and they go around the country talking about how miserably bad it is on the southern border and how it needs to be fixed they’re right unfortunately this shouldn’t be about press releases and emails and newsletters and interviews at night this should be about getting something done to fix the problem so what transpired about four months ago is we had a bill on the floor then funding for Ukraine I believe there was funding for Israel I believe there was funding for the endo specific in it and there were some at this in this body that said this bill is going nowhere until we get something that addresses the problems of the Southern border I was standing right over there when one of the senator said we get Southern border Republican Democrats get Ukraine funding well he was wrong the truth is is the United States gets Southern Border Protection and the United States stes citizens get to help Ukraine and support democracy and make sure that Putin isn’t successful in taking over Ukraine and ultimately the rest of Europe but nonetheless there’s three people that went out was given the blessing to negotiate a bipartisan which is the way things should be done around here and are done around here a bipartisan Southern border bill the two people the Republican and the Democrat or the Democrat and the Republican however you want to place and happened to be the chairman and ranking member of the Homeland Appropriations subcommittee the other one was a member who was an independent that lives in a state that borders the southern border Arizona so these folks went down and they worked and worked and worked I’ve been part of these negotiations and quite frankly they’re never easy nobody gets everything they want there’s compromise there’s negotiations and in the end you thread the needle and you come up with a bill that actually secures a southern border that by the way any one of those three negotiators will tell you they would not have written of themselves but through the negotiating process they came up with a bill and I’m going to tell you it was a pretty darn good bill they rolled it out last Sunday night for all of us to see some 300 plus pages I got to read that bill but the interesting thing is Before the bill was even rolled out some of the folks that serve in this body said I oppose it before they even had a chance to look at it they said I oppose it because they were told to oppose the bill now look we’re all elected by our citizens in our states to come here I would hope we all have a mind I would hope we all can think and I hope we could all discern fact from fiction but when somebody says vote against it and you just vote against it after you’ve been in your state you’ve heard what A big the issue this is and you’ve considered what can happen if if we do nothing versus what we can happen if we do something and yet for political purposes not because it’s bad policy but for political purposes a person says don’t fix it and almost almost like a cult the people here said we’re voting no many of them have not read it it’s unbelievable to me and I’ve seen a lot of hypocrisy in this place but is unbelievable to me the hypocrisy in that vote as a condition of National Security and folks in this body turn their back on fixing the problem why because they want to keep it a political issue which is exactly why the people look at Washington DC and say you know what those those folks don’t represent us they’re in it for themselves they just want everything to be an upheaval it confirms that thought so what’s the bill do what does this compromise Bill do for America it funds $20 billion in security for the southern border for Manpower for technology and to attack the fentanyl crisis which is a Scourge on this country it includes the fenda fentanyl act which puts serious harm to China’s wallet for putting Cur the precursor elements of fentanyl into Mexico it changes the Asylum laws it raises the bar exponentially and stops folks who come to the border illegally from gaming the system it requires it requires the president to shut down the Border when they can’t handle the people look don’t take my word for it the national border patrol Council some 18,000 border patrol agents have endorsed this bill these are the folks that are charged by the way with keeping our border safe the acting director of Customs Board of protection endorsed this bill and said would provide the strongest set of tools that we’ve had in decades the chief of the US border patrol said on Fox News and I quote this bill that would have added additional hundreds of border patrol agents to our Rank and file that would have given us more technology would have given us more equipment infrastructure of course course I’m going to be supportive of that and one of the Senators that negotiated this bill a strong conservative I might add Republican senator James Langford from Oklahoma said that this would have stopped 800,000 entries in the past four months if it had already been signed into law the hypocrisy is stunning senators and house members who went back to their home States and talked about how bad the southern border was and how we needed to act now have flip-flopped these are politicians who claim to work bipartisanly but they oppose bipartisan Solutions the same ones that have cried loudly for years that we need changes policy changes on the border but they’re revealing in plain sight that it isn’t about policy issues it’s about politics and the disinformation campaign that’s come along with this is Rich claims that 5,000 migrants would be allowed into this state into this country every day is patently false and if they’d have read the bill they’d have known it there’s those that say the congressional action isn’t needed that also is false we control the pur strings we control the policy language and only Congress can fix our Asylum laws only Congress can make sure we’re giving the border patrol the resources that they need to secure the Border look I I wish this place worked I really do this is the greatest country in the world not by accident because our forefathers acted responsibly and that we didn’t have campaign Seasons that never end that we actually could sit down and negotiate not as Democrats and Republicans but as Americans to do what’s right for this country if if if we don’t if we don’t start acting like adults in this place and start thinking and acting reasonably and listening to our constituents not listening to one person but listen to the folks who sent you here even when you don’t dis even when you disagree with them you should be listening to to try to fix the problems I fear for this country’s future and I don’t say that lightly there’s plenty of evidence out there that shows that China would love to replace this as the premier economy and the premier military in this world that is not something that we should take lightly that is something that we should take very very seriously and when Congress doesn’t do their job when Congress doesn’t even debate a bill to deal with a serious problem in this country it does not speak well of us and it only empowers our opponents out there the countries that want our place Us in the world I don’t know what will transpire with this negotiated border agreement but I do hope that we get another opportunity to vote on it on the policy that was negotiated by Langford and Cinema and Murphy they worked hard at a bare minimum they deserve they deserve but more importantly the American people deserve to hear a debate on this bill and find out not what Facebook or Twitter or what the internet says about this bill but find out exactly what’s in this bill because I can tell you montanans are tired of DC political games and quite frankly so am I I yield the floor