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[Pages H1001-H1002]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
STATIC WALLS DON'T WORK
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for 5 minutes.
[[Page H1002]]
Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, well, the President is increasingly
focused in messaging on the need for the wall as being the shipment of
illegal drugs into the United States of America and the drug epidemic.
I think we are all concerned about that, and we would all like to do
something effective to deal with it.
Now, as his current acting chief of staff said when he was a Member
of Congress about a wall: You go under--tunnels--you go through or
over, and what you need is more manpower, more technology.
So the President says we need a stupid, static wall at extraordinary
costs. Actually, we need something else. What we need are effective
measures.
The Department of Homeland Security says they need $5 billion to
reconfigure our ports of entry and to bring in new technology.
El Chapo's lieutenants and others have testified at his trial in New
York they don't go across remote desert areas. They buy semi-tractor
trailers and they reconfigure them and bring them through the ports of
entry. They are very efficient. And that is how they are getting drugs
into this country.
We lack the personnel and the equipment to detect these shipments. So
how about investing there?
Oh, and by the way, the people who are screening at the ports of
entry, 8 percent of the vehicles is all they can screen today. Probably
less today because they aren't getting paid, and some of them can't
show up to work because they can't hire childcare or they can't fix
their car to get to work or something else.
So the President is concerned? Really? I don't think so.
And then there is another way that drugs are more and more frequently
coming into our country. As you can see from this display of drugs
here, the Coast Guard intercepted $5.6 billion of drugs coming in on
maritime routes last year. But the retiring Commandant said that is
only about 20 percent of the drug shipments we can identify. We don't
have the personnel or the proper equipment to intercept the other 80
percent.
Oh, by the way, the Coast Guard, they are not getting paid either.
But the President is concerned. Well, has he talked about the need to
give more resources to the United States Coast Guard?
So, hey, it would be great if they get $5.7 billion, and that is one-
fifth of the drugs they can identify. That would be $25 billion of
drugs being intercepted next year if they had the equipment, the
personnel they needed--five times the cost of a stupid, static wall.
So if the President is truly concerned about cartels and Asian mobs
shipping drugs into the United States, he should be talking about
putting money where it is needed: at the ports of entry, the Coast
Guard for maritime interception, and other places where it would be
more effective.
That is the position of the Democrats. We want to have effective 21st
century border security, not a failed wall. That has been tried by a
number of civilizations.
Static walls don't work. Let's do real things to deal with the real
problem.
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