the case. i'd hoped that by now we'll be much closer to passing a funding bill for the department that the senate would have proceed to the d.h.s. appropriations bill and that we could begin the process of debate, of considering amendments, and of developing consensus of getting our work done. yet here we are on the third day just trying to proceed to funding the department of homeland security, a department that fen agrees is vital. and that's -- that everyone agrees is vital. and that's what this bill does. it funds the department fully and completely,ances and it does it in the right way by enforcing the law. mr. president, i don't have to tell my colleagues that the defining attributes of the senate come from the senators' ability to debate and to amend legislation. debate an amendment -- the presiding officer: time has expired. mr. hoeven: mr. president, i would ask unanimous consent for another three minutes. the presiding officer: is there objection? seeing none -- the senator from new hampshire. hurricane katrina hoon i certainly want-- mrs. shaheen: i certainly want to give my colleague time to finish his remarks. i want to make certa

the 2015 d.h.s. appropriations bill as leverage to reverse the president's executive actions on immigration policy. if my republican colleagues believe the president has overreached then the constitution provides them a path of action through the authorizing committees rather than an appropriations bill. mr. speaker when we are increasingly faced with the possibility of terrorist threats, i urge the republican leadership to let this house vote on the clean, bipartisan bicameral 2015 homeland security appropriations bill negotiated in good faith last november. this bill will pass the house and the senate and will be signed by the president enabling our department of homeland security to continue to protect our country from harm. to do otherwise is a failure in our most basic responsibility as members of congress. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady yields back. the chair recognizes the gentleman from north carolina, mr. jones, for five minutes. mr. jones: mr. speaker, in the last couple of weeks the effort to declassify the 28 pages of the joint inquiry report into the 9/11 attacks

the senate proceed to d.h.s. -- this d.h.s. appropriations bill without

the list of national security related programs this bill provides resources for is long. before i speak to those programs in greater detail, i will reinforce the importance of proceeding to this d.h.s. appropriations bill. d.h.s. funding expires on september 27. to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who don't want to trod this bill, i would just point out, we need to take up this d.h.s. appropriations funding bill and debate it, to let the senate do its work. mr. president, we just passed the keystone bill after the consideration of more than 40 amendments. at the end of the day we were able to produce a bill that garnered 62 votes. urge my colleagues to let the senate do its business. vote "yes" often on cloture on the motion to proceed. now i'd like to walk through some of the things that this bill funds. i want to remind my colleagues how critical these d.h.s. operations are to the economic prosperity public safety, and security of the american people. the bill provides $39.67 billion in net discretionary appropriations plus $6.4 billion in disaster funding. let's take a low-income at some of the critical -- let's take a look at some of the critical security functions that this bill p

the date when d.h.s. funding expires. we need an appropriation bill that does not disrupt this important work. i talked to new mexicans who live in the border communities and i talk to ranchers and farmers in my state. border security is not theoretical. it is not a political game. it's crucial to safety, it is crucial to trade at our ports of entry like santa teresa and plumb bus. -- columbus. in new mexico a shutdown of d.h.s. is a threat to our security, 0 jobs and to our economy. i've read reports where congressional republicans have said on the record that a delay in funding a delay in funding d.h.s. wouldn't be a big deal. they say most of the department's employees are considered essential so they would still be working at our borders and screening airline passengers. that may be true, but those employees wouldn't get paid. i'm not willing to tell our border patrol agents and t.s.a. officers with families to feed that they still need to go to work but they aren't going to get paid. because washington can't get its act together. i know my constituents would feel a lot more secure in borde

course the part that, i guess, confused me the most is our democratic friends said well we don't want to debate the bill, but what we want is a clean d.h.s. appropriation bill. so they wanted to get to the end of the process without even starting the process which strikes me as odd. as i pointed out last week during the senate debate on the keystone x.l. pipeline, senator durbin from illinois, the assistant minority leader, spoke very sincerely in support of a process surrounding that bill. we didn't all agree that the keystone pipeline bill should be passed but we did at least have an open amendment process that allowed everyone to express their point of view and to get votes on amendments, up or down, before concluding that piece of legislation. of course, this was something that i think the most notable part of that was that we actually had more votes in the united states senate during the three weeks we were on the keystone x.l. pipeline than we had all of last year under the previous management. so it was amazing to me that -- to see that the democratic leadership the senate minority, worked so hard to marshall their caucus together to block debat

the authorizing committees not through an appropriations bill. last week the senate definitively demonstrated three times there are insufficient votes to bring up the d.h.s. funding bill with the house passed poison pill riders. even if the senate were to take up the bill it would be vulnerable to a budget point of order because the poison pill riders have been scored by the congressional budget office as having a net cost of $7.5 billion. republicans control majorities in both the house and the senate and they control the agenda. by allowing a vote on the clean full year bipartisan d.h.s. funding bill, the leadership today has the opportunity to make clear that the nation's security takes priority over unrelated policy debate over immigration enforcement strategy. this bill addresses the most pressing needs of the department of homeland security to protect our country from harm. it would pass both houses and be signed by the president today and we should send it to him. i urge my colleagues to defeat the previous question to make in order consideration of a clean homeland security funding bill. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady yield

the d.h.s. not only needs a good funding bill at an appropriate level which we've already agreed to but they needa financial certainty and the flexibility to direct its resources as they can. mr. president, let me just give you one interesting recent example of how d.h.s. employees have been very important in virginia and though serving in virginia have served a critical role for the nation. we saw a crisis in be 2014 many of us hadn't paid attention to before the spread of the ebola vier it's in africa -- virus in average. it's the largest in history for this kind of virus and had a significant impact on many he west african countries, more than 22,000 confirmed cases as of january 2015. whenever there is a challenge like this nations of the world turn to the united states and ask for our help and many parts of our government responded we've deployed military and health professionals to africa to battle the disease there but we've also deployed our d.h.s. personnel right here at home to keep us safe. as part of the strategy to -- strategy to stop ebola d.h.s. announced in october five u.s. airpo

the appropriations bill passed by the house were to become law uscif would have been prevent interested finalizing that rule. republicans don't talk about the fact that they are refusing to fund d.h.s. unless they block each of these efforts, but that's what they voted to do. turning to today's hearing, i note that although the title of this hearing as has been mentioned, presumed that the president's executive actions are unconstitutional no court, including the texas district court, that issued the preliminary infunction have found that these actions are unconstitutional. in fact, a challenge to the original daca program brought by the state of mississippi was thrown out of court for lack of standing. in a challenge to the administration's recent executive actions brought by marea copea county sheriff, was also dismissed for lack of standing. of course i'm disappointed by the court's ruling and i know millions of american families across the country are also greatly disappointed. still, i expect that both programs will be upheld as fully within the president's legal authority by appellate courts. i say this because there is ample legal and historical precedent supporting the pres

the appropriations bill passed by the house were to become law, uscif would have been prevent interested finalizing that rule. republicans don't talk about the fact that they are refusing to fund d.h.s. unless they block each of these efforts, but that's what they voted to do. turning to today's hearing, i note that although the title of this hearing as has been mentioned, presumed that the president's executive actions are unconstitutional, no court, including the texas district court, that issued the preliminary injunction have found that these actions are unconstitutional. in fact, a challenge to the original daca program brought by the state of mississippi was thrown out of court for lack of standing. in a challenge to the administration's recent executive actions brought by maricopa county sheriff, was also dismissed for lack of standing. of course i'm disappointed by the court's ruling and i know millions of american families across the country are also greatly disappointed. still, i expect that both programs will be upheld as fully within the president's legal authority by appellate courts. i say this because there is ample legal and historical precedent supporting the presid

d.h.s. funding fight is the first new test of the new republican congress and so far they are failing. we shudder to think what's going to happen when they have a full appropriations bill or we have to raise the debt ceiling. if this is prelude, this country's in trouble. if the republican party, which has traditionally prided itself on homeland security and national defense can't even fund department of homeland security, how are they going to address these other issues like debt ceiling or funding the rest of the government? speaker boehner, what you choose to do will set the tone for the rest of congress this year. please make the right choice. i call on senator mikulski. >> i'm proud what the senate did today. we passed a full year funding for the department of homeland security. it means we did our job so that those men and women working in every agency can do their job to protect america whether it's securing the borders whether it's the coast guard doing search and rescue or interdifficulting or doing the ice breaking on the channels, whether it's the people doing cybersecurity or protecting other attacks on us and also the grant funding that goes to our local c

the senate proceed to d.h.s. -- this d.h.s. appropriations bill without further delay. and i urge my colleagues to vote for proceeding to h.r. 240 the d.h.s. appropriations bill. with that, mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the clerk will now report the motion to invoke cloture. the clerk: cloture motion. we the undersigned senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule 22 of the standing rules of the senate, do hereby prove to bring to close debate on the motion to proceed to h.r. 240 making appropriations for the department of homeland security for the fiscal year ending september 30 2015. signed by 17 senators. the presiding officer: by unanimous consent the mandatory quorum call has been waived. the question is: is it the sense of the senate that debate on the motion to proceed to h.r. 240 an act making appropriations for the department of homeland security for the fiscal year ending september 30, 2015 and for other purposes, shall be brought to a close? the yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule. the clerk will now call the roll. vote

the senate proceed to d.h.s. -- this d.h.s. appropriations bill without further delay. and i urge my colleagues to vote for proceeding to h.r. 240 the d.h.s. appropriations bill. with

course the part that, i guess, confused me the most is our democratic friends said well we don't want to debate the bill, but what we want is a clean d.h.s. appropriation bill. so they wanted to get to the end of the process without even starting the process which strikes me as odd. as i pointed out last week during the senate debate on the keystone x.l. pipeline, senator durbin from illinois, the assistant minority leader, spoke very sincerely in support of a process surrounding that bill. we didn't all agree that the keystone pipeline bill should be passed but we did at least have an open amendment process that allowed everyone to express their point of view and to get votes on amendments, up or down, before concluding that piece of legislation. of course, this was something that i think the most notable part of that was that we actually had more votes in the united states senate during the three weeks we were on the keystone x.l. pipeline than we had all of last year under the previous management. so it was amazing to me that -- to see that the democratic leadership the senate minority, worked so hard to marshall their caucus together to block debat

the senate proceed to vote on the bill with no intervening action or debate. following disposition of the bill the senate will resume the motion to proceed to h.r. 240, the d.h.s. appropriation bill. the presiding officer: is there objection? a senator: no objection. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. the clerk will report s. 295. the clerk: calendar number 16, s. 295 a bill to amend section 2259 of title 18 united states code and for other purposes. the presiding officer: under the previous order there will be one hour of debate equally divided in the usual form. the senator from iowa. mr. grassley: i thank the majority leader for moving ahead on s. 295, that we call the amy and vicky act. the need for this bill comes because the supreme court's 5-4 decision last year in paroline versus united states. the court at that time limited that the recovery of a victim of a child pornography offense could receive even as additional wrongdoers saw her images as it was repeatedly posted on the internet. rather than making the offender provide restitution for all the harms caused by the repeated viewings, the supreme court limited recovery against any one defendant